Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Metadata goodies

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Not useable metadata goodies, unfortunately, but still, this is good to hear. Apparently, Gracenote — maintainers of the CDDB (which iTunes and many other audio players use to provide track information upon insertion of a CD) have many additional possible data fields that can be used, according to this comment sent to Macintouch (emphasis mine):

Classical music is a difficult problem for almost all digital media players. The rock & pop music world is much different than the Classical world – the data fields are not sufficient for describing Classical music. The Gracenote database has support for Composer, Ensemble, Orchestra, Conductor, and many other fields, but many applications choose not to support these fields. So over the years, the fields have been overloaded in meaning and in data. We recently re-wrote our Classical music standards so that existing applications can begin to be more consistent. But more importantly, Gracenote’s next generation database will fully support Classical music metadata like no other database. We are working to spread these changes out to our application developers, including Apple. Our editorial team is working hard to standardize the existing Classical data as well, partnering with experts in the industry. Look for big changes in 2004 and 2005.

Hopefully these extra fields trickle down to iTunes in a (near) future release!

iTunes: “1st Premonition (DBX)” by Giannelli, Fred from the album Sound of Superstition, The Vol. 5 (1997, 6:08).

As the Apple Turns RSS feed

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I’m tossing this up here because until today, I had never, ever, ever seen nor heard of any mention of an RSS feed for everyone’s favorite Apple-flavored soap opera, As the Apple Turns (I even just dug through their help pages and v2.0 FAQ to be sure I wan’t entirely off base — at least, as far as this is concerned). However, in a typically off-the-cuff mention, the heretofore super-secret-ninja-RSS-feed address has been leaked (and leaked by no less august a personage than the AtAT team themselves): http://www.appleturns.com/rss/.

Hey, I thought it was exciting.

There’s no such thing as too much music

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My one major accomplishment of the weekend was finally completing a project that I’ve had going on for months now: importing every CD I own into iTunes. Quite a task, when after years of being a complete music junkie (compounded by a few years of DJing), I’ve built up a CD collection of 1,142 albums!

Now that I’m done, though, the final tally…

  • Total songs in my iTunes library: 14,622
  • Total time: 49.6 days (49 days, 15 hours, 8 minutes, 23 seconds)
  • Total space: 65.09 GB

The fact that all that music takes up only 65 GB was a pleasant surprise. When I was using my G3 as my primary computer, I picked up an 80GB drive specifically to hold all my music. At that point, though, encoding my music as 160kbps VBR MP3 files, I couldn’t fit all of my music on that drive! This time, though, I’ve been encoding at 128kbps AAC (not archival quality, but slightly better sound quality than the 160kbps .mp3s even at smaller file sizes), and managed to get all of my music on the ‘puter in 15 GB less space than before.

Then, since iTunes has a special “Grouping” field that can be used for whatever sort of customized sorting options the user wants, I set up four groups for my music. I’ve always prided myself on the fact that the majority of my music is music that I actually own, and I’ve generally only resorted to downloading songs from peer to peer networks such as Napster or the like when I was trying to get really rare tracks that I couldn’t find any other way. I was curious as to just how the numbers worked out, though, so here’s my four groups, and their final results…

  • Copied from friends or downloaded from P2P networks (technically illegal): 610 (4.172%)
  • Original rips (my own mixes, GarageBand creations, or imports from vinyl): 51 (0.349%)
  • Bought from the iTunes Music Store (legally owned, though without the physical CD): 232 (1.587%)
  • Ripped from CDs that I own: 13,729 (93.893%)

Overall, I really don’t think that that’s too bad of a ratio.

And yes. I’m a complete and total music whore. :)

iTunes: “Come What May” by Kidman, Nicole/McGregor, Ewan from the album Moulin Rouge (2001, 4:48).

Up, up and at ’em

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Guess it’s about time I should poke my head up around these parts again, huh?

Been a good weekend — a little too hot and muggy at times, but overall, quite enjoyable. Saturday I took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island for a blogger’s picnic, and sat and chatted with Julie and Ted Leung and their three girls, Anita, Chip, Beth and her new son (all of six weeks old), and Robert and Myriam Scoble for a few hours. I ended up plopping down on a blanket and spending a good amount of time with the Leung’s girls, all of whom were adorable — and since Julie already mentioned Michaela showing me the owie on her middle finger (“Look at what I’ve got!” as I try to keep from laughing too hard as she gives me the bird) than I guess I can too. ;)

Between the heat and not sleeping terribly well for a couple nights, Saturday night became a night of rest, doing very little aside from dinking around on the ‘puter, ordering pizza, and kicking back to watch The Abyss. I really enjoy that movie, especially the extended special edition cut, and that ended up being just the night I needed to recuperate.

I debated heading down to check out the Bite of Seattle festival on Sunday, but decided that it was a bit too muggy outside for me to go traipsing around Seattle, so I wandered down to the theater to see I, Robot instead. Overall, not horrible — but not great, either. Pretty much just standard summer movie fare more than anything else. A few amusing lines here and there, decent special effects, and very pretty to look at (I do enjoy Alex Proyas‘ directing), but aside from the title and the Three Laws of Robotics, any connections to Asimov were few and far between. Character names and a couple situations lifted from the pages of Asimov’s robot short stories, but the spirit of Asimov’s writing definitely wasn’t there. It’s not so bad that I’d recommend staying away, but if there’s another movie you’re more interested in, don’t go out of your way to see I, Robot.

