cygweb

My sister had pre-ordered SM2 from Amazon for my birthday and I got it in the mail today. I definitely liked it better than the first, and it'll be neat to check out all the extras. A great movie for the collection.

Thanks, Candace & Brian!

There's some buzz going on around the beta launch of MSN Spaces today. I signed up to check it out. 10MB of space is a real non-starter for me. I'll try some low-fi blogging on it just to see how easy it is to use and customize.

Update: Ross and I synched up on this. I posted a test entry on my test space.

Due to the gorgeous weather today (sunny and high 50's) we went out this afternoon and cut down our Christmas tree a week early. You have to take advantage of the weather when you can!

As a result, I missed the 1PM games. When I checked in just now, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Outlets already topping the 100-point mark for the week before McNabb, the Philly defense, and Witten have even played! GO GO GO!

Cyg's Calorie Outlets played their hearts out this week, amassing the highest single-week point total of the BDFL season (185) in a drubbing of Theismann's Legs; however, they didn't get the help they needed to make it into this year's playoffs. They ended up in third place in the hotly contested Mid Penn division.

The Outlets fared much better in the second half of this season than the first, finding a winning identity and scoring big point totals in three of the last four weeks of the regular season. Coming back from 0-5 to make the playoffs was improbable, but finishing 5-3 leaves the team with high hopes for next season. Among the positives for the Outlets:

• It will be tough for them to pick their keepers for next season. Having some of the league's marquee players (QB Donovan McNabb, RB Corey Dillon) and up-and-comers (RB Julius Jones, TE Jason Witten) is a good situation for them to be in.
• They ranked fifth in Kurt Albin's BDFL 2004 Power Rankings and were hailed by the coach of the league-leading Baltimore Banyanators as the winners of the "I DESERVE TO BE IN THE PLAYOFFS BUT AM NOT" award.
• They scored the fourth-highest number of points in the season and had the second-highest points-against total.

Outlets coach Alex Harden says he's now ready to enjoy the BDFL playoffs and provide color commentary in his weekly podcast with Hanover Hellions coach Scott Buffington. "I fully expect us to come off the field with a win after the first week of next season," said Harden. "Whatever it takes."

(Cross-posted at the BDFL website.)

I'm catching up on my favorite podcasts and was sort of tickled when Reel Reviews' Michael Geoghegan went over his new podcasting setup and mentioned he just got the Behringer Eurorack UB802 (he said "820", but I'm sure he meant "802") mixer. That's the one I just purchased. The first podcast using it for will be recorded tonight with Scott. Like Michael, I'm recording off the computer (at least for now). My server running Skype is patched into the mixer, but I will be recording the podcast to MD and playing it back into the computer for final encoding. I've had issues with Total Recorder and Skype, and I only have one full audio interface on the server to play with. For the voicework we're doing on the podcast, the multiple A/D and D/A conversions shouldn't be a big deal.

Apparently the MD unit I'll be getting for Christmas may not be arriving in time - supposedly there aren't any in the country currently. Good things come to those who wait, right? When I get the Hi-MD unit, I'll be able to digitally upload my recordings to the PC and avoid that last D/A/D conversion.

15.4MB 48kbps MP3 44m 55s (Link disabled due to bandwidth issues.)

This is our weekly Brutal Deluxe football podcast. Scott and I review the end of the regular season and the first week of the playoffs. We talk about the past and upcoming NFL weekends, and what's currently going on in between them. I also lament about the Outlets not getting into the playoffs some more. ;)

Credits:

• Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Recommended podcatchers:

• iPodder (Mac and Windows)
• Doppler (Windows)

Update: Eric Rice gave us some nods. Cool! I've visited Eric's sites a few times (through Scoble links, I believe); now I have an excellent reason to listen to him.

