(cross-posted to my Livejournal page)
Pretty inflammatory subject for a first post, isn't it? They'll probably ban me.
But I absolutely HATE that I can't get RSS feeds from friends private journals. Do the developers at Livejournal pay any attention at all to Web 2.0 trends?
Listen up people! If I can't read it in Google Reader, then it doesn't exist.
David
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Big Rip Is Over
Whew. I finished the big rip project. 121 gigabytes of Apple Lossless files (5215 tracks), piles of clean up and de-duplication, and a bunch of manual hunting for cover art, but it is done. Was it worth it? I'm not really sure. I had some hope of actually using some of the lossless music on my iPod, but 121 gigs? I think not.
The one advantage is that if I change my mind about the lossy format that I actually want to use (192kbps MP3 for now), I have everything tagged and organized so that it is pretty easy. Just the processor time to chug through it all again.
My one gripe is that I had to fight against iTunes in a number of places. Everything is possible, but not necessarily easy. It would be very nice, for example, if you could force imports to go to a different directory than the main iTunes directory. Or if you could display (and sort by) the file location. Or if you could use iTunes to move physical files around. Or if you could delete music from playlists. Or if when you do a conversion it asked you if you want to keep duplicates (like it does when you rip a disk). Or if you could have it touch every file in your library to find the missing files (and then if you could sort by the [!] or something). Or if you could swap back and forth between two or more different iTunes directories and then merge them at some point (I got to a place where I had to finish the entire process before I could sync my iPod or things would go horribly wrong - it would be nice if I could have done some of the fiddling in a separate environment).
On the other hand, some things iTunes got very right. Smart playlists are a godsend. The search function is almost magically good. And now that I have actually filled in my album art, cover flow is pretty neat.
And speaking of filling in album art - I never could have done that without amazon.com and google image search. Not a chance. The iTunes missing album art function only hit about 50-60% of my collection - that's what I get for being eclectic I guess.
One interesting thing about the whole process is that it took 24 hours running at ~75% CPU utilization on a modern dual core computer to transcode the files from Apple Lossless to MP3. That is an astonishing amount of CPU time on a computer that would have been classed as a supercomputer a few years ago and magic a few years before that. I estimate it used about 3E14 CPU cycles. A circa 1990 Cray Y-MP would have taken around 625 days to do this processing (obviously not counting any of the optimization that you definitely would have taken the time to do and using a 1:1 assumption about CPU cycles that probably isn't strictly accurate).
David
The one advantage is that if I change my mind about the lossy format that I actually want to use (192kbps MP3 for now), I have everything tagged and organized so that it is pretty easy. Just the processor time to chug through it all again.
My one gripe is that I had to fight against iTunes in a number of places. Everything is possible, but not necessarily easy. It would be very nice, for example, if you could force imports to go to a different directory than the main iTunes directory. Or if you could display (and sort by) the file location. Or if you could use iTunes to move physical files around. Or if you could delete music from playlists. Or if when you do a conversion it asked you if you want to keep duplicates (like it does when you rip a disk). Or if you could have it touch every file in your library to find the missing files (and then if you could sort by the [!] or something). Or if you could swap back and forth between two or more different iTunes directories and then merge them at some point (I got to a place where I had to finish the entire process before I could sync my iPod or things would go horribly wrong - it would be nice if I could have done some of the fiddling in a separate environment).
On the other hand, some things iTunes got very right. Smart playlists are a godsend. The search function is almost magically good. And now that I have actually filled in my album art, cover flow is pretty neat.
And speaking of filling in album art - I never could have done that without amazon.com and google image search. Not a chance. The iTunes missing album art function only hit about 50-60% of my collection - that's what I get for being eclectic I guess.
One interesting thing about the whole process is that it took 24 hours running at ~75% CPU utilization on a modern dual core computer to transcode the files from Apple Lossless to MP3. That is an astonishing amount of CPU time on a computer that would have been classed as a supercomputer a few years ago and magic a few years before that. I estimate it used about 3E14 CPU cycles. A circa 1990 Cray Y-MP would have taken around 625 days to do this processing (obviously not counting any of the optimization that you definitely would have taken the time to do and using a 1:1 assumption about CPU cycles that probably isn't strictly accurate).
David
Friday, March 7, 2008
sshfs rocks!
I have no idea how I went for so long without knowing about sshfs, but for the record it rocks. It is a *nix user space mountable file system that works over ssh as a proxy for sftp. Or in english, it is a way to mount anything that is available via ssh (sftp) as though it were a disk on unix/linux.
Yes, it works on macs. No, it doesn't work in cygwin. Yes, there is a windows client, if you don't mind paying for it (I haven't tried this).
Sshfs, plus an ssh terminal, plus a tiny bit of port redirection, and hey, who needs a vpn? The completely brilliant thing is that you never need anything more than sshd running on your "server" side and you never need anything but port 22 open. Ever.
David
Yes, it works on macs. No, it doesn't work in cygwin. Yes, there is a windows client, if you don't mind paying for it (I haven't tried this).
Sshfs, plus an ssh terminal, plus a tiny bit of port redirection, and hey, who needs a vpn? The completely brilliant thing is that you never need anything more than sshd running on your "server" side and you never need anything but port 22 open. Ever.
David
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
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
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
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
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
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