Cleaning Up

Posted by on October 30, 2014 No comments

At this point, I’m solidly in phase 2 of my music enhancements.  Phase 1 was ripping my CDs to a lossless format (with a .1 of acquiring a specific label’s full catalog).  Phase 2 is scanning the album covers in high quality.

Phase 2 is a MUCH more labor-intensive process.  The scanning part is easy, the cleaning up of the scans is tedious as hell.  I’ve been doing this for four days and in those days I managed to complete 21 covers: 5 the first day, 2 the second day, then 6, then 9.  It takes about 15-30 minutes per cover.  I’m getting better and learning more time-saving tricks as I go, but still, 750 covers is going to be ~250 hours of work.  Being able to put in only a couple of hours each night, 5 days a week, I’m looking at almost 6 months of this work.  That’s pretty insane.

Sometimes, I think I should only focus on the covers that are unavailable online or are rare or out-of-print.  Other times, I think I need to represent my entire collection.  Sometimes I think I need to focus on the MCA Master Series, so I can move on to phase 3 – framing.

So, what is my process?  I scan the cover at 1200 dpi, which gives me a 10mb, 5700×5700 jpg.  I take that into Photoshop and run a descreen filter on it.  This blends the “dots” into a more-or-less solid color.  Then I do cleanup of the stains, dust, and scratches.  Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is extremely difficult.  Then I add an adjustment layer for Levels, in case I want to tweak the black point or contrast.  I save this to a PSD file, which ends up being 80-180mb in size.  This will be my “master” from which I will do further refinements and resizing.  When all is said and done, I’ll probably have near 100GB of cover images.

Looking at my post history, this conquest has been going two months so far.  All I can hope is that another unexpected obsession doesn’t appear in the next six months.

In Time For Thanksgiving

Posted by on October 28, 2014 No comments

I’m starting to make some steps forward with phase two of my CD collection plan – scanning the artwork.  I did a couple trial runs on an old scanner at the house and it was way too much of a headache.  So yay, I get to buy more stuff.  A new scanner, but not such a big expense.  $65.  I can’t believe how cheap that tech has gotten.

While preparing for that effort, I researched communities that I could benefit with my efforts.  I found one that was appealing, if just a touch elitist.  When I went to sign up, I took the time to read their terms of service.  I didn’t like what I read.

In summary, when you upload to their site, they become the owners of the content.  Further, they insist that they will be the only source for that content.  You can’t post your artwork anywhere else.

First off, let’s just make it clear that it’s very odd to be discussing who “owns” owns a replica of a copyrighted work.  But, ignoring that for a moment and moving to a secondary “IP market”, let’s think about what this ToS means.  I “created” the work with my effort of scanning and cleaning and when I upload it, I effectively lose ownership of that work.

Yeah, yeah, it might be standardized language.  But there’s other standardized language that is more lenient.  Something like: By uploading, I am granting an unlimited license for the site to use my work however they want.  In that case, I retain the original rights (yeah, of a copyrighted work; just ignore that…).

So my problem with the site is that they are taking my work and making it their own.  It’s Christopher Columbus on the Internet.  Why should I be outraged?  Tons of websites have a similar model.  Or do they?  The first thing I’m thinking of is Huffpost, that site that pays people in “exposure”.  But even there, after reading their ToS, you grant them rights to use your submission any way they want, even through derivative works.  And, you still own your stuff.

That thinking and research made me start questioning the entire publishing for exposure model.  If you create something awesome and it gets posted on HuffPost, and gets scooped up by multiple news outlets (licensed? paid-for? maybe.), what do you get out of it?  Your name is attached to it, but does that really help you?  There’s just so much happening.  You would have to repeat that success over and over to get recognized as consistent talent.

I’m much more agreeable to the “toss it to the ether and let other do what they want with it” ideal.  So, my choice is not to affiliate with any artwork website, but to use Flickr.  Hypocritical?  All I’m doing is providing great content to a huge corporation.  Yes, but, all I want from them is hosting space.  If someone wants to use my cd scan for an ebay auction, great!  I would encourage that.  See, it’s not about just making your world better – which I’d already have done for my own cd collection – it’s about making everyone’s world better.

Time, Money, and Music

Posted by on October 22, 2014 No comments

imageHere’s an update to my music label collection: I am down to six remaining CDs.  This leads to the questions, “what’s next?” and “and then what?”

