The Arts: November 2003 Archives

I have been thinking of simple ways to play music on different floors in my house without schepping (and losing cd's). I came up with an easy and cheap solution. On the main floor, I put an el-cheapo DVD player, $37.99 after rebate which does MP3's, WMA's, DVD's, SVCD's, CD's full of JPEG's and CD's. Hooking that into the reciever first allows me to play the tunes, MP3's in my case, without the TV on. It also made me hook up the TV to the reciever, something I had been meaning to do for 2 1/2 years. While it's not nearly as slick as the gateway solution or the linksys offering it's way cheaper. The side benefit is that I don't have to move my DVD player from floor to floor depending on who want to watch a movie where.

For the upstairs I am considering re-purposing a PC with Freevo, but need to find a cheap and simple remote to go with it.

I finally tracked down a cassette tape I have been looking for. It's the infamous bootleg "208 in Concert" tape from my fifth grade class. The tape had been lurking in my box of cartridges and tapes for my TRS-80 computer.

I tried to make an MP3 file, but ran into some problems. I'll keep working on it. If nothing else, I believe my friend Todd can get the groove out for me.

I'll post the MP3 as soon as I get it.

Just picked up Sarah McLachlan's, Afterglow album. I don't buy much music lately. I rip all my cd's to MP3 as the music listening I do is on the computer. The annoying this is that everytime you stick this disc into a PC it tries to install software. I didn't ask it to do that. Then music match my current preferred mp3 ripper doesn't even seem to recognize it. Thankfully after a little playing I found that itunes and cdparanoia had no problems.

How did I like the album. It's nice but no home run. I have a thing for moody music sung by moody sounding women.

Today's music will be "Message in a Box", The Police, box set. Sometimes when I hear music that I enjoyed as a kid I think that it sounds dated. I might still enjoy it like Nena's "99 Luft Balloons", but it sounds so corny. The Police on the other hand see a bit more timeless to me. Perhaps they were simply ahead of their time. Their hair in the extensive liner notes are dated though. (Reminds me of how cool I thought this one kid Mike Shibilski was when he showed up with spiked hair reminiscent of Sting. He was the coolest.)