Randomness Part Eight

What a weekend. The Panthers won Friday and Sunday giving us a total of four wins in a row. Yay, Panthers.

Next up, I'm sitting in Thomas' car on Sunday and he's driving. We're both wearing seat belts. Though I often give him crap for his driving, he's a pretty good (ie: very cautious) driver. So Saturday afternoon at around 310pm, we're leaving Office Depot, and he stops at a stop sign. He starts to go, but someone comes flying by at warp 30 in a car, so he stops again. They pass. He's in the process of looking both ways when some lady in a Black Honda Accord rear ends us at a high rate of speed causing us to lurch forward about 6 to 10 feet. We both get out and survey the damage -- most of which is to Thomas' car. They trade insurance info, though Timmy fails to get her driver's license number, and I got down her tag number. They decide not to call the cops. Thomas is fine, me not so much. As they're wrapping up I notice my neck is unusually sore on the left side where it joins the shoulder.

Thomas goes home (a five minute drive) and calls his insurance agent and their insurance agent. They want to talk to me since I'm injured. They ask me for my auto insurance details. Really. I refuse to provide it since I was not driving and my car was not present. I hate this already. In other news, gets worse as the hours tick by. I try to ignore it because that's how I am. Today it hurts more, sore to the touch. My back hurts a little and my right hip a lot.

Adrian cancelled skating on me today, which is probably for the best anyway. I went grocery shopping and then to Walgreens for some drugs. Yay, drugs. Doing laundry now.

Watched some of the Pens vs Capitals game on TV and some stuff on the science channel. I did a great deal of work my tax packet. I hate taxes. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. So much work.

Had dinner with Jason last week. That was fun to see him, Jenny, and Erica again. We really have to do that more often.

UK newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph are reporting yesterday and today on an expected deal between Sir Paul McCartney and Apple, Inc. to bring the Beatles catalog to iTunes. According to the Telegraph, the deal could be worth as much as £300 million. An Apple Corps label spokesperson said that the date "has not yet been set." The deal has been much delayed. But industry insiders say that by the end of the year fans using iTunes will be able to buy songs from albums such as Help! and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Former hits from albums such as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album, and Help are expected to top the download charts for several months on release. I envision the long rumoured Yellow Submarine iPod which I will purchase on opening day because I must own one.

Apple, Beatles Label Plan Announcement Today

EMI Group PLC (the Beatles' record Label) said Sunday it planned to unveil "an exciting new digital offering" with computer company Apple., raising expectations that The Beatles' music catalog is about to be made available through Apple's iTunes online music store. Apple's attempts to make the Beatles available on iTunes were hampered by a long-running ongoing trademark dispute with The Beatles' company, Apple Corps. Ltd. Recently, Apple Computer and Apple Music finally resolved their legal feud over use of the apple logo and name.

EMI said it would hold a news conference Monday at its London headquarters with its chief executive, Eric Nicoli, and Apple's CEO Steve Jobs "and a special live performance." The company declined to give any further details.

Apple Corps was founded by the Fab Four in 1968 and is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the widow of John Lennon and the estate of George Harrison.

(305pm add-on: Okay, so they have announced DRM-free downloads for iTunes starting next month. For me, that's a great announcement. EMI deferred on making a Beatles announcement saying they were still working on it for "soon" whenever that may be. From my POV, this is great news. I will now use the iTunes store, and gladly pay extra for DRM-free music. I really didn't use iTunes because I am opposed to DRM. I hate for people to assume I am a criminal which is what DRM does.)

Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive. Complete.

I have had a series of posts about my ongoing CD ripping project started 1-1-07 and finished today 3-6-07 after 65 days of work. The first post is here, but you can see them all by using the labels (tags) feature.

The final result is 10,629 songs for a continuous playing time of 29.8 days -- this represents 773 albums and 252 artists*.

As I said in my original post, I've always wanted to have my complete library available to me, and now I do. I've ripped everything except spoken word discs

I used either 160 or 192 and in a few rare cases 320 bits depending on the recording. Most are being done at 160 because when they were recorded any real difference wouldn't be noticeable, and as a result I saved tons of drive space. Newer discs were done at the higher rate for better quality. My calculations for total space were way off because I took a typical CD and used that for all calculations, but most older albums are much shorter. Back in the LP era, an album could hold 45 minutes of music. The new ones hold 70 to 80 minutes so I ended up using half the space I expected. I also did the calculations before factoring in disk space shrinkage for using smaller bit rates. It was all done at 320, so my 1TB hard drive still has a lot of space which means I can buy more CDs.

