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My Music

So I have a lot of music. With over 700 CDs ripped, and some other misc. music, it’s quite a bear to manage it all.

For the last few years, I’ve used Netjuke on my Linux server. During the upgrade process this past spring, I put my music on two seperate hard drives, seperate from the third which holds the OS. What I love about Netjuke is that it’s database driven, making it very easy to search, and a nice web interface, that is semi-skinnable. It’s also GPL.

The downside is that Netjuke 2.0 has been in development for almost (or just over?) a year. Netjuke 1 was released in Aug. ’03, and no updates since. Netjuke 2.0 development has been quiet for almost 6 months, with no updates, and the CVS is unusable. And there is talk that it will be propietary, not GPL, which doesn’t make me happy.

I’ve been looking at other projects, first Andromeda, which is a PHP script that is not database driven. I had used Andromeda before Netjuke, and purchased it again this past spring when I had some installation problems with Netjuke 1.0, but still wasn’t happy with it.

On the Netjuke forums, I came across Jinzora, which looks similar to Andromeda, but has more functionality through PHP scripting. Features include ID3 tagging, server side playback (which Netjuke can do kind of), file downloading, RSS feeds, and a slim version for adding via an iframe.

I still have some questions that the FAQ, Wiki and forums didn’t answer around multiple directories (I have my Ogg and MP3 files in seperate directories, but those directories have identical artists, but different albums).

I still have some work to do to finish cleaning up some ID3 tags, and getting some newer music on the site and syncing it all up, but this is another project to add to my list. I still have to figure out why the ID3 tags for some live Dave Mathews stuff isn’t working in Netjuke too.

In addition, I need to get a linux box up with a sufficiently big enough hard drive so I can rsync nightly or weekly to back it all up. My Mirra won’t back up a network drive, and I had mapped my music directories on my linux box over Samba to my extra Windows box hoping it would. Dammit.

Speaking of music, I need to find out how Windows serving works. A while back I received Omnifi for the car and my home receiver. While pretty cool to transfer my music to my car’s hard drive, the car version was way to sensitive and doesn’t work. I still have the set top box hooked up to my home theater, and that works streaming from my extra Windows box where I have some of my music duplicated from my server. The downside is that Omnifi uses software to manage your music collection called SimpleCenter. This is one of the worst designed music interfaces ever created. The one neat feature it has is “Watch Folders” where you point it towards your music folder, and it automatically notices when you add music to that folder and adds it to your collection. It does not support Ogg, but does support Rhapsody and some internet music stations.

I had purchased The Killers new CD, ripped it to MP3 (bleh) and put it on my Windows box. Firing up the Omnifi, lo and behold I see a Musicmatch server on it – sure enough, from my Linksys boombox installation, Musicmatch has the identical ability that SimpleCenter, including watch folders, and what not. So I import all the music on that Windows box into MusicMatch, and can use that on my Omnifi. From managing my music on my PC, I prefer the MusicMatch interface – it’s not my favorite either, but it has some better features built-in including ID3 tagging, and the interface is cleaner to use, but it has too many advanced features to get you to buy crap.

So the questions becomes what is the SDK that they’re using – terminology is identical (Watch Folders, etc) and what would it take to get it ported to Linux. If I could have my whole collection on my server serving my house (with the exception of Ogg dammit, and I’m not re-encoding that stuff), I would be golden.

So much work, so little time.

  • in General
  • 1 min read

Back from Orlando

Back from sunny Orlando.

Sunny and 85, with a few clouds on Fri. and Sat. Not that I’m complaining, though flying back today, the Twin Cities weather is nicer than it was there, but at least the storm we left in Orlando didn’t have a name.

Not sure how I survived 4+ days without internet access, lots of work and lots of play got me through.

Off to Chicago this week for the BFG lan party, I may try to blog it live. It will depend on the setup there, and transferring photo’s from my camera to the PC to the website, we shall see, it might be kind of cool to try. Long as I don’t pass out again.

Packers better win tonight. That is all.

Go Go EFF!

The EFF is suing the FCC over the Broadcast Flag.

The brief argues that the FCC has no authority to regulate digital TV sets and other digital devices unless specifically instructed to do so by Congress. While the FCC does have jurisdiction over TV transmissions, transmissions are not at issue here. The broadcast flag limits the way digital material can be used after the broadcast has already been received. “Bowing to a group of copyright holders led by the MPAA, the FCC promulgated a rule drafted by those corporate interests that will dictate design aspects of a vast array of consumer electronics – televisions, DVD recorders, TiVos, digital VCRs, iPods, and cell phones – for years to come,” the brief reads.

ALA legislative counsel Miriam M. Nisbet said, “Two years ago Congress passed a law allowing for use of copyrighted works for distance education. Yet now the FCC through the broadcast flag would prevent schools from using an entire category of those works — high definition television programs — in distance education.”

Filing the brief along with EFF, PK, and the ALA were the Association of Research Libraries, American Association of Law Libraries, Medical Library Association, Special Libraries Association, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumers Union.

