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GRAFFITI -- August 06, 2007 thru August 12, 2007 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable.     About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
August 6, 2007

1911 - Good evening. There's no time, but here's something I just wrote to a group including Jerry... Nope. Not gonna. Now I'm angry about the whole thing, and that's not a good place to be. It's the whole DRM argument that's got me worked up. Now, I've got to get the bills paid. Ciao!

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August 7, 2007

2119 - Good evening. Wow. Battle of the Species.

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August 8, 2007

2054 - Good evening. First, Happy Birthday, Barbara! Don't worry, I remembered earlier, and sent flowers, along with a little note (via the Intertubes) that read, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM THE ENTIRE MARYLAND CONTINGENT: INCLUDING MARCIA AND THE DOGS. ME, BRIAN, REMEMBERED TO DO THIS!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I HAVE 73 CHARACTERS LEFT. NOPE, 39. ERR, 30. OH, WELL, RUNNING OUT OF S"

Not so mighty mouse

In other news, my Mighty Mouse gave up on mightyness the other night. Taking it apart for user service is a one way process...

I'm deeply dependent on the rolling third button for most of my GUI activities, on ANY of the OS platforms I use. A mouse that doesn't do that is doomed. You can see how doomed worked out for that rodent, eh?

I get stuff done at work, but not everything I'd like to accomplish, in any given day. Firefighting eats up an amazing amount of time. Of course, where possible I take the time to script my activities, so the next time is relatively automated. The tunnel isn't a very dark tunnel, and there aren't any trains I can hear when I put my ear to the track. So, there's just plenty to do and keep myself busy being productive and useful. Now, to relax a little bit...

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August 9, 2007

No Post....

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August 10, 2007

0907 - Good morning. Well, we got everything organized, and put Marcia on the plane for Michigan this morning. She's going to a baby shower (sounds dangerous if you ask me). Last night I watered extensively in front, to help the front yard try to recover from the re-trenching. That, of course, drew in some rain, late in the evening. Not much else to report, so I'll be on my way. Happy Friday!

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August 11, 2007

1617 - Good afternoon. Marcia's at a baby shower in Michigan. I've been busy here. I spent several hours shaving the brown things that used to be lawns, front and back. Why so long? Well, I was cutting short and getting rid of the thatch, which means bagging. Stop, dump, reseat, start ... rinse and repeat. And in the areas where there has been water — near the front flower beds and the back raised garden — the grass was pretty tall. So those areas took a pass with the weed whacker thing, then three passes with the lawnmower, set to successively lower heights, to get everything down to level. Now, at least, Lucy won't get lost in the tall grass. There's more to do, and it's really quite a nice day, but I'm whacked. If it's nice again tomorrow, I'll do some weeding in the garden, to catch up with the encroaching darkness. I also need to harvest out the second season of Basil and make a boatload more Pesto sauce.

It turns out that one of the downsides of converting all those music files from OGG to MP3 was that I lost the tags. Untagged files don't sort right in a number of ways in virtually every music player. There's good news, though. The directories are named [artist_name.album_name], and the filenames are [tracknumber]-song_name.ext. So, with just a little research to determine the year of issue for the album, I can run an automated tool to put tags in each file. First, though, I have to deal with a consistency problem. Apparently I used to just do [tracknumber][song_name].ext. So first I have to normalize the filenames when I encounter a directory with files like that, by using a script I wrote called mp3nums:

#!/bin/sh

for FILEN in `ls *mp3`; do
   NEWF=`echo $FILEN | sed 's/\([0-9][0-9]\)\(.*\)/\1-\2/'`
   mv $FILEN $NEWF
done

That uses sed to parse the filename and create a new target name with a dash between the tracknumber and the rest of the file name, so that my main tagging script can parse pertinent data out easily. I could have made the main tagging script more complex, to handle things like that, or like missing track numbers altogether, but a separate tool isn't a bad idea, and easier to tweak without breaking other things.

Of course, I have weird directories with no track numbers at all, or with all the words of a song title run together instead of with underbars separating the words ... I fix those on the fly. Once the directory is in the right shape, I can call my tagging script, id3thing, with four arguments: Artist, Album, Genre, and Year. Multiword strings are quoted on the command line...

