Music - All files re-FLACed, and 5,660 of 7,204 have the album art in the FLAC file now. I wrote a script that ran on the old desktop to re-FLAC the files, and I literally have three computers that I'm adding album art on (old desktop, my laptop, and Jen's laptop). After this, I start the conversion to Apple Lossless. I should be able to have the old computer whir away at that all week. Of course, I'll have to modify the script to move the new files over to the other share. *sigh*

Weight - Holding steady, but today have been a royal pain. I've been hungry all. day. long. I don't know what's going on, but this sucks bad, because I really want to just get a Double Double or something.

Work - Eh. I blew a virtual server up yesterday, and will have it back Monday. And I really really hate Java.

Apart from that... I got nothin'.

I've got two computers working on re-encoding all of my FLAC files correctly. One is an old computer running a Celeron 866 MHz chip on a 100 MB connection to the network, and one a 1.8 GHz Centrino Duo on a 1 GB network connection. Take a guess which is my work laptop and can only do this work part time? ;)

After the files are re-encoded, I need to go through and clean up the OGG tags and add the album art. When I was just dealing with Sonos, I had to only worry about having the album art in the same directory as the FLAC file. Well, since I need to convert things over, I need to album art embedded in the file now, and the encoder I used didn't do that. *grr* This is, regretably, a manual process.

After I get all that done, I use dbPowerAmp to convert from FLAC to M4A (Apple Lossless). All of this so that I can load the M4A files onto Jen's new iPod Classic (80 GB) that she received last night. Woo-hoo! *collapses* My poor NAS and router are taking a beating today.

Why not just convert everything to M4A format, especially when Sonos will play that as well? Because I don't want to be beholden to Apple's proprietary format. With FLAC, I can convert to anything I want. And since FLAC is an open source file format, I just generally feel better about it. I really with the iPod would support FLAC so that I don't have to go through all this hassle, but unless I want to load RockBox, that isn't feasible right now. (update: RockBox doesn't yet support the iPod Classic anyway, so ... pooh.)

In other news, I have lost about 4-5 pounds so far, which is exactly where I want to be. To me, that's really impressive given there was a week vacation in there. The really weird part to me is that I feel like I'm eating ALL THE TIME! I have really taken to this concept of eating a little bit of food throughout the day, and it's generally working for me. The weekends are tough for me, because I tend to lose track of time. But at work, I've got this down to an art. Coffee and half a muffin for breakfast, the other half a muffin for mid-day snack, a small lunch, something for mid-afternoon, and dinner when I get home. Sometimes I will have something after dinner, but generally a big glass of cold water and crushed ice does the trick. So I'm good there.

All of my FLAC files have a corruption in them. Even though they are playing fine, they all have an MD5_MISMATCH. Seems that WinAmp does something screwy when encoding the file that doesn't 100% meet the specification, probably with the tags. Now, after having download the real FLAC, I have to re-encode the existing FLAC files (FLAC.EXE -f {file}). All 7,129 of them, in 671 directories. Time to crank up the old VBScripting skills...

Why go through all this? Because I then need to turn around and convert the files from FLAC to M4A files using dBpoweramp, so that I can then secretly load them onto an as of yet unpurchased iPod for my wife's birthday. If only Apple would natively support the FLAC format, this would never have been an issue...

On a side note, the Eagles have released their new album Long Road Out of Eden in FLAC format (including the deluxe edition).

Within the last hour on XM 8, I've heard Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith, and The Fat Boys "Wipeout" with The Beach Boys. I'm trying to think of another 80's song where a then-current artist dragged out an older performer to do a song... Thoughts?

IT: The History of Pop is coming back October 21 starting on XM4! (ignore the dates on that site which haven't been updated)

So I recently found out that my mother has not one, but TWO CDs from the Backstreet Boys. *shudder*

Sonos upgraded their software to version 2.3, which now includes Sirius Radio integration. It also has a 30 day free trial, and I truly love their free trials. No questions, no email accounts, no credit cards -- just say start and it goes. Did that with the Rhapsody trial when I got the Sonos, but have not yet done that with the Pandora Music trial. If the merger between XM and Sirius does go through, this may end up being a VERY good thing.

