Episode: 589
Title: HPR0589: DownThemAll SongFight and a Song
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0589/hpr0589.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:35:46

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Hello everybody. Welcome to today's episode of hacker public radio.
My name is Poki and I'll be your host for today.
This is my first hacker public radio episode.
So, forgive me if I sound like I'm new with this because I actually am.
I have several topics I wanted to cover today.
The first thing I wanted to talk about was a Firefox plugin called down them all.
That's down them all. It's all one word when you look for it.
What down them all is a download helper.
I'm sure you don't need any help downloading or you don't think you need any help downloading.
But believe me, down them all is helpful.
What it allows you to do is to click on a link on a web page and download the media behind that link.
Of course, you can do that with any web browser since the beginning of web browsers.
However, down them all does something special with that.
It will break that download up into several parts and it will grab it very, very quickly.
Okay, so far not so impressive.
Down them all also lets you right click anywhere in the web page that you're looking at
and gives you the option to down them all.
It will download all files from that web page simultaneously.
You are allowed through down them all to select the file types that you would like to download.
Be it MP3 or AUG or anything.
You can make your own extensions.
There's a bunch in there by default.
It'll download any zip files or it'll download any video media.
And you can make your own filters and they all show up graphically and you can do little check marks, check boxes.
And tick off whichever ones you would like to download.
It's very, very handy.
One use for it that I've presented to different folks.
Folks on the August planet chat room.
IRC chat room, sorry, in case you didn't know that, August planet at
IRC.frino.net.
That's a great place to talk to.
A bunch of really good people know their stuff and know how to crack a joke and how to take a joke.
Good stuff.
Anyway, back to down them all.
One use for it is at Libravox.
And if you don't know what Libravox is, it's a website that accepts recordings from contributors of books which are in the public domain.
Typically books found on the project Gutenberg website.
And you can go to that website and download that book, that now audio book for free.
You can download the whole thing in one download as an MP3.
But if you prefer your audio book in AUG, you have to download each of them individually.
So what you can do is make a filter for AUG.
And you can go to Libravox.org and find a book that you like and right click anywhere in the web page and select down them all.
And then you use your filter for AUG. And it will grab all of the AUGs from that web page.
And some books have dozens of chapters.
It could save you a lot of right clicking.
Save you a little bit of carpal tunnel.
If you've ever tried to right click and save as on 60 or 70 files from the same web page.
It's tedious.
This gets it done in a couple of seconds. It's very, very good.
It's so good. In fact, it got me in a lot of trouble one night, which is my next topic.
There's a web page that I discovered in a backwards kind of way called songfight.org.
And what songfight.org is, is they've allowed, they present the world with the title of a song, which they make up.
And they allow anyone in the world to make a song by that title.
And then they allow anyone in the world to vote for their favorite of those songs.
They give you a week with which to make that song. They put the title of song out one week later.
They close exceptions for that song. And then they run the voting for a week. Great concept.
I heard about it recently. I figured such a great concept. It must be new or else I would have heard of it before.
It never occurred to me that they could have been around for as long as they were.
And they have been around for quite a long time. So I clicked on the link to their archive page.
And I saw some songs there. I said, okay, great. Down them all. Get those songs for me.
And I told down them all to grab every MP3 on that web page.
It also did not occur to me that they would store every single song that they've ever...
They'd improve some that they've ever presented from those folks ever on the same web page and in the same directory.
So what I had done is just hit down them all. Grab me all the MP3s.
And I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning to see what I got.
I filled my hard drive with songs from down them all just about. I grabbed eight and a half gigabytes of songs.
I felt very guilty about using eight and a half gigabytes of someone else's bandwidth.
So I felt that it would be morally reprehensible to simply delete those songs and say that's too much to listen to, too much to filter.
So it has been my little project, personal project, my little task, to go through all of the songs that I've downloaded from songfight.org.
And I have since then gone through, I would be guessing here to say maybe a thousand songs, maybe more, maybe as many as 1500 songs.
And about 10 to 15 percent of what I hear is really, really good, really good music.
Some of it is unbelievably good.
The rest is unbelievably bad. It's so incredibly bad. I don't even want you to go listen to how bad it is.
It's better for you to just take my word for it.
However, that much work on my part, I personally feel like it's a bit of work to listen to that much bad music and call that out and save the good music.
I really didn't want to do that just for me. So I've been cataloging the songs that I feel are good songs.
