cygweb

The Yngwie Malmsteen show on Tuesday was enjoyable. A local metal band, Steel, opened things with a six-song set highlighted by three original songs, ending with covers of "Last In Line" and "Run To The Hills". Not bad at all for some guys from Mechanicsburg. I'd never seen Yngwie before (except for pictures) and haven't every really listened to his music. It was pretty fun to watch him play; he's a classical shredder all the way. About half of the show was guitar-solo stuff; twice he played leads over recorded orchestral arrangements. It got a little tiring for me, a guy who's definitely more song-oriented. My favorite song the band as a whole played was "Valhalla". Yngwie loves to sling his guitars around and toss picks; I got one and gave it to Jim since he invited me to the show and drove. Plus, out of the two of us, he's the better guitar player. ;)

I'm headed out to Long Island tomorrow to visit birthday boy Don (head over to his site and wish him a good one). The NYC DT show should be a lot of fun, as well as the (unfortunately limited) time we'll have to share some food, music, and games. Looking forward to it.

ICYG is kind of back-burnered right now until I receive some more music from the participants. I've been inserting some of the songs I've received into my normal playlist for the time being. I'm having more ideas about the infrastructure/programming of the site rather than its design at this point; I probably will make it a Zope site since it will host real-time info, rather than archived content. My problems with Zope/Squishdot seemed to be due to ZopeDB problems that I don't anticipate having with this implementation. I still owe Scott some logo ideas to take him up on his generous offer. Another thing I'd like to do is migrate the ICYG "engine" from Foobar 2000 0.7.7b to 0.8. I just need to do some final 0.8 testing before I make the move.

Speaking of streaming, I've been meaning to get some more streaming info blogged. Soon!

Well, this was definitely my favorite Dream Theater concert ever, mainly because of the wealth of material they played. We were off to Petrucci's side and were spared the brunt of the volume, so unlike most of the concerts I attend, my hearing is normal after the show. ;)

The setlist (with a little help from Don):

As I Am This Dying Soul Beyond This Life (with "Frank Zappa" jam) Hollow Years Another Day Endless Sacrifice Trial Of Tears

Intermission

A Change Of Seasons
Caught In A Web
Mike Portnoy Drum Solo (with audience participation)
Jordan Rudess Keyboard Solo
Honor Thy Father
Vacant*
Stream Of Consciousness*
Disappear*
Pull Me Under

Encore
In The Name Of God

* with special guest Eugene Friesen on cello

Excellent show. Now off to get some sleep and lose an hour... Thanks Don for hosting me!

Whoever said "politics make strange bedfellows" probably never would have predicted Scott McNealy and Bill Gates would shack up. Just goes to show that if you dangle a few billion dollars at a desperate company, they'll probably say "uncle". (Understatement of the year.)

It turns out that Mike pulling audience members onstage isn't all that common. Jordan's tour log has videos of the two lucky guys from the NYC show. It also has this picture, which includes Don, Citrus, and myself. We really are there, it's just too fuzzy to make us out. We were about seven rows up in the 206 (middle level, far right) section.

Someone posted a Torrent to an audio recording of the show to Sharing The Groove. Excellent.

Edit: I looked at my ticket stub last night; we were actually six rows up (Row F) in section 206, seats 5, 6, and 7.

Update: The recording sounds great! And the artwork is great, too!

We have today off from work and since my wife is a little under the weather and our little one is at daycare, I have a little time to do some stuff I've been meaning to get to.

I'm finally sitting down to listen to some of the stuff Don shared with me last weekend. I'm currently enjoying some Robert Plant stuff that I've never heard before. I'll have to get it into rotation on ICYG. ;)

Speaking of ICYG, I have decided to use Zope and have just created a simple, but important, set of scripts that will parse the station log and provide "now playing" type info in real time. I'm going to try and design the site from scratch, something I've never done before, so it should be fun. Once I have something ready to be looked at I'll ask my LXG brethren for some feedback.

