bookmark_borderYou torrent?

It’s fairly common for us-wot-use-computers to be considered experts at all things computery. However, this is often not the case are there are so many different areas of computeriness that being an expert in all of them is, invariably, impossible. For example, please do not EVER ask me about networking. Wi-Fi or otherwise. I can hack my way through the minefield if I need to but I sure as hell don’t enjoy it and most certainly don’t want to do it any more than needed.

Software usage I’m pretty good on, but that comes with the job really, so when Louise asked for some advice on how to get someone up and running and downloading torrents as quickly as possible I figured I could handle that. I also figured that I may as well post it here too as, who knows, it may be beneficial to others. The following information is based solely on what I use. YMMV.

Disclaimer: There are many illegal files that can be downloaded. There are also many legal files available as torrents, so please stick to them. I am not responsible for what you choose to download.

So, what are “torrents”? Technically a torrent is just a file containing information that is used by a torrent application. When you want to download something, be it software, music or videos, you find a torrent file, and use that to download the files.

The name comes from the underlying technology that provides “peer-to-peer” file transfers, known as BitTorrent. The clever bit is that you aren’t downloading one big file from one place (like a website) but smaller chunks of that file direct from other people. The torrent application handles the downloading of the chunks and, once it’s got all the chunks it needs, it assembles them into the file you wanted to download.

First things first, you’ll need a torrent application. I use μTorrent as it’s simple, easy to use and light on resources. I have used Azureus in the past but it can be a little greedy when it comes to your system memory. I’ll be talking specifically about μTorrent from here on out.

Right, you’ve downloaded μTorrent (or if you haven’t go and do that now). One thing to note is that you don’t need to install it. I like to keep things organised, so I created a folder in c:program filesutorrent, pasted the utorrent.exe file in there, then created a shortcut to it. You can put the shortcut anywhere you like, either on your desktop or add it to your Start menu. Up to you.

Next up, where to find torrent files. Well there are a magnitude of sites out there, but I typically use two. TorrentSpy and IsoHunt. They should be fairly straightforward to use, just search for whatever you want to download. When you see what you want in the search results, click on the link and you should find an option to “Download Torrent”.

Can you guess what the next step is? That’s right (gosh, we are clever little monkeys), click the “Download Torrent” link. Your browser will probably ask you what you want to do with it, so make sure it opens the file with μTorrent. If you don’t get the option, you’ll need to find where the .torrent file was downloaded to, and open it in μTorrent manually*.

Almost there, still with me?

μTorrent will now be opened and you’ve got one final step. You need to tell it where you want to the downloaded files to go. Again I have a Torrents folder, and under that I create subfolders as necessary.

And that’s it. μTorrent will start downloading as soon as it finds someone who is hosting the file. Simple.

A few things to note then:

  1. As soon as you give it a .torrent file, μTorrent will ‘reserve’ the filename in your system. If you browse to where you asked it to save the files you’ll see the filename there already. This does NOT mean it’s finished downloading. Check the status in the μTorrent window to see if it’s finished or not.
  2. Once you have finished downloading, it’s considered good manners to leave the files available to others. This is the basis for a peer-to-peer system. You can throttle the “upload” speed in the μTorrent settings if you are worried about impact on your connection speed.
  3. I’ve deliberately not mentioned RSS feeds, which μTorrent can handle, I’m saving that for another post.

So there you have it, a quick(ish) guide to downloading torrents. I hope it’s useful. If you get stuck, I can recommend the μtorrent forums, or if it’s a more general question, feel free to ask here.

* Whilst I like not having to install μTorrent, the downside is that it doesn’t setup ‘associations’. So you have to tell Windows which application it should use to open .torrent files.

bookmark_borderKetchup

I had a few hours to myself on Saturday afternoon as Louise had gone into Glasgow to meet up with her sister and cousins for a wee afternoon out. I took the opportunity to do some shopping and, after careful deliberation, decided to buy all four shirts that I had spotted. Decadence? Not really, they were £5 each in Primark (Preemark).

Headed into Glasgow later on, met Louise and wandered up to Bath Street to meet our friends for a shandy or three. According to my darling wife I was happy drunk on Saturday night, which explains my lack of motivation for doing anything that didn’t include the words “horizontal” and “couch” on Sunday. It was an excellent night though and as usual it zipped past. Last thing I remember I was playing with remote-controlled daleks and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t just some weird dream. Ohh and whilst I remember I’d like to apologise to the brunette bar-lady in Moskito. Sorry for leering, but it was my wife who pointed you out to me, blame her.