Some of them I don't even like. I don't always like good music and I don't always dislike bad music. I like plenty of bad music. I bet you do too.
So I've been cataloging the good songs. And so far I've emailed the list that I've made or the pieces of the list that I've made to a couple of different people.
Who do podcasts? And I said, here, have a listen to these good songs. I've done all the work for you of getting rid of the bad songs and feel free to play this on your, your podcast or your podcast.
I've given it to Dan of Radhol Radio. And he actually played one of them. I was pretty happy with that. I've sent the list out to Klatu.
Who you know, of course, from Hacker Public Radio and from Gnu World Order. And if you don't know, Klatu from Gnu World Order, go listen to that cast. That is one of the best.
And I sent it out to Dave Yates of Lotta Linux Links. And that's also a great podcast. You should go listen to that if you haven't.
And he's also contributed here on Hacker Public Radio. So I've sent that list out to those few people. And I posted a couple of songs in the IRC.
But I'd like to get some of these songs out to more people, or at least my opinion on these songs. Since I had nothing to do with writing or producing any of them, I can't take that kind of credit.
But there are songs that I feel deserve a little more exposure. I believe they're good songs. So I'd like to play those songs at the end of my Hacker Public Radio episodes.
There is no license associated with the songs on song fight whatsoever. In fact, they have a webpage. One of their pages on their website is dedicated to stating just that, that they submit their songs in MP3 format, that they're freely downloadable by anybody.
And that they realize MP3s that are freely downloadable are easily copied and represented to anyone you want, reproducily reproduced.
And it also says in that webpage that they make no representation or requirement for licenses. They don't require any particular license. The song is released under just that the people who enter the song fight, acknowledge the fact that their songs can and probably will be copied.
So I feel it's probably okay to play those songs here on Hacker Public Radio. And if you're hearing this episode, then the admins of Hacker Public Radio agree with me.
The reason I haven't just put these songs up on a website somewhere on my blog or anything like that is because I don't have a blog or a website.
I don't have a Twitter account. Well, I do have a Twitter account, but I don't use it. I don't have an Identica account. I don't use Facebook. I really am kind of anonymous on the web.
I wouldn't mind having a blog, but I have no idea how to do that and I have no idea where to start. If anybody would like to do an episode on how to start your own blog or how to make your own webpage, how to host that and get domains and all that kind of stuff, that would be fun too.
Because I simply, for one, have no idea how to get that done. And I'm not so compelled to do it that I'm going to run out and research it all and learn by making a bunch of mistakes on my own.
So rather than do all that, I thought that Hacker Public Radio was a great way to get that done, get some of these, some of my ideas published, some of my thoughts published.
And a way to enjoy the sound of my own voice. And I thank all of you for enjoying the sound of my voice with me.
That's all I'd like to put in this first show. I'd like to do some more shows on Hacker Public Radio. And, you know, I don't want to burn it all up now. I have a couple more ideas.
So if you'll forgive me for such a short episode, I think I'll stop here. And I'm going to play for my first song that I'm going to play is one of my very favorites that I've downloaded so far.
And I got a great story to go along with it. It's by Brad Sucks. If you've never heard Brad Sucks seriously run right out to www.bradSucks.net.
It's a song called The Proposal. In this song, we had a lot of fun with it. My brother's wedding. I had it with me on my MP3 player and I found somebody with a USB cable.
And I gave my MP3 player to the DJ and he downloaded the song to his computer for my MP3 player. And he was really afraid to play it. He wouldn't play it unless I introred it for him.
So he made me take the mic and intro the song. And I had a lot of fun with that. And everybody actually really, really loved the song. It's a good song. And I hope you enjoy it too.
Again, the song is Brad Sucks. Excuse me, the artist is Brad Sucks. And the song is The Proposal. And this again can be found at www.bradSucks.net.
As well as www.songfight.org. You'll have to poke around there for a little bit. It's not too hard to find songs on there if you know the name of the song.
But I hope you enjoy this one and that's it for now. I look forward to seeing you again next time.
It is nice to have you here. I like spending time with you. And suddenly I find finding confidence and I am now exactly what it is I have to do.
I recommend you to be my woman forever.
And I hope you enjoy it.
And I hope you enjoy this one and that's it for now.
I recommend you to be my woman forever.
I recommend you to be my woman forever.
I recommend you to be my woman forever.
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Thank you.