Fedora Audio Player Goodness - 7.19.2005
I've been running pure Linux on my home PC for about four months now and I'm finally getting to the point where I'm feeling comfortable with this thing. I've found some pretty good applications that put my XP install to shame.
Today I want to write about music players on LInux. My primary player is Amarok. It's a great program because of it's neat features. My favorite is that it builds dynamic playlists from you music collection by using data from on the MusicBrainz website to find songs that are similar to the one currently playing. Also, the program has good controls and nice desktop integration including Notification Area Controls and On Screen Display. It also has a built-in audioscrobbler plugin, which I really dig because it's been a pain to install the plugins for some of the other players.
Besides, Amarok, I've also been using Muine, a really fast and easy music player. I use it when I want to play an individual song or individual album and I don't want to wait for Amarok to load. A neat feature of Muine is that it automatically downloads album covers from Amazon. One potentially negative aspect of using Muine is that it is a Mono application and you have to install the Mono stack in order to get the program to work.
Other audio players include XMMS and BMP. Both are WinAMP clones. BMP is a more modern version of XMMS. Finally, there is Rythmbox, the default music player that comes with Fedora. Its simple fast and it works.
Today I want to write about music players on LInux. My primary player is Amarok. It's a great program because of it's neat features. My favorite is that it builds dynamic playlists from you music collection by using data from on the MusicBrainz website to find songs that are similar to the one currently playing. Also, the program has good controls and nice desktop integration including Notification Area Controls and On Screen Display. It also has a built-in audioscrobbler plugin, which I really dig because it's been a pain to install the plugins for some of the other players.
Besides, Amarok, I've also been using Muine, a really fast and easy music player. I use it when I want to play an individual song or individual album and I don't want to wait for Amarok to load. A neat feature of Muine is that it automatically downloads album covers from Amazon. One potentially negative aspect of using Muine is that it is a Mono application and you have to install the Mono stack in order to get the program to work.
Other audio players include XMMS and BMP. Both are WinAMP clones. BMP is a more modern version of XMMS. Finally, there is Rythmbox, the default music player that comes with Fedora. Its simple fast and it works.
Suicide CEO - 7.16.2005
Ubermensch, Strap on Chapter 11 explosives and blow your bank account to shit! Yesterday Bernard Ebbers was given a 25 year sentence for his role in the WorldCom failure. Shall he be remembered as a millionaire down-on-his-luck or Suicide CEO?
Audioscrobbler Vs. Playlists - 7.08.2005
A while ago I had written some PHP scripts to interact with a WinAMP plug-in to create a rudimentary log of what I'd been listening to. It worked pretty good but one day I switched to Linux no longer ran the plug-in. I toyed with the idea of finding a similar plug-in for XMMS but I finally got tired of the WinAMP style interface and just gave up on the idea of having a playlist section on my site. Then one day I found Audioscrobbler and decided to ditch my scripts and use it instead since it does everything my own scripts do and then some. Consequently, the playlist link the main page no longer links to my own section but rather http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/iramhernandez.
So what? Well, now you can see some interesting statistics about the music I've been listening to and I can use it to find people with similar music tastes and new music to listen to.
So what? Well, now you can see some interesting statistics about the music I've been listening to and I can use it to find people with similar music tastes and new music to listen to.
Panic on the Streets of London -
I can't resist writing about the London bombings because today I was a victim of Media Overload. I work at a hospital and there is a TV outside my office that the patients watch while they wait. The television was tuned to a twenty four hour cable news station and there was non-stop coverage of the events in London. It was really wild to hear the newscasters try to cast this event as London's 9-11, along with the obligatory Muslim/Christian holy war implications. All the while, I couldn't help but remember some of the lines from the song Panic by The Smiths...
Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again ?
The going consensus on television was that the the attacks were timed to coincide with the G8 meeting in Scotland where the wonderful rock and roll superheroes of western wold were meeting to cure AIDS, stop hunger, end third world debt and just all-around save the planet. And whilst our do-good leaders stood in circle holding hands with Mandela-like peaceful intentions, the evil no good Arabs blew some shit up. And its all been wrapped up in a gelatin coated twenty four hour news format. Open wide and swallow. This pill is getting too big.
Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE.
If the talking heads of CNN can present their story, then so shall I. So there is my version of events.
Inside the Gleneagles, seven men stood in circle jerk formation around another, ready to unleash misery upon the world. It was the time for the unmasking, when the alpha reptilian sheds his human form and devours the world. In a moment it would be done, just as a light bulb flashes brightly before it burns out, so is the world consumed. And onwards to digest.
Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again ?
The going consensus on television was that the the attacks were timed to coincide with the G8 meeting in Scotland where the wonderful rock and roll superheroes of western wold were meeting to cure AIDS, stop hunger, end third world debt and just all-around save the planet. And whilst our do-good leaders stood in circle holding hands with Mandela-like peaceful intentions, the evil no good Arabs blew some shit up. And its all been wrapped up in a gelatin coated twenty four hour news format. Open wide and swallow. This pill is getting too big.
Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE.
If the talking heads of CNN can present their story, then so shall I. So there is my version of events.
Inside the Gleneagles, seven men stood in circle jerk formation around another, ready to unleash misery upon the world. It was the time for the unmasking, when the alpha reptilian sheds his human form and devours the world. In a moment it would be done, just as a light bulb flashes brightly before it burns out, so is the world consumed. And onwards to digest.
Finally Updating Again -
I'm finally awake and rested enough to start blogging again. I haven't updated anything up here in quite a while. Sometimes the things immediately in front of me get so intense that I don't get a chance to work develop my online presence/persona.
