I let some of the guys I work with know that my music is on share, so they can listen if they want. I just asked them not to judge; we all have crappy music hidden in our collections.
Anyway, they're all separately perusing the folder structure, and my manager finds the Black Flag “Live '84” album. "Oh hey", he says, "I think I was at that show."
Crap like that makes me love my job.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
music is getting around
So I finally broke down and got a new iPod the other day. I got the 120GB Classic. "Casey," you may ask, "aren't you all Ubuntu at home? Why would you get a closed-source, fancy-pants iPod?"
I'll tell you why: iPods are nice. My last one, a 2nd gen 10GB, just died. Finally. Some people buy toys, get fancy accessories, and baby them. Not me. I used the crappy case it came in, for about a year, and after that, threw it in my school bag or pocket, and went through a year of grad school in it. I was not gentle. I ran that thing dead, or close to it, most days of the week. I had to get the headphone jack fixed once (due to a design flaw which they fixed in later models) but that was the only problem I ever had with it. It even once got half immersed in lemonade overnight, but I just let it dry out, and all was good, though the buttons were a bit sticky. That was years ago.
In short, it was easy to use, I used in constantly, and it took the beating. I was sold on it.
However, all good things come to an end, and it was no different. I am still not entirely sure if it was the battery being completely gone, or the disk, but in any case, I wanted a new one since I had outgrown 10GB, and it was a pain to add new music. Which brings us to the present day...
I went to the apple store at lunch, picked the new one up (silver, not black), and took it home. Booted up windows, got the latest iTunes, plugged it in, and made sure the software was up to date. Rebooted to Ubuntu. Plugged the iPod in, fired up Amarok, mimicked the settings I had for my shuffle, connected, and loaded an album. (Incidentally, it was Minor Threat's “First Two 7"s”, just to keep with that DIY spirit) Ejected. It played. Perfectly.
Nice.
Caveats: The album artwork did not go over. I checked the tags, and not all the songs had the artwork, so I grabbed a well-tagged album. Still no luck. Ok, no worries, I can figure this out later. I also have not tried loading photos or video.
At this juncture, I figure all that stuff is gravy. I really just wanted an mp3 player that I could use to travel with all my tunes (currently about 37GB and growing). I am guessing in another five years this will all be on my phone, but for now, given past history, this is/should be the solution.
Act II:
You may remember from earlier posts that I had transported all my music to work, 1 or 2 GB at a time, to have on my work machine. I did this since my iPod had poor battery life. I like this setup, since I have some big studio headphones at work, and I like having it all there. Less to carry back and forth. Anyways... at the time I was moving stuff, I had not unlocked my iTunes and Audible content, so was using iTunes to listen to it all. I didn't have a lot of locked up tracks, but some, and it was newer stuff, so I wanted it available. I have since unlocked the works, at home, and have cleaned up some tags in the process. I wanted all that at work, but I didn't want to move it all piecemeal. I now had a solution.
Since all my stuff at home was unlocked, decently tagged, and organized, I simply dragged my ~/Music folder onto the mounted iPod. When I got to work, I uninstalled iTunes (no need for that anymore, and I suspect it was jamming me from sharing the folder my tunes are in), renamed my current music folder (always have backups), mounted the iPod, and dragged the Music folder from my iPod (which was mounted as an external drive, since iTunes wasn't there to lock it up) to C:\. I then decided to kick it old-school, and installed winamp. Oh yeah, that's right kids, I went back to your grandpa's mp3 playing windows app. That's how we did it back in my day. I set the local media folder during setup, and voilà! DRM-free tunes for me! A couple clicks later, read-only access was granted for everyone on the network. Sharing is caring, after all.
Dénouement:
I now have a lighter weight method of listening to and sharing my music at work. I am going back to PA this weekend, and I have a convenient way to take and listen to whatever I want on the way; planning out what I may or may not want to hear on two five and a half hour drives through western Mass. and upstate New York is no longer something I need to do. I have a new toy. If having all my music wasn't fun enough, I also now have a project: I need to get album covers, photos, and videos syncing from Ubuntu.
Sometimes you got to love being a geek.
I'll tell you why: iPods are nice. My last one, a 2nd gen 10GB, just died. Finally. Some people buy toys, get fancy accessories, and baby them. Not me. I used the crappy case it came in, for about a year, and after that, threw it in my school bag or pocket, and went through a year of grad school in it. I was not gentle. I ran that thing dead, or close to it, most days of the week. I had to get the headphone jack fixed once (due to a design flaw which they fixed in later models) but that was the only problem I ever had with it. It even once got half immersed in lemonade overnight, but I just let it dry out, and all was good, though the buttons were a bit sticky. That was years ago.
