cygweb

31.9MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 09m 47s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 22nd Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005/2006 season. Yep, we took the holiday week off, but we're back! Scott and I review the outcome of this year's Brutal Bowl, the week 17 NFL games, our Pick 'Em League, and look ahead to the wild-card NFL playoff matchups.

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

Credits:

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

Last night I moved my router so that I could put the Airport Express into "Access Point" mode and try to decommission my old 802.11B AP. It's working great, but I haven't fully tested the range yet. The AE is on the first floor of the house, but is near a far side wall. My old AP was in my upstairs office, which is in the center-front of the house.

The AE has lots of settings when it's in AP mode as opposed to client mode. Now that its Ethernet port is active, I can now stream from my wired machines directly to the AE.

Now I'm going to start playing with Justeport.

I've been very impressed with the compatibility and quality of MP3s I've recently encoded with LAME 3.97b2's alt-preset-standard mode. When I started using Vorbis over three years ago, I chose it because of its quality, openness, and enthusiastic developers. I still think it's awesome for streaming, but at the 160-192kbps range it doesn't hold a lot of advantages for me. I want to take more advantage of iTunes' sharing, librarian, and AirTunes features, and I can't do that with Vorbis files.

To faciliate this, from this point forward I'm going to start encoding my rips with LAME APS instead of Vorbis Q5. This will make them more usable once archived; I can play them with Foobar 2000, iTunes, and SonicStage. I'll still use FB2K for streaming, listening, tagging, and converting, alongside iTunes against a consistent, unified library of music. The same file will be transferable to the Nano, easily parsed and streamed by ICYG, and could be transcoded on the fly if I transfer it to Hi-MD (in a pinch, I'd usually direct-rip to Hi-MD's ATRAC codec). Vorbis will still be my "gold standard" for streaming.

One of my biggest concerns besides quality was gapless playback. LAME APS MP3s of my torture test tracks, Dream Theater's Scenes From A Memory, play back gaplessly without help in FB2K, so for me, that feature has reached parity with Vorbis. Another concern is VBR MP3 support on the Nano, but I've only heard skipping once or twice on it with MP3's. I don't listen to a lot of music on that anyways.

I've been impressed with AAC's quality as well, and it's pretty well supported by FB2K. The only things holding me back from embracing it is the lack of Python code (although I've read about PHP code) to parse AAC metadata and the current lack of support for gapless playback. Once Apple addresses gapless playback with their encoders and iTunes/Quicktime, maybe I'll look at it.

Opinions? Jeers? ;)

• 300ml Orange Juice
• 500mg Vitamin C
• 400mg Ibuprofen
• 50mg Zinc
• 510mg Echinacea

I've been taking this every morning for the past week and it's helped. I like to avoid taking cold medicine if possible.

The Airport Express combined with Podcasting and iTunes is enabling me to time-shift audio even more effortlessly. I've got the laptop fired up in the living room, browsing podcasts sitting on my upstairs PC. I'm listening to NPR's weekly Technology podcast on the stereo in the family room while I'm doing chores.

28MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 61m 09s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 23rd Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005/2006 season. Scott and I review the NFL wild card games and look ahead to the divisional playoffs. Each of us picks one away team to upset this week; listen to find out who picked what.

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

Credits:

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

Switch

by INXS

Anyone regularly reading Cygweb should know I was a fan of the Rock Star: INXS show. I'd been talking about getting the fruit of the show, the new INXS CD Switch, ever since it came out in late November, but hadn't found it when I would remember to look for it. Well, Melissa remedied that and gave it to me for Christmas.

I don't own any other INXS CDs, so this is a first for me. I really dug the song "Pretty Vegas" on the show ("it ain't pretty when the pretty leaves you/with no place to go") and its treatment on Switch is great. My next favorite track is "Perfect Strangers", which features a great sax solo. Make no mistake, this is not the sort of music I normally listen to, but this band sounds together. And JD Fortune was definitely "roit" for INXS: he makes it easy to imagine the late Michael Hutchence singing this stuff. He has the tone, range, and attitude that makes this sound like an INXS record. The last song on the album, "God's Top Ten", sounds like a fitting tribute to the original INXS vocalist. Suzie McNeil guests on that song and sounds great. "Never Let You Go" is also a catchy track.

Ryan's actually a bigger fan of this album than me. I had to burn a backup copy for him to play at his discretion. He really likes dancing to it.

Some may dismiss this CD as part of the Rock Star show's marketing (which it certainly is), but it's a decent album from a classic band. Recommended.

Watching the NE-Denver game tonight. Not a bad playoff matchup yet this season, although NE-JAX was disappointing. I would like Denver, Pittsburgh, and Carolina to advance to next week. I don't think the Steelers will get it done against the Colts, though. Prove me wrong, guys!

I've started to attempt to consolidate my ICYG back-end scripting, but to be honest, the stuff I have in place works pretty well. I've been listening to the mix a little more since I've been using AirTunes, but the project (which in this incarnation is coming up on its 2nd birthday) is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I'm the only one that's listened to it in 2006 so far. I'll probably retire some of the older material to freshen up the mix. I'm certainly more concerned with the mix itself than the backend, or even the website. I still agree with my reasons for hatching the project, but I think other sites/tools like Pandora and Last.fm have made the public side of ICYG a lot less relevant. I'll definitely keep up on streaming audio technology, but I probably won't be doing much more development on ICYG overall.

