Someone on Twitter posted about a new Australian-based online music service called Guvera. Its principle is free music streaming and downloading, paid for by targeted advertising. I love music, and I love free stuff – win win for me. So I was in.

You can register for a beta account at Guvera.com – I was worried that being in ‘beta’ might make it tough to get an account… but within a few minutes, I got an email saying my account was ready. Don’t know how readily they’ll be dishing out accounts, or when it will go completely “public” or out of beta – but there’s nothing to stop you from registering an account. I logged in, and was directed to update my profile in order to get “credits”. Essentially this just involves going through 11 different categories and saying what you like in each section… so that the advertising is aimed at you. Don’t totally understand the whole “credits” thing.

Once that was completed, it was onto the music. First thing was that the streaming wasn’t working – both at work on my PC using IE and on my Mac using Safari. Little bit annoying. But the downloading works perfectly.

It seems to all be done based on ‘channels’ – each channel is an advertiser who then sponsors those downloads. Whether that happens in actual fact, or whether money just changes hands in bulk amounts that’s then paid onto the record companies, it isn’t clear. Doesn’t matter I guess. But when you search for a song, you’re presented with a handful of channels who’re offering that song. And you visit their page, which is filled with plenty of info about their product, and you can then download a 256kbps MP3 of the song.

Pretty sweet deal.

So what’s the catch? There doesn’t seem to be one – just that there’s copious amounts of advertising. But that’s obvious based on the fact that those guys are paying for your music. And another very minor downside is that you don’t have the ability to download full albums – you have to search for and download all the individual tracks, but again, this is expected because you therefore have to see more advertising to get your music. There’s a bundle of terms & conditions, but none of them seem anything much different to what you’d expect from an online music store (such as iTunes) – it just states that your login is for your personal use only, and that when you download the song, you receive one licence to play the music only on your personal equipment. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

As for the music available – Guvera say they have the whole catalogues of EMI, Vigin and Capitol (pretty much just EMI) on board right now, and say they’re working on IODA, Universal and the rest of the world’s music. Presumably, when they say “the rest of the world’s music”, that will also include Warner and Sony. Really, if we just do some generalisation of the Big Four music labels (EMI, Universal, Sony & Warner), they’ve only got 25% of the world’s music at the moment. But it is only in beta I guess. They do say in the registration email that throughout 2010 they are “expanding available music to every major music artist in the world.” That’s a big statement. But hopefully it will mean that the missing labels of Warner, Sony & Universal aren’t far away.

Legitimacy? Well, I am very certain this is totally legit. From what I understand, there have been press releases about Guvera, and they’ve been saying loud and proud that they have EMI and Universal on board. Their company is based in Queensland, and so I’m sure that they would’ve been quickly and swiftly dealt with by those music lawyers had any of this not been legit. So fear not.

As far as artists getting paid any more or less than, say, iTunes Music Store? As far as I understand, it doesn’t make a squat of difference whether you pay $1.69 per song, or whether you deal with looking at ads and download it for free now via Guvera – the record company is still getting whatever fee the outlet (iTMS or Guvera or Bigpond) has negotiated with the individual record label, and thus the artist then gets their agreed royalty that they have with their record label. It’s just that Guvera have set up their company to have advertisers pay them plenty of money to cover all their charges to the record companies.

I’ll certainly be looking to use it next time I think of an album or songs that I want – advertising sucks me in any normal time… surely I can’t be that much worse off looking at a little more to get some music :) And I’ll just say a big thanks to McDonalds or Contiki or Bacardi  for buying me some new music.

I think it’s great to see something like this in Australia – the US have a bundle of free music streaming sites (that are strictly for US users), but I’m not actually sure if they have anything like this where they can download music for free. But at the moment, Guvera is strictly Australian – run by a company in Queensland, solely for Australians. Pretty cool.

And I like the sounds of something in their ‘about’ section: And if that’s not cool enough, film & TV isn’t too far behind.

I removed access to my archives a while ago cos I was a bit mean to Telstra back in the day, and I didn’t really want that to be seen as being written by me as an employee of the company. So it was safer to abandon them.

But it’s a good thing, cos re-reading some of my early blog posts in 2003 makes me hugely embarassed that some of that trash made it onto the web!

