Standardization

I like standards. I like things to have a format, the type that makes things easier. What I'm talking about now is music. I have a lot of music and it is all somewhat organized. I went through it all with a program called easytag that rewrites all the file names and even the folder tree to a set way. But sometimes the ID tags of the files are missing or just goofy. I got new music and some of the album names wound up as the artist, rendering it useless to me basically.
And I had a conversation with Colin about quality difference and I started thinking about what format I want my music in. Right now it's all organized in mp3s because that's what easytag can read. So I went through with a script that finds all the m4a files and converts them to mp3. But this loses a lot of quality. Like, a lot.
The best option for quality and functionality is basically FLAC. It's a free codec that is lossless, so it's super high quality. Higher than you can probably hear. Problem is, file sizes are also large, and can be 3 times as large as their mp3 counterparts. This means 3 times less music when putting them on a portable device, which is sad. On my computer I don't notice because storage is so cheap, but on my 2gb mp3 player I definitely notice.
I also don't remember what quality I have been using for years to rip Cds, probably the fastest as it takes about 15-20 minutes to rip a CD in FLAC. That's just a long time to rip a CD I feel and I get most of my music from the KUMM station and time is limited to about 1.5 hours of ripping. That means I can only get about 4-5 Cds ripped during a show. But that is the only place I can get CDs of a lot of music for free. The internet is another option, as a lot of music torrents are in FLAC, but then I run into file name issues again and I get frusterated again.
So, the plan as of right now is just to rip the music I own into FLAC and try and get my favorites into FLAC and enjoy them.

Sitting here wishing on service pack 2...

So, it is complete. My new computer is done being put together. Now the hard part: software. Although the actual build hit the usual snags that I think are inherent to building something. Putting the CPU's heatsink on was interesting as it looks like it could fit somewhere on a car its so big. I only have installed XP so far as I wanted to install ubuntu afterwards, and am still debating what operating systems I will want on it.
I don't really know why I'm still awake either. I finished building it at about 8:30 and had XP on it running after open mic night at about 1. But it is now 5:30 and I am two offices up to date, lots of software updates, drivers and youtube videos later and it's 5:30. Wow.
Right now I'm listening to the decemberists and downloading service pack 2.

Open mic was great tonight. It didn't start off too strong, but picked up after about 3 acts. Then it got really good with a cover of MGMT's kids and a solo cover of Radiohead's fake plastic trees. Mixed with Gil's amazing crazy sax antics and the use of a children's size drumset it was just great.

Bathroom wall

Okay, so I just went to the bathroom and the wall above the urinal was tiled in a way that you could stare at one intersection of grout and all the others turned a darker shade of gray (grey?). So, when I get a house, I will totally make my bathroom walls in some sort of very subtle optical illusion. Just to let you know.

It's been a long time now.

I'm sorry bout the drought.
I'm all for writing more.
But I will try to satisfy
all the requests and your interests.
For you know I will show
you mean a lot and of you, forget I will not.

ibrick

My ipod's right channel audio has gone. It was a sad day when it happened as it gave out over the span of a week. I felt it going as I knew the symptoms from my first mp3 player, my creative zen usb2.0. What I had to do was eventually re solder the connectors for the headphones. But I don't know how that will do with an iPod. I will be dissecting it this week though.
In leu of having my ipod, I am using my 2gb sansa clip, which is a surprisingly good for how small it is. But I am also in need of a large mp3 player for bringing all my music everywhere. So naturally I considered the ipod touches and although i am impressed with the functionality of being able to get the internet, I plan on buying a palm pre when it comes out and that would fill my wifi needs. So the next option is the newest generation of ipods, the classics. I like these a lot, as they have coverflow and a generally smarter interface, such as the ability to turn on shuffle with out going to the settings menu. Major downside to ipods are the branding. It's apple, and I don't like paying so much more for the brand. I get that with computers, your buying a lot more than the physical hardware, but for an mp3 player they have really all started to become similar and decently built. Other downside is lack of a radio. i still don't get the lack of the radio.
Then, on saturday i saw jake and chris at the common cup and sat down with them and talked about getting new tech and mp3 players and now I want something that doesn't exist. What it is is a music player that gets the music through a stream from a large music source.
----kay so I stopped here and it sat as a draft for a while------

Okay, so I just found this of digg: http://digg.com/d1oRSs
It's a (possibly) new zune that I'm guessing competes with the ipod touch. This is very exciting, because if microsoft doesn't screw this up, this could be great. If they really want to one up the touch, they would make it with everything apple doesn't like users to have, like more control. Figuring that more app stores are parting from apple and allowing in functions that users want, I can easily see microsoft taking this route to steal apple's users.
but if they have a functional music player that has wifi and the capability to have apps that have a good amount of control, wireless syncing to a server would be possible. Sandisk had a device that was paired with yahoo's old music service. It had the capability to connect to the yahoo servers and you could choose what you wanted to have on your device. you also could listen to radio and tag things and download them later. the current zune has this, but you have to buy the songs though the zune's marketplace. I'm just really excited for it and i will feel less bad about buying something later on when it might be released.

How far we've come...

In 2002, I built my first computer. It was close to the top of the budget PCs you could make back then. It had an AMD CPU that ran at 1.5 GHz and a 64 MB GeForce4 MX graphics card. I believe I started it out with 60 GBs of hard drive space. With the 17" CRT monitor and 512 MB RAM the total was about $800.
Now it's 2009 and I'm looking at buying a new desktop. The thing that gets me is that for a total of about $650 I can buy a computer with the following:
CPU clocked at 2.5 with ability to over clock to 3 easily
640 GB hard drive
512 MB video card (this description doesn't do it justice)
4GB RAM
A motherboard with better built in audio than I bought for $60 to upgrade my old PC
And what might be my favorite and most apparent part, a 22" LCD monitor.

I already bought the monitor because I found a deal that made it $30 cheaper than the usual sale price. But I still can't believe how much things have advanced and how apparent it is when you look back 7 years. I think I'm going to buy the PC too. I made money from KUMM this year and I know that this PC will last me in the coming years and has great upgradeable options. Oh man.

Notebook find

Rolling ball pen
rolling on then
it stops
dried up
it rolls on again

Out of fuel
out of ink
I'm dried up
trying to think