I'll probably start working on tweaking the ICYG playlist generation code/methodology soon. I think I'm going to go to an hourly playlist generation scheme that takes into account several factors:

• Every hour of programming is defined as either full rotation or things like specific genre hours, indie-only, or specialty shows; I plan on having at least two variables to choose from for each hour (ex: an auto-generated "Scott's Metal Hour")
• Target playlist length: 60-61 minutes
• Other things I haven't thought of yet. ;)

I also want to take this opportunity to do two things I haven't done yet: create actual object-oriented Python code and integrate this process more with Zope.

I'm also going to actively try to find more independent music (remember, Magnatune's catalog is fair game for non-commercial streaming and podcasting) and also try to get together enough time and stuff for a weekly or biweekly "Nuclear Rock" show that would be available both through ICYG and as a podcast from this site.

I was catching up one of my Firefox instances and I went to the main Extensions site to browse. I'm blown away by the currently highest-rated extension, ForecastFox. Check it out!

This is the first Sunday where I'm really feeling that HD coverage of the NFL has smoothed out to the point where I can watch the games and not worry about technical issues (usually on the carrier side rather than mine). The scheduling gods have graced me with HD Ravens, Steelers, and Eagles games today (no Buffalo, but hey...) and I'm taking some advantage of it. I really want to see all of the Steelers game, so I've done some chores in the first half of the Super Bowl XXXV rematch (looks like the 34-7 Ravens victory may be repeated). The single largest factor in the mainstreaming of HD NFL has to be FOX stepping up to the plate this season, offering 6 HD games each week. After some early-season glitches, their coverage now is quite nice and the games are a pleasure to watch. I hope CBS will increase their coverage next season to match.

Melissa and I watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind on Friday evening and it was a lot more detailed and quirky than I expected. Kate Winslet plays way against type, and Jim Carrey puts in a strong performance. All the supporting actors are great (especially Mark Ruffalo) and the story is a chronological mess, but in a good way. This movie made me think about the power of the memory of love and seemed to reward me for paying attention. It's definitely worth at least a rent; it's probably good for two inital viewings, the second with the commentary on. I'll be doing that when I get a chance.

The Bills are on a tear. They won 37-7 today and held Cleveland to 17 yards of offense (fifth-fewest in league history). Go Bills!

Cris Carter puts it succintly:

Tonight's game is a perfect example of why the NFL should go to a flexible schedule. With it, we'd have better matchups than the Kansas City Chiefs against the Tennessee Titans late in the season on Monday Night Football.

Because of parity, the league has totally changed as far as which teams should be shown from year to year in prime time. A flexible schedule would ensure that we're seeing the top teams. It's best for the league and the fans.

Agreed. Even though the flexible prime-time matchups are in the new TV contract, the details still have to be worked out. Such as, how much lead time is acceptable to make changes to the league schedule? One week seems like too little; three weeks seems like too much. Perhaps two?

Even though it's not a marquee matchup, there are still the fantasy implications of the game. Several of the players will play key roles in determining the winners of two of the games in the first playoff round of the BDFL.

My collection is now complete - at least until the Extended Edition DVD of "The Hobbit" comes out in 2008. ;)

Will I ever be able to block off a whole day to watch all three LOTR:EE DVDs back-to-back whilst my shirt is off and I'm eating a brick of cheese? Probably not. But one can dream.

I've submitted my ballot for the 2005 Pro Bowl. Go AFC!

Update (12/22): The offical rosters are out. I've bolded my picks that ended up on the roster.

Peter King (Citrus' favorite sports writer?) is now warming a seat on the Bills bandwagon:

[..] Buffalo has scored 37, 38, 42 and 37 in wins over St. Louis, Seattle, Miami and Cleveland the past month. Since starting 0-4, the Bills are 7-2. They're rapidly becoming The AFC Team No One Wants To See Win The Second Wild Card.