• …but then I blew on the Golden Eye cartridge and it worked on my Nintendo64 again
• Hey, nice Macintosh. Is it Y2K compliant?
• They want $300K for a house in Inner Sydney, they have GOT to be dreaming, I’ll wait for the bubble to burst.
• What the hell? What do you mean no more Big Day Out?
• Can’t decide if we should get Foxtel or Galaxy… and I’ve changed my phone plan to OneTel.
• Wow, I really like your cargo pants.
• Oh come on, nobody would be stupid enough to vote for Bush…
• Check it out, my tracksuit pants have press studs all the way up both legs.
• Napster is great! It’s like, 15 minutes and you have a whole song!
• I like that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman adopted children. Nobody else in Hollywood does that!
• Did you hear the secret track on Jagged Little Pill?
• Ace of Base are just as good as ABBA. They’re gonna go a long way.
• Let’s go to Macca’s.. I feel like Mexican shaker fries.
• Do you have the new battle Tazo? Can I swap you it for this one of Daffy Duck?
• Check out my minidisc! One hundred songs in the palm of my hand.
• Did you see that Starbuck’s is opening up? I’ve heard it’s the best coffee…
• Who’s Dave Grohl?
• The new Guns’n'Roses album should be out soon!!
• I’m so glad Mick Molloy finally has his own show, it’s gonna be great!
• We’re totally going to the skating rink for my bday! Don’t forget to bring your new rollerblades!
• Have you tried filling in the holes on a phone card with liquid paper to get free calls?
• Have you seen my Geocities page?
• The Sony Playstation’s got nothing on the Sega Dreamcast. Best console ever!
• The Nokia 3210s are way better than the 5110s – no antenna, *and* it vibrates when it rings

Holidays were tops. The time in Qld with family was great – Christmas was busy, but nice to see all the family, and especially my beautiful grandparents. And it was just nice to be away from the house with nothing to do! Scooter riding was also done – to my surprise, Debbie was also up for it. We spent a couple of hours one afternoon riding little 50cc Honda scooters up and down The Espanade in Hervey Bay. But apparently I’m still not allowed to get one here in Sydney.

Once we arrived back home just before new years, I still had a week and a half worth of holidays left. It was really nice to just hang out at home, see friends, do a bunch of handyman type things around the place. It was a nice week. But very quickly, it was all over and this week was back to work.

I had one of the worst night’s sleep in months on Sunday night – I had a lot of anxiety about being back at work. The past 6 months have not been at all kind to me at work. It hasn’t been a horrible place to be or anything – but in amongst all the tech stuff I do, my job is basically just a sales role, and not having made my sales target for 6 months in a row meant that it was really tough to go back.

But I was reminded of little wins I had toward the end of 2009, and also just how good I do have it… and in the end, just how much fun I do have being a nerd and doing all this IP and networking stuff. And so I ended up hitting up Monday morning with a pretty positive attitude. In the end, if it turns out that this job isn’t for me anymore, then I look around and find something else to do – no biggie!

Don’t know why I lost a night of sleep over it. :)

So Debbie and I drove round and picked him up, and headed for Milsons Pt for some walking over the Harbour Bridge, and then some awesome pancakes at Pancakes On The Rocks. And then lots more walking back to the car.

We drove up here on the 23rd and 24th – long drive, but it wasn’t too bad. We were on the F3 by about 7:15 and heading north. We made it to Old Bar to visit Debbie’s grandma by about 10:15 and had some morning tea with her, and then it was time to keep driving. I was really happy with the time we were making… until we hit Kempsey. About 2km out of Kempsey, the traffic just stopped. And for about half an hour, we crawled into and then through Kempsey. Very annoying. But after that, there weren’t really any other hiccups. We got into Tweed Heads at about 6:30 and checked into the City Lights motel. Nice place, and the right price. After unloading and sitting down for a minute, it was off to the South Tweed bowlo for some dinner. It was a pretty decent place, and the meal was fine. It had a nice view looking over the river that Tweed Heads sits on.

We started the final leg about 8am the next morning, and a few minutes up the road as we hit Qld, it was 7am… so we were already ahead! Thankfully, getting along the freeways through the Gold Coast and Brisbane was smooth. As we neared the exit for Eumundi and Noosa, I felt a little nostalgic, and enjoyed remembering times in the late 80s / early 90s when we had holidays in Noosa. And so I exited for Eumundi for a little reviver break, and to hopefully find some coffee. And happily, there were quite a few cafes, and one serving some nicely made Toby’s Estate coffee. And then the drive continued, finally arriving in Hervey Bay at about 11:45. Very nice drive. Christmas Eve arvo and evening was just a bit of unpacking, saying hi to Hervey Bay and its beach across the road from our appartment, and a little napping too.

Then Christmas Day was up and off to visit Hervey Bay Baptist in the morning, before coming home, having some presents, and then heading out to lunch with everyone (Mum & Dad, Jenny & Ryan, and my grandparents). After a very big lunch, a nap was definitely in order… and I think I was still incredibly tired from the driving. So I slept for two hours. And then it was off to Dundowran Beach, where my Aunt & Uncle live, which is a suburb to the west of the main bits of Hervey Bay. We had dinner there with all the family who are up here for Christmas, and most of the extended family who live here in Qld. It was a nice evening seeing cousins who I haven’t seen in many months and catching up with them.

And now it’s boxing day… and the morning was spent with a visit to a coffee shop down the road, and the rest of the time has basically been on the couch watching the boxing day test, and playing card games with people. Just what I needed… and it’s helping me to slowly get over the tiredness that has been plaguing me for the last few weeks.

Work is crazy town at the moment. Just so busy. There’s only a few days of the month left really – I’m on leave from next Wednesday, and all the account managers are taking the week between Christmas and new year off too. So if we want to close anything off in December, the window is rapidly closing. That means a heck of a lot of meetings, and 25 different things happening at once.

