Friday, February 29, 2008

The Big Rip

In the wake of the realization that my music collection has gone the wrong direction, quality-wise, I have decided to re-rip my entire CD library in Apple Lossless. I expect this to keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

Why apple format instead of flac? Because iTunes supports it natively (and it is a nice ripping environment) and the format is playable in Linux and convertible to other formats. The thing that sucks about any format is that there is no one perfect choice. MP3 is the only real generic choice for lossy, but there is no similarly universal format for lossless. So I will need a minimum of two copies of my entire library to support my existing audio needs. Possibly three. Sigh.

I don't actually expect the ripping to be the really painful part of the process. I expect incorporating the lossless items into iTunes without losing anything or duplicating anything and without hopelessly wrecking my playlists to be the hard part.

The way my luck is going lately, my hard drive will probably crash halfway through the process. I should get a Drobo, but I want a Mac to attach it to. Or I could take a chance and attach it to linux (formatted hfs+), I suppose...

48 disks down, lots and lots to go.

David

Saturday, February 23, 2008

The Lure of iTunes

If you had asked me two days ago whether I buy a lot of stuff on iTunes, I would have said, "Some, but not too much. I'd rather buy the CD so that I own a higher quality copy. But I like it for the ability to explore and find new music."

Well, I would have been lying apparently. I installed doubleTwist to mess around with and I was astonished when it started "liberating" my iTunes music. Not because of the liberation - I was obviously expecting that. But because of the number of bloody songs there were to liberate. 854, not including the 245 iTunes Plus selections. Sheesh.

Score one for iTunes and a marvelous store interface. It totally sucked me in.

Ironically, the ability to liberate the music (without burning/ripping) actually makes the store more attractive. I may need therapy.

David

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Spiraling Economy

The US economy appears to be in a deep spiral. I seriously wish that I had some capital to invest right now - bargains are starting to abound in the stock market. I also seriously hope that I don't get downsized until after a rebound of some kind.

I wonder what the reason is for the particularly bad hit that Las Vegas is taking from the mortgage foreclosure debacle? Was it particularly bad lending practices in the area? Or is it just that the Las Vegas economy is only good when people have spare money to gamble with? Or both? In any case, this might be a great time to pick up some deals in Las Vegas real estate.

David

Friday, February 1, 2008

Confusing Web Trends

I am puzzled. I discovered Google Trends a while back and I have the Gadget on my Google home page. I look at it from time to time in the hope that I will find something interesting going on in the tubes. I haven't yet.

At this moment in time, the top two search trends are for "amuse bouche" and "i sound my barbaric yawp". And Trends claims that these searches are related somehow.

I know what an amuse bouche is only because I am a foodie. It means to amuse the mouth in French and is a kind of very small titillating appetizer.

I know the phrase "I sound my barbaric yawp" only because Dead Poet's Society is one of my favorite movies. This is a Walt Whitman quote that Robin Williams' character uses to break his students out of their shells.

What they have in common is... Nothing. Nothing at all.

This must be an experiment (possibly by aliens, but more likely by a sadistic developer over at Google) to see what happens when people notice.

I would be sad if it just turns out that Google Trends has a monster bug in how they determine that trends are related. It is more fun to think that they might be somehow.

But how, darn it?

I don't know and seemingly neither does Google.

David