Jefflog

Just before Maggie was born, we bought a video camera, and have been recording her ever since. No doubt you’ve seen some of the better video clips on the sidebar. Naturally, we shoot much more footage than that; we’ve filled up 12 DVDs of home movies so far, and that’s just the edited footage.

On each of these DVD’s, of which we make copies to send to family members, we include a photo slideshow of the pictures taken during that period, set to music. On the latest DVD (volume 12), the slideshow was good enough that I wanted to share it with my readers. If you are so inclined, you may download the Quicktime video. It’s about 10 megabytes and doesn’t stream, so expect to wait a while before it starts playing.

The music in the slideshow is a piece called The Chase by The Wiggles. We downloaded (legally!) their Yummy Yummy album a few months ago, and Maggie loves it a lot. She likes to dance to most songs, and after each one is over, she exclaims “More!” (in a very sweet tone).

The Wiggles are surprisingly good, mostly original pieces that are simple but not dumb. They’re much better than most “children’s music” you find on the market today, which tend to be uninspired renditions of children’s classic songs. (Barney the Dinosaur, I’m looking straight at you.) The Wiggles seem to be good enough musicians on their own, but they’ve used the niche of kid-oriented themes and songs mostly under 2 minutes. Despite this, I find myself liking some of the songs almost as much as Maggie does. It’s hard not to sing along to Hot Potatoes or Fruit Salad. If you’ve got a toddler in the house, I highly recommend them.

Within this post found on Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen offers up some interesting advice.

In general I favor approaches which shake us up, and force us to overcome our preconceptions and status quo biases. If you are at a very good restaurant, you often do best by ordering the course you think you are least likely to enjoy. I do not, however, recommend going to the restaurant you think you are least likely to enjoy. The trick is to keep part of your filter steady and strong, while, at the same time, inverting some portions of your expectations. I’ve never gardened, or wanted to garden, but the best book on gardening in Borders still might be worth my while. Or pick a genre of music you dislike — the more rabidly the better — and go buy what is supposed to be the best CD from that genre.

I love music, but there are truly more genres that I cannot stand than ones I love. Hong suggested that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate even the best CantoPop album. Rap/Hip-Hop is another genre I have a hard time I’d imagine I’d enjoy. But maybe I haven’t truly tried to listen to the best of what those genres have to offer.

So, I’ll leave the question up to my readers: for a given genre, what do you think is the “best” album in that genre?

I’ll leave you with a couple of suggestions from my favorite genres.

• Metal: Blackwater Park by Opeth
• Progressive Rock: In Absentia by Porcupine Tree
• Electronic: Classical Mushroom by Infected Mushroom

I’m checking out eMusic.com today and am so far enjoying what I see. $10 a month gets me 40 song downloads, all in the MP3 format with no DRM attached.

What’s the catch, you might ask? Aside from the downloads being 128Kbps MP3’s (which sound okay but definitely not as good as the original CD), all of the albums come from independent labels.  Don’t go looking for the big names here. Although you can find some famous musicians on the site, most of the albums are from smaller outfits. This doesn’t bother me, since I generally listen to stuff out of the mainstream anyway, and there seems to be enough there I enjoy. I’m listening to Echolyn’s The End is Beautiful right now and loving it.

Oh, and if you’re using Linux, you’re out of luck; you have to use a special downloader application that only runs on Mac and Windows. That’s a shame, although once you download your tracks, at least you can transfer them to your Linux desktop and listen to them now that the MP3 codec has been licensed for GStreamer.

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Update: I have learned that the MP3’s that you get aren’t 128Kbps, but have a variable bit rate that is typically between 160Kbps and 220Kbps. They are also encoded using the LAME encoder, which is generally considered to be the encoder with the best quality. As a result, the files do sound quite good.

I hadn’t heard of the band Steadman before, but I’m listening to a few of the 130 songs they’ve made available on-line under a Creative Commons license. So far, I’m liking what I hear.