In short, it was easy to use, I used in constantly, and it took the beating. I was sold on it.
However, all good things come to an end, and it was no different. I am still not entirely sure if it was the battery being completely gone, or the disk, but in any case, I wanted a new one since I had outgrown 10GB, and it was a pain to add new music. Which brings us to the present day...
I went to the apple store at lunch, picked the new one up (silver, not black), and took it home. Booted up windows, got the latest iTunes, plugged it in, and made sure the software was up to date. Rebooted to Ubuntu. Plugged the iPod in, fired up Amarok, mimicked the settings I had for my shuffle, connected, and loaded an album. (Incidentally, it was Minor Threat's “First Two 7"s”, just to keep with that DIY spirit) Ejected. It played. Perfectly.
Nice.
Caveats: The album artwork did not go over. I checked the tags, and not all the songs had the artwork, so I grabbed a well-tagged album. Still no luck. Ok, no worries, I can figure this out later. I also have not tried loading photos or video.
At this juncture, I figure all that stuff is gravy. I really just wanted an mp3 player that I could use to travel with all my tunes (currently about 37GB and growing). I am guessing in another five years this will all be on my phone, but for now, given past history, this is/should be the solution.
Act II:
You may remember from earlier posts that I had transported all my music to work, 1 or 2 GB at a time, to have on my work machine. I did this since my iPod had poor battery life. I like this setup, since I have some big studio headphones at work, and I like having it all there. Less to carry back and forth. Anyways... at the time I was moving stuff, I had not unlocked my iTunes and Audible content, so was using iTunes to listen to it all. I didn't have a lot of locked up tracks, but some, and it was newer stuff, so I wanted it available. I have since unlocked the works, at home, and have cleaned up some tags in the process. I wanted all that at work, but I didn't want to move it all piecemeal. I now had a solution.
Since all my stuff at home was unlocked, decently tagged, and organized, I simply dragged my ~/Music folder onto the mounted iPod. When I got to work, I uninstalled iTunes (no need for that anymore, and I suspect it was jamming me from sharing the folder my tunes are in), renamed my current music folder (always have backups), mounted the iPod, and dragged the Music folder from my iPod (which was mounted as an external drive, since iTunes wasn't there to lock it up) to C:\. I then decided to kick it old-school, and installed winamp. Oh yeah, that's right kids, I went back to your grandpa's mp3 playing windows app. That's how we did it back in my day. I set the local media folder during setup, and voilà! DRM-free tunes for me! A couple clicks later, read-only access was granted for everyone on the network. Sharing is caring, after all.
Dénouement:
I now have a lighter weight method of listening to and sharing my music at work. I am going back to PA this weekend, and I have a convenient way to take and listen to whatever I want on the way; planning out what I may or may not want to hear on two five and a half hour drives through western Mass. and upstate New York is no longer something I need to do. I have a new toy. If having all my music wasn't fun enough, I also now have a project: I need to get album covers, photos, and videos syncing from Ubuntu.
Sometimes you got to love being a geek.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Free Music to Share with Friends - October '08
I'm working on a new mixtape- I've got a good playlist going right now. All new tunes*, or mostly new, at least. The format is new-fangled 8-track. I am defining that as 8 songs and a short story. If you've got an address, the ability to play CDs, and about a half an hour, then get on board.
*And by "new", I mean "new to my collection"
*And by "new", I mean "new to my collection"
Monday, October 13, 2008
True Brew IPA
Tonight, after much procrastination (much), I brewed my second batch of beer. I used a kit again, but this time I feel like I had a better idea of what I was doing. I also wrote down how long it took, so next time I'll know, and be able to judge if I have time or not. Here's the info:
Total time to brew: ~3 1/2 hours and bottle of merlot.
My biggest improvement over the first brew was starting the boil before sanitizing the fermentation gear. The initial boil takes 45 minutes, so there's plenty of time for sanitizing and dinner if everything is clean to start with, which it should be (and was).
Another big plus was the fact that I had a bunch of new tunes from emusic from yesterday. Tonight's soundtrack consisted of an EP and a missing track of Dashboard Confessional, Minor Threat's "First Two 7"s", Tagada Jones' "Le Feu Aux Poudres", and The Gaslight Anthem's "The '59 Sound". I like emusic since I get to gamble on bands (since the music is cheap and it's a fixed number of tracks per month so I'm forced to get something), and this month the two gambles (Tagada Jones and The Gaslight Anthem) were big, big wins. I found out about both of them from some random punk internet radio channel, and they are both great. The Gaslight Anthem is somewhere between Springsteen and The Killers, and definitely New Jersey, and they are excellent; I think anyone reading this would like them. That's three, maybe four, people total, but I think you would all dig them. If you want a copy, shoot me an email. Tagada Jones is a hardcore band from France and also excellent, but in a completely different way. Same goes for them. I'm kinda rediscovering hardcore punk, and really appreciating it for the first time, I think. Also, that DIY attitude is a great soundtrack for any home project. As for Dashboard Confessional, well, I'm not ashamed to admit I have feelings. Maybe that's what being grown up is all about? I think that has a lot to do with it.