Buffalo visits dangerous Cincinnati this week, then at San Francisco the following Sunday. The Bills then close at home against Pittsburgh in what's shaping up to be the best game of Week 17. Both teams might need the win -- the Steelers for home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, and the Bills to gain the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs. The latter task is eminently achievable, particularly because the teams ahead of Buffalo in the standings have zits.

Let's go Buffalo!

21.0MB 48kbps MP3 1h 01m 29s (Link disabled due to bandwidth issues.)

This is our weekly Brutal Deluxe football podcast. Scott and I review the first week of the BDFL playoffs. We talk about the past and upcoming NFL weekends, and what's currently going on in between them. It's now Scott's turn to lament -- about the Hellions getting beat in the playoffs. ;)

This one went a little long - but bear with us. I'll try to get the time down to 40 minutes for next week's cast.

Credits:

• Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Recommended podcatchers:

• iPodder (Mac and Windows)
• Doppler (Windows)

On my way in to work this morning, WITF-FM ran a local story about a new Central PA Christmas CD that sounded pretty cool. I've heard of some of the local artists featured in the piece, and have seen at least one of them, Sherri Mullen, live downtown.

When I'm running some errands around lunchtime today, I'm going to try and pick the CD up at Media Play.

Update (12/18): I picked it up today and it's pretty cool.

We're not supposed to get much, but we're getting our first significant snowfall tonight. I've been hoping we'd have a shot at a white Christmas this year.

I've been using SharpReader on a daily basis at work for a while now and it's usually performed fine. It's a bit of a memory hog for the ~100 feeds I have it monitoring currently, but it had never kept me from doing my work. Recently, though, it's started showing new items in the wrong folders, and this has got me looking to finally make the move to Bloglines as my main feed reader. I was thinking of using Thunderbird 1.0 in this role, but two things make that a non-starter: no support for importing my subscriptions OPML file (or OPML export, for that matter), and no easy way to toggle proxy server settings as I can with Firefox and SwitchProxy. I've synched my SharpReader subscriptions with it for a while now, so all I really have to get used to is Bloglines' interface. I think SharpReader's text display is more efficient, but Bloglines' accessibility and utility will probably make my feed reading more efficient and easy than before.

Another reason I'm moving away from SharpReader is the fact that it hasn't been updated to support RSS enclosures. As a Net-based app, Bloglines doesn't have settings for automatically downloading enclosures, but I'm using Doppler for that on my server, since I want to download my subscribed podcasts to only one location.

A happy by-product of shifting to Bloglines means that I can more easily read my feeds at home and other locations. I'll post about this again if I have any serious usability issues with Bloglines.

• Made a "Subscribe" block on the right-hand side with links to my feeds, as well as Bloglines and My Yahoo! scubscription links.
• Removed the Groklaw and NHL News right-hand side blocks.
• Scotbuff gets a RHS block.
• Other minor tweaks to the RHS.

I'm starting to gather the songs to play during a two-day ICYG Christmas Special. If you're a member and have appropriate material to include, please tag and upload it ASAP and let me know what/where it is. I'll finalize the playlist sometime Thursday and it will go live the morning of Christmas Eve. We're hosting my parents this coming weekend and it will be a great opportunity for them to hear my hobby.

As always, I'm going for a rock theme and I'm drawing on some good stuff: the two Merry Axemas CD's, the new Brian Setzer Orchestra Xmas CD, the aforementioned Central-PA Christmas Compilation CD, and various seasonal tracks from some of my favorite bands. Certainly not the catalog of a "real" station but decent enough for our purposes.

While reading this article on German automakers developing standards for car-to-car wireless networking, I remembered Cringley had proposed that concept in one of his columns. Good call; that article was from over a year and a half ago.

I've upgraded the site to MT 3.14.

14.3MB 48kbps MP3 42m 04s (Link disabled due to bandwidth issues.)

This is our weekly Brutal Deluxe football podcast. Scott and I review the second week of the BDFL playoffs and look at the Brutal Bowl III matchup. We talk about the past and upcoming NFL weekends, and what's currently going on in between them. We talk about the Darius/Ferguson incident from the Packers-Jaguars game. We also take a look at the Pro Bowl rosters that were published today.