#!/bin/bash

ARTIST=$1
ALBUM=$2
GENRE=$3
YEAR=$4

for FILEN in `ls`; do
  TRACK=`echo $FILEN | awk -F'-' '{print $1}'`
  TITLE=`echo $FILEN | awk -F'-' '{print $2}' | awk -F'.' '{print $1}' | tr '_' ' '`

  TITLE=`echo $TITLE | capit.sed`

  id3ed -s "$TITLE" -n "$ARTIST" -a "$ALBUM" -c "" -k "$TRACK" -g "$GENRE" -y "$YEAR" -q $FILEN
done

Neither of those are safe for general use. Note that I don't even check that all the files are MP3's. I've written these for a specific purpose, and once I've done with them, they'll be deleted (but documented here, in case I ever need to remember how I solved the particular type of problem. Ah, that pipe through capit.sed, I was wondering if you'd notice that. It's a standalong sed program that I found online that capitalizes the first letter of each word in the input string. That cleans up the Title from its all-lower-case state of filename-ness. I didn't feel the need to reinvent that particular wheel, so I found it at this site.

It will take me a while to process all of those directories (about 570 albums left to do), but it's the right thing. If I caught that before I deleted all the OGG files, I'd have found a way to automate that in transition. But life is what it is. Now, to go stir that chili pot again...

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August 12, 2007

1130 - Good morning. The dogs are moping about waiting for Marcia's return this evening. I'm only not moping because I'm doing plenty to keep busy. Dog's only know how to sleep, have fun, and mope. They're flipping back and forth between options one and three. On the keeping busy front, I've gassed the truck, done the shopping, filled two propane tanks, and started a cake baking. In a few minutes, I'll do some weeding and yard cleanup in back while watering in front. That should be exhausting enough that I can nap with the dogs in the late afternoon, and be bright and fresh to pick Marcia up at the airport this evening.

It's a balmy 80° F out just now, nice enough that most of the riding clubs (motorcycle) appear to be out and about. I can't see a group of riders without thinking good thoughts about the Patriot Guard Riders, who "...have one thing in common besides motorcycles. [They] have an unwavering respect for those who risk their very lives for America�s freedom and security." Rock on.

Now on to my little contribution to honoring our troops. I have great pride in and the utmost respect for our service members wherever in the world they're posted. You folks are the best! My condolences to the families and units of our fallen service members...

• Staff Sgt. Fernando Santos, 29, of San Antonio, Texas, died Aug. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Cristian Rojas-Gallego, 24, of Loganville, Ga., died Aug. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Eric D. Salinas, 25, of Houston, Texas, died Aug. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Master Sgt. Julian Ingles Rios, 52, of Anasco, Puerto Rico, died Aug. 2 in Baghdad when his HMMWV was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
• Spc. Braden J. Long, 19, of Sherman, Texas, died Aug. 4 in Baghdad, of injuries sustained when his hmmwv came under grenade attack.
• Tech. Sgt. Joey D. Link, 29, of Portland, Tenn., died of natural causes at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, Aug. 5.
• Sgt. Dustin S. Wakeman, 25, of Fort Worth, Texas, died on 4 Aug, in Hawr Rajab, Iraq, when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations.
• Cpl. Jason K. Lafleur, 28, of Ignacio, Colo., died on 4 Aug, in Hawr Rajab, Iraq, when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations.
• Pfc. Jaron D. Holliday, 21, of Tulsa, Okla., died on 4 Aug, in Hawr Rajab, Iraq, when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations.
• Pfc. Matthew M. Murchison, 21, of Independence, Mo., died August 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device.
• Spc. Charles E. Leonard Jr., 29, of Monroe, La., died August 5 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when the vehicle he was in was struck by a rocket propelled grenade.
• Sgt. Bradley W. Marshall, 37, of Little Rock, Ark., died July 31 in Tunis, Iraq, of wounds suffered from enemy indirect fire.
• Spc. Daniel F. Reyes, 24, of San Diego, Ca., died July 31 in Tunis, Iraq, of wounds suffered from enemy indirect fire.
• Sgt. 1st Class Travis S. Bachman, 30, of Garden City, Kan., died Aug. 1 in Mosul, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations in Al Basrah, Iraq.
• Sgt. Jon E. Bonnell Jr., 22, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, died Aug. 7 from wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Spc. Justin R. Blackwell, 27, of Paris, Tenn., died Aug. 5 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered from enemy indirect fire.
• Pvt. Jeremy S. Bohannon, 18, of Bon Aqua, Tenn., died Aug. 5 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered from enemy indirect fire.
• Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Thompson, 26, of North Mankato, Minn., died Aug. 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Sgt. Nicholas A. Gummersall, 23, of Chubbuck, Idaho, died Aug. 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Cpl. Juan M. Alcantara, 22, of New York, N.Y., died Aug. 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Spc. Kareem R. Khan, 20, of Manahawkin, N.J., died Aug. 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