cygweb

Today we went to Misty Run for the fourth year in a row to cut down our tree. We usually go in October to tag one, but didn't this year. Turns out we didn't need to; we found a Douglas Fir we liked in about 10 minutes.

The Clock Peddler, a local store we purchased our mantel clock at, is going out of business, so we went over and found a nice wall clock. It's a Hermle Westminster with classic wood styling. I just hung it up today in our family room. It's very nice; it matches the other furniture's coloring.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 came out a few days ago. I'm still getting it onto the various computers I use. The only difference I've noticed so far was that the flickr-generated CSS in my photo block is now being rendered properly. It does seem a little faster.

Other free software I use that will have new version releases soon:

• Mozilla Thunderbird (currently 1.5 RC1)
• Foobar 2000 (currently 0.9 beta 12)
• LAME (currently 3.97 beta 2)

I don't know what's tougher -- watching the Eagles get beat up (Seahawks lead 35-0 at the half) or the lame-duck MNF features (I don't "Like It, Love It"...). At least Jimmy Kimmel was funny with "Which coach is it?" Turning it off early tonight. Looks like the Seahawks are earning their playoff berth this year.

I've been impressed by iTunes' usability since I started using it with the Nano. It's got a slick, functional interface. I've been considering making it my music librarian, but have decided not to. iTunes doesn't natively support all the formats I use, most notably Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. I don't think Apple will ever add support for codecs that aren't natively supported by iPods. So it will remain a niche player for me.

I'll continue to use Foobar2000 for the majority of my computer-based music stuff. In fact, once version 0.9 comes out, I plan on trying out plugins new to me, like the Columns UI, to increase its efficiency for me. I also want to delve into its playlist generation and scheduling capabilities, to see if I can't move more of ICYG's functionality into FB2K itself.

I'm a broken record; go buy this one. The Central-PA Christmas Compliation CD is awesome; I've got is spinning again for the season. My favorite track is still Negative Space's "I'll Be Home", followed closely by Emily's Toybox doing "O Holy Night" and Grantham Road's "Angels We Have Heard On High".

35.2MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 17m 03s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 19th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to the first week of the BDFL playoffs. We also look ahead to the last four weeks of the NFL regular season, and fantasy implications of the teams who may or may not be headed to the playoffs. Welcome back, Scott!

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

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

I have yet to put up a real review of the R30 set because there's so much stuff. I have to say that the stuff on disk 2 is killer. I hadn't seen many videos/film of Rush performing prior to the Moving Pictures era, so to see performance videos for "Fly By Night", "Circumstances", and "La Villa Strangiato" (which is psychedelic) from back in the day is truly a treat. I will gather my thoughts and write up a proper review of all of R30 soon.

Yahoo! has made some prescient purchases lately. Adding Flickr to the fold was neat, but questionable given Yahoo!'s own photo-sharing service. But their acquisition of del.icio.us brings a lot of utility to the table that I don't think Yahoo!'s had before. As with all these acquisitions, I hope the service remains relatively unchanged from its core functionality, and uncluttered with roadblocks that might stand in the way of using del.icio.us the way many of us have become accustomed.

I've been using del.icio.us since Ross pointed it out, and I'll admit I've taken it for granted. I use it as my linkblog. Congrats to Joshua and the rest of the team for persevering and making the service attractive and functional.

I wanted to come up with a master copy of my podcast subscriptions that could be imported into any podcatcher I chose. My current podcatcher is iTunes. It doesn't currently provide ways to import or export podcast subscriptions via OPML, the dialect that most podcatchers/aggregators use. I already had a "Podcasts" folder in my Bloglines account, so I updated that to reflect my current subscriptions. I'm already using the excellent MT-Outliner plugin to power my blogroll (based on the public contents of my "Blogs" folder in Bloglines). So I created a new MT template that generates an OPML file with my current podcast subs.

It validates against the OPML Validator (which is currently in beta), and I'll be tweaking it as the aggregator subscription data interchange space matures. I haven't tested it much yet, so if you decide to try it, please let me know where it does and doesn't work. I know Doppler likes it, but Google Reader (which is beta) does not. Feedback is welcome.

iTunes does allow per-subscription imports/exports by dragging and dropping a podcast entries and PCAST files, but apparently the PCAST format is limited to one "channel". I couldn't aggregate podcast subs into a single PCAST file with multiple channel elements and get it to import more than the first feed. Here's the template I made in case you're interested. I think Apple should be a good sport and give iTunes OPML import/export capabilities for podcast subscriptions. They could continue to support PCAST as the point/click/drag/drop solution, and add OPML as the menu-selectable solution.

