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The Lobby / Re: posting prompt experiment: how have music modules affected your life?
« on: January 01, 2024, 19:23:24 »
As a teenager I had access to many cracktros. I often jumped them because I wanted to play the game, but some of them were catchy and I indulged in the trainer to listen to them. Anyway when I bought a PC that music went to the oblivion, with a few exceptions. In the 00's MP3s took almost all of my listening time.
Fast forward to 2018 I had a really strong flu, with temperatures above 39.5 °C, and I felt really bad. Couldn't stay awake for 10 minutes, had troubles standing, etc. My worst flu since I was adult, and as an adult it wouldn't be appropriate to ring to my parents and ask for cuddles as I did when I was a child, so I tried to find a "safe space", some (virtual) environment where I could feel "at home". My decision was to listen to a compilation of several hours of cracktros, that I put in loop for the few days of my illness. They brought me back to my teen years, when everything seemed (only seemed indeed) simpler.
My immune system eventually did its job and I recovered quickly. Listening again to the compilations I found some really good catchy tunes and I wondered why they don't have the celebrity that they deserve. I started to search more music like the ones I've listened during the flu and the more I searched the more I found. Years passed and now sometimes I do DJ-sets with cracktros and demoscene music, at the moment in strictly no-profit, non official venues because there are some quirks with Italian copyright's intermediary and because I don't know many of the authors (i.e. if I say that a tune is 4-mat's and the intermediary hasn't 4-mat in their database and is too lazy to check on the internet, the royalties for the evening goes to a pool of the most paid artists, like Taylor Swift or Eros Ramazzotti, and I really don't want this to happen, besides I risk a fine too if I put some music that I can't prove released as public domain or with a CC license). The evenings did very well, people danced a lot and we had fun.
Fun side story: during one of the evenings I was beaten by a completely stoned girl that was holding an enormous tree branch, she disturbed also the performer before me throwing a child's tricycle among the public, so I don't think she was angered by the MODs. I thought that being myself a big man and her a little woman I could overpower and disarm her easily. I was wrong, VERY wrong. Anyway I wasn't badly hurt and now I have a story to tell.
Second side story: searching for modules I also found some issues of the Amiga Cracker Journal, that I've never heard of. I read some articles and I found it to be a fantastic source of what the cracker scene was, with many anecdotes revealing a lore that I've never fathomed. I did a small presentation during a hacker event and it raised a lot of interest.
Side story of the second side story: during that presentation there was a laser printer with a keypad that printed zines on the spot. One of the zines was about relationship anarchy and when I read it I said "my god! that's me". After two months I met a girl in a poly relationship and now we're in love. The coincidence is staggering.
Fun fact of the side story of the second side story: the relationship anarchy manifesto is written by the same person that did the comic "Soldering is Easy" that I often use as a presentation when teaching how to solder. That manifesto was all the time under my nose but it needed a flu to trigger the cascade of events that lead me to all this.
Fast forward to 2018 I had a really strong flu, with temperatures above 39.5 °C, and I felt really bad. Couldn't stay awake for 10 minutes, had troubles standing, etc. My worst flu since I was adult, and as an adult it wouldn't be appropriate to ring to my parents and ask for cuddles as I did when I was a child, so I tried to find a "safe space", some (virtual) environment where I could feel "at home". My decision was to listen to a compilation of several hours of cracktros, that I put in loop for the few days of my illness. They brought me back to my teen years, when everything seemed (only seemed indeed) simpler.
My immune system eventually did its job and I recovered quickly. Listening again to the compilations I found some really good catchy tunes and I wondered why they don't have the celebrity that they deserve. I started to search more music like the ones I've listened during the flu and the more I searched the more I found. Years passed and now sometimes I do DJ-sets with cracktros and demoscene music, at the moment in strictly no-profit, non official venues because there are some quirks with Italian copyright's intermediary and because I don't know many of the authors (i.e. if I say that a tune is 4-mat's and the intermediary hasn't 4-mat in their database and is too lazy to check on the internet, the royalties for the evening goes to a pool of the most paid artists, like Taylor Swift or Eros Ramazzotti, and I really don't want this to happen, besides I risk a fine too if I put some music that I can't prove released as public domain or with a CC license). The evenings did very well, people danced a lot and we had fun.
Fun side story: during one of the evenings I was beaten by a completely stoned girl that was holding an enormous tree branch, she disturbed also the performer before me throwing a child's tricycle among the public, so I don't think she was angered by the MODs. I thought that being myself a big man and her a little woman I could overpower and disarm her easily. I was wrong, VERY wrong. Anyway I wasn't badly hurt and now I have a story to tell.
Second side story: searching for modules I also found some issues of the Amiga Cracker Journal, that I've never heard of. I read some articles and I found it to be a fantastic source of what the cracker scene was, with many anecdotes revealing a lore that I've never fathomed. I did a small presentation during a hacker event and it raised a lot of interest.
Side story of the second side story: during that presentation there was a laser printer with a keypad that printed zines on the spot. One of the zines was about relationship anarchy and when I read it I said "my god! that's me". After two months I met a girl in a poly relationship and now we're in love. The coincidence is staggering.
Fun fact of the side story of the second side story: the relationship anarchy manifesto is written by the same person that did the comic "Soldering is Easy" that I often use as a presentation when teaching how to solder. That manifesto was all the time under my nose but it needed a flu to trigger the cascade of events that lead me to all this.