Well, the next thing is CD cover scanning, so I have pristine artwork for all my CDs.  Over time, reissues and re-releases will change the cover artwork, usually to the album’s detriment.  For example, all the Ozzy Osbourne covers got some massive, dumb border around them, with the actual album artwork in a tiny box in the middle.  Who came up with that stupid idea?

So, yeah, I want my album artwork to be exactly like my CDs.  And, I want some album artwork framed and hanging on my walls.  But then what?  I think the next step is owning a real listening stereo system (again).

What’s up with that graphic?  That was the image I got when thinking about owning a high-quality stereo system.  Right now, I can get by with my home theater system, but there is a certain appeal to having a real stereo, with dedicated speakers and amplifier, and components.  Why?  I have a computer with every CD ripped to lossless format playing through studio monitor speakers in my office.  Why this?

Let me first explain the graphic.  I think that owning a dedicated listening stereo is the realm of young, single men and old, retired men.  Exceptions abound, but bear with me.  The graph illustrates the likelihood of owning a stereo between the start and end of your adult life.  Yes, I had a great system in my 20’s.  I got into a stupid relationship and sold it all off for pennies at a garage sale.  Now, 20 years later, I am reconsidering the purchase again.  I’m not sure now is the time though.  Maybe a little later.  When I thought of why now might not be the right time, my rationale illuminated why the parabolic curve makes sense.  It’s about time.

Being young, single and free, you have the free time to indulge in nothing but music.  The same freedom applies once you are an empty-nester or a retiree.  You can also apply this to book-reading or really, any hobbies you had to give up because of the rat race of life.  For me, I’m not sure I’m nearing the end of the rat race yet, but I want to slow down, definitely.  I can say I haven’t exactly disliked any point in my life so far.  I sacrificed some things at certain points that may or may not have been wise.  But overall, life’s been good to me.

Now, about that stereo.  Why is that something to desire?  This sentiment would probably be shared by many hobbyists who have had their hobbies “stolen” by modern convenience.  There is an effort you must make when using older, dedicated equipment.  One might go so far as to say there is a ritual involved.  It’s the performing of the ritual that matters.  If you don’t do it right, the results won’t be good, or said another way, the more precise you are performing the ritual, the better the results will be.  And you can take pride in that.

Sure, the ritual of listening to an album involves choosing a cd, placing it in the tray, pressing the play button, then sitting down.  But that’s more than using a wireless remote to scroll through a huge list of albums, then clicking one.  Book people, you understand.

Disconnecting, and Connecting

Posted by on October 10, 2014 No comments

I made the decision today to delete my personal Facebook account.  To some, it may sound dramatic, but I hadn’t used it in months, so there was no pain involved.  I’m just staying old-school with the blog.  I’ll continue to maintain a different account for business purposes, but that never has any posts from me anyway.  That’s enough discussion about that.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a little about social media.  It started when I was forced to install the Facebook Messenger app on my Windows Phone because that functionality was removed from the main app, and also seems to have been removed from the phone integration (a key selling point of Windows Phone).  That led me to take a peek at Ello, which has been in the news lately as a potential rising star for future social platforms.  I was rather unimpressed.  If Facebook beat out Myspace for the reason of lack of customization, Ello beats Facebook in sheer minimalism.  And, I really dislike monospace fonts.

However, looking at Ello in such an early state gave me reason to think about what problem social media platforms are trying to solve.  When will Ello stop adding features?  How much do they need to add to make it “usable”?

I think what the Internet needs is a global contact list website.  To me, that would be the Internet’s “killer app”.  Do one thing that is critical, and do it extremely well.  How hard would it be to do this?  I’m going to spend some time and see…

Status Update

Posted by on October 4, 2014 No comments

After returning from a refreshing vacation, it’s time to jump back into the collection plan.  The current status is: of 42 albums, I now own 26 and 6 are in transit, leaving 10 left to purchase.

My current mantra is, “Why am I not listening to music?”  There’s a ridiculous number of times that I catch myself just working in silence.  I’m spending a good amount of money to complete this music collection.  At the very least, I should be listening to it.  Geez.  But, I have found some very good music that I am glad to have.

And I did get most of my music ripped to lossless before the vacation.  I say most, because I used Exact Audio Copy and there are some discs that had some errors in ripping and some discs that I had to skip complete tracks.  So, there’s going to have to be a second round of ripping to recover what I didn’t get the first time.