Courtesy of solcita, I submit this YouTube video about Pachelbel's Canon. A note - there are some NSFW words here, but it's so worth it.
( Cut provided as a courtesy by management )

What sort of directory structure/naming scheme do you have for your mp3s? I will, over the course of a finite period of time, be ripping all of my CDs to electronic format, and would like to have some consistent structure to it. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I figure I'd ask you, who probably went through this already.

My inital thoughts are \Artist Name\Album Title\Track number - Track Name.mp3
...but what do you do with multiple disc albums? (Disk 1) and (Disk 2)? And then there are those wonderful compilation albums with a different artist for every track.

BTW, it looks like the Googlification of my email has been made more complete. I got my first comment from LJ to the new system. I'll probably post something about this separately, especially now that I can see the comments being made and I'm on vacation...

I guess nothing says Happy Holidays like this.

Nothing to say, except that Johnny Horton is a really swell, keen dude.

In case you missed IT previously, XM Radio is again airing IT - a complete history of rock and roll from the 40's to 2000. Except, they aren't doing that. They went back to the 20s this time, and have updated this to go all the way to today. So the 40's channel was playing 1920's through 1949, and when IT gets to the 90's on 9, they will air from 1990 through 2006.

Currently, IT is on the 50's on 5, airing 1951.

I'm going through the Microsoft security bulletins, and had my XM Radio on the 50's on 5. Realized this was much too mellow for the crud I'm going through on these updates, and said to myself "I need something harder". Flipped it to the 80's on 8 and ...

First from renaissancegeek
( Cut! )

And from creativedv8tion
( Cut 2! )

The world has now officially some to a total and complete end.

Bob Seger releasing first studio album in 11 years.

That's not bad. But the killer part, to me, is that this is going to be a COUNTRY ALBUM. Mister "Old Time Rock and Roll" is putting out a country album. Un-smegging-believable...

Went after dinner last night to pick up the new Billy Joel "12 Gardens LIVE" from Best Buy, who matches Target's price of $13.98. Jen was with, and she stuck the first CD in the player as soon as we got in the car. Prelude/Angry Young Man started, and I made a comment along the line of "You know, I feel like driving now." "Go ahead."

To save your web pages, I'll put the map behind a cut. The colors mentioned below relate to the map... ( Here be a map (95.36 kb) )

So we started at Central Ave in Montclair (white star), and took I-10 West (Red) to CA-57 South (Blue) to CA-91 West (light green) to I-110 North (lavendar). I swung by the old apartment in Pasadena (AKA the Ewok Village), at which point we changed CDs. Then, back on the freeways, with a long stretch on I-210 East (brown) to I-15 South (orange) to CA-60 West (light blue) to CA-83 AKA Euclid Ave North (drak green) to Route 66 AKA Foothill Blvd West to Central Ave South (pink), past where started, and then home.

Got it timed perfectly to park in our driveway just as the last song finished playing.

I figure, if I have to be subjected to someone forwarding this to me, I should do the same you all of you. Congratulations. May it help you finally understand that joke from "Family Guy".

Does anyone have the cover of this week's 52 yet? I'm really curious what it is.

If anyone wants to hear a sneak of the new Billy Joel "12 Gardens Live" CD, coming out next week, go to this link and get a "sneak peek" of the two-disc set. This has ALL the tracks, in their entirety, so long as you can put up with the "Sneak Peak. Hear it here first." lady twice at the beginning of each song. This will be good until June 10.

In related news, my network admin will probably be killing me in 3...2...1...

James Darren should not have sung "Can't Take My Eyes Off You"

That is all.

I went to Best Buy tonight, and purchased Billy Joel's My Lives, Meat Loaf's VH1 Storytellers DVD, and, for the wife, the new Dixie Chicks Taking The Long Way all for $39.

I want you.
I need you.
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you.