Credits:

• Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Recommended podcatchers:

• iPodder (Mac and Windows)
• Doppler (Windows)

Melissa and I don't have to work today, so we're getting ready for this weekend; we have all our gift-shopping done, so we just need to go food-shopping this morning. Then we're cleaning up this afternoon.

I altered my playlist-picking script last night to accomodate the ICYG Christmas playlist; it worked great. I'll kick it off at 8am tomorrow. Enjoy the mix.

I thought there was a problem with my new mixer and had been working with Behringer to try to fix it. It turned out that I made a wrong assumption about a particular function of the mixer, and also had a bad cable connection to my computer. I debugged this before recording the BDFL podcast last night and was very relieved when everything started working correctly. I think I'm going to really like this setup the first time I take it on the road for some field recording.

I hope your holiday preparations are well underway and that you have a safe and relaxing time doing whatever you're doing this weekend. Merry Christmas!

Granted, I don't have a copy of the late-90's Atlantic reissue of Yes' "Close To The Edge", but after receiving and taking in the recent Rhino reissue (thanks, Don!), the comparison to the original pressing of the CD is breathtaking:

Before:

After:

I can envision the CD product manager at Atlantic saying about the original release, "Yeah, that's good enough. Like they have an alternative?" Their excuse would probably be that DigiPaks weren't invented until the 90's. Yes vinyl releases always had the coolest gatefold covers filled with Roger Dean artwork. (Raise your hand if you have/had "Yessongs" on vinyl.) It's a shame much of that work was left out of the first Yes CD releases.

An upcoming episode of Enterprise will reportedly address the issue of explaining how Klingons gained those turtle-like (I say that with the utmost respect!) foreheads and other features as the Star Trek universe aged and its budget grew. It's always interesting to see how a franchise like this will fill in the gaps; I wouldn't say midi-chlorians is a successful example of this. But I think this will be fun. If you don't mind spoilers, check out the official StarTrek.com article.

Merry Christmas! We're having a great time here; hoping you are, too.

Peyton Manning just set the single-season passing TD record (49) with a toss to Brandon Stokely. Indy plays Denver next week, so he will probably edge up the record to 50 or more.

Speaking of Denver, with their win yesterday and Jacksonville & Baltimore losing today, the Bills need two wins (against SF today and Pittsburgh next week) and a Denver loss to take the sixth AFC playoff seed. With the Steelers locking up home field advantage today, they will probably not go all out against the Bills. This could happen.

Mike was the first local blogger I'm aware of to post about Reggie White's passing. I wasn't in the area when he was playing for the Eagles, so I ended up knowing about him more as a Packer and as the champion of modern-day NFL free agency. Rest in peace, Reggie.

I was very pleased to get a call from Paul this evening. I haven't heard from him in several months, so it was great to catch up with him. He is quite familiar with the "Internets", so I hope we can continue with more regular correspondence! He's missed a few new things around here, like the BDFL podcasts, so he's got some catching up to do! ;)

Maybe we'll even be graced by a comment or two from him... you never know...

Good to talk to you again, buddy.

I hadn't been visiting HydrogenAudio lately, so imagine my surprise when I read that new versions of both Icecast and Oddcast are out. Oddcast v3 has me absolutely salivating; it now supports multiple simultaneous encoders from a single source. If it works for me, this will allow me to support both Vorbis and MP3 (or possibly AAC) ICYG streams, which I've been wanting to do since Jonathan told me he hadn't been able to listen to the current Vorbis stream on OS X with iTunes. Many thanks in advance to Oddsock for his continued work.

MNF tonight is a snoozer, so I should have some time to test and possibly complete both upgrades on ICYG tonight. If/when I have an MP3 and/or AAC stream live, I will post appropriate info to the "official" ICYG forum over at Nitevilla.