Another project I'm starting is an e-commerce venture for a significant someone. ;) I'm leaning towards a MT site using a Paypal business account for shopping cart and order processing features. I've seen a few references to people doing this, so it shouldn't be impossible. However, this is another one that I'd like to design from scratch. Doing this stuff part-time makes for some slow-goin'. But I'll get something going. Now to register some domain names...

Update: I registered the domain names with 1&1; they may have an acceptable e-commerce site solution, and it has a money-back guarantee, so we'll probably try that first.

I'm glad to hear this news: Dream Theater is recording their April 26th show in Tokyo for an upcoming DVD/CD release. My features wish list for the DVD:

• Anamorphic Widescreen
• 29.97fps (Video), not 24fps (Film)
• The Whole Long, Wonderful, Unedited Show
• PCM Stereo & DTS 5.1 Music Tracks (hopefully with a helping of dynamic range)
• Commentary Track (similar to the one on Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York)
• A few multi-angle tracks featuring footage from the static bandmember cameras

Here's hoping for another fine video release from DT.

Per Don's entry, here's a helping hand to all my Jewish friends.

How're we doing?

After having borrowed her signature line for this entry, I was amused to see Ernestine hawking WebEx on TV the other night.

I've been having fun creating the ICYG Website over the last few days. I'm using it as an opportunity to get down-and-dirty with CSS, Zope, and Python scripting. There's not much there now, but it will continue to get tweaked and fleshed out as the weeks go on.

One thing I noted in an email to Don was that I don't know of any streaming audio providers that appear to be generating per-song URL information through tag infomation. The stuff I've seen (like SomaFM's "recently played" pages) appears to use database-lookup URLs based on text substitution. Am I onto something here?

Melissa and I are hoping Bill wins over Kwame tonight. Kwame has not proven himself to be a good leader.

We've enjoyed the show. Our only problem with it (besides the smug, deceitful Amorosa) is that they don't tell you much about the parameters of the challenges (particularly starting capital). However, Melissa says the show's website has more info after the broadcasts.

Good luck, Bill!

Update: Bill won! Cool!

Man, it was a nice day here today. It was in the 70's and we had a fun time outside, visiting with neighbors, doing yardwork (the first mow of the season), and heading over to City Island to catch a Senators game with some friends. The little guy had a good time and was even given a free Senators baseball.

I really do like living in the Harrisburg area. It's populated enough to have the commerce of a large city, but small enough that going downtown is a pleasurable experience, even when there are large events.

I hereby declare that spring has sprung!

I appreciated the irony that David Carradine's Alias character "Conrad" was killed in last night's episode, the same week as all the Kill Bill buzz. We watched KB Volume 1 over the weekend. I thought it was excellently made, but it sacrified plot and character development for action to an extent I don't usually like. Maybe Volume 2 will round things out for me; I'll find out when that comes to video. BTW, the anime sequence in the movie is superb. I'm not much of an anime fan, so it usually finds me. I don't know how KB's anime compares to other current anime. I liked the Matrix-related anime that came out last year, too.

Last night's episode of The Practice was essentially the first episode of the spin-off. New characters at the Crane firm were introduced (including a great "ice queen" performance from Rebecca De Morney) that I hope are fleshing out what we'll see in the fall. Shatner was funny once again. I'm liking the balance Kelley is striking with the spin-off. However, it's sad to see original "Practice" whimpering out this way; hopefully it'll pick up before the final episode.

I've been meaning to write a decent entry (or four) about my experiences and implementation of streaming audio. I think I'm going to split it up among these topics:

1. Overview of the process and setting up source files and player
2. Setting up a streaming server and feeding it the source stream
3. Connecting to the stream with clients
4. Advertising stream metadata

Of course, much of it will be specific to the way I'm doing things, but since what I'm doing appears to work pretty well, that shouldn't be a problem. ;)

As seen on Slashdot: The official Star Wars website has a some new info about the previously announced SW Trilogy DVD set.