This coming Friday I'll be heading down to Fayetteville, NC to help my buddy Paul get computers and networking in place at his new neurology practice. I ended up recommending a Dell PowerEdge 830 server running MS's Small Business Server 2003 since he needed Windows Server and SQL Server to run the medical accounting software he needed. Plus, I should be able to remotely manage the PE830 quite well, given my skills. We're also building two Althon-64-based Windows XP Pro (not the x64 version, for now) PC's for the office. And I recommended a Dell Latitude D610 config to Paul for his main computer; he needed something portable. We'll have all day Saturday to get things up and running. It should be enough; I plan on supporting this stuff remotely without onsite help as much as possible. It's been some good (and rare) side work for me and I think I'm saving him a lot of money he might have spent on local consultants to get similar results.

34.4MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 15m 09s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 24th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005/2006 season. Scott and I review the NFL divisional playoff games and look at the conference championship matchups. We rant and rave about the most exciting and most horribly officiated game of the season so far, the Steelers' win over the Colts. We also take a look at the BDFL Top 100, which accurately predicted the NFL MVP again this year. And you BDFL owners should definitely tune in; Scott has a great scoring idea for getting more WR's in the top 20.

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

Credits:

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

My quick trip to NC was eventful - in good ways! I got to spend time with Paul and his family, as well as build his new office's network and do initial setup of his server and client computers. The flights weren't too long, but the seating was certainly cramped. Which brings me to one of Cyg's Theorems: An airline's smallest seat should fit their largest employee. ;)

The main fly in the ointment turned out to be that the Sprint Business DSL that Paul ordered for the office worked, but only one way - no external clients could connect in to the few services that I wanted to expose for remote management. This was very disappointing. I'm hoping we can get Sprint to provide the options we need to support that; I'm hoping it's just their "static IP address" add-on. What other need would there be for a static IP besides serving something out, right?

MS's Small Business Server 2003 wasn't too bad of an install. They put a lot of wizards in front of product installs and configuration, and I used them at every opportunity so that the config stayed as vanilla as possible. One weird thing that SBS had me do was to use "[companyname].local" as the DNS domain name of the AD domain, which I'd never done before. It look me a little too long to realize I needed to make the SBS server the primary DNS server for the clients so that they'd find the domain. But we got through it. The Athlon 64 config we put together (based mainly on Ars Technica recommendations) was speedy and I'd like to have one of those machines for myself!

OK, the Steelers/Broncos game is start. I'd love to see a Steelers/Panthers Super Bowl XL (sick of all the unimaginative "extra large" references), but I think we'll end up seening the Steelers and the Seahawks in the big game. Go Pittsburgh and Carolina! I saw a lot of both jerseys today in the Charlotte airport.

33.5MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 13m 15s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 25th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005/2006 season. Scott, Don, and I review the NFL conference championship games and look at all the head-coaching moves that have taken place so far. Next week, we'll break down the Steelers/Seahawks matchup and make our picks. Stay tuned!

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

Credits:

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

I either have a new phase of the cold I had two weeks ago, or I caught something new from my NC trip. Either way, my throat is getting quite sore...

Speaking of NC, Paul worked with Sprint and got the DSL modem (actually a modem/router combo, as we found out) switched to "bridge" mode, allowing it to hand off a real Internet IP to the Linksys we're using as the center of his network. I can now remotely administer stuff! Now to get on to phase 2.

I purchased a cheap Behringer BX600 bass amp today at our local Guitar Center. I wanted a simple combo amp for potential get-togethers where I might not be able to plug into someone else's setup. I certainly don't want to lug my stack of home-made speaker cabinets around. ;) It's a little noisy but it gets the job done. I was looking for the BX1200 model, but the 600 seemed plenty loud and it's received some good reviews for its price/performance.

We're planning on going to RoundTop tomorrow morning. I went out and got some cheap bib pants at Dick's today. On our first trip there I was wearing some borrowed snow pants that were bit tight. I should be more comfortable this time. Don't know if it'll help with the 'boarding... ;)

Our cable modem (rented from Comcast) appears to be way on the fritz. It's been disconnecting for periods of 20 minutes to an hour daily for the past few weeks. I called in on it a week ago and it seemed to behave after that. It went offline yesterday morning for an extended period, so I called Comcast again. They are sending out someone to check it out Wednesday afternoon, but in the meantime it appears the modem won't stay up for very long at all. It's now offline most of the time.

The Comcast rep went over their standard lines, like "if we come out and it's your equipment that has a problem, we will charge $50 for the service call." I told him if Comcast wants to charge me for this problem, they will lose a customer. For the money we pay for the Comcast services, I would think that even if the service call was bogus, they shouldn't charge me unless I exceed a certain amount of service calls per a certain time period. I'd also love it if they kept track of technically-savvy customers such as myself so that I'm not being asked to try things that I usually try before making the dreaded tech support call.

If the modem is replaced (as I suspect it will be), this'll be my third modem. I guess I should be glad I'm renting the modem from Comcast - what if a store-bought modem crapped out this often? (I think I've had this service about 4 years now, perhaps a little longer.)

Found this interesting. From Samuel Alito's College Yearbook Entry (via Wikipedia):

Sam intends to go to law school and eventually to warm a seat on the Supreme Court.

27MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 58m 59s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 26th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005/2006 season. Scott and I share our thoughts about the Steelers/Seahawks matchup this Sunday, talk more about the coaching moves going on in the NFL, and reflect on our first full season of podcasts. I share a fun sound bite in preparation for tonight's SOTU address. :)

Join us on Sunday for game-related online chatting! Visit the BDFL War Room to connect.

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

Credits:

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

CBS and NBC are with it. ABC and Fox are not. Did someone misplace a 1080i-to-720p converter?

Update: Looks like ABC switched to HD once the president came on. Switching it off now... I'll read the transcript. Less applause.