Is my torrent seeding?

November 17, 2004 7:48 AM

We have had a torrent open for a few days now, Good for that! We are forlorn for it quite obviously has been abandoned: all Seeders have flown away before their Seedlings had been Sown. We are saddened by the fact that there is Not a chance of any One of these Miscreants returning. Please Miss, does there exist a hope for Salvage betwixt our missing Limbs?

The acquisition had Good Intentions of becoming 792Mb of mp3s ( fear Not: it is/was a collection of Cylinder recordings from the Oughts, i.e. publick domain, i.e. Hello, Edison! ), and we have been left with 602Mb of that Figure completed. We are familiar with the nature of BitTorrent downloads, though we are curious if it is possible to ascertain whether or Not any of the mp3s have been completed successfully. Or would it be safe to assume that bits are missing from each and every One?

-- The mp3s are of low quality ( who needs 192Kbps of Crackle and Hiss? ) and therefore 792Mb constitutes hundreds of Five Hundred Seventeen files, Not an amount One wishes to sift through One-by-One! Indeed, Not! --

(Google wants us to learn and become acquainted with the art and nuances of gluing together pieces of .avi pornography. Silly search friend!)

posted by tenseone to computers & internet (21 comments total)

Azureus, the Finest of Windows torrent clients, will tell you in an extended detail view how your individual files are faring.
posted by muckster at 8:05 AM on November 17, 2004

Azureus also happens to be the Finest of the Mac and Linux torrent clients. And yeah, it'll show you the completion status of each individual file. Very handy in situations such as yours.
posted by Acetylene at 8:15 AM on November 17, 2004

Gosh, thank you for the push! It just so happened we were using Azureus and had neglected to peek around at its potential.

This is a perfectly answered question, and now we are able to see just how many hundreds of files were not completed. Balderdash!
posted by tenseone at 8:16 AM on November 17, 2004

And tenseone, should your Torrents ever become completed, by all means please update us as to the results. There are those on this Inter-net site who would be quite interested in procuring said cylinder recordings and other recorded ephemera.
posted by 40 Watt at 8:18 AM on November 17, 2004

Azureus, the Finest of Windows torrent clients

I must disagree, and offer TorrentStorm as a better alternative.
posted by four panels at 8:58 AM on November 17, 2004

please update us as to the results...

We shall, although we are at this point not hopeful. As a result of this hopelessness, we are loathe to set someone up for the agonizing grief we feel upon discovering that only a miniscule amount of mp3s have come to fruition after a few days of anticipation. Such is the nature of BitTorrent, we suppose.

Here are some sites that offer a wonderful selection of songs and recordings to obtain:

The Cylinder Archive

Le Gramophone virtuel

Vintage Audio

Dismuke's 1920s & 1930s Electrical Recordings

Duus' 1920s & '30s Real Audio Page

The Authentic History Center

Little Wonder Music

19th Century Records

Edison Recordings

1920s Jazz Age Songs

Vintage Recordings
posted by tenseone at 9:00 AM on November 17, 2004

Great Caesar's ghost, tenseone! You are a knowledgeable fellow indeed. Many thanks! I shall set forth with the downloading.
posted by 40 Watt at 9:13 AM on November 17, 2004

We actually have one other question, if any one continues to read this thread:

We are on a Mac and use Audio Hi-Jack with websites like the ones mentioned above. Although before we discovered Audio Hi-Jack, we used this wonderful program on Windows in VirtualPC which achieved the same effect (Real to mp3), but allowed queuing of .rm URLs, something we do not believe Audio Hi-Jack allows (please correct if in error!).

It had an incredibly bloated user-interface, but we did not care, as it was a blessing to load up thirty or so .rm URLs, forget about it, and then return a while later to find all of our newly converted mp3s in our Music folder.