Still waiting for the announcement that the THX-remastered classic editions will be given the DVD treatment. Probably a year after these come out. ;)

I'm hoping to watch a bit more hockey as the Stanley Cup Finals approach. The main problem is that I don't have ESPN2, and my ESPN and Comcast Sportsnet is limited to the one digital cable box we have. Well, really, the main problem is that my wife doesn't like hockey. ;)

That aside, here are my completely unscientific picks for the semifinals:

• Canadiens over Lightning in 6
• Flyers over Leafs in 6
• Wings over Flames in 5
• Sharks over Avalanche in 6

How would you pick 'em?

Update: Via Scoble: How the Sharks use Tablet PCs for video review.

You guys probably already read Groklaw, but I wanted to share how pleased I am to be reading this article (referenced in this Groklaw entry) that details how SCO management's negative visibility caused Baystar to withdraw their investment in the company. A nice read for the first news story of my day.

Just a quick note to say I received access to the MT 3.0 beta earlier this week. I'm going to test a mock Cygweb upgrade (or two) before deciding to upgrade the site. If anyone else that reads this is testing MT3, please feel free to post your experiences with it.

My "quick fix" from it will hopefully be the near-elimination of comment spam by utilizing TypeKey. We'll see.

Update: I did a test upgrade over lunch. It's definitely an "evolutionary" release, but since all I want at this point is comment registration, it's fine for me. The new eye candy is appreciated as well. I'll probably upgrade over the weekend; if nothing looks different, you'll know that it worked. ;)

If the weather stays like this, the pending MT3B1 upgrade and the first "real" streaming audio essay won't happen. ;)

We spent the day buying and planting new azalea and lilac bushes. After that I did the regular lawn chores and spread out the Scotts Weed Control. I now have my first sunburn of the season (but just on my arms and ears).

I finally picked up the following movie for rental:

Gotta earn my membership somehow, right? ;)

I have to admit that as much as I love the NFL, I've never really followed the draft. I think it's because I'm not much of a college football fan. I usually rely on the pre-season pundits to write about what rookies are going to make an impact on fantasy football in their first season. I think it takes equal parts of talent, team needs, and coaching faith for a rookie to have a breakout season.

Who will break out this year? Just looking at the first-round picks, my guess is (just rolling the dice here) Jacksonville's new WR Reggie Williams. Leftwich will make him a star. You heard it here first.

The site is now running on MT3b1; I'm kicking the tires. Let me know if anything isn't working for you. I'm getting few rebuild errors but I think I can localize them.

Update: I'm getting Error 500's all over the place. You may not be able to comment for a little bit.

Two thumbs up for Matchstick Men. Definitely a renter, as opposed to a buyer. Besides the excellent movie, the behind-the-scenes stuff is entertaining. I think it's rare to see so much pre-production footage on the DVD for a movie where CGI is absent.

But make sure to watch the movie first if you decide to check it out!

MT3b1 seems pretty solid for my use; Beta 2 has been released and I'll probably upgrade over the weekend. I probably won't enforce comment registration until after the beta period is over and I'm running the gold 3.0 version.

My geekly energies over this last week have been focused on tweaking the ICYG website. It's now XHTML. I also added pop-up info for each listed track. Fun stuff. I think I've figured out how I'm going to create a batch process to generate a new playlist and load it into the ICYG FB2K instance dynamically. I may get that going this weekend. What I'm thinking of is generating a new playlist daily and loading it up at say, 4 or 5AM when no one's listening. Or are they? ;)

May is almost upon us and that means my family's first Florida vacation is almost here. Similar to Chuck, we're headed down to the Tampa/St. Pete area, staying in a resort at St. Pete Beach. It's been a long time since I've visited Florida; I can't wait to get down there. It'll be my son's first beach experience, so that in and of itself will be fun. We'll also be visiting Busch Gardens and some of the other local attractions. It should be a great week.