And now the weekends done, the week begins, and I try to catch up with everything else in the world that I missed over the past few days.

Whee!

iTunes: “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Vanessa Mae from the album Violin Player, The (1995, 7:49).

My Depeche Mode collection

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For Rebecca, for comparison purposes, and for Jonas, because he made fun of me for dancing to Strangelove at the Vogue a few months ago. ;)

My final Depeche Mode song count:

  • 217 songs
  • 42 albums (this includes compilations where DM has only one track)
  • 19.3 hours
  • 1.03 Gb

And here’s the full list, in .pdf format, printed straight out of iTunes:

iTunes: “Judas” by Depeche Mode from the album Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993, 5:14).

Okay, okay, I’m awake, I get it

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Weird night last night — no matter what, I just couldn’t sleep solidly. Tossed and turned all night long, until I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep a little while ago. It’s Saturday and I’ve been up since just before 8am. Ah, well — hopefully a nap later in the day will happen, and I’ll knock myself back onto my usual schedule before too long.

I do remember having a long, very involved dream revolving around discovering that Lloyd Alexander had written a series of companion novels to his Prydain Chronicles: two collections of short stories, and a full trilogy of three almost Harry Potter-length novels set about sixteen years or so after the end of the Prydain Chronicles. I was really excited about this, found some beautiful leather-bound editions, but the bookstore I was at was missing the first book of the trilogy, so after flipping through the ones that were there and admiring the maps of Prydain in the front leaf, I started going to another book store to find the first of the new books.

Then I woke up, realized that it was all just a dream, and was very disappointed.

I’ve had a couple people notice that I’ve just been reading the (real) Prydain Chronicles after seeing them pop up in the sidebar and ask about them. I’m planning on writing about them, but at the moment Prairie’s borrowing my copies, and I’m waiting to put up a full post until I have the books back in my hands to quote from. So no smackings and crackings of my poor tender head, please — I’m getting there!

I’m also just a few CDs short of finally having every CD I own imported into my computer. It’s almost frightening how much music I have. Almost, but not quite. ;) More details on that once I’m actually done.

And, as long as I’m up and (apparently) functioning early enough, I’ll be catching the 10:40 ferry over to Bainbridge Island for today’s blogger picnic. Should be fun!

And the day begins…

iTunes: “All I Really Need” by Machines of Loving Grace from the album Rite of Shiva (1991, 5:07).

Bumbershoot 2004 lineup

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The Bumbershoot 2004 lineup has been announced. Sweet. Quite a few big names catch my eye and will be fun to see, but I’m also looking forward to discovering a few new acts that I might not have heard of otherwise (I find at least one or two more each year).

Just calling out a few that catch my interest…

Friday: The Clumsy Lovers

Saturday: Seal, Nancy Sinatra, Robyn Hitchcock

Sunday: Public Enemy

Monday: The Pixies, Toots and the Maytals (Kevin just played some of their stuff for me on his way through last weekend), Critters Buggin’

Not as many “must see” acts as there have been in the past few years for me, all in all. In fact, the only one to really make me sit up and get excited was Public Enemy. Still, it’s certainly not a bad initial list of possibilities, and as I said before, it’s the unexpected discoveries that can be the most fun.

iTunes: “Pine Effect” by µ-Ziq from the album In Pine Effect (1995, 4:51).

Mac OS X Panther Hacks

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I just wanted to toss out a quick congratulations to Phil, who with the release of O’Reilly’s Mac OS X Panther Hacks, is now officially a published (co-)author!

I haven’t even managed to wrangle my infamy into that particular accolade. ;)

iTunes: “Life In Ecstacy (Long Dong)” by Trust in 6 from the album Techno-Trax Vol. 1 (1991, 6:37).

Photographers Protest at the Ballard Locks

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How wonderful. I can’t claim total inspiration for this, as all I did was point to the article regarding Ian Spiers’ run-in with Homeland Security while photographing the Ballard Locks, which brought it to the attention of Myk O’Leary of Life, it is a Travesty. After reading that article, however, Myk is organizing a peaceful protest at the Ballard Locks.

In response, I will be trying to organize a photo shoot at the Locks as a means of protest. Anyone else who cares about our rights as Americans to photograph interseting PUBLIC subjects are welcome to join me. If you are a photographer in Seattle, please consider coming.

If you are hesitant (and this is fair given what already happened) at least pass this on to others you know who may want to come along. Feel free to post the link to any and all boards that may have folks who would come (I’ll be posting to dpchallenge in just a few minutes after this post goes live.)

DETAILS: Sunday August 1st, 2004 1PM – 4PM We’ll meet at the front gates at just before 1PM, if you’re late, just look for the gaggle of tripods inside the property by the locks.

I’ll do my best to be there. Thanks, Myk.

iTunes: “Ya Mama” by Fatboy Slim from the album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (2000, 5:38).

Google to me in eight clicks

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Meme time, started by A Whole Lotta Nothing, and being tracked by Kottke: how many clicks to get from Google’s homepage to your website without using the search box?

For me, it’s eight.

  1. Google »
  2. More »
  3. Blogger »
  4. Knowledge »
  5. Working With Blogger »
  6. How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog »
  7. Seattle Times: Microsoft Fires Worker Over Weblog »
  8. eclecticism