Books, movies and techno-babble
October 22nd, 2005 @ 17:13 by NormMonkey
From the weekend-update department:
A number of incredibly normal things happened this weekend (and it’s not even over yet! How can I stand the excitement!). Let me use many more words than necessary to describe them all:
1) Books and Movies
This weekend I spent more on books than I did on movies. And I bought three movies: Shawshank Redemption (tonight’s feature presentation), Girl Next Door (I watched it before when I once borrowed it from a colleague, but it’s good so I bought it to watch over and over… besides, it’s the Unrated[TM] version), and 50 First Dates which I watched last night.
NormMonkey recommends 50 First Dates for the following reasons:
* Stars Drew Barrymore
* Happy ending is not a fantasy ending; it has some realism
* It’s a great comedy/romance — better than The Wedding Singer, which I watched again this afternoon for completeness and comparison’s sake. To clarify, I thought Wedding Singer was great, too.
* Great character writing — I can’t think of any characters who played an average, run-of-the-mill part; they all had something unique and funny and/or charming, every one of them
* Drew Barrymore is really hot and it really shows in this movie
On the book front, I bought: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda, the first and second novels in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett1, and Dancing Barefoot by Wil Wheaton, which I read this afternoon. If you’ve ever enjoyed Star Trek: The Next Generation and you’re a geek, then pick up Dancing Barefoot or Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton and discover a little piece of life through the eyes of a fellow geek. Dancing Barefoot is packed with entertainment but it’s short enough to read in a couple of hours (and not nearly as expensive as a DVD, which would’ve provided the same couple of hours of entertainment). Just A Geek, which I read a few weeks ago, is longer and yet still full of entertainment.
Also on my list of books bought but not yet read is Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham, advocate of start-ups and all-round smart guy who kicks ass at writing entertaining and thoughtful essays. If you don’t believe me, go here and read a couple of his essays. A long time ago I read a Slashdot post describing a new essay by Paul Graham. Curiosity lead me to one of his essays. That lead me to read all of them, and that lead me to buy his book, which I look forward to reading.
2) Techno
This week I discovered Digitally Imported, a source of techno music. Allow me to describe a musical dilemma that this stuff helps with:
I can tolerate, and indeed find joy in, just about any genre of music. My tastes lean towards stuff that is either sappy, like love songs, or 80’s, or both. My favourite radio station is Majic 100 for those of you playing along in Ottawa. I’m much more tune-oriented than lyrics-oriented. I have built a small collection of just over a thousand songs that I enjoy so much that I’m willing to listen to them over and over and over and over and over again.
Between the Gnurple Collection and the radio, the music lover within me is satisfied. The Gnurple Collection is great for when I’m doing nothing but listening — walking, biking, driving, or Hardcore Listening2. The radio is good for discovering new songs, but it comes with the price of advertising bombardment.
However, there are some problems that remain unsolved: you need something to listen to when you’re not in the right mood to listen to your favourite music, and you need something to fill the silence and drive you forward when you’re involved in a task. Also, for situations like conversational or reading music, your favourite music is no good ’cause it pulls your attention away from the place where it needs to be.
That’s where techo fits in. The kind of techno I’m listening to is either classic techno, high-energyish sorta Euro-trance stuff, or slow chill-out techno (my favourite so far). The kinda music that has an interesting yet repetitive rhythm and tune and has no vocals. The high energy stuff is great for programming or scripting or problem-solving. The slow stuff is good for reading3. Either is good for conversational or background music.
3) Wiring stuff
So, with my intro to techno in mind, a new problem arises: in my old apartment, I had set it up so that music from my computer was piped to both my stereos. In this way I was able to listen to the Gnurple Collection in either room without having to pull out my MP3 player which often enough lived in my car or at work.
Here at the new house, wiring is a bit more challenging. I can’t just cut holes in drywall and snake wires around on the floor. It has to be done right and it has to look good. So far this weekend I’ve got the basement stereo wired up to one of my computers for music, which is easy ’cause I can use the suspended ceiling. Getting a pipe to my living room stereo is going to be more challenging: up one floor, and I’ll have to install an outlet in the wall.
Tomorrow I think I’ll cut a hole in the drywall near my living room stereo and drill a hole through to the basement ceiling. I’ll be able to run a sound pipe up to my living room stereo, and at the same time I can use the same hole to go upstairs to my bedroom, which is the next likely place I’d put a stereo (or even just a set of powered speakers, more likely). This is challenging because I’ll have to get some fish tape, some sheilded coaxial cabling (four channels: L/R for main room, another run of L/R for bedroom) and some junction boxes and RCA stereo plug plates for the walls.
3) Computer stuff
So, to get the computer (Yoda) set up to play my music, which is either techno streamed from the internet or MP3s played from the Gnurple Collection (which is backed up onto a HDD on the same computer, Yoda), I needed to do a few things:
* Get VNC running so that I can control the music from anywhere in the house via my laptop
* Get Xine and gXine running so that I can play the techno streams
* Fix some audio driver problems
* Get XMMS running to play the MP3s — granted, XMMS should be able to play the techno streams as well, but it requires a plugin that I haven’t investigated yet whereas the streams work with Xine right out of the box.
Anyways, so I did that. Now what’s left is running wires inside my walls. This part is gonna be fun.
1 I read the 25th novel in the Discworld series, The Truth, recommended to me by a great friend, and unless something really bad happens, I do believe I’m hooked.
2 Hardcore Listening is when you sit yourself down in a comfy seat surrounded by speakers or headphones, turn off all the lights, close your eyes and just listen.
3 I do have a collection of non-vocal Music To Read By, which is mostly classical and/or piano music, but my collection isn’t big enough for non-repetitive hours of material. I also like to listen to classical music when I read, or sometimes nothing at all, but slow techno provides a refreshing alternative.