And then somewhere in the future lies the CD cover scanning, which I will use for artwork, both digitally and physically.

A Fool’s Game

Posted by on September 24, 2014 No comments

Today I learned (TIL for all the modern, acronym-dependent, Internet citizens), that when it comes to personal injury, I am no smarter than a toddler playing peek-a-boo.

Almost a week ago, I had some shoulder pain, like a knot in my back shoulder.  It’s not really uncommon, since I am either sitting at a desk or driving in my car 90% of my waking day.  The last time I had this specific kind of knot, it lasted for days and days and kept me pretty miserable, so I wasn’t thrilled to have it return.

So Friday night, I broke out my Shiatsu chair massager and beat the hell out of my back and shoulders.  It was like twanging guitar strings.  Just to be on the safe side, I took a pill from my emergency stash (now 5 years old) and went off to bed.

I woke up the next morning in pain.  Great pain.  I made it through the day with ice, heat, and Advil.  At the end of the day, I figured I was past my problems, but just in case, I took another emergency pill and went to sleep.

Sunday morning was no better.  Worse, in fact.  Probably because I had spent some time Saturday doing yard work since I wasn’t feeling any great pain (Thank you, Advil).  Now, I can’t turn my head or look down.  I self-diagnose myself with a pinched nerve and I can still feel the knot in my shoulder blade.  So I call up a local massage place and get a walk-in appointment.  They say, “We only have a male masseuse available, is that ok?”  Geez, whatever.  Even if I wasn’t in excruciating pain, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

So I get the crap wrenched out of me on the table.  He probably spent too much time on my neck and not enough on the trouble spot, but everything was messed up, so whatever.  As the night comes on, I’m sinking back into pain.  Advil wearing off again.  Then I get to thinking, maybe it isn’t a knot or a pinched nerve.  Maybe it’s actually an injury, like a pulled muscle or a torn tendon.  After all, I am currently on an antibiotic whose primary side effect is causing brittle tendons.

So, to recap:  I have a knot in my shoulder.  I pull or tear my lat muscles with a shiatsu massager.  I go to a massage and have them ripped up even more.  All the while, I’m peaking and crashing on Advil thinking, “I’m better!” or ”I’m in hell!”

It doesn’t end there.  Sunday evening, post-massage, my shoulder back doesn’t have a knot anymore.  Now it’s just one big swollen mass.  Sleep that night was in 20-30 minute intervals, followed with a painful repositioning.  At one critical point, I was on my chest and turned my head to stretch my neck and I heard and felt something in my neck squirt.  As scream-inducing as that was, it actually was kind of a turning point and I slept better afterward.

Monday, I had to leave work after less than a hour because the pain was making me dizzy.  Tuesday, I felt pretty good during the day, so I thought I was on the mend.  Then the Advil wore off.  Silly, me.  I took more Advil and felt better.  Better enough to do yardwork when I got home.  Silly, me.  Today, I’m paying for my transgressions again.

So yeah, I’m just playing peek-a-boo with my injury.  As long as I don’t feel the pain, it doesn’t exist and I’ll just go and injure it more.  It’s definitely not the first time I’ve done something like that.  This is just the first time I’ve noticed my behavior.

If I Only Didn’t Have a Day Job

Posted by on September 10, 2014 No comments

To go along with all my other damn posts about missing out on inspiration because of life,  I found this in my drafts – a beginning to a short story I wanted to write.  It was going to be about how life is sort of a game played by spirits in the afterlife.  Your spirit controls your body and tries to make it live as long as possible.  Real-life Sims, I guess.  Steve meets one of the “monitors”, who supervise “gameplay”…

“And then the ambulance just rolled away with no lights or anything.  Much different than when the person is still alive, huh?”

Although he tried to make it sound humorous, there was little in his voice that indicated it.  There was only a dull monotone that sounded like the shock hasn’t passed yet.

“But Steve, it really wasn’t your fault.  From what you’ve told me, it isn’t.”

And that part was legally true.  No charges from the police.  No insurance hassles.  The woman had pulled out in front of him and he…

“Yup.  I couldn’t do anything.  Couldn’t do anything but kill her.”  Steve wasn’t making himself feel any better by relating his story.  Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?  “Get it out” and all?

His sounding board, Paul, had no comforting retort for Steve this time.  He could only sit and silently provide support.  Paul had known Steve for many years.  Although they weren’t what you would call best friends, they would get together often enough to keep a friendship strong.