I still wish iTunes let you have real dual libraries -- that is you could have two open at the same time and move songs back and forth. That would please me and it would make my project of removing any remaining illegal tracks go faster. I'll start updating tags which should be done later this year. And I'm slowly adding artwork too, because I'm anal that way.

* Sort of. Some albums a multi-disc set counts as "one album" and on others it counts as "two albums" depending if iTunes recognizes it as "Title" or "Title (Disc One)" and "Title (Disc Two)" but that is a minor quibble. Also for artists, it's the same thing "Elton John" is not the same artist as "Elton John & Billy Joel" so the count isn't perfect. Use the iTunes browse feature to get this information..

Terrabyte HD and the CD Ripping Project Update

In three previous posts to date: one, two, and three, I've commented on this project. As of right now, I'm at 23.5 days of continuous music, representing over 8300 songs and counting. I'm on the Soundtrack section and this one's interesting because I'm wondering exactly why I even bought some of these. Yeah, a good track here and there, but do I really need the entire Empire of the Sun soundtrack? And why do I have both London and Broadway cast recordings of Cats?

The one that will be really fun (insert sarcasm here) is my multi-lingual collection of Les Miserables soundtracks. I have a lot of these and I'll have to encode them so they don't register as duplicates. Won't take too long.

I'm still trying to keep up the pace but it's hard to stay with it; I'm probably done for the week and will try to resume this weekend. But I maintain that I'll still finish this project by June. I started New Year's Day and figured it would take 4 to 6 months.

After soundtracks, there's nothing much left except my Elton John library. I've saved that for last. I will not be including my spoken word CDs; that seems sort of pointless to include CDs containing interviews and such.

After it's done, as I said in post one, I'll slowly check my original playlist, and remove songs that are in my master list. I want to make sure I legally own everything. Then I'll go on a shopping spree to buy whatever I may not legally own. Yay. Then, I get buy new stuff. Watch my Amazon wish list later this year!

Advice, suggestions, and help solicited for this way-cool ongoing project.

In My Ongoing CD Ripping Project

In a previous post or two, I've commented on this project. As of right now, I'm at 20.5 days of continuous music, representing over 7400 songs and counting. I'm on the Classical section and it's slow going because of various discrepancies in the process that don't happen with Rock/Pop CDs. With all the foreign names, I'm having to check the spelling and accentuation of each composers name before I rip.

Also the people who've uploaded them have often included the composer's name as part of the title track. Like "Beethoven's 9th" instead of "Ninth Symphony" with the composer as Beethoven, so everyone has to be hand edited. It's really slowed me down. Some the artist is missing a first or last name. I've been on Google and Wikipedia quite a bit to clean everything up.

I'm trying to keep up the pace but it's hard to do and my motivation has dropped. But I will still finish this project. It's quite the challenge and I've learned a lot too.

As far as Classical music goes, the Baroque period is clearly what I like the best. Must be the romantic in me or something. It certainly doesn't fit my character.

iTunes has a bug, BTW, where it doesn't properly calculate the disk space. It rather insists all these songs only take up 40gb. A look at the disk information window (or even at the iTunes folder) clearly shows otherwise. Ah well.

I wish there was a way to find out how many CDs this represents without counting. At 12 tracks per CD average, I could guestimate. Maybe counting them will be my next project.

Apple's Steve Jobs Blasts DRM

Today, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer and iTunes and co-creator of all the cool stuff that represents has said that DRM sucks. Yes, he did. Posted it right there on Apple's web site for all to read, including some very unhappy people at record companies. DRM is digital rights management which translates to copy-protected songs. It didn't work for software -- remember the discs you couldn't make archival copies of and never worked right because the protection interfered with the music -- and it won't ultimately work for music. The record companies and RIAA are just too damned stupid to figure it out. The RIAA is just slightly brighter than George Bush, which doesn't say a whole hell of a lot.

Jobs says he only had DRM with iTunes because it was the only way to get labels to sign when it came out, "Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices."

He said he'd get rid of it right now if he could. "Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

Naturally Microsoft has already come out with a reply to Mr. Jobs and said they like DRM and think it's a good idea. The Zune which rolled with a big emphasis on sharing is now quietly doing away with it.

