Media media media So I'm sure you all have your little automated countdowns on your AIM profiles that say, you know, "3 days 'til Wes!!!" or something equally enthusiastic. So, I thought this would be a good time to introduce one of the technological marvels and multimedia goldmines available to the Wesleyan student body:

"The Network".

(cue the orchestra, please.)

Unlike many big universities, Wesleyan doesn't have port blockers (not that I'm aware of anyways), so all your file sharing programs should work fine--Even ones that utilize gnutella, which I think most of them do anyways, but I know that a lot of universities won't allow it to connect. Plus, Wes is small enough to have all its students connected to the same thing. I do think we might have rate limits, though, so watch out if you run bittorrent--Chances are it'll go ex.treme.ly. slow.ly. But that's okay, because as you'll see, it really isn't needed.

This is because of The Network, which allows you to directly access other people's computers, if they choose allow directory sharing. The benefits of this are enormous: First of all, since this is Wesleyan, you can usually find a lot more obscure and interesting things than you can on, say, Kazaa, and if you want to you can just transfer an entire folder of an album you like. Secondly, there is literally everything you could want: Anime, porn, music (obvi), movies, entire seasons of television shows, amusing video clips, and even some programs (photoshop 7.0 + serial, anyone?). Thirdly, file transfer speeds are RIDICULOUSLY fast--I'm talking about a 700+mb movie in about five minutes. What's more is that a lot of these computers are NOT read-only--some people even create a special folder so that other people people can add their own movies to the ever-increasing available library.

(And before you ask--transfer speeds via chat clients like AIM and MSN are amazingly speedy as well using send file or direct connect, as long as both people are at Wes)

How to dig in? I'm not sure how it works on Macs, but on PCs you can either open your internet browser of choice--oh and while I'm on that topic, PLEASE get firefox if you don't have it already--and just type \\ followed by the name of the individual computer (ie, \\JIM) in the address bar and hit enter. If you have an older version of Windows like I do, go to Start-->Run and do it there.

And of course, there is a search utility available that actually allows you to find specifically what you're looking for and which computer it's on.

http:\\bdolangavitt.stu

The site as well as the computers ONLY work if you as well as their owners are at Wesleyan and connected to their network, so the site should be down until at least the third of September, when upperclassman housing opens. The best and most specific results come from running boolean searches (look it up on google to learn how if you don't know already), or you can search for specific file types--for example, if you want a movie called "fire" but don't want to have to scroll through every single song that mentions the word, you can look up "fire"+"*.avi".

Individual computers often gain a quasi-famoso status through people using the network--Most notably, DONTSHOOT, which I recommend you check out at the soonest available moment...That guy has gigs upon gigs upon gigs of just about everything you could hope for.

And if he doesn't, there's always Kazaa.


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Everything you need for a great file-sharing experience at Wesleyan:
"THE NETWORK"
iTunes
myTunes (if you have a PC, or ourTunes if you have a Mac)
Wirehog (IM me at actiondisaster if you need an invite)
a p2p program as emergency backup.

OH, and before I forget--if you want to watch movies, download the DivX codec, BS player, and if you watch a lot of films with subtitles, VobSub. You'll thank me for it later, I promise.

See you all in a few days--  ¶ 6:50 PM