yes, i should be in bed.
but quickly: as i was out and about just now doing some guerrilla composting, i stumbled upon first one, and then several little ones wearing masks, running around looking for treats. one of them stood and looked at me, and then ran off as i shooed them away.
raccoons!
honest to god raccoons! five of them! running around in the mission.
it’s an early start to halloween, i say.
good thing i actually bought some candy this year.
despite ostensibly spending all my time this week studying for yet another certification test as well as working on big important projects©, i found myself futzing around with the open source slimserver software.
why? well, the slim squeezebox is the other major device that works like my roku soundbridge to stream music from my mac full of music to the stereo, and while i’m quite happy with my soundbridge, there’s always room for improvement, right? at the very least, i should know whether i’m using the best solution or not. it’s ok to live with the less optimal solution, but you’ve got to know, at least. ignorance is unforgiveable.
warning: lots of technical babble follows here. continue at your own glossy-eyed risk.
on the upside, the new squeezebox is very cool looking. nice display, and the audio specs look really good.
the audio DAC might possibly be of higher quality, and there’s much more support for other codecs, including things like ogg-vorbis and FLAC. things that make internet audio geeks cream their pants. the usual consumer, not so much.
the downside is that this device seems to require you run their slimserver on your machine. one of the things i really love about the roku is that it can just feed off of itunes as a client, and you don’t have to set up anything extra. this is a definite plus.
however, i thought, if it’s just some software that automatically syncs with itunes in the background, maybe it’s not so bad. if it’s just a service, then what’s the difference?
ugh.
the difference is that my old little underpowered imac dv can’t handle running anything else. especially this behemoth, whatever it is. the moment i started the slimserver software up, my mac started running at a slow crawl. everything took seconds to run, even switching between apps became onerous. after much futzing, i could get the roku to see and even connect to the slimserver instance, but navigating through the menus took minutes. and it tried to play, but nothing ever came out. likewise running the java slimplayer: slow connection to the server, but playing was fruitless.
it dawned on me that this process was really ridiculous: i was running itunes, and then an app that sucked down the itunes library, and then streamed the itunes stream out as another stream.
wtf?
let’s take my miata, and stick it in the trunk of the land cruiser as the engine. now, let’s try and drive around! wheee!
the difference is clear to me: slim devices are basically dumb interfaces and the processing and streaming is performed by the slimserver software, whereas the roku devices are tiny linux boxes running their software, so the interface and processing are done by themselves, not the music hosting server.
basically, where do you want your computer power to be? in the player, or in the server?
i guess if you have a hefty machine, it maybe makes sense for it to be in the server. this is what enables transcoding from all the different codecs to WAV to the squeezebox. it also allows it to synchronize streams to different squeezeboxes if you’ve got several, because it’s running the stream.
but then if that’s the case? why am i paying all this money for what is essentially a hardware implementation of a dumb java interface?
at least with my soundbridge it’s actually doing something.
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well, i played around a little bit with flock today, which is a new browser designed for more group interaction: a lot of tools such as del.icio.us and flickr and blog hooks are built in.
for example, i blogged this directly from the browser!
i’m not sure how much i liked dr. atomic.
no, literally, i’m not sure. i slept through a good deal of it.
this is not necessarily a poor reflection of the opera, as hmc liked it quite a bit, and what i saw of it i also enjoyed. the sets were pretty great, the staging was quite interesting, and the lighting was gorgeous.
however, when we go to a live performance, i inevitably doze off during the first act, regardless of quality or my interest in the actual event. opera, symphony, theatre, it doesn’t really matter. suddenly i’m struck by performance narcolepsy.
it’s not just the darkness, however, as this doesn’t happen to me while watching movies. well, mostly. i did fall asleep during taxi driver. (um, yeah, that one. but i did wake up for the “you talkin’ to me?” part.)
hmc says that movies do more to involve you while these other performances require a little bit of imagination and effort for you to get involved.
which means that my brain is SO LAZY that when something is not spoon fed to me, it GIVES UP AND SHUTS DOWN.
this is so sad.
we tried to go out to the opening of the de young last night.
sure, fool’s folly, i mean who’s nutty enough to go on opening weekend, right? but they were doing an all-night party there, with om dj’s spinning, so who can turn down a chance to rock out in a museum at night for free?
apparently, a bazillion people can’t.
we got down there a little after midnight, and the line was already from here to yonkers. literally massive size. i thought i was lining up for lollapalooza or something. or maybe it’s a preview when we’re lining up for food rations, getting our daily dose of soylent green after the next armageddon incident?
anyways, we stuck around for about an hour, and hadn’t made it more than halfway through the line. the de young was in sight, but it was clearly more than an hour more, and we had to be at the opera in a little over 12 hours.
so we gave up and went home.
i guess we’re too old to hang with these whippersnappers.
hmc points out that choosing to skip the free dance party because you have opera tickets the next day definitely makes us old.
i stopped by and saw xz and danger before they left for africa this weekend.
originally i was maybe going to go to lost angels and hang out with them during their last weekend in the states, since they’re flying out of lax to zanzibar. you know, that direct flight. 24 hour nonstop. zanzibar air. the one with the spots. or is that oceanic air?
dammit kids, don’t get lost! if you do, be sure to bring lots of useful stuff in your luggage. like a dinosaur gun. and a helicopter.
only i’m not going down there; instead hmc is flying up here so we can go see dr. atomic, the opera about the race to create the atomic bomb. it’s probably a comedy.
“oh, fission, oh collision, breakin’ that nuuuuucleus in twwwooooo…”
wait, i was talking about xz and danger.
i’m going to miss them, and i’m sad to see them go, but not that sad. no, not because i secretly hate them. because i love them and i know they’re going to have a fantastic amazing adventure and i’m incredibly excited for them.
maybe we’ll meet up with them in africa or wherever next year.
what’s the waiting period for a dinosaur gun?
quick movie roundup:
saw tim burton’s corpse bride? and wallace and gromit: the curse of the were-rabbit. while W-n-G was funnier, i think that corpse bride perhaps worked better as a movie. W-n-G had to stretch a little too much to fill that length: good enough to be more than their normal short, but not quite enough for 80 minutes. corpse bride looked great, and worked really well. and i still can’t stand danny elfman, so that’s saying a lot.
also finally watched million dollar baby, and i can’t say that it was terrible. sure it was very manipulative and melodramatic, but it was well done and some of the cinematography was pretty nice. it perhaps might have had a bigger impact if the nytimes hadn’t spoilt the plot for me way back when, but it’s not like rosebud was her sled or anything.
can i say that it was a huge injustice that it won the oscar for best picture? i dunno. aviator and welcome to neverland were also pretty good, but significantly better than this? eh.
i still say that don cheadle was robbed for hotel rwanda, though.
i also finally saw preston sturges’ miracle of morgan’s creek. that movie is insane and kicks the collective ass of everything above.
finally getting around to scanning film negs. first xzbp, then last year’s trip to chicago to see roo. oh, and that honeymoon thing. why does every tourist city have a space needle type tower?
maybe it’s to tell us that we’re in a tourist city.
quick, take a picture!