I could have used all this information ten years ago. Given my genes, the best part of my life is getting shorter in a painfully real way every day. But then, I'm living it, so you got to love that.
All in all, I wouldn't change it for the world. Unless this batch of beer comes out less than spectacular. In that case, I would change recipes. :)
Next up: Homemade recipe for pumpkin ale!
ADDENDUM:
Notes from racking:
Total time to rack: ~2 hours and bottle of Newcastle.
The racking was a lot more steady, in terms of doing stuff. Really the final soak was my only break, and that wasn't much of one. Not a bad way to spend a couple of Monday nights, all told. For some reason I have gotten a low alcohol content with both these recipes. The first time, I figured I just screwed up. This time, however, I was quite careful at each step with sanitizing, temperatures, and general instruction following. I wonder if I've just gotten some sub-par yeast or maybe not enough sugars? I will have to look into it. And honestly, if this is my only problem, I'm cool with that. I don't like the super-strong stuff anyway, so as long as it's tasty, who cares if it's only 3.5%-4.0%?
I guess we'll see how it is in a month, eh?
- I used an IPA kit from Crosby & Baker
- Began boiling water about 6:30 pm
- Sanitized what I needed while waiting for the boil (big time saver)
- It took about 45 minutes to get the water boiling. It was about 2 gallons
- Blah, blah, blah, following instructions...
- Beer fermenting and all cleaned up at 9:50pm
- Original gravity 1.048- a little low, but oh well
Total time to brew: ~3 1/2 hours and bottle of merlot.
My biggest improvement over the first brew was starting the boil before sanitizing the fermentation gear. The initial boil takes 45 minutes, so there's plenty of time for sanitizing and dinner if everything is clean to start with, which it should be (and was).
Another big plus was the fact that I had a bunch of new tunes from emusic from yesterday. Tonight's soundtrack consisted of an EP and a missing track of Dashboard Confessional, Minor Threat's "First Two 7"s", Tagada Jones' "Le Feu Aux Poudres", and The Gaslight Anthem's "The '59 Sound". I like emusic since I get to gamble on bands (since the music is cheap and it's a fixed number of tracks per month so I'm forced to get something), and this month the two gambles (Tagada Jones and The Gaslight Anthem) were big, big wins. I found out about both of them from some random punk internet radio channel, and they are both great. The Gaslight Anthem is somewhere between Springsteen and The Killers, and definitely New Jersey, and they are excellent; I think anyone reading this would like them. That's three, maybe four, people total, but I think you would all dig them. If you want a copy, shoot me an email. Tagada Jones is a hardcore band from France and also excellent, but in a completely different way. Same goes for them. I'm kinda rediscovering hardcore punk, and really appreciating it for the first time, I think. Also, that DIY attitude is a great soundtrack for any home project. As for Dashboard Confessional, well, I'm not ashamed to admit I have feelings. Maybe that's what being grown up is all about? I think that has a lot to do with it.
I could have used all this information ten years ago. Given my genes, the best part of my life is getting shorter in a painfully real way every day. But then, I'm living it, so you got to love that.
All in all, I wouldn't change it for the world. Unless this batch of beer comes out less than spectacular. In that case, I would change recipes. :)
Next up: Homemade recipe for pumpkin ale!
ADDENDUM:
Notes from racking:
- Began santizing about 7:30
- Beer in bottles and equipment soaking at 9:00
- Final gravity 1.020 (which is a bit high, given the recipe)
- All put away at 9:30 (well, some stuff was drying
Total time to rack: ~2 hours and bottle of Newcastle.
The racking was a lot more steady, in terms of doing stuff. Really the final soak was my only break, and that wasn't much of one. Not a bad way to spend a couple of Monday nights, all told. For some reason I have gotten a low alcohol content with both these recipes. The first time, I figured I just screwed up. This time, however, I was quite careful at each step with sanitizing, temperatures, and general instruction following. I wonder if I've just gotten some sub-par yeast or maybe not enough sugars? I will have to look into it. And honestly, if this is my only problem, I'm cool with that. I don't like the super-strong stuff anyway, so as long as it's tasty, who cares if it's only 3.5%-4.0%?
I guess we'll see how it is in a month, eh?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