Paul was exactly what Steve needed right now.  Someone who wasn’t too close that would be shaken by his recent accident and the effect it had on him, but also someone close enough that would actually care about him getting over this.

“It’s shit like this that makes me question everything in life, Paul.  Why her, why now, why not me?  You talk to the religious types and they say ‘God has a plan for everyone.’  And you talk to the non-religious and they say ‘That’s life, dude.’  I have to say, there’s gotta be something in the middle.”

Paul looked down at the mug of coffee in front of him.  “Let him talk it out,” he thought.

“I started reading a lot lately.  Looking for some reasoning.  I came across this thing called Theosophy, which is supposed to explain the whole life and death process, without religiousness.  Or at least that’s what I got out of it.  I read other books about after-death communications.  So I have all these ideas about karma and purposes and reincarnation, but even considering all that, it still doesn’t make any sense as to why.”

Paul looked back up at Steve.  “Why what?”

“Just, why.  Why did it happen.  When you think about ‘God’s plan’ or predestiny or even some weird cosmic theory that someone dies so that someone else can learn a lesson.  There’s the big debate about free will in there, too.  It just seems… random.”

A figure in the booth behind Steve spoke up.  “It’s calculated.”

“Excuse me?”  Steve half turned around, not sure whether to be annoyed at the eavesdropping or intrigued at the stranger’s certainty in his declaration.

“It is calculated, or I should say, pre-calculated.  The outcome isn’t really known, but the scenario is a generated one based on known factors,” the stranger explained in a matter-of-fact way.  “The outcome will change a lot of future events, events that were pre-planned, but get adjusted with current data.”

“Data,” 

A Troubleshooting Challenge

Posted by on September 8, 2014 No comments

You have to love troubleshooting.

As a mentioned earlier, I’m doing a hard drive update on my Zune to bring it up to 120gb.  In the first chapter of this crazy process, I simply bought a 120gb 1.8” drive that was supposed to be IPod and Zune compatible.  I got the drive and prior to installing it, I erased the Zune completely, firmware and all.

After installation, the Zune wanted to be connected to the PC to install the new firmware.  After doing so, the Zune software registered a hard drive problem – not enough space on drive.  Hmmmmmmmm.  After thinking about it for a while, I considered that the base level of firmware back when the Zune 30gb came out might not support a 120gb drive, since they didn’t exist at that time.  So I thought I should bring the firmware up to the most recent, then install the new hard drive.

I put the old drive back in, upgraded the firmware, then put the new drive in and restarted.  Then I get a obscure (and yet common) error code.  So I think some more.  The new hard drive is a different brand – Samsung instead of Toshiba, and it uses more power – 4v instead of 3.3v.  Maybe it’s the drive that’s just incompatible?

So, I order a second drive, a Toshiba this time.  Without erasing the firmware, I install the drive.  The Zune boots to a “Please Wait” screen.  I wait for a few minutes and decide it’s not doing anything.  I power the Zune down, check the drive connections and start it up again.  Same screen.  I look online and the Internet says that that screen is shown during drive format and initialization (Do not disconnect or turn off the device).  Oops.  So I leave the Zune plugged in overnight.  The next morning, I left without remembering to check the status, so it ran all day while I worked.  When I get home, no progress.

I put the old drive back in and everything works just fine.  I put the new Toshiba in again and it doesn’t.  I put the old drive in, wipe out the firmware, put the new drive in and I get stuck at the “Please Wait” screen. Hmmm. The Samsung got past that screen but failed when writing the firmware.  The Toshiba doesn’t get past the drive initialization.  It’s actually a worse situation.

The next step of my troubleshooting is going to be at a lower level – the drives themselves.  One possible theory is that the drives can’t be formatted because they are not partitioned.  The company that sold me the drives may have run a diagnostic test that erased the drive’s file system.  So, I’ve ordered a ZIF to USB adapter so I can connect the drives to my computer and verify for myself.  Maybe I will need to create a partition and/or format the drives myself before installation.  As a side project, the adapter would let me see what kind of files are saved on the Zune itself.  That could be interesting information, too.

Running cost for this project: $70 for the two drives, $10 for the adapter.

Genres, Generalizations, and Generations

Posted by on September 4, 2014 No comments

Continuing my quest for ripping and metadata-izing my whole CD collection (currently midway though the D’s – getting through one letter a day).  And I’ve come up against the dilemma of assigning genres.

There seems to be 3 camps: don’t use genres at all, use a limited number, or go all in and use hundreds.  I’ve read a few interesting schemes as well, one being to use a limited number, then subcategorize using playlists.  That was going to be my plan, until I kind of realized something.

Looking at the Rock genre, there is a very large collection of sub-genres under it.  For example: Surf, Hard Rock, Hair Bands, British Invasion, Rock & Roll, etc.  Reading this list made me realize that the “genres” are actually few and far between, but the sub-genres can nearly be classified by release year.  Right?  Rock is different in the 50’s, the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and on and on.  Yet, it’s all Rock.  It’s the same with Heavy Metal.  The metal of the 70’s is nothing like the metal of today.  70’s metal is many times tamer than modern rock.

So I guess my plan now is the same as it was, keep a very limited number of genres and the classify things further with playlists.  But with my new insight, I can create smart playlists grouping by Year and get a pretty close approximation of a specific sub-genre.

In an semi-related topic, I had a hell of a time ripping one particular CD: The Digital Domain: A Demonstration.  This is one of those CDs that you almost need to have in lossless because its entire purpose is to demonstrate the capabilities of digital audio.  For some reason, every single track resulted in a read error when ripping with Exact Audio Copy.  I got the great idea that I could copy the disc to ISO as data instead of as audio, then mount the ISO and rip from that.  The first tool I tried, ImgBurn, hung during track analysis, so I ended up using Daemon Tools Lite, which I had installed already.  The rip from the ISO went off without a single issue, and it was fast.

Bits and Pieces, Scattered

Posted by on August 30, 2014 No comments

As my recent posts have indicated, I’m getting ready to do some serious work re-ripping and cataloging my CD collection.  It’s about a 600+ disc effort, so I want to do it as efficiently as possible.  One of the things I am having a lot of difficultly coming to terms with is whether to contribute my efforts to the public domain.

By public domain, I mean submitting highly-detailed metadata to an online database, probably MusicBrainz.  From what I’ve read and understood, this seems to be the workflow I’d have to perform:

  1. Search MB for album on website
  2. If not found, enter the new album on the website, if found, add additional data
  3. If new album, wait for submission approval
  4. Rip CD
  5. Use MB Picard to get DiscID for CD
  6. Search MB for album (hence the wait for approval) then submit the DiscID for that album
  7. Use Picard to update the metadata in ripped files from MB

The part that keeps nagging at me is the part where the metadata has to exist in the MB database before Picard can do its (only one) thing.  I am pretty sure Picard is supposed to be a database consumption application, tagging MP3 files from the MB database.  The DiscID and audio fingerprint features feel like they’re tacked on.

I was already resigned to the two-step process of ripping and then metadata cleanup, but I’m now looking at metadata entry, then ripping, then metadata refresh.  This is where I can’t tell if it’s worth the extra effort.  It’s probably worth something, because someone can use that metadata sometime.  After all, if I searched for the album and didn’t find it, someone else surely has, too.

There’s so many potential apps out there, but nothing does everything I want, and I don’t think there’s a lot I want.  The ideal application would:

  1. Look up metadata from MusicBrainz based on DiscID from CD in drive
  2. If data does not exists, prompt for it, otherwise display it and allow for editing
  3. If data changed, submit it to MusicBrainz. 
  4. Submit the DiscID if not already there
  5. Rip the CD and include the metadata in the files

Some apps do 1, 2, and 5, some do 4, some only do 5, none seem to do 3.

These are the times I wish I could have a clone of myself that would be able to do nothing but this task for a few weeks.  This is why sudden obsessions are so difficult for me.

… And I did some metadata editing on MusicBrainz.  I don’t think it’s for me.  There’s so much ambiguity, I don’t want to add any more confusion to what they have.  In my few edits, I came across a album they didn’t have – a classical compilation (damn it).  I entered the basic info and they said that my entry looks like this other album.  It was, so I copied the tracks.  Then after saving, I thought “Why didn’t I just edit the original after I learned it was there?  (and why couldn’t I find it in the first place?)”  I looked at the original and it may or may not have been the same album.  It might have been released by a different company.  So, on one hand, I could duplicate data; on the other hand, I could screw up another person’s release.  Yeah, not for me.

So I guess my decision is made.  My data is mine alone.  Selfish.  But cover art… that I can contribute, which is different post altogether.