Tag: cd

concrete Picaresque

I just scored a used copy of The Decemberists‘ Picaresque. And it’s not even due out for a couple of weeks.

You’ll like the photos. They’re very silly. Chris Funk looks good as a tree.

Wild East is cool

I just sold a bunch of CDs to Wild East on the Danforth. I got a pretty good deal on them. This is what I bought with part of the proceeds:

  • Anne LeBaron / Rana, Ritual & Revelations
  • Badly Drawn Boy / One Plus One Is One
  • Devendra Banhart / Nino Rojo
  • Elliott Smith / From A Basement On The Hill
  • Kate Rusby / Underneath The Stars
  • Sterling Roswell / The Psychedelic Ubik

Avoiding Copy-Protected CD suckage with an iRiver H120

  1. Hook your iRiver H120 to the optical output from a CD player
  2. Start recording on the H120, and play the CD
  3. Stop recording at the end of the CD
  4. Transfer the very large MP3 file across to your Linux box
  5. Use mp3splt to split the tracks from a freedb track list
  6. Result! 😉

Now I can listen to Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers without hassle.

Oh, and if anyone says that an H120 recorder doesn’t have legitimate use, please see my field recordings.

busy busy weekend

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This weekend was so busy, I’ll need the whole week to recover …

Friday night was baseball. We saw the Bluejays beat the Texas Rangers.

Saturday was speaking about wind energy at the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers annual conference. There were some great talks, including one by Jim Hunt called “Can Physics Experiments be Inexpensive and Accurate?“.

Sunday daytime was attacking the garden. Being away in Missouri last weekend meant that it got a bit overgrown. Sunday evening was going to hear Shahid Ali Khan with Mast Mast Qawwal Party. Who would have thought that Sufi devotional music could be so much fun?

I also finally got the Beta Band‘s newest CD, Heroes To Zeros. Annoyingly, it’s copy controlled (read: deliberately broken for your lack of listening pleasure). Why, then, did I pay the Canadian levy on my MP3 player to exercise my right to make a personal copy for my MP3 player? Thankfully, the “copy control” is extremely poor, resulting in a slightly slower rip. EMI Canada sucks, but you knew that.

If you are wondering why there’s a strange logarithmic scale at the top of the page, it’s because I found my old Make your own slide rule source code. Until I get round to posting instructions on how to multiply, divide and estimate square roots with it, print out the PDF that’s linked from the image, cut along the line, and enjoy having two pieces of paper to play with.

yay, go nettwerk!

After writing this, I emailed Nettwerk about the essentially broken CDs they were selling. Very quickly, they said they could send me a non-copy-controlled one. And a week later, it arrived. I now have happy CD players, happy MP3 players, and a happy me, ‘cos it’s a good album.

Someone at Nettwerk hinted to me that they’re dropping copy-controlled CDs because of all the bother. Good.

Canada supporting copy-controlled CDs

Canada, though its Sound Recording Development Program, supports local musical talent. Canada also permits private copying of music as part of its Copyright Act, and levies a charge on recordable media to support this.

BC band the Be Good Tanyas acknowledge the support of the government’s program on their new album, “Chinatown”. Unfortunately, their record label EMI Canada has decided to copy-control the CD, depriving us of our rights to make a private copy of the work. The band is not happy about this, and ask you to complain to their label.

found sound

Hauling my bike up the stairs up the Queen St viaduct over the Don this morning, I found a beat-up discarded demo CD for Estella Fritz. Being an avid fan of the 365 Days Project, I hoped this would be a demented demo for some superannuated wedding singer.

On hauling it into the office, I was disappointed. It’s generic overly-angsty rock from Windsor, ON. They have a website, alas: estellafritz.com.

Dang.