Watched some episodes of the IT Crowd last night but not as funny as the episode of Robot Chicken that we watched late on Saturday night. Admittedly I was fairly drunk by that point and can’t actually remember WHAT I was laughing at but I do remember that it was very funny. A-torrenting-we-go this evening. Which reminds me, I heard that some of the bigger torrent sites were hit by lawyers recently, anyone spotted any fallout?

Ohh and that, in turn, reminds me that I’ve got a draft post about torrents (a how to) sitting waiting to be finished. Must stop procrastinating. Wouldn’t it be great to blog full-time? Jason Kottke has just finished his “year of blogging” raising $40,000 in the process. Not to shoddy. Anyone fancy ‘sponsoring’ me to do the same?

Right, it’s 8.25am, time for coffee and the perusing of emails. Ohhh wait, I almost forgot.

Anyone know the rugby scores from the weekend?

bookmark_borderWillpower-less

Popped into Waterstones at lunchtime in the vague hope of finding a decent book about Microsoft Word (2003). Nothing on the shelves worth bothering with so I left.

Somehow, when I arrived back at work, I was carrying a bag containing 3 recently purchased books. Such is the power of the ubiquitous 3 for 2 offer.

There’s a thought, are there ANY bookstores that don’t have sales on?

Anyway, I can now add the following to my “to be read” stack:

Suggestions on which to read first are welcomed.

bookmark_border50 million

£50million, that’s a lot of money. Makes me wonder….

Would it spoil some vast eternal plan
If I were a wealthy man? – Topol

Personally I don’t think the uppermost priority in my mind would be to build a house with “one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere just for show” as, frankly, if I had a house built and the architect put in a staircase “just for show” I’d have him taken to the top of it and shoved off.

Since the introduction of the National Lottery a common pondering is “what would you do if you won?”. A more common pondering is “why do they STILL have those crappy game shows, can’t they just show the numbers during a break between programs?”, but I digress. I have to admit my first answer to the “you’ve won, now what” question is always:

“Turn up at the airport with my passport and take the first long-distance flight to somewhere exotic.”

This is mainly because I like the “devil may care” attitude it suggests, unlike my normal pragmatic approach to life, and also because I’m absolutely, unmoveably certain that I’d make much better decisions about how to spend my new found wealth if I was lying on a beach somewhere sipping Margaritas from the belly-button of a svelte yet buxom groupie (by which, obviously, I mean my darling wife… ).

Anyway, it’s nice to ponder such impossibilities, but as I don’t buy lottery tickets anymore and have never really thought of myself as the type to commit armed robbery as guess they will remain dreams.

Either way, it’s much nicer than contemplating a day of wrestling with Microsoft Word templates and staring out of the window at the dreich, dank day that is unfolding.

So, presuming there are no limits and you only have your own moral compass to guide you (god save us all) what would YOU do with £50million?

bookmark_borderSnippets

Coffee at its best – Just opened, fresh this morning, the jar of Nescafé we brought back from Spain. Yes, that’s right, we brought back a jar of instant coffee. Why? Because it tastes GREAT!

It may be because it’s not granules but powder, it may be because I don’t normally drink Nescafé and ALL Nescafé tastes great, or we may be getting back to the point I made a couple of weeks ago. Continental tastebuds are different from ours and most of their goods just taste better.

Working at home today, the advantages of which are many-fold (manifold?). However, over the past couple of weeks, a new benefit has been added in the fact that I wasn’t shouted at this morning.

Low-level Glasgow Central has two exits which take you from the platform and up some stairs to street level. The exit I use has two options when you reach the top of the stairs, turn left towards the north side of Argyll Street (and the upper-levels of the station) or turn right to emerge on the south side of Argyll Street. Most of the people, like myself, who turn right are heading for the same “office district” in which I work. We know where we are going. Or so I thought.

The people who run the station have seen fit to hire a very loud man who likes shouting. He stands at the top of the stairs and shouts at people to let them know that “THERE IS AN EXIT TO YOUR RIGHT” “THERE IS AN EXIT TO YOUR RIGHT”. Loudly. Repeatedly.

Isn’t that why we invented robots?

Gridlines don’t help but no-one has told Reckitt Benckiser. Despite the appearance of some funky gridlines on their package of Lemsip MAX I can feel no additional benefits between that and regular (non-MAX… um… MIN?) Lemsip.

Worryingly the packaging also includes the sword and circle motif found on bottles of Dettol (here’s Lemsip for comparison).

What AM I drinking?

[voiceover man] This post was brought to you by a variety of influences and goes to show you can construct a post from anything … um… nothing [/voiceover man]