endperform.org

I know this will make at least one reader happy. It looks like I may take on learning some Python in the interests of potentially expanding my career, or at the very least, my horizons. Should be interesting in that I have one book for Python and no real projects or ideas to toy with for now. I guess I’ll just write up some minor scripts to do things I already know how to do in Perl to get an idea of what I’m going to be up against. Unfortunately, I’m going to put learning Ruby on the back burner for now, but I’ll get back to it eventually, I hope.

There’s a bug in Myth 0.19 that deals with mySQL 5.0, which happens to be the version I’m running. Basically at random times, the backend loses connection with the database. And of course, when that happens, if I have anything set to record when the db connection is lost, it doesn’t record. The solution? Upgrade to 0.19.1, which I’ll do if I can find some .deb packages. I don’t know that I want to spend a ton of time compiling on my poor P3-550.

At some point during the weekend, I’m going to begin project ‘Merge the MP3s’.  My problem is I have a directory on the fileserver with MP3s, and a directory on my Linux partition on my desktop with MP3s.  Of course, a lot are duplicated, and the files on my desktop are for the most part retagged correctly.  What I’m going to do is whip up a script (Perl or Ruby) to go through a directory of files comparing ID3 tags.  If the tags match, the file is eliminated, if they don’t match, the file will be moved to the fileserver, overwriting the old file.  This is, of course, assuming that I haven’t changed the filenames, which in general I haven’t.  Once it’s done I’ll post it for public consumption once I’ve cleaned it up.  If it’s Ruby, I guarantee it’s not going to be pretty.  If it’s Perl, it might be ok.  I may just go with Perl and try it in Ruby later on down the line.

Well thankfully today is the last day of June. June hasn’t been a good month for me financially, thanks to some lost bills (no not me, the biller). Anyway, most of that is now straightened out and I can get myself back on track, which is definitely a good thing. I’m finally done with the computer room. I just need to take a pic and add it into the apartment tour gallery.

In more tech related things, I have two music directories I need to merge into one. I’m sure there’s plenty of file compare utilities I could use, but the issue is that the one directory has most of the ID3 tags corrected, and I don’t really feel like trying to re-tag the music again. So, it’s looking like I may end up coding something to take care of that, or else just go through each directory manually and compare them. Also on my plate this weekend is getting a copy of the original Half-Life (again, I know) and getting it running under Wine for next gamenight. I’ll have a separate post on what I went through to get that working. Mmmmm gaming goodness.

I got drawn back into the world of KDE again, simply because I really like amaroK to manage my music, and it works fine in KDE. Granted, KDE has always been my environment of choice, although I’m not exactly sure why. I’m just drawn to it more than I am Gnome. I pretty much have a base KDE install, using the split ebuilds in Gentoo to reduce the things I don’t need. Of course, Firefox is installed and running, however instead of using the version from Portage, I just downloaded the binary from mozilla.org. Why? Well, with the way Firefox now updates itself, I can have the most up to date version without having to compile it. Granted, compile times don’t hurt as much as they used to, but if it works, why bother. For mail, I temporarily have Thunderbird up and running until I get around to getting my mutt solution set up and in place.

I mentioned amaroK earlier. It’s running great. I have the latest version running, and it does what I need. The one feature I really like is the ability to go out to Musicbrainz and attempt to fill in the tag using an audio fingerprint. I find that very handy. Next step is to get the iPod syncing with it, and I will be all set. Of course, I now need to reconfigure Xbox Media Center to point to the new music share so I can access my music collection. One last piece is finding something (a script or program) which can mass-rename MP3s so I can get the filenames standardized.

Lately I’ve had a dry spell as far as project ideas go. Castgrab is long since dead, and I really haven’t come up with anything else to sit down and code. I do want to find something to code, simply because I don’t want to lose what little skill I have as far as PHP goes. Perl isn’t so bad since I am exposed to it daily at work, but I’m far from an expert on it. My interest in Python and Ruby are growing, too, so I’ll have to see if I can dig up some projects.