Update: I now have Vorbis, MP3, and (experimental) AAC streams going thanks to an upgrade to Oddcast v3, and my Icecast server was successfully upgraded from 2.1.0 to 2.2.0 without any problems once I massaged the config file. The efficiency of the FB2K/Oddcast combo when encoding all three streams is quite remarkable (averaging under 10% on my P4 2.4GHz server). I had to cut the sample rate of the MP3 and AAC streams to 22050Hz to get them to sound reasonable at my target 64kbps bitrate. The AAC support at this point seems a bit rough in Oddcast; I'll play around with it and see how others are making out as well.

17.4MB 48kbps MP3 50m 59s (Link disabled due to bandwidth issues.)

This is our weekly Brutal Deluxe football podcast. Scott and I review the outcome of Brutal Bowl III. We discuss a possible opening in the BDFL for the 2005 season. We talk about the past and upcoming NFL weekends, and what's currently going on in between them. We take a look at the NFL playoff picture with one week to go in the regular season. And I hope the Bills get the win and the help they need to make it into the playoffs!

Credits:

• Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD & "Dirtbag" by Brad Sucks from the CD I Don't Know What I'm Doing.

Recommended podcatchers:

• iPodder (Mac and Windows)
• Doppler (Windows)

This week's BDFL podcast was the first time I'd recorded using the Hi-MD Walkman I received for Christmas. It has a thick manual and does quite a bit more than the Walkman it's replacing. I have a pretty good handle on its interface and software now, and was able to record, edit, and encode the podcast in the following manner:

• Conducted my conversation with Scott via Skype, routed through my UB802 mixer; the Hi-MD was connected to the mixer output via its analog line in. It had a 1GB Hi-MD disc in and was set to record in PCM mode (which provides lossless CD-quality audio).
• Connected the Hi-MD unit to my computer via USB and used Sonicstage to bring the recording over to the computer digitally. About 820MB of data was transferred, and it took about 45 minutes. This is about 2x faster than the recording time of around 1.5 hours.
• The resulting file on the computer was wrapped with Sony's OpenMG DRM, but they recently released a WAV conversion tool that lets you convert original analog recordings to an unlocked WAV file. This worked pretty quickly.
• At this point, I edited and mastered the WAV file as I normally do in Sound Forge, and used the FB2K command-line converter with the LAME 3.96.1 DLL to create and tag a final 22KHz mono MP3 file for the podcast.

Even dealing with the DRM issue, this is still faster than transferring the recording over in real time in analog, and the quality of the recording is preserved in the process. The MZ-NHF800 has been enjoyable to use so far; I'm still scratching the surface of the NetMD-generation capabilities like group folders. It also supports a range of bitrates, so I'm testing different encoding & transcoding scenarios to see what I prefer. It gets a thumbs-up so far.

Not being very up on AAC encoding, I didn't realize that at low bitrates (like the 64kbps target I have for ICYG streams), FAAC doesn't appear to perform much better than LAME MP3. While HE-AAC/AACplus would perform better and compare favorably with Vorbis, there's currently no free implementation of it available. Since Oddsock has stated that he won't link Oddcast to non-free DLL's (which I agree with), I don't see much purpose in implementing it at this point on ICYG and have removed the experimental AAC stream.

This leaves us with the ~64kbps stereo 44.1KHz Vorbis stream and the new 64kbps stereo 22KHz MP3 stream. If you're using the MP3 stream and have comments, please post them.

7.4MB 48kbps MP3 21m 46s

After recording yesterday's podcast, Scott and I immediately started into an impromptu discussion about Revenge Of The Sith, the SW Original Trilogy DVDs, and the Star Trek franchise. It was a fun & frank discussion and we thought it would make a good podcast. So here it is. Enjoy.

Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.

Recommended podcatchers:

• iPodder (Mac and Windows)
• Doppler (Windows)