What makes you happy ?

There was a Youtube vid meant to appear – looks like 2.4 doesn’t agree with the plugin. But then why should it? Yet anyway :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg6ruPjnVxs

Not the best track, but it’s still an excellent album and the only music in my ps3.

Well over a year ago Shep suggested I listened to the album A Piece Of Strange by the CunninLynguists.

It was the first Import CD I then bought in a very long time. Superb album. It really is a 5 star review. It’s in both my mp3 players and it must be the most complete album I’ve played since I got it. (Though if you think I like it Shep has a site for it – whatisapos.com.)

Met Shep in #wordpress a couple of days ago and he tells me that CL have a new album – one he thinks is even better than APOS. I wasn’t keen on their work pre-APOS so I wasn’t entirely sure but everything is worth a listen – at least once anyway.

Dirty Acres is excellent. If you liked the first the second is amazing. If you’ve heard neither just read the reviews and then get it. Thankfully I’ll not have to pay import prices this time – it’s at HMV for a tenner.

http://myspace.com/cunninlynguists – check the videos and the tracks at the top – Dance for Me is my current favourite track but there really isn’t a dud one on either album.

I just got a 500gb My Book and I’m looking to rip the remaining of J’s music (that’s a LOT of music). I’ll be ripping in Windows. I’ve used CDex and have heard of Musikcube, Media Ripper and apparently Winamp does it. Know of any good others? (iTunes just is not a choice either). I need cddb tagging. The bitrate will be good enough in any, but CDDB lookup + correctly applying those tags is essential. I seem to remember problems with cddb at some point but I forget what. Is there better than CDex?

“Glad I got a mac. No viruses and hardly any spam” – a commentor on this blog

Last night I finally bit the bullet that is iTunes. I’m working upstairs on the laptop in the evenings now as it’s quieter and with the girls being around I’m not needed to help J. Bored of TV I looked for a decent alternative to the blatantly commercial iTunes. Unfortunately no-one has made anything for the mac (isn’t Microsoft the big baddie in dominating markets?) so if I want music I have to have iTunes. So it’s in and I have some music playing right now.
Fortunately, tomorrow we go IKEA (Noooooooooooooooooo!) to get a large desk so I can work upstairs from 3:30pm each day. The computers will be coming upstairs too so I’ll be able to go back to the fab Winamp 5.5 (see the visualisations in the new version? very good). So a decent music player plus hopefully 3 monitors should see me being quite productive. It also means that as I have more space I can play more music so I’ve got the iScrobbler added to iTunes and will do for Winamp. Some last.fm goodness there. I debated importing what I had at /podz but my daughter still has it in her winamp so… no.

And over the next week I’ll hunt around to see if Leopard will allow several apps to run on a 1.83 2gb mini and at a decent speed. Given that the minis are apparently being phased out I have my doubts. Though having looked at it I can’t honestly see a reason to upgrade. Eye candy does not warrant cash.

Bill Nelson’s Red Noise – Revolt into style
The Rumour – Emotional Traffic
and together on ebay would sell for around 4 quid.

Coloured vinyl…. they were the days…

Sitting here working and copying music to the HD (‘ripping’ is such a stupid word. That’s what you do to material, not shiny discs) and I find this not-heard-in-along-time:

I’m pretty sure I was in London, met Veal (from IAM), went to a veggie restaurant and I came back on a Sunday. And I have no other clues as to when or with who. Though Claire was there possibly. I wonder if it was when I was drinking? that would explain the gaps. Oh well, I shall have to see if hearing it again helps.

(and a Tina Turner CD? And All Saints? I bought them? The shame….. though Mel Blatt was damned good to look at.)

This was seem an unpleasant topic for some, but domestic disputes are ugly things too :)

Gary Barlow of Take That – Fat or ‘Solid’ ?

EMI have apparently also dropped DRM from their music videos too – which is good, especially if they can be got at a decent size.
This LoveFreekz track is one of my favourites for two reasons – the music and the … skater :) I have tried to get hold of a decent sized copy before (and blogged it) and failed.

I do have a better quality – but smaller image here – http://tamba2.org.uk/video/shine.wmv – and that was taken from a streaming (bet they can’t copy this) video. But it’s small, and they made the video for TV so a better one just has to exist. One of the playlists I have for the gym has this track as every 4th track. There is motivation to hear it one more time….

Two nights ago I find that the mac won’t see my Creative Zen. A google later and I have installed XNJB which had me grinning at the monitor because of just how damn great it is.

A couple of hours ago I open iTunes (which I am/was checking out) and find it has duplicated lots of tracks. All by itself. Easy, find Duplicate Tracks and remove them to trash. Why to Trash? Why not – after all, it’s Apple’s code, it just has to be good right? … and then I find half the music is missing – it’s in the trash. Way to go there Apple! Go to trash and find that unlike Windows you can’t ‘Restore’. Oh no. Manual drap/drop back to where it came from. Think I’m ever going to do that again? Not a chance in hell. iTunes can keep the hell away from my music files. This is yet another reason why I hate iTunes. That and having to give credit card details if ALL you want to do is download an album cover. You need to open a whole new account JUST if you want to see artwork.

Songbird is it.

XNJB is really really good though.

“If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”

Yeah – and iTunes won’t be declared illegal in even more countries.
Steve Jobs give a shit about music? Like hell. Not that he should be but the way people are sucking up this news is nauseous.

(And of course no other device would place this DRM-free music would they? Good grief no.)