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What have I been up to? Jinzora!

I’ve been playing with Jinzora this week, as you could see in the screenshot in my previous post.

I’m very impressed. I still have some glitches to work out – my ID3 tags don’t seem to be importing correctly, and I downloaded Easytag to check, and they looked right. A light bulb just went on, and I’ll have to check to see if it’s using id3v1, instead of version 2. I’m 99% positive all my tags are v2.

I really like the layout, it’s one of the best install routines I’ve ever seen, the album art it automatically grabs and puts up random is cool, and it does everything else. My only complaint, is that it doesn’t seem (and I’m new to this, could be wrong) a recursive file scan after the initial import to check for changes. One of the cooler things about Netjuke was I could update my ID3 tags, scan for changes, and it would fix it in the database. That, and the web pages seem to load slow, even on my local lan.

I’m slowly re-encoding all my CDs after the great hard drive crash of ’04, and doing it in MP3 this time, instead of Ogg. My new MP3 player cheats, and won’t do Ogg (though it does Napster2Go, but I’m not signing up for that).

Could it be?

Could that be silwenae.net making a return? With the music server?

I have proof:

silwenae.net screenshot

And it’s streaming music as we speak.

There’s some kinks to work out, so if you had access to the old music server, I have some things to fix first. But progress is being made!

Ubuntu migration (almost) complete

I’ve upgraded 3 of my main machines to Ubuntu 5.04, aka the Hoary Hedgehog release. The laptop went flawlessly, as did my gaming machine, which is installed on a second hard drive. Most impressively, the ATI binary drivers, with the change to X.org, stayed and worked on my gaming box automagically. OpenGL is beautiful, the fonts are beautiful, and I’ve switched to the Clearlooks theme from Industrial.

My two major complaints are the Industrial theme disappearing and they’ve changed Nautilus’ spatial nature. Clearlooks is acceptable as a replacement, but I don’t understand why they’ve had to go and screw with Nautilus. Gnome’s default behavior for Nautilus is to open every window in a new window. I like it that way. Ubuntu, being a Gnome-centric distribution, and dedicated to releasing after every major Gnome release, should follow that direction. I can understand why some people don’t like it, but it strikes me as odd they’ve made this change.

Only the server is left to upgrade, and based on the 3 upgrades I’ve done from Warty to Hoary, should go flawless. Then it’s a matter of getting the server up on the network, which is a different story after my network rebuild last weekend.

Xeni Profile from LA Times

Courtesy of Boing Boing.net, the LA Times has written a profile of Xeni Jardin. Xeni is famous as a co-author of the Boing Boing blog, tech writer for Playboy, Wired, and Popular Science, and radio correspondent for NPR’s Day to Day.

Xeni is pretty interesting. I’ve TiVo’d a few shows she’s been on as a guest, and listened to her on NPR, and her voice always strikes me as something I didn’t expect after seeing her picture. She’s one of the new breed of journalists who “gets it” – the convergence of media, pop culture and the internet are creating a new form of journalism.

Ubuntu Linux 5.04 is out!

Ubuntu Linux 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog release) is out!

Go download it!

Ubuntu has, by far, become my favorite linux distribution. Releasing stable version of Debian every 6 months, with the latest version of the Gnome desktop, an awesome user community, and a great selection of software.

The Hoary Hedgehog release adds X.org for the xserver, faster boot process, much better laptop support, and what I think may be a first for a Linux distribution, automated package manager download and installer to upgrade the OS. Check it:

Ubuntu 5.04 includes two new packages to help you keep your computer up to date: update-manager and upgrade-notifier. The Synaptic package manager also now includes support to upgrade your Ubuntu Distribution.

update-manager is a package that allows you to quickly and efficiently upgrade your software in the background. The process is simple but without the fine-grained choices offered with the Synaptic package manager. The package is good for people who like the simplicity of a one-click upgrade, similar to that available in other operating systems.

Read the Release notes here.