27.6MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 00m 24s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 20th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in the NFL, and recap the first week of the BDFL playoffs. We look ahead to the Week 15 NFL matchups, and review the BDFL conference championship games. Good luck to all of you playing in fantasy football playoff games this week.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

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

Rush - R30 - 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

by Zoe Records

I got R30 a few weeks ago, on its release date. If you regularly read here or know me, you know I'm a pretty rabid Rush fan. I've been critical of the sound quality of some of their more recent material, but I still listen to a good portion of their albums regularly. Enough that Ryan requests Signals in the car. ;) I'll take all the new Rush releases I can, because you never know when they're going to decide they've had enough. However, Power Windows reports that the boys are going to record a new album early in 2006 for release in the summer. Can't wait.

Back to R30. The package is substantial; a quad-fold dual-tray case holds both DVDs, the envelope with the two audio CDs of the show, guitar picks from Alex and Geddy, and a commemorative backstage pass and booklet. The booklet's size (1.5x the height of a CD booklet) makes for a nice layout, and there's lots of pictures. DVD 1 is most of the 30th anniversary show performed in Frankfurt, Germany on September 24, 2004. They cut a number of songs: "Bravado", "YYZ", "The Trees", "One Little Victory", "Secret Touch", "Red Sector A", and some of the ending medley. Some of those songs were on Rush In Rio, but this concert DVD looks and sounds so much better, so it's a shame they weren't included. The stuff that is there is still quite a full show, and it rocks. I appreciated the fact that they integrated some of the video from the concert backdrop (like "That Darn Dragon") directly into the DVD as opposed to showing it playing on the backdrop itself. The DVD's anamorphic widescreen presentation is a relief given the letterboxing of RIR. The 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is fun; the rear channels are used for ambience more than audience or effects. It works for me. The only time I thought the audio was sub-par was after the guitar solo in "Earthshine"; a prominent low-end sound takes over the mix for the few bars until the last verse. It sounds that way on the CD as well.

My favorite part of the package is probably DVD 2, with its archive of interviews and performance videos from "The Anthem Vault". I had a few of these items, like the 1994 Juno Hall Of Fame Induction and the recent Canada for Asia recording of "Closer To The Heart" for tsunami relief, but they obviously weren't of this quality. As I blogged before, seeing the "Fly By Night" video with the very young Rush playing was a real treat. It really illustrates where they've been. One thing that struck me was how much Neil's performance back then resembles his playing now.

This package is a great memento of a great 30th anniversary tour. If you are a fan and don't treat yourself to this, you're nuts. I was disappointed with Rush In Rio, but they've redeemed themselves with this release.

I'll probably go out and purchase another CD or two for the ICYG Christmas mix. I'm re-ripping most of the stuff I have at Vorbis Q10 so that the HQ mix I play around the house will sound extra nice. It shouldn't sound too bad for you ICYG members either. Enjoy! It should go live later today.

When tagging the files, I noticed that the Merry Axemas CD's are out of print; they're great and I'm surprised by this. However, another thing I found is that the Central-PA Christmas Compilation is now on Amazon.

Looking back at last year's entry on this subject, I didn't start this so early. I must have a lot of spirit this year. Or a lack of listeners? ;)

34.3MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 15m 06s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 21st Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in the NFL, and recap the BDFL conference championships. We look ahead to the Brutal Bowl, the Week 16 NFL matchups, and review the players you may want to be cautious of. Good luck to all of you playing in championship games this week!

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Former BDFL champion Jaboobie recommends a daily dose of Dan Shanoff's Daily Quickie over at ESPN.com. Go check it out!
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

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

I've never been a downhill skier, and the one time Melissa took me over 6 years ago I didn't enjoy. She rarely goes and wanted to introduce it to Ryan, so we took this afternoon off and went over to Ski Roundtop. Since I didn't like skiing, I tried snowboarding. We got an introductory package that included lessons, so I took a first-time boarders' lesson with 7 others. Some of us did better than others, but I was probably the worst. My weight and height combined with my recent lack of exercise to make it hard for me to get up on the board in certain positions. Especially an hour into the lesson.

