Heads up...

[johnridley]

BBC's "Last Chance to See" is currently running, and is available on Usenet or many torrent sites. Usenet has standard and hi-def versions - I think it's very likely that this one is well worth downloading in high def (720p, 1.2GB per show)

Episode 5 has just posted.

From the program description for the first episode:
Most of us would happily follow Stephen Fry anywhere, so his latest venture seems the perfect project: retracing the steps of his friend Douglas Adams in search of endangered species. Adams's book Last Chance to See inspired conservationists, but he died before he could revisit it. His collaborator then was mild-mannered zoologist Mark Carwardine, who also accompanies Fry here as they head first to Brazil in search of the Amazonian manatee. What follows is the usual lilting montage of scenic views and genial encounters, enlivened by Fry's turn of phrase: "They feel like an old vinyl lilo," he says of river dolphins. The manatee itself turns out to be very sweet, but it's overshadowed by the scene where Fry breaks his arm getting onto a boat: it's no fun at all watching a national treasure in agony.

Comments

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

They had a clip from that show on the Rachel Maddow show Friday night. A hysterical piece featuring a flightless parrot species that um...takes a fancy to one of them.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

I need 3,4, &5. Do you have a link?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

If you can do usenet, they're easily findable via binsearch or newzleech. If not, they're on the torrent site TheBox.bz, though you have to sign up to their site to use their tracker, and they require you to maintain an upload ratio. Unparallelled as far as I know for BBC shows though.

If none of those work for you, let me know and we'll work something out.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

I managed to use that to get the Last Chance, and the America series (thanks!) but I can't maintain the upload ratio, as I have no BBC stuff that isn't already up there. Hopefully I can get the last Last Chance episode before they cut me off. Too bad, cause there is a lot of other good stuff up there I'd like to grab. :-(

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Remember that it's a torrent, so you're uploading AS you're downloading, and as long as you leave the torrent running afterwards. You're uploading what you just downloaded to other people who want it.

I maintain my upload ratio by just leaving anything I download from them running for a week or two. Even the very little-downloaded stuff like The Sky At Night eventually gets itself up to 1:1.

Also, when you get a freebie (marked "free"), usually episode 1 of a series, that means they don't bing you for the download but you get credit for the upload. Leave those run.

I don't leave things run on public sites like TPB or Mininova, because I know those torrents are monitored. On membership sites like TheBox and MVGroup though, I let things run.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to "leave the torrent running". I use BitTorrent. I think if I was doing any uploading, I wouldn't be getting these nasty warnings, would I?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

BitTorrent should be making the file available to others whenever it's on and the torrent is active (even if it's still downloading, any chunk that you've already downloaded is then available for others to grab). If there are peers (others connected that are not seeders (seeders are people who have the whole thing downloaded but are still connected, allowing others to download from them)) then they can request a chunk from you and your client will send it to them.

The whole way that Torrents work is that everyone involved is downloading pieces from each other. I grab piece 1 from the originator, you grab piece 2, then I get piece 2 from you and you get piece 1 from me, etc.

As long as you don't shut the program off when the download finishes, the file is still available to others. If there aren't any peers, obviously nobody's downloading, and you won't be sending any data. And if there are 300 seeders and you're just one of them, you won't be sending data very often since downloaders machines will pick randomly for pieces, but eventually someone will download and you'll send them some data. Leave the files where they are and leave the torrent client running whenever your machine is on, and after a few days or weeks, you'll have uploaded as much as you've downloaded.

It can take quite a long time to get your ratio up, especially if you don't jump on a popular torrent as soon as it's posted. If you wait a few weeks, there will be many seeders and hardly anyone downloading, so it can take weeks to get your ratio up.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that's how that worked. Unfortunately, I clear each torrent out and delete it after I get what I want. How selfish of me! I'm so sorry!!!!

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Well, you can put the file back and rejoin the torrent if you want to fix up your ratio. The client will re-check all of the file's chunks against the CRCs for those chunks, and then announce itself as a source and allow uploading again.

(This is why it's called a "peer-to-peer" system. As long as all of the parts are available somewhere on the system, it doesn't even matter if the originator of the file is even around anymore, the torrent will still run.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Last Chance is available on usenet too, and there's no such thing as a ratio there. If you don't have a usenet server, let me know and I'll post it somewhere where you can pick it up off my server. Do you want the HD version or the regular AVI?