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend: Upgrading 5 machines to Hoary, including my server. (My original plan was to get the server back up on the DMZ and get Jinzora working. Ack).

Playing with a new theme

The WordPress Themes Competition winners have been announced. I’m torn to what theme I want to use.

I’m testing the equix theme, which I like as a light colored theme, though I’m still debating about going back to a dark theme. I don’t like the mouse cursor, and I don’t know why it doesn’t render correct in IE (damn work forcing my browser choice). It works fine in Firefox. I like it’s clean look though.

…Must learn more HTML, PHP and CSS.

Update 6:00 p.m.: Cursor fixed, thank god

Interview with Jon Lech Johansen

Slyck.com Interviews Jon Lech Johansen, famous (or infamous if you work for Big Media) of DeCSS fame, and *Musique fame. Interesting follow-up to last week’s post about Digital Music on Linux.

Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome & Mono fame, recently reached out to Jon to create a pyMusique port to GTK# resulting in SharpeMusique.

It’s on my t0do list to download and try out. I’d give Apple’s iTMS a shot if it works. I’m hoping it shows up soon in the Ubuntu universe (I haven’t checked yet). I have Mono running, with a few apps (I love Muine) and I miss Tomboy (Tomboy isn’t working in Hoary for me, no idea why, it was fine in Warty).

Supreme Court Asking the Right Questions

MGM vs. Grokster hit the Supreme Court Tuesday, and the Justices’ we’re asking the right questions:

MGM and nearly a dozen other entertainment companies argued that peer-to-peer software manufacturers Grokster and StreamCast had built their businesses by distributing “infringing machines.” But counsel for the entertainment industry, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. of the law firm Jenner & Block, scarcely finished his opening statements before the Justices interrupted with pointed questions about how his arguments would impact technological innovation. Justice Antonin Scalia asked how the industry would protect nascent technologies from “out-of-the-box lawsuits,” and Justice Stephen Breyer pushed him to explain why MGM’s argument wouldn’t also apply to the iPod, Xerox machines, and even Gutenberg’s printing press.

(I’m finding myself agreeing with Justice Scalia?? First time for everything).

Lots of folk’s turned out to wait in line to get tickets in to the Supreme Court Monday night. Luis Villa’s blog (a Gnome Developer) has some great pictures up, including demonstrators and waiting in line.

Digital Music on Linux

So Apple has been in the news all week, as their DRM has been stripped – but what hasn’t necessarily been said is that is hasn’t been stripped, as as much as the Apple iTunes solution implemented on Linux doesn’t apply the DRM. Technically, it’s almost impossible to apply the DRM at the server level, and when pyMusique downloads a song on a Linux box, the DRM isn’t applied as it’s not a native iTMS client like on Windows or Mac.

I whole heartedly agree with this interview with Cody Brocious, one of the 3 developers of pyMusique (along with DVD Jon) on Linux. It’s not the DRM issue – it’s the fact, as a Linux user, I don’t have any options today to buy digital music on the platform I choose to use.

I’d accept their DRM if they supported Linux. No question.

I’ve used Napster and MusicNow – I’ve bought over 20 albums in the last 6 months online. We need a commerical Linux solution for digital music.

Flickr! Acquired! By! Yahoo!

My favorite photo-sharing site, Flickr was acquired by Yahoo this week.

The link to the Flickr Blog has some interesting Q&As about what it means.

While I’m nervous about it, I’m not worried. I hope what they’re saying is true that Flickr will influence Yahoo more than Yahoo influencing Flickr.

Flickr is great for a few reasons:

It’s completely built on Open Source software.

Flickr’s use of Creative Commons

Flickr’s use of social networking to tag photos. (Search for “Packers” some time – you see some great shot of Lambeau during a game).

Flickr’s tools for integrating photos into blogs.

I’m very happy for Ludicorp. Good for them for building a site that works, people like, and being able to make some money for it.

CNet’s News.com did a great story on Flickr, tagging, and it’s acquisition.