But it was fun for all involved, so we bought some discount passes for our next visit which include discounts on rentals and lift tickets for the rest of the season, as well as free lessons. I suspect we'll get out there at least two more times this season, if not more. I'll definitely be taking some more lessons. ;)

Anyone else ski around here?

Thanks to Don we'll be attending the closing night of Dream Theater's 20th anniversary tour at Radio City Music Hall on April 1, 2006. According to DT, this gig will be recorded for their next live release. Cool!

Gotta keep the streak alive... ;)

Merry Christmas to you and yours this season!

My parents are here with us to celebrate. Ryan will be surprised by a new Trek Jet bike this year, along with other goodies. We each opened a gift last night, and I received the Airport Express I'd namedropped with Melissa twice. I'll probably have some time to play with it before the day's through.

Melissa, Ryan, and I went to church last night, and I'm going to play bass at the 11AM mass this morning. There's more music to play at a Christmas mass, so it should be fun.

Ryan should be up soon, so we'll have our hands full. Have a good one!

On Christmas Day I set up the Apple Airport Express I received from Melissa successfully with my existing network and wanted to document what I did since I may change things.

The Airport Express software has a Wizard that helps you initially configure the unit. It's good because it looks at your computer's current wireless network configuration in an attempt to help you pick the right way to run the AE. I have a network that at its wired core is homed to my Linksys BEFSR41 router. The Linksys has my cable modem plugged into it, as well as a separate 5-port 100Base-TX Netgear switch and my SMC2655W 802.11B access point. Computers are attached to either free ports on the Linksys or the Netgear.

Since I'd read reports that the AE could integrate with non-Apple wireless nets, I decided to try to get it talking to my network through my access point. I've been running my wireless network with 64-bit WEP and MAC address filtering for the longest time with success, and didn't want to compromise my existing config. I found that the AE didn't support 64-bit WEP; it supported 40-bit, 128-bit, and WPA2 encryption schemes. However, the Orinoco silver PC card I use on my laptop while at home maxes out at 64-bit WEP. For purposes of this project, I went ahead and disabled WEP for the time being. However, my access point still has MAC address filtering on, with only the addresses of my NIC and the AE (which was printed on it) present. Since I don't do anything critical on my wireless network that isn't already taking place in a secured session, it's not that big of a deal.

After reconfiguring my access point and laptop and verifying connectivity, I used the AE configurator to tell the AE to join my existing wireless net (dubbed "CYGNET", of course!). It connected up fine and told me that the AE was assigned an address through DHCP. It's nice to know the address of the AE, but it's not essential since iTunes appears to broadcast to the local network to find AEs to connect to. However, I may try to use Justeport to pipe content to my AE, so having the address is good. The Airport Express's management software can be used to find out the address if I forget it or it gets assigned a new one since it broadcasts out to look for AEs like iTunes does.

The AE has an audio minijack (1/8") that accepts analog or digital (optical) connections. On my receiver I've used up the digital optical connections, so I used an analog patch cable to the AUX input to connect the AE up. I haven't used the Ethernet or USB ports at this point.

Once online, a new button appeared to the left of the EQ button in iTunes and let me direct the output to "My Computer" or "Alex's Airport" (the name I gave it). Once I selected the AE, the audio played through my stereo without much of a delay. I then reconfigured ICYG to output a 320kbps MP3 stream and connected to it through iTunes. The stream sounded quite good on the stereo, but iTunes disconnected from the stream after a few minutes for an unknown reason. I figured the bandwidth might have been too high, so I set it to 256kbps and it's been more stable.

At this point, I'm considering moving my Linksys router to the family room with my cable modem and the AE, so I can use the AE's Ethernet port and reconfigure it as a full-fledged wireless access point. Assuming its range is good from that location, I could then decommission my old SMC access point and set up encryption on my network once again. We'll see.

The AE is a fun toy. Definitely recommended as a way to pump music from your computer to your stereo in a wireless fashion, if you can deal with not having remote control of the music source. If you want a solution that includes source control capabilities, I recommend the Squeezebox, although I haven't personally used it.