For me, it's Pandora. At home, at work, and in the car.
--
Jeremy L. Gaddis
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
I've mostly stopped listening to music covered by the big RIAA players,
though my wife still buys random CDs now and then. (I'm not against
buying CDs from CDBaby, etc, but no big labels for me.) I listen to
a lot of podcasts, but when I listen to music it is typically a lot
of SongFight.org songs and various things covered by Creative Commons
licenses -- I like things I can redistribute freely and legally.
I've tried GNU MP3d, then Ampache, and now I lean heavily on SSHFS.
I use 'podget' for podcatching, so I have all my podcasts hosted on the
same hardware that hosts my other music. (I use a custom BASH script to
easily add feeds from within Firefox, etc.)
Ampache has album art and rating support, which I liked for a time.
However it believes that song titles are unique, which -- particularly
with SongFight -- is not the case. I got a patch for that, but I grew
unhappy with it when I found that the supported Ampache "solution" for
an issue with the PHP getid3 product (which resulted in numeric genre
IDs) was to retag all of the music. What really grated on me was that
within 15 minutes I found and solved the problem with a line or two of
code.
It was the first time I'd ever even looked at PHP code -- let alone
the first time I wrote any. The fact that the author was recommending
retagging collections of thousands of MP3s instead of <15 minutes of
work for someone totally unfamiliar with PHP boggled my mind. It did not
increase my fondless for the product. (The exact issue in question was
failure to deal with improperly terminated id3v2.4 genre tags.)
My big problem with Ampache was that the playlists it generated didn't
remain viable. After a period of time they time-out -- not when you're
playing them, but if you have a playlist you don't intend to finish in
one sitting it just didn't work. Since I frequently have a playlist I'm
working through over multiple days I've since whole-heartedly abandoned
Ampache.
The feeds generated by GNU MP3d didn't contain enough meta-data when
initially loaded in my music client (Amarok). It is annoying, and I've
not gotten around to extended GNU MP3d to support other playlists. (I'm
more likely to write my own tool, or extend something written in Python
to do what I want. All very low priority.) The most annoying thing is
that with GNU MP3d-based playlists it doesn't always allow me to skip
within the file -- you'd need to start a file over.
At this point I find I generally get the features I want faster and
easier with an SSHFS remote filesystem. All the tags show up properly, I
can delete podcasts when I'm done with them, the cover art gets mapped
properly on the folder-icons via my .directory files, etc. (Another
reason to use KDE: .directory files that allow for relative paths for
folder icons.) Everything just works, and it works quite well.
I do find that browsing with GNU MP3 works nicely, as the SSHFS file
browsing can be slowish, and I'm usually looking for directories with
"New" files (marked as such with GNU MP3d), or with a reasonable large
set of files to load up. (Typically a podiobook that I've not started.)
I don't currently listen to music on-the-go. I have in the past, but
I've another project taking my brain-time while I'm on the go.
Cheers,
Steven Black
On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 12:24:59PM -0500, Barry Schatz wrote:
> Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> > Sitting here listening to some music this morning and got to
> > wondering, how do other people listen to music? All on the computer?
> > CD's? LP's? iPods? How does everybody else listen to music? Here's
> > how I do it:
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
I have all my music divided by album (CD) with the folder titled $Artist
- $AlbumTitle. The music files are all named $TrackNo-$TrackTitle.$Ext.
This is from before I used music library applications (first Winamp,
then Amarok) to keep things in order. When I don't want to launch a big
jukebox applucation, I go directly to the music I want and play it with
vlc or dragonplayer (dragonplayer is default app for now). I used to use
Amarok more, but 2.x doesn't perform as well as 1.4.x did. It's
improving though, and every release is better than the last.
I also use Last.fm a lot. the API is open and the Last.fm app is
open-source as well. The recommendations are decent and I don't have to
listen to music I don't like. I'm sorely tempted to buy a subscription.
I use my iAudio U2 and n810 for portable music. The former plays OGG
files and the latter is just awesome. In a pinch, I can tether the n810
to my phone and listen to Internet radio stations on my data plan.
-Barry
Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> Sitting here listening to some music this morning and got to
> wondering, how do other people listen to music? All on the computer?
> CD's? LP's? iPods? How does everybody else listen to music? Here's
> how I do it:
>
> I haven't owned a "real" stereo in years. Actually I think the last
> stand alone setup I had was a Magnavox 3 CD changer I got for
> Christmas when I was around 14 and kept until I left for college. I
> started using my computer as my tv/stereo/home theater setup since
> 2000 and haven't looked back since (in fact my wife and I no longer
> have a TV, just main PC and laptops do us just fine). I still have a
> somewhat largish collection of CDs (mostly classical), but those are
> all ripped and on my computer. So our main PC is where I have my nice
> speakers and is the central location for my music listening when I'm
> at home.