Cnet news is reporting all about it, and I think there will be fallout from this. I just don't know what it will be. But I am utterly fascinated he'd come out and make such a statement. I'm not a fan of Mr. Jobs, nor am I a detractor. His ego just freaks me out a bit -- it's bigger than anyone's. But on this, he has my wholehearted support.

Beatles on iTunes and iPod: One Step Closer?

Apple (Computer) Inc. has reached a surprise agreement with Apple Corps Ltd., the record label started by The Beatles in 1968, concerning the use of the name "Apple" and related logos. Under the terms of the agreement announced Monday, Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer) will own all trademarks and logos related to the name "Apple" and will license them to the Apple Corps Ltd. music company. This is a shock because basically Apple Corps (Apple Music as I call them) has conceded that Apple Computer is more known my the name than they are in all circles. They took money whilst there trademark still had good value. And it's a win-win situation for both parties.

This hopefully marks an end to the long-running and bitter trademark feud between the two companies. More importantly, it replaces a pre-existing agreement, from 1991, which forbids Apple Inc. from distributing music through physical media like CDs and cassette tapes -- an agreement that, needless to say, predated the advent of the digital music market.

In a statement, Steve Jobs said that "we love The Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks," adding that "it feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future." Yes, it's been painful for all of us. But here's to the iPod with the cover of your favourite Beatles album, or perhaps the Love-themed iPod.

There is no word yet on whether this deal will eventually lead to the sale of The Beatles' music catalog in the iTunes Store, as the songs of the Fab Four are still not available for legal digital download. Everyone, me included, expects this will change in the relatively immediate future. This may be one of the biggest ever announcements in the digital music marketplace.

Possibilities are endless. Buy Apple stock now :)

More On Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive

In my previous post entitled Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive, I detailed my plans for this monumental project of ripping all my CDs into iTunes. It's been a much larger task than I thought but here's an update.

I am on the letter "S" today (remember, I'm only in my Pop/Rock library) and have 8.6 days of songs representing some 3600+ individual tracks. Once that's done, I have my classical, world, show tune, new age libraries. I also have libraries of Beatles and Elton John CDs which are not included in my regular rock/pop library.

I am (if you count by CD and not contents) just about 12% done. Current calculations indicate that my spoken word collection will not make the cut because I don't think the 1 TB hard drive will have space. This may change though because much of the stuff I haven't got to yet (live recordings) will be recorded at tighter bit rates and that will save space.

iPhone, iPod, Beatles, and Apple's New Name

Welcome, Apple Inc. That's the new name of Apple Computer, Inc. The word "computer" has gone missing as they foray further and further into consumer electronics. Today the announcement of the iPhone (surprising absolutely nobody) and the Apple TV unit were met with great reviews.

Shares of all rival phone makers plummeted an average of 6% today on the markets as Apple's phone which is an iPod and phone rolled into one. It runs Mac OS-X, has Bluetooth, iPod, phone, and other features. It's pricey as hell, but Apple's never much cared about that.

And, get this, as reported previously in this blog, the Beatles are coming. Really .Soon. Now. Sure, that rumour has been going around forever. However, there was a big, not very subtle hint dropped at the unveiling. What was the first song played on the new iPhone? Lovely Rita, Meter Maid from the most widely acclaimed album of all time: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The iTunes Store has officially sold more music than Amazon.Com and appears to be an unstoppable juggernaut.

Lots of other announcements, but the iPhone is apparently the big one, though right now it only works with Cingular so I have no interest. I expect after a waiting period, we'll see others come on board (probably one year exclusive deal). Your Mac running OS-X 10.4.8 already has iPhone drivers in it. Really. Go look.

Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive

Everyone who knows me knows I love music. I own close to 1000 CDs, all store bought. Over the years, I have downloaded more than a few songs -- most I own but am too damned lazy to go find the CD, bring it upstairs, rip a track, put it back, and then update all the info -- but if I don't own it, and I like it I buy the album. If I don't, I delete the song. I really do believe the artist is entitled to their money. As a (former) software publisher, saying otherwise would be hypocritical. It's a great way to try new music and that short snippet on iTunes just isn't long enough to make up my mind whether I wish to buy an album. And, I buy my albums at Amazon because I won't support DRM because it interferes with my use of the song. Fuck that.