If you’re looking for some new Internet radio stations, check out Tuner2 for a growing list of stations broadcasting in aacPlus format, which promises higher quality at a lower bitrate than MP3 streams. You’ll need the VLC Media Player (all platforms), or Winamp (Windows only) to listen to these stations.

From what I can tell, the 48Kbs aacPlus streams are as good if not slightly better than the 128Kbs MP3 streams. Most of the stations are unfortunately broadcasting variations on electronic EuroDance, but there are a variety of genres and the list seems to grow by the week. Two of my favorites include Radio Paradise and The Current (Minnesota Public Radio).

A couple of nights ago, I was working late and tuned into Minnesota Public Radio on my computer, and heard a song I really liked from a band with the odd name of Death From Above 1979. I decided to check out clips of other songs from the band via the iTunes Music Store, and when I realized that the song I had heard was the only one I liked, I opted to buy the song from the iTunes Music Store (note: URL will load up in iTunes if you have it installed).

Now, after reading Cory Doctorow’s rant against DRM in iTunes, I’m having second thoughts about my impulsive purchase. Because of the DRM (that’s Digital Rights Management, for those unaware) embedded in the file, it is Apple, not me, who controls how much and where I can listen to the song. While the current restrictions don’t seem too restrictive at the moment (can only burn it to CD 7 times, and only five people on my local network can listen in per day, neither actions of which I will likely do), they have the ability to change that in the future. If Apple wanted to put out a version of iTunes that caused all of my songs to stop playing after 100 listens, or say, expire after 1 year, they could do that.

No, I don’t think they will go anywhere near that extreme, but the point to be made is that they can restrict the music that you’ve already purchased under previous terms, and in fact they have done this in the past. And, since I don’t back up my music directory (as it largely consists of 15GB of files I ripped from CDs I already own), if my hard drive ever goes kaflooey, I’ve lost the song. Compare this to purchasing a CD, which I can play as much as I want, copy as much as I need, encode into any format my heart desires in full CD fidelity, and short of losing the CD or the CD becoming obsolete, I’ll always be able to do these things with it.

You could argue that my purchase was just 99¢, and you’d be right; I won’t lose any sleep should the song be lost. And in this case, perhaps it is better than spending $15 on the CD version and only enjoying one song. But you better believe that in the future, I’ll think twice before making any purchases from the iTunes Music Store.

Here is a list of all of the albums I’ve downloaded on file sharing networks that I like and haven’t yet bought a copy, but should get around to do so:

• Among the Living, by Anthrax
• …And Then There Were Three…, by Genesis
• Blackwater Park, by Opeth
• Deliverance, by Opeth
• I’m the Supervisor, by Infected Mushroom
• The Light, by Spock’s Beard
• Signify, by Porcupine Tree

I’ve downloaded other music, but most get deleted soon after listening to them once or twice; these are the only ones solidly worth listening to.

I just got the new Neal Morse album One in the mail today, four days before its release date. Yay! I’m importing it into iTunes and listening to it now.

According to the results in a poll regarding musical preferences by IT professionals, I most fit the profile of a Linux Developer. Oh, wait, I am! In fact, according to these results, I could be just about anything except for a MSDE or a database administrator.

Last year, I managed to pick up the excellent double-album Testimony by Neal Morse, which is such a stupendous album that it’s 123 minute total running time goes by too quickly. It’s hands-down the best Christian album I’ve ever listened to. Excellent musicianship all around, and lyrics that are honest and extremely personal. When he sings “I never felt so out of place in all my life” describing his visit to a friend’s church in Sing It High, or “I am broken” in I Am Willing, I know it’s coming from the heart because I’ve felt those same feelings myself at times. The fact that Mike Portnoy, of Dream Theater fame and possibly the best rock drummer performing today, plays drums on the entire album makes the album even more special.

Now I hear that they’re back in the studio recording another album! See Neal Morse’s online diary for more details about the new project.