I did get a chance to catch up with my boss early this morning. And what I thought would be a hard meeting (because I’m really down on my sales numbers… have been the whole fin year to date) actually went pretty well. She was positive about a lot of stuff, and thankfully seems to understand that everything about my job is going well… it’s just the actual numbers that are lacking.

There’s a big batch of butter chicken on simmering away at the moment – that’s for supper on Sunday night after we play a simulation game (Basti Life) at church. That should be tops fun. Tomorrow night we’re having a bundle of fun people over for dinner as we farewell a couple of friends who are heading off to Nepal for a year… I have to cook a beef teriyaki (or something like that) for that. And then the craziness of Saturday kicks in: Christmas lunch with Debbie’s family, and then off to Lane Cove for Christmas with my Dad’s side of the family and dinner there.

But after that, there’s thankfully only two work days before Debbie and I hop in the car and head up to Tweed Heads, and then rock into Hervey Bay on Christmas Eve for a week or so there. I definitely can’t wait for that break :)

For me, they are really up there as one of my all time favourite bands – even though the majority of their music was written well before I was even born.

I’d bought my tickets to the V8s in Homebush way back in May – there was no way that B2, Steve, my Dad and I were going to miss one of the best street race events. We knew there was some kind of concert entertainment that was yet to be announced, but we didn’t think much of it – we were going for the racing! Well, that was until September rolled around, and it was announced that Cold Chisel was reforming to play on the Saturday night! My Christmases and birthdays really had all come at once.

And tonight has been nothing short of epic. Grinspoon opened the night, and played a good set, even if they were a little bit drunk. The Living End came on and played a set of brilliance and were just so very tight – not that you’d expect anything else from them.

Finally the time had arrived for Cold Chisel to take the stage. They walked on and smashed some Standing On The Outside with such perfection that it was like this was the 15th stop on just another tour. It was pretty much everything I assumed to expect from Chisel! They played for a solid two hours, going through the likes of Bow River, My Baby, When The War Is Over, Forever and Flame Trees – all the stuff you’d expect them to bring out really. Surprisingly, Khe Sanh was in the middle of the set – but that didn’t stop the incredible singalong that was sure to happen. It was cool to see the boys all looking at each other every now and then with a bit of a wry smile that said, ‘wow, I’d forgotten how awesome this was!’

They did a couple of encores, but eventually finished up coming back on stage and playing Breakfast At Sweethearts and then closing the night with Last Wave Of Summer.

Some people do have lists of bands that that absolutely must see before they die, and such lists usually contain those bands who’ve broken up and are usually going to be nearly impossible to see. I don’t have such a list – but if I did, Cold Chisel would’ve been at the top of it. And I can very, very happily cross them off tonight.

Although, if they do reform again, I’ll be right there in front of the stage to see it all again without any hesitation.

And I can’t even think of anything decent to blog about.

But I will harp on The Basics’ concert last Friday night that Tamara and I went to. Incredible. It took me a while to get into The Basics, and I only saw them live for the first time a couple of months ago. But they are such a brilliant trio who write and perform some incredible music.

Keep Your Friends Close is their new album, and it’s an amazing piece of work. Stand Out Fit In comes from a few years ago, but is equally awesome - but they are definitely quite different albums.

Switchfoot have released a fantastic new album as well. There’s a lot of opinions floating around about Switchfoot, and if they’re anything like my thoughts, I loved The Beautiful Letdown, but that was about it. Well, Hello Hurricane has completely changed my thinking on them. You should just put any preminitions about Switchfoot out of your mind and just listen to this album on its own, and I really doubt you’ll be disappointed. It’s turning out to be one of my favourites this year.

I’ve definitely enjoyed these few new-music-months that tend to happen around this time of year. 2009 has been quite wonderful for music I think. Pity that the concerts have been few and far between for me over the last few years. Although I will finally get to see Cold Chisel in a week and a half thanks to Tony Cochrane and the V8s – they were one band I was sad I never got to see, and was sure I’d actually never get a chance to!

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

I love that it’s so much more than an organisation throwing money at a situation – it’s showing people caught up in depression or self-harm that they are loved; that their life is worth fighting for; that they do matter! And that’s worth so much more than all the money in the world.

You should definitely read the story about how TWLOHA started. It’s an incredible story.

Today was a bit of an awareness day for the TWLOHA movement. It was encouraged to write the word ‘love’ on your arm, and spread the word about what these guys are on about. I did it – and for the times when I didn’t have to be all professional and meet customers and such, I rolled up my sleeve so it was visible.

But money is needed and important in this world. Those shirts that you see a lot of “cool” band people wearing, (notably, the dudes from Switchfoot) and that have become a bit of a fashion statement, are actually what they first made and sold to pay for their friends’ drug rehab treatment (read the story). And today they’re still the major portion of support they receive.

And more than that, wearing the shirt is a great way to keep spreading the message of To Write Love On Her Arms.