So, after saying all that, I have about 400 songs in my primary play list compiled over the past five or so years. Yay. Most were ripped track by track or downloaded to try t(as I said above). If I buy the CD I don't believe there's a real need to delete the song I downloaded and re-rip it from the CD I just bought. Even the RIAA can't be that fucking stupid. Well, okay, they're more stupid than that, but I digress: the RIAA is dumber than the shit in a baby's diaper and they smell about the same.

Anyway, I've always wanted to have my complete library available to me, but at current estimates I needed around 850 GB of disk space. Yeah, that's right, nearly a terabyte. And, mind you, that excludes spoken word discs, and some of my collections of various operatic works -- they came free with my old BBC music magazine, but they're really not worth putting on disc. That's an exorbitant amount of disc space, more than my computer's two internal hard drives had, and an expensive proposition.

Until Now.

Apple Store has on sale a 1TB (a terabyte is 1,000GB) external drive which is tri-port, accepting the ever-slow USB 2.0, the very fast FireWire 400, and the new and relatively rare Firewire2 (Firewire 800). It so happens my G5 has a FireWire 800 port and this baby flies. At $549 it's a fucking steal. Yeah, that's a real bargain. It configures as a Raid 0 or Raid 1 drive so you can use it as a 1TB drive or two 500GB mirrored drives. Default out of the box, it's a Raid 0 1TB drive and the Mac recognizes it right away and the default HFS+ journalled format means you're ready to rock immediately.

I am in the middle of ripping my Pop/Rock CDs right at the moment. Middle is not the right word. I'm in the middle of the letter "B" after two hours and have 520 songs for 1.4 days of playing time, at 2.41GB. Not bad really. I'm using either 160 or 192 bits depending on the recording. Most are being done at 160 because when they were recorded any real difference won't be noticeable, but I'll save tons of drive space. Newer discs are being done at the higher rate for better quality.

I wish iTunes let you have real dual libraries -- that is you could have two open at the same time and move songs back and forth. That would please me.

When I'm all done, then I'll probably start updating tags which should be done by the end of this year. I'm figuring 15,000 songs or so will be in the library when done. Why do I have to do this? Because as great as iTunes is, it sucks at some things. Let's take Jimmy Buffet, for example, his songs get tagged as Rock, Country, Pop, and Alternative. The soundtrack to Don't Stop The Carnival (get this disc) is tagged as Rock. It's just screwed up. So it's got to be fixed. And I'm slowly adding artwork too, because I'm anal that way.

After that I'll slowly check my other playlist, and remove songs that are in my master list. I want to make sure I legally own everything. Then I'll go on a shopping spree. Yay.

Advice, suggestions, and help solicited for this way cool project.

Fun With iTunes -- your library says things about you....

Eric Hedlund posted a version of this in his blog on 1-22-06. I've modified it and put it here. Load up iTunes, my friends, for a fun experiment. (You can do this with your iPod, or other music program if you prefer). Prepare your answers and post them here as comments.....

You have to tell the truth no matter how embarrassing. You may omit Podcasts and AudioBooks if you'd like. If you use symbols to force sort stuff where it doesn't normally appear (such as tildes) you can go to the first naturally sorted item.

What are you using to answer? iTunes 6.0.2 for the Mac

How many songs? 676 (I have many more, but I don't keep them all in iTunes).

Sort by artist
First artist: [USA For Africa] but if you don't count punctuation, Aaron Copeland
Last artist: ZZ Top

Sort by song title
First Song: 99 Luftbaloons (Nena)
Last Song: Your Wildest Dream (Moody Blues)

Sort by time
Shortest Song: 20th Century Fox Fanfare at just a few seconds
Longest Song: Echoes (Pink Floyd) at over 23 minutes

Sort by album
First Album: 4 (Foreigner)
Last Album: You Had To Be There (Jimmy Buffett, Live)

Sort by "Last Played"
What was the most recent song played: Baby Grand (Billy Joel) today
What was the least recent song played/when: Come on Feel the Noise (Quiet Riot) 11-5-04

First song that comes up on Shuffle*: Come Monday (Jimmy Buffett)
(If you don't have Shuffle on your device, what would you like to come up next time you press PLAY?)

Search for these terms
How many songs come up?
"sex?" 2
"death?" 0
"love?" 45
"you?" 69
"why?" 4
"God?" 4
"crazy?" 3