Does anyone know of this program of which we speak? We have lost it due to some VirtualPC mishaps, and adore the opportunity to use it again.
posted by tenseone at 9:23 AM on November 17, 2004

My stars, tenseone! That list is as insurmountable as the Himalaya! I must commence henceforth with sturdy boot and walking pole.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:48 AM on November 17, 2004

tenseone, this is great! Now, to scratch an old itch of mine, do you know of any places that have mandolin orchestra recordings? The orchestra's were popular but not extensively recorded and I've only found two recordings so far.
posted by tommasz at 9:50 AM on November 17, 2004

Hmm - I have been using Applescript, RealPlayer, and Audio Recorder to achieve the queueing of RealPlayer streams, but I end up with 8-15 seconds of silence as I want to make sure I don't miss the beginning of the streams... I would be happy to send you the script I am using, but I also wondered how people deal with the accurate start... Do the non-free recorder/rippers have a feature for this?

I have beeen using Audion to edit the mp3's directly, which is fine for my purposes, I am recording long radio programs, but would be annoying if I was trying to grab and convert many shorter files.

Oh and if you want that script, email
mzurer@*removeme*gmail.com
and I will send it to you forthwith.
posted by sfz at 10:04 AM on November 17, 2004

tommasz ( et al ) --

We are quite gleeful that you find those websites of interest!

We do not know of such a Mandolin Collection off-hand, though while we are terrible at the most simple of Google searches (this thread for example), we have discovered a knack for tracking down vintage recordings.

We shall most happily see what we may find!

sfz -- We would be honoured to receive your script. The one benefit we have found with Audio Hi-Jack is that it automatically begins recording at the first instance of 'noise'. This adds a neat effect to older recordings for the initial scratches of the records are included with the results.

I shall send off for your invited gifting.
posted by tenseone at 10:09 AM on November 17, 2004

By Andrew Carnegie's tightening financial grip, I believe this is a discussion of great value to persons of like mind to my own! Drat the oligopolist chokehold 'pon music recorded by living persons, and rather, toasts and celebrations to the sounds of those long dead!

Huzzahs and loud appreciations for our anachronist friend, tenseone! May his name be celebrated among the gaslit-hallways of cylinder-fancier's hearts anon and forever more!

Hip hip -

HUZZAH!
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 AM on November 17, 2004

in re: Maudlin Mandolin.

There appears to be something of a Symphonic Mandolin Renaissance in the Machinery works. (We are assured that these must be very pretty Gears, indeed!)

Although we did come across this site of Auditory Fun, which alongside the Mandolin Orchestrations, includes an assemblage of additional pleasantries in sonic inducement.

There are also directions towards purchasing propositions, and now that we are introduced and enamored, we may have to trit-trot towards procurement.
posted by tenseone at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2004

Drat the oligopolist chokehold 'pon music recorded by living persons, and rather, toasts and celebrations to the sounds of those long dead!

We have a new motto, it appears.

We are forever indebted to this frolicking phonetic fondness.
posted by tenseone at 10:53 AM on November 17, 2004

tenseone you should whip up a FPP out of that beautiful list.
posted by Mitheral at 12:10 PM on November 17, 2004

An absolutely stunning menagerie, tenseone. High praise all around. The tune "I'm Just Wild About Animal Crackers" (contained within these pages) is just the bee's knees, I say!
posted by lpqboy at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2004

TorrentStorm is a horrible alternative to Azureus. I started out using TS, thinking it was great, but after switching to Azureus I've never looked back.
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 12:29 PM on November 17, 2004

you should whip up a FPP out of that beautiful list.

We are not fond of posting items to the front page of this website, it leaves us in a chill. The websites listed above are quite dear to us, and we would be horrified if another MetaFilter user were to condemn us for offering them.

40 Watt very nicely and, we believe, sincerely asked for Parcel, and we were delighted to offer something more than the agony of the torrent in question.

Though any one soul is free to do with the collection as one wishes.
posted by tenseone at 12:34 PM on November 17, 2004

List? heck, your site is worth an hearty yowsa all of its own.
posted by mwhybark at 4:06 PM on November 17, 2004

Gosh again, mwhybark. That was a fantastickally kind thing for you to type.

Thank you so much, sincerely.
posted by tenseone at 6:25 PM on November 17, 2004