This is a great thing to see. and I’ll continue to publish other links that cover it, such as Boing Boing. Building a HDTV HTPC is a priority for me, along with getting the basement done. With pcHDTV’s out of stock on Linux HDTV cards, it will be interesting to see if I can get this done in time. I firmly believe the Broadcast Flag is an evil, evil thing. I want to record the shows I want to, when I want, without the government interfering.

Actions like this make me proud to be a Pioneer level member of the EFF.

Don't Vote Campaign

I saw on Daily Kos, a liberal weblog, this morning, that Clear Channel has put up 11 billboards across the Twin Cities saying “Don’t Vote“.

According to a Clear Channel spokesman, the billboards are a teaser ad for an ad campaign that will be unveiled on Oct. 11th. The billboards are in predominantly minority neighborhoods. Clear Channel claims that at first they said no to the campaign until they saw the whole thing, which will be in good taste.

No matter what the ad campaign, even if it’s for their radio stations (of which they have almost 50% market share here in the Twin Cities), this is in poor taste, even if it’s nothing to do with this years election.

At some point, I need to get my old blog imported here, so I can link back to the stories I did on why Clear Channel is evil, and why radio here in the Twin Cities sucks (Thanks Clear Channel and ABC Capital Cities Radio!).

And don’t forget, Clear Channel executives have a nice history of giving to the Republican party…

Long Day Ahead

It’s going to be a long day today. I’ve already received a hard time about the Packers loss yesterday… I even subjected myself to KFAN this morning on the way in to hear them laugh long and hard at the Pack.

I’m not a big fan of Fox’s first team broadcasting group of Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Cris Collinsworth, but I thought they were absolutely right when they were saying that the Packers’ offense is still searching for an identity. After running the ball and stuffing it down the Panthers throat in Week 1, they haven’t stuck with their gameplan week after week.

I was surprised this morning to see Pederson on the injury list on ESPN. I had thought, as did the announcers, that Nall had entered the game because he had the stronger arm for the hail mary at the end of the game. Here’s to hoping that Favre is back next week.

Nice Design

I recently received a Linksys Wireless-B Music System. The device is pretty cool, and designed fairly well.

Using a wired or wireless connection, you can stream MP3 (no Ogg!) from your PC, internet radio and Rhapsody if you have a subscription.

Fairly good design, including ethernet, optical audio out or RCA out. Detachable speakers so you can even just hook it up to your stereo. But where the block is for all these outs, there’s still a fairly large hole – like where batteries should be.

So it’s a wireless music system – as long as AC power is plugged in. They couldn’t have found room for two C batteries? Of course, checking the wireless settings and streaming from a PC would probably drain them pretty quick, but still.

The speakers don’t even sound too bad.

So close, but yet so far in design.

  • in Politics
  • 1 min read

Section 505

I heard on the way home last night on National Public Radio, that the 2nd Circuit Court has struck down key portions of Section 505 of the Patriot Act.

Specifically, Section 505 allows the Justice Department to send a NSL, National Security Letter, to businesses, demanding information related to terrorism, without a court order. U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marreo found this disturbing without judicial oversight. The Justice Department was required to submit a list of all businesses that they had done this to – and did, which was 5 pages long, with every line blacked out.

Judge Victor Marreo also struck down the portion that requires individuals and business not to disclose that the DOJ or FBI has requested the letter – so even if you receive one, you coudn’t tell a lawyer.

The challenge was brought by the ACLU, representing a “John Doe” ISP – who by law the ACLU can’t mention by name.

Ears Ringing

I got to see Lenny Kravitz up close and personal tonight at a work event. Lenny rocked the house. Amazing show. Can’t say enough about it, it was quite loud, and very entertaining. Played my favorite song, Again.

B-52s and Lenny Kravitz, both up close in less than 6 days. Good week!

When it rains, it pours

A week and half ago, I purchased Fable and NHL2k5 for my X-box. I’ve probably played 10-12 games of hockey, and having a blast doing it – even if on Pro I’m still winning too many, even if by only 1 goal.

I haven’t played Fable as near as much as I’ve wanted due to two things:

  1. Was traveling

  2. It’s a M rated game – as I found out after I started playing it. And Alex likes watching me play way too much for him to see me playing a role playing game as I hack away at the bad guys.

So I had received a gift card last week, and after trying out Farcry at Kent’s a week or two ago, decided to pick it up, as I enjoy a good FPS. After the fun I had playing Call of Duty single-player a year after everyone else, I decided this could be a good fit. So I bought it today. Come back to the office, and get more presents: Rome: Total War, a new real time strategy getting good reviews, and Star Wars: Battlefront (Warning: flash site) for the PC.

Considering I’ll be wiring the basement this weekend, in Orlando the following weekend, in Chicago after that, then at Lambeau the weekend after for the Cowboys game, when will I find the time? I still have Fable to play, my NFL2k5 football and hockey seasons, and two beta’s, including WoW to test. I’ve barely caught up on my TiVO from the last week or two, and here we go again… Good thing I haven’t bought X-Men from Raven yet! And I haven’t even thought about practicing for the BFG lan competition.

When it rains, it pours.