Blog von fugaL

IMMS was complaining to me that sox couldn’t read mp3 files to alalyze them. I wasn’t about to let this go on too long, I want IMMS to work to it’s full potential. I tried installing liblame0 and liblame-dev, I even tried libmad but all to no avail. Finally I did apt-cache policy sox. The installed version was some studio version from DeMuDi. I thought if any of the available packages would support mp3 it would be the one from demudi, alas this was not the case. I installed the version from ftp.easynet.fr (PLF) and now I have (readonly) support for mp3. Good enough for me.

I once again have a working IMMS system. (Finally!) I’m using MPD for the player, my own imms.rb to talk to IMMS, and a history/queue wrapper client to turn MPD’s playlist into—you guessed it—a history (before current song) and queue (after current song).

This has the downside that your playlist isn’t a comprehensive playlist. So if you use a client where you would select a song you wanted to hear from a playlist you might not find it. Not to mention that would also mess up the IMMS behaviour.

My solution is mpremote.rb (which also needs livesearch.rb) to quickly find songs from the library and enqueue (enter) or jump-to (END) any song or group of songs I feel like listening to.

Eventually I’ll make a qt or gtk version of mpremote to be more like xmmsfind_remote (if you still use xmms I highly recommend it). Hans and I are also currently conspiring to make an even better MPD that will queue and possibly talk to imms itself.

I was doing some research into SVG when I stumbled across this. Pretty darn cool. I had no idea SVG was that powerful.

I’ve been using quodlibet for a couple weeks now. I actually was introduced to it by my brother Hans some time ago, but it lacked an imms interface so I clung to xmms. Subsequently, xmms managed, in it’s awesome ability to annoy, to drive me away once and for all.

Using quodlibet I now have a couple fun projects ahead of me. First is writing an imms plugin for it. Next is fixing some quirky behaviour involving the play queue. Queue is probably the most awesome media player feature since random/shuffle. It allows you to add specific songs to come next without muddling around with the playlist itself—the playlist can happily remain in random mode or any other mode you can fathom.

Now I describe those queue quirks. If someone wants to tackle them before I get to it, go ahead. Just let me know so I don’t duplicate a work in progress. ;) Both issues seem to arise from the fact that a song in queue is a seperate instance that != the same song in list. This causes problem 1) the playlist doesn’t show the current song as playing or jump to it. Problem 2) likewise, when quiting quodlibet, the queue state, the playlist state, and the current playing song are all saved. However, upon resuming the current song, if derived from queue, fails to register as anything and doesn’t play. I assume this is because song_from_queue != anything_in_list.

DRM has always left a sour taste in my mouth. I sympathize with those whose tools ‘support’ DRM. I sympathize with music junkies who buy and buy from labels only to be betrayed with a broken product.

It has heretofore been a removed sympathy. I don’t buy a lot of CDs and what I do buy I try to buy from independant/smaller/DRM free labels. Where I do end up with a DRMed disc, I hardly notice as my software doesn’t ‘support’ it.

Then today I took a trip into a parallel universe. This trip was spurred by articles concerning Sony’s attrocities. I found my most recently favourite band, Switchfoot, is infected. I imagined the sorrow had I thought Switchfoot was for it. I’m glad the same article cited Switchfoot’s dismay and prevented rifting me from them.

I plunged into the parallel universe. There I buy CDs more than 1 or 2 a year. There I bought Switchfoot, Foofighters and other deranged Cds. I played them on my windows computer and it broke. I couldn’t use the music how I wanted. My computer got infected with more viruses than normal. My faith in the bands waned. My trust in CDs was betrayed. I came back shaken.

Back in this universe, I’m saddened that my ethics rival purchasing the infected switchfoot CD which very likely would have been CD #2 for this year’s 2.

Those of you on the music frontlines, you innocents taking shrapnel and crossfire, my heart goes out to you, more than ever.