After a break of about a year, I made tablet again today. It’s good.
Blog
-
spiff with a silent X
I’ve been playing with XSPF, mostly so I can use the XSPF Web Music Player. There’s a Perl API for working with XSPF (XML::XSPF) which works well, but is extremely short on documentation.
Creating a playlist with XML::XSPF is pretty logical: create a new track object for each new track, then feed an array of these tracks into the playlist object. It took me a couple of hours of fiddling about (and much use of Data::Dumper::Simple, the plain man’s guide to tortuous data structures) to find that out.
The end result is this:
id32xspf – create XSPF playlist to stdout from a list of MP3s with ID3v2 tags.
It’s intended for use on a local directory of MP3s, which will subsequently be uploaded to a website. It uses MP3::Info to do the tag work.
It has some limitations:- every file must have ID3v2 tags.
- it doesn’t handle file:// locations at all well, as their syntax is system-dependent. You’ll probably have to use the --urlbase option. For example, for Unix systems for local files in the current directory, I find -u file://`pwd`/ works well.
- it doesn’t include track numbers, as I didn’t know that XSPF supported them.
- it doesn’t create track artwork links, as this isn’t included in ID3 data.
One slightly amusing caveat about the XSPF Web Music Player is that it doesn’t understand the rate of some of lame‘s more amusing VBR presets. If you feed it files from the voice preset (56kbit, mono, resampled to 32000Hz), the results sound like Pinky & Perky …
-
pig out!
Every restaurant is packed out tonight – except Phở Vietnam. Then we realised that tonight is the eve of the Year of The Pig (Hogmanay, as it were), so of course the place was quiet.
-
a narrow escape
I narrowly avoided buying an old Speed Graphic camera on eBay today. I regretted bidding almost immediately; film is a pain, and I’m glad I didn’t win. It would have been a nice ornament, but nothing more useful.
-
I’m learning a lot about Jessica
Someone on the GO train is talking very loudly at their phone. It sounds like there’s a disciplinary hearing perhaps involving the caller, and/or a Jessica and an Elaine. There are a Steve and a Val involved somehow, and the loud talker is discouraged. There are appeals and continuances, and Acts (non-biblical) are being cited. It’s all very interesting, in the way that spectacularly dull things are. I can’t wait to get off the train to MAKE IT ALL STOP – gahh!
-
“boing twang”, as Arnie would say
I’m going to the Midwest Banjo Camp this summer! W00t!
(and yes, I’ve set up a Banjo Hangout account. It’s like myspace for banjo nerds.)
-
neat, but quite last summer …
Toronto Public Library Finder; nice, but I was so on that game months before …
-
can we have more CN strikes, please?
Hey, the GO train was (nearly) on time this morning, and there were plenty of seats!
-
whee!
It was the Banjo Special last night. There was much frailing, picking, and whatever it is that Irish Tenor players do.
-
I have teh spicy …
I spent too long in Taste! this afternoon, and consequently spent too much on good hot sauce.
-
an eco-meme you can use
Don’t remember where I read it, but apparently the war in Iraq has cost more than Kyoto-compliance would have done for the whole USA. Waytah go, Geordie!
-
first LED
Saw my first retail LED domestic bulb today – $14 at Rona. Looked more like a novelty than anything else, but it did have a stated 100,000 hour life…
-
this is not graph paper
The PhotoSmart has an ability to print various ruled paper forms: lined, todo lists, and graph paper. But what they print for graph paper is merely squared paper:
Graph paper’s the stuff with 1mm squares. Personally, I was disappointed that it wouldn’t print log ruled and Smith charts, but that’s just me … -
gtabloggers 2nite!
The GTA Bloggers will be meeting tonight on the second floor of Paupers Pub on Bloor, just east of Bathurst at 6:30 pm. Be there, or not.
-
GO Transit, you suck!
I discovered last week that GO don’t have a central announcement system. That means that unstaffed stations like Kennedy and Exhibition always leave their passengers in the dark. Plus, the e-mail announcement system only alerts you if the train is more than 30 minutes late. I think by that time I would have gone home.
No sign of that train yet …
