Archive for the 'Music' Category

Music videos: well, at least there’s still the video aspect

Every once in a while, I’ve gotta spend some time catching up on my music videos, to see what pop culture silliness is going on. And generally, I do enjoy the task–although lately it seems like most of the music is crap. I think this is a sure sign you’re getting old: when you don’t understand/don’t like the current batch of popular music. But, the videos are pretty entertaining. Here’s a little roundup of eight recent videos I saw…

Nas f/Genuwine: You Owe Me

BoooootayyyyI like Nas. I like Genuwine. There’s some sort of music going on during this video, although I was pleasantly distracted from it… and it wasn’t striking me as anything special… the music, that is.

I never see cops like thisStill, I managed to find a lot of redeeming value in this latest offering. Not sure it does much for Nas’ street cred, but I guess he figures Jay-Z stealing his style and ultimately doing it a lot better than he does was fate, might as well get some video hoes and put on a show. And Genuwine, well, this is the brotha who made it big with “My Pony (Ride it)”…

Note: Neither Nas nor Genuwine pictured in screengrabs, for your enjoyment.

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iTunes for ‘doze rocks

iTunes on the mac was pretty cool. iTunes on windows is even cooler. Why? Because I use a PC way more than I get to use Val’s mac :-)

I guess I didn’t think the sharing would work, right off the bat, but it sure does, to Mac iTunes users, no matter. This is good news–at home, my PC is the one with all the CDs ripped to it–my wife’s PowerBook only has a few CDs; now she can stream them off my harddrive if I leave iTunes on, and she can use my PC to play stuff if she wants it loud (it’s connected to the big Logitech Z680’s in the livingroom).

Second point–I installed it at work on my T30 notebook, and realized that the mac users upstairs in the graphics department have weird taste in music, but cool. Interesting to check it all out.

Of course, this is standard out-of-the box stuff. Nothing mind-blowing. What we really need is to be able to stream stuff off the linux box sitting next to me. Someone must have done that. Yes, they have. A little compiling and tweaking later, I’ve got it working for me. Shweet. Thanks to this story at macoshints.com for the juicy bits). Basically, follow that article… I was doing this on RH9, no big deal, only thing that wasn’t clear from the article is that you do the build (make os=linux) in the mDNSPosix dir of the Rendezvous download from apple, and then the binaries are in build/. (I did sudo cp build/* /usr/local/bin/). Also, you’ll need to add /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf if not already there (and then run ldconfig as root.) Make sure you get daapd going (requires building a couple smaller libraries first, and make install’ing them.). Copy the daapd-example.conf to /etc/daapd.conf, and configure. Then, here’s the (cheesy, and not perfect, I know) init script I made (/etc/init.d/itunes): This will obviously require some editing before it’ll work for you!

#!/bin/sh
#
# Startup script for mDNSProxyResponderPosix and daap, ie. iTunes server
#
# chkconfig: 2345 95 05
# description: set up this machine for Rendezvous and DAAP protocol (iTunes sharing)
#

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
. /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

prog=”mDNSProxyResponderPosix”
prog2=”daapd”

[ -f /usr/local/bin/$prog ] || exit 0
[ -f /usr/local/bin/$prog2 ] || exit 0

start() {
echo $”Starting $prog: ”
CMD=”mDNSProxyResponderPosix 172.20.31.170 dotnet ‘Ben RedHat9′ _daap._tcp. 3689″
#echo “Running: $CMD”
$CMD &
RETVAL=$?
touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog

echo $”Starting $prog2: ”
CMD=$prog2
$CMD &
RETVAL=$?
touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog2
return $RETVAL
}

stop() {
echo -n $”Stopping $prog: ”
killproc $prog
echo
rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog
echo -n $”Stopping $prog: ”
killproc $prog2
echo
rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog2
return $RETVAL
}

case “$1″ in
start)
start
;;

stop)
stop
;;

status)
status $prog
status $prog2
;;
restart)
stop
start
;;
condrestart)
if test “x`pidof $prog`” != x; then
stop
start
fi
;;

*)
echo $”Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|condrestart|status}”
exit 1

esac

exit 0

By the way, Eclipse rocks too. I’ve kinda given up on Komodo, and am just using Emacs again for PHP. Sigh.

Badass Boom Box and Free Music

First, the geek link: Old school Lasonic boombox, retrofitted with wi-fi, mp3 decoding, and web browser interface (shweet)

A few posts ago I wrote a bit about downloadable music and bus models, etc. I got a couple comments from Ani at LaMundial.net, and now their new album is available for download for free. Yep, free (as in beer). And, the stuff’s even good! These guys can play, you should definitely check it out. Maybe even rename the files with titles like “50_cent_pimp_lamundial_bulletridden_remix.mp3″ and put them on your eMule (kidding). Give it a listen.