Category: Blog

  • No More Google Reader: Part 1, Feedly

    Feedly is the first in the list of cloud RSS reader software that I’m taking a look at as a replacement for Google Reader (see the Introduction for the index of all the parts.) Somewhat ironically, Feedly might be at least indirectly responsible for Google Reader’s shutdown. It’s been around for quite a while, but…

  • No More Google Reader: Introduction

    Like many other people online, I’m a heavy user of the Google Reader application now left to find some replacement for this aggregator of interesting news that I’ve subscribed to. I know that Reader had some social features at some point, but I’ve never actually used them. There was a single thing that I valued…

  • A MusicBrainz report on Pseudo-Releases

    As an implementation of support for translating or transliterating the tracklists on foreign releases, MusicBrainz has something called “Pseudo-Releases.” They are meant to be used alongside the database entry for the original, real release to contain alternate tracklists. Unfortunately, many MusicBrainz users weren’t quite sure on when the “Pseudo-Release” status should be used, and incorrectly…

  • MusicBrainz contributions – Search result and stats improvements.

    I’m pleased to see that two of my MusicBrainz contributions have been merged in time for the 2012-01-26 server update, and are now live on the site! The first change isn’t exactly visible to the naked eye, but it should hopefully provide improvements in the Google Search result listings for MusicBrainz artist pages by providing…

  • Music in Review, 2011

    So, what did I spend 2011 listening to? As it turns out, quite a lot. This is the first year that I’ve had a portable music player capable of holding (nearly) my entire music collection, and I have a habit of listening to everything on shuffle. That said, a few things managed to stand out.…

  • Stuff I Can’t Afford

    Aw, man… Why did HIMEKA have to come out with a new album right now? himekanvas [w/ DVD, Limited Edition] If I calculate that up, it’s nearly $60 with shipping to where I am in Canada. Maybe I can convince someone to get it for me as a Christmas present? Who knows :) (Why yes, I am…

  • Expensive SD cards: Worth it.

    So, I just bought a cheap 16GB SD card today. My original plan was to use it as a replacement to the failed flash drive in an old EeePC laptop. (As it turns out, the SD card reader in said netbook is broken, so the plan failed.) But I got curious; what benefit do you…

  • Vala Bindings for libmusicbrainz4

    When developing Riker, I had a bit of a choice – I could either write (from scratch) a new library to interface with the MusicBrainz XML webservice, or I could create bindings to access the existing libmusicbrainz library from within Vala. Up to today, I’ve gone a little ways down both paths, and both have problems. If…

  • Mercurial Frustrates Me

    Maybe I’m just used to having too much power at my fingertips. Git was designed, from the ground up, to provide operations to do absolutely anything to a repository, right down to the most basic level of manually creating individual objects in the repository. Using user-visible command-line tools that can be operated from scripts. It…