Keeping in tune with the previous posting, we may as well follow up with the announcement that the Walkman has officially ejected its last tape.
After retiring the floppy disk in March, Sony has halted the manufacture and distribution of another now-obsolete technology: the cassette Walkman, the first low-cost, portable music player.
The company announced on Monday that it has ceased production of the classic, cassette tape Walkman in Japan, effectively sounding the death knell of the once iconic, now obsolete device and marking the end of one of the most successful consumer gadgets of all time.
Yes, they were actually still being manufactured until as recently as April 2010!
Like most connected people in the 21st century, I’ve accumulated a plentitude of MP3 audio/music files. Like many modern people in the western world, I’ve ripped most of my CD collection to MP3 music files, and like many other people I’ve also converted my old cassette collection to MP3 audio files.
Like a luddite audiophile, however, I’ve not switched to this so-called digital camp.
Despite the ubiquity of digital audio files (in whatever format) and the devil’s walkman (iPod), MP3 files are by no means my preferred means of listening to music. Still, they are kinda cool, convenient, useful, comparatively small, and portable.
As a result I’ve accumulated a fair share since I started collecting them (as far as that’s even possible) in earnest after I decided to rip all my CDs during several boring weeks of being holed up in an apartment in 2001. Before long, I got broadband, discovered P2P and even managed to fill a few gaps (yes, I’ve been a naughty boy). Still, most sound like crap and all it’s done is make me go out and buy more CDs.
But on a positive note, a great feature of MP3 files is their ability to store additional metadata (ID3 tags) such as song and artist name, album title and track number, genres, and even “artwork”. Researching those missing and incorrect ones proved to be quite the challenge in the early days, and it was this how I happened across and eventually got involved with Discogs. It is the information within the ID3 tags alone that turns the MP3 format from background noise into a powerful and informative tool. Usefulness is key.
And throughout, Winamp has been (since version 1.x) the default player of choice. It was quick, simple, free, allowed editing of ID3 tags, and supported just about any audio format thrown at it — including MIDi and MODule files (from the BBS days) as well as Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats (although initially only via plugins).
All in all, Winamp did and still does what I need it to do.
In fact, as I write this, it’s playing a mix.
Yes, a mix. All the MP3 stuff that’s been collecting on my hard drives as of late consists of either DJ mixes or other free downloadable material by netlabels, or mashups, promos and freebies by aspiring or independent artists, or my own CD/tape/vinyl rips. There is so much out there — all for free and perfectly legal.
Digital media has arrived, and I suppose it’s here to stay for a while.
But how does one effectively maintain a growing collection of MP3 files, one that, as the owner’s tastes and interests change, becomes increasingly unclear and unwieldy? How does one keep track of everything?
In the beginning it was easy to keep an overview of a hard drive with a batch of songs on it: Windows’ own old file manager in conjunction with a great indexing utility called Everything and Winamp (now matured to version 5) and my own stringent tagging standards and sorting methods ensured that I always know where my shit is. No duplicates, no problem — notwithstanding that there were a lot less files to worry about.
As for playing entire directories or MP3 CD-ROMs, it’s the outstanding 1by1 Directory Player that has earned itself a permanent place in the regular arsenal.
So what’s missing, I hear you ask? What’s the point of this blog entry?
Well, if you’re looking for a “professional” review of software-based music players, look no further than this good and informative article at anythingbutipod.com.
Before anyone accuses this blogger of stagnation, thundering silence or an utter lack of activity, let it be said that we have been keeping ourselves rather occupied.
With loose tasks, mostly… lots and lots of loose items that need to get done before the next project can begin.
To wit, a few loose thoughts and ramblings: Received a few more tapes. Have started buying records again. Ubuntu 10.04 is a rather usable and mature package. IBM Thinkpads are solid and robust laptops. iHate iTunes. FreeNAS is an avenue worth exploring. I’ve learnt who my friends are. Max Normal / Waddy Jones / die Antwoord intrigues me to no end. Mark Zuckerberg did grow up to be a twat. Didn’t make it to SIGINT 2010. The new Star Trek movie was enjoyable. Donnie Darko was better on second viewing. And there are still some 100 South African record labels unaccounted for and unprofiled on sicDogs.
Progress update: South African discogs label research progress = 148 objects remaining.
This is pretty much what our tweets consisted of during the last few months: status updates of the current round of research and rummage through previously- and recently-added record labels in the discogs database, and pre-search of those that may be included sometime in the future.
Months of this insanity involving late hours trying to piece together the origins of an existing label or the forensics to determine the time and cause of demise of a label that’s disappeared off the radar can drive a person nuts. Conversely, it’s the controversial Google Book Search that’s turned out to be an invaluable tool for hunting down facts on companies that existed during the dark days of apartheid, BC.
Surprisingly, people have been rather forthcoming when confronted with straight requests for info; many, in fact, are truly thrilled to discover that there’s someone who still cares and is interested, and that’s always positive.
But sorry, no entertaining “fan mail summary” for 2009 either, no nasty emails, no complaints by disgruntled oggers, nobody wants to “touch me on my studio”.
And before we lose our minds completely, we’ll momentarily reroute power to other tasks and interests since we still have to deal with this bunch of artefacts:
So, today is that other hallmark day named after a certain Saint Valentine, a Roman priest who got arrested, stoned and then had his head separated from his body for the crime of marrying (heaven forbid!) Christian couples.
Charming.
And what is it then that we should give our dear loved ones? One of these perhaps?
Next up on the event calender we have that annual four-day weekend where we will all gather to celebrate a botched execution by painting eggs and pretending they were hidden in our gardens by a chocolate bunny rabbit.
What? Were you expecting little hearts and roses and cuddly teddy bears?
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture made up of words must be worth much more.
“Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”
In that case, here are my Twitter’s and this blog’s RSS feeds, and a dump of this blog’s current page’s text presented as word clouds.
Well, since a new year is upon us and stacks of new and updated post-it notes adorn the office as reminders of things to do and projects to complete you’ll have to excuse us — this world needs to get taken over.
While we’re rounding up what’s left of the current decade, allow us to reveal some statistics of nonsense within the vast hmvh network of shenaniganisms.
For starters, few folks like them rednecks no more. Very little visitors as of late… maybe Averell should sign up on the Facebooks instead?
Then it’s turned out that the most popular blog posting by far is the the pseudo-humouresque, quasi-investigative, and semi-critical-of-life-online essay called “The story of Moshzilla” which this year became a point of reference on “Know Your Meme” and, for a brief period, even was the authoritative source for a since-deleted Wikipedia article (we had nothing to do with either of it).