>
> The PC is running Japanese Windows 7 (my wife does translation work
> from home for a company she works for) and my favorite player across
> all systems has to be Foobar2000. Even on my laptop, which runs
> Xubuntu, I often run Foobar through wine when I have it on the home
> network. I like Foobar b/c it's so flexible and powerful. I
> mentioned I have a large classical music collection. I started
> re-ripping all of these recently into lossless Flac (drive space is
> cheap and plentiful these days, I figure why not have a bit-for-bit
> copy of the CD? and another reason I'm glad I bought all that music
> in CD form rather than MP3) and I like to have very detailed
> meta-data. One of the things I like about Foobar is that I can browse
> my collection by any tag or custom tag I want. In this screenshot,
> http://www.shewbox.org/images/foobar.jpg , I'm browsing by composers,
> which I know other players like Amarok can do, but I can also browse
> by things like conductor or orchestra or label. If I want to see all
> the recordings I have with Haitink conducting or the Chicago Symphony
> I can.
>
> The second place I can find my music collection is online. I am
> running Ampache, http://ampache.org/, on a password protected
> subdomain of my hosting account (screenshot:
> http://www.shewbox.org/images/amp.JPG) . I run a program on the main
> PC that syncs select bits of my music collection to my server and a
> nightly cron job updates Ampache's catalogue. Ampache is a really
> neat open source music web app, although it does have it shortcomings,
> at least for my classical music collection. It doesn't have the
> option to browse by anything other than artist or album. A Mahler
> recording might have Solti and the Chicago Symphony as the artist and
> Mahler only in the song title or album. So if I want to view
> everything composed by Mahler, I can't do that with Ampache. That's a
> minor annoyance though because overall it's great when I want to
> listen to some of my music away from home. Amarok also has built-in
> support for an ampache install, which is also really cool. So on my
> Xubuntu laptop I have Amarok installed and will often use that while
> I'm on campus since it will automatically connect to my server and
> stream the music that way.
>
> I never had much of a pop music collection and I've found that right
> now I really don't have a need for it. There are two free music web
> apps I use when I want to listen to some random pop song that has
> popped in my head. grooveshark.com <http://grooveshark.com> is a
> bright and shiny web 2.0 music search engine thing of sorts that finds
> and streams most things I throw at it. I also use skreemr.com
> <http://skreemr.com> sometimes, mainly because it provides direct
> links to the files it finds if I want to d/l anything. I also find it
> rather amusing that the RIAA spent the last ten or so years suing
> everybody and it's easier than ever to listen to just about anything
> you want for free. Just take a walk down Youtube lane. . . .
>
> And for mobile music I have an (unlocked) iPod touch. It's a great
> piece of hardware, but with all things Apple I don't like the closed
> nature of everything. And I hate iTunes. God I hate iTunes. Nothing
> against anyone who uses it, if you like it great for you. I just
> can't stand it, as a music player and for the fact that they want to
> lock the iPod into iTunes and try force you to use it for everything
> Apple. Yuck. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But the actual iPod
> itself, that I rather like in spite of itself. Btw, I now want an
> Android phone, b/c somebody wrote an ampache app for android, so I
> would be able to listen to my music collection on my phone.
>
> Oh, and as for buying music I still do buy classical CDs from time to
> time. Honestly, I think buying music online is over priced.
> Especially if you are getting a lossy mp3 with no album art and in the
> case of classical music, often poor tags. I think most albums should
> be $5 tops for an online purchase. There is often very little
> difference in price in an album download and an actual physical CD.
> To me anyways, why not pay an extra $3 and get the better package?
> Isn't one of the reasons why Apple's app store is so popular, because
> you can purchase apps without a second thought? What if most albums
> were like $2.99 or something? Then you'd buy just because it'd be a
> cheap, easy, (and legal!) way to get new music. There is one place I
> have bought classical music that does it very well, though, and that
> is Deutsche Grammophon's site. It's still a bit pricey, but on some
> of their albums you can purchase the album encoded in FLAC, and they
> include high resolution scans of the booklet and album art. In this
> case they deliver a much better product for the money. But this could
> be a topic for an other day.
>
> Oh dear, this ended up being a bit longer than I was thinking. Sorry
> 'bout that!
>
> Ben
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
The netbook phenomenon seems to bear this out somewhat. At least I
have never seen a netbook with Vista OEM.
Kirk
On 11/5/09, David Ernst <david.ernst@davidernst.net> wrote:
> Wow, interesting. I've got an oldish machine that had ~770M RAM in
> it, and I got very poor performance running Windows Vista. I added
> another 1G stick of RAM, and now it runs great.
>
> Could it possibly be that Windows 7 makes more efficient use of memory
> than Windows Vista?? It defies all precedent, there must be some
> other explanation.
>
> David
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 03:50:08PM -0500, Kirk Gleason wrote:
>>I am running a windows 7 machines with 512MB of ram that performs like
>>a champ. I don't do a ton with it, but it performs like a champ when I
>>need it too.
>>
>>On 11/5/09, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
>>> 512M of RAM is just enough RAM to be in the middle of swapping-hell in
>>> Windows Vista *or* Windows 7. Neither OS will be usable on the machine.
>>> And I mean, literally, she would be better off sticking to machines in
>>> computer labs/libraries/etc than trying to use it.
>>>
>>> The laptop-license of Windows XP that came with the system became
>>> invalid with the destruction of the install media. The license on the
>>> bottom was only ever valid with both the physical hardware as well as
>>> with the original install media. (This is usually a physical partition.)
>>>
>>> You are running in to the same reason that it is impossible for Goodwill
>>> and the Salvation Army to resell modern computers. They can't insure
>>> it has a legal version of Windows so when they can not reject them at
>>> delivery time, they have to throw away the CPU. This is the same
>>> reason pawn shops require the original media -- they've been sued by
>>> Microsoft for selling illegal versions of Windows when it did not
>>> include the original media.
>>>
>>> Your best bet is to find someone selling Windows XP online. Some
>>> retaillers may still have it. (Unlikely -- and costly -- as it may be.)
>>>
>>> Ideally, you want to just install Linux and Wine. Unlike a VM, Wine does
>>> not require a license to a Windows OS.
>>>
>>> My recommendation: Install Linux exclusively. Tell her about Wine and
>>> how it might work, but remind her that the big reason a person needs a
>>> laptop is usually for writing papers, and that Linux will work just as
>>> well for that. Then install Wine and try to get the software she needs
>>> to run on it.
>>>
>>> If Linux and Wine won't work for her at all, then she'll have to pay
>>> real money to get a real laptop. There's just no getting around it.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 11:50:37AM -0500, Mark Warner wrote:
>>>> It's a 2.0GHz Celeron with 512MB RAM. I got it off of FreeCycle with a
>>>> totally trashed OS and no install media, of course. I was hoping to put
>>>> a more legit version of XP on it, rather than the IU volume licensed OS
>>>> that we all know is available.
>>>>
>>>> My understanding is that she is going into the medical technology
>>>> (transcription, coding, etc.) program. I can only assume she'll be
>>>> working in a Win environment. In these types of situations, what I like
>>>> to do is offer a dual boot Lin/Win setup, and encourage the user to
>>>> spend as much time as possible in the Lin environment.
>>>>
>>>> My personal playtoy laptop is a Dell C600 700MHz/512MB/20G machine, that
>>>> has a "just in case" load of XP (never has been needed), a default of
>>>> MEPIS 8, and a partition that I use to install and play around with new
>>>> stuff. That last currently has a load of Karmic. Yes, it runs well, but
>>>> it doesn't have the "snap" that the MEPIS install does.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Mark Krenz wrote:
>>>> > If its not going to have enough horsepower to run a VM on top of the
>>>> > OS, then its probably not enough to run Vista or Win7 then. Right?
>>>> >
>>>> > I recently install Ubuntu on an old Dell 600 series laptop and was
>>>> > rather surprised by how fast it was and all the stuff I could run
>>>> > normally. It may seem risky to try to get them to try using a
>>>> > different
>>>> > OS, but we took that risk in the 90s a lot and got through it. 10
>>>> > years
>>>> > later its much safer to do and you're much more likely to be
>>>> > successful
>>>> > in converting a user.
>>>> >
>>>> > I think one thing that the Linux advocates forgot to do is to teach
>>>> > a
>>>> > new generation of Linux advocates how to promote Linux. An OS can't
>>>> > promote itself, it needs users to do that.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 02:34:22PM GMT, Mark Warner
>>>> > [markwarner1954@att.net] said the following:
>>>> >> Of course. Except for the facts that
>>>> >>
>>>> >> 1) the machine I'm cobbling together isn't going to have much
>>>> >> horsepower, at least not enough to run a VM with decent performance
>>>> >>
>>>> >> 2) you still need an OS and software for the VM. We all know the IU
>>>> >> stuff is easily obtained, but I was hoping to be more legit.
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Mark Krenz wrote:
>>>> >>> As if it has to be said.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> Sounds like a great opportunity to spring Ubuntu and Wine or
>>>> >>> Virtualbox on them.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 09:55:16PM GMT, Mark Warner
>>>> >>> [markwarner1954@att.net] said the following:
>>>> >>>> I have been asked to rebuild a computer for a new Ivy Tech student,
>>>> >>>> and
>>>> >>>> was wondering if they have access to Microsoft operating systems
>>>> >>>> and
>>>> >>>> software similar to the arrangement that IU students, faculty, and
>>>> >>>> staff
>>>> >>>> enjoy. The student didn't know herself.
>>>> >>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> BLUG mailing list
>>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>>>
>>
>>--
>>Sent from my mobile device
>>
>>Kirk Gleason
>>_______________________________________________
>>BLUG mailing list
>>BLUG@linuxfan.com
>>http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
--
Sent from my mobile device
Kirk Gleason
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
