Glen
You'll be missed. Your positive attitude, and always willing to help, helped me during the early days when i joined "The Hub", and more recently with protection for the Blogs, etc.
You'll be missed, but we all have our own journeys to make in this life, and at times, we need to make "life changing" decisions for our own good.
I wish you well, and hope everything works out as you hope.
Richard (OD)
Boy...I don't know how to start this....I'll just get straight to it.
Significant life changes have occurred for me such that I am leaving ALL file sharing and surround/hi-res hobby activities, with immediate effect.
No, I'm not in trouble. It's the exact opposite. Something wonderful has happened. (No, I'm not having a baby, nor have I married (yet)...keep guessing...)
The reason is that I have resolved to pursue a dream in real life which is far, far greater than anything I could ever do in the surround world. It involves a likely brilliant career, a completely different way of life and set of values, and is essentially a 'new' life.
I was committed to this community and wanted to give it what I knew it's been always needing, but has never happened. I was working on something that would have been the biggest thing in the surround world (or at least the surround 'file sharing' world, which is maybe about 2/3 the size of the greater surround scene anyway).
I might as well 'announce' it now, since it's not gonna happen anyway.
I was planning, for over a year, a gazelle-based (à la What.CD) BitTorrent tracker for surround and hi-res music - the first true audiophile tracker and ultimate go-to place for sharing and finding anything in our beloved formats. It was my big project, I put all my resources and skills into the thing and spent considerable time planning and making preparations and networking throughout the surround/file sharing worlds, to make the dream happen.
It was not just going to be a torrent tracker, but it was to have a public DDL release blog for outreach (serving as a mojave replacement at same time), and a massive internal (and a mirrored external) audio wiki on all the formats where I would collate all the obscure info and knowledge into one place and make it a massive resource, so that instead of endless repeated discussions on the same topics happening all the time, people could simply browse the wiki and just learn all it there. Some of the completed pages I have at http://groups.google.com/group/surroundsound/web. Anyway...enough of all this, you get the point. It was going to be a paradise, where nothing we could imagine wasn't possible...
And for ages I wanted to tell you all about it, but because of what turned out to be endless months (and in the end, a whole year) of delays due to what I know was fate standing in my way and not letting it happen (it's a loooooooooooooong story, it's longer than longcat!), I didn't want to excite people, and then only disappoint them with what at times felt like a tunnel with no light at the end of it. I had to keep the news all to myself, and just a few of you, for the good of the group. But once ready, the site was going to be our new home, replacing this primitive google group and the - I'm sorry, but we all know - inferior file sharing method that is the hub.
In truth though, the project and all the things associated with it, was a burden for me, a thorn in my side - something stubbornly standing in the way of what I knew all the time, was what I should really be doing with my life.
Recently, a few catalysts have played out in my life, and my love for my RL dream has overcome even the passion I (now past tense: had) for the tracker project, and if you've known about my passion for 'TS' [the codename for the project] over the last year, you would agree that this is something pretty huge happening in me.
And it's been very emotional.
I know some of you will be disappointed to hear that I'm 'leaving', but at the same time I think all of you understand what's best for a person in their life. I now have peace, and am happy, but life's all about sacrifices for the sake of what you want to really do, and I've now taken the right choices regarding this.
I'll still be here, i.e., logged into the hub, I just can't be expected to have any obligations or expectations any more, and I will have extended absences (from the hub) too. And I'll no longer be checking the google group, i have de-subscribed and also won't be checking the vf.surround gmail address regularly either. The best way to contact me (if it is an important matter) would be via PM in the hub. The most important thing for me now is to spend as little time in here as possible and to not be obligated to anything here.
So if I do not respond to hub PMs immediately, or at all, please understand that it is because I am either away or too busy to chat. It's not because I'm being rude. My life has changed and so have my habits.
My role has now changed to 'casual surround/hi-res enthusiast and listener', and even then, ONLY when I can spare the time (like when I'm relaxing and having time off)...from my busy rl schedule and commitments.
However...There's one other 'big thing' that I have been working on, with the help of a few unnamed key people (which will indeed affect the [u]entire[/u] surround/hi-res world, not just the file sharers), which in contrast I intend to see finished (and look forward to doing so). This is because it is something I can 'finish off', and then be done with it, as opposed to an ongoing commitment of time and care.
And this: is the cracking of the SACD format (I think most of you know from my hints in previous months of this anyway - as in, DVD-A was cracked, and SACD is finally going to be cracked too - a method for copying the ACTUAL files off the disc (and then you can convert the DSD files to PCM via software that I've already released), and even, a method for burning 'SACD-R' on a normal blank DVD, and being able to play it back in your SACD player - which I hope eventually can work on the majority if not all SACD players - it works on a few so far, with the method we're using - 'so far'. I've been fighting to get SACD cracked for two years now(!), quietly, but thankfully this dream CAN become a reality. The Oppo PCM method was just an interim method since development in SACD's cracking was so slow, until more recent times.
So though I am no longer an uploader or file sharer, I look forward to being able to back up my own SACDs and I know you'll also appreciate it very much.
I also was slowly working on other projects/goals, like a DVD-A watermark defeating system and open-source MLP encoding being implemented into the DVD-A tools project so that people wanting full res surround MLP home-authored DVD-A discs no longer have to pirate discWelder/surcode in order to do it.
All these things are possible, if others want to make the effort in making these things happen. The role I have played in many of these things (ripping, authoring, encoding/decoding of the of the dvd-a/sacd formats) over the years, as always been lobbyist, helper, enabler, spearheader etc...well - others will have to fill that role and make the effort if they want the DVD-A watermark system defeated, or the other things I mentioned...I will give some contacts to lokkerman and maybe eventually you guys can get it done...
But I'm out of the scene, and it has no place in my life anymore. I want to spend as little more time now in this as possible. It was dictating my life.
Now, I must get down to business -
- Lokks is now the active manager of the google group...fox, I'm sure you're fine with that....
- Lokks is now the active administrator of the hub ('owner', if you will, and indeed, successor to King Julian - so it's now King Lokkerman - er...I ordain thee 'Lokkerman, King of the Hub' - there, it's official). All hub inquiries and matters are to be directed to him and he will add and screen new members and be the custodian there from now on...
- Now this is the important matter to discuss. Hosting of the hub. The hub is currently hosted on a seedbox which slx was previously using for his own seedboxing, and kindly let me host it on there while he was using it. For the past two months he's no longer been using it so I've been paying for the monthly rent which is 35 Euros.
In past times, we (i.e. me, and at times, RW) have hosted the hub just from our homes and it's been fine, but I eventually moved the hub to slx's server because a. I was now paranoid due to being a future tracker owner and didn't want to host it on my own ip address and b. a dedicated server is the most reliable setup anyway.
But a home-hosted hub should be fine as long as the hoster has a super reliable internet connection and hosts it on a computer that never ever is turned off, etc...
RW might want to step up and host it once again like in times past, I'm not sure. This is a call-out to whoever would like to step up to the job. It does not require any admin/maintenance work (apart from changing the welcome message in the server software when/if Lokks wants to change it at any time), you just need to keep it running reliably all the time for the group.
And also, this must be done before July 20th, which is when the billing period for this month ends for slx's server. I'm sure everyone would prefer one of us to host from their home rather than everyone contributing towards a monthly 35 euro cost to keep it going on the current server.
But either way, it is no longer my burden and if no one wants to step up to take over hosting, I'm not going to do anything about it. Except for merely keep a backup file of the config files for anyone who wants in future to take up the noble role of hub hoster.
ALSO - I hope someone can take up the 'releases' idea in the hub, which I was working on. It would actually make the hub almost as good as a website (and torrent tracker) anyway, and would make the hub good enough to serve the community's needs for a long time. In fact, if committed to, it's good enough for you all to stop torrenting on demonoid or RS'ing on the blogs and all gather into one happy family on the hub (and speeds would be excellent, due to how the new system would work), and just use VPNs if you're worried about your IP address. I'm not going to make the tracker now, so this might be your only hope of a unified and quality surround file sharing community.
If anyone wants to try and take up the idea (it's not that hard, really....) I can show you the links to the script, and possibly even help with it...so if you want to make a better place for yourselves, that's the easiest avenue I can see for making it possible.
So that's that...
I love you guys. You know I do. I'll miss you too, and will try to drop in when I can, but cannot be expected to in any way...
With all past paranoia regarding my identity and privacy dropped, I sign off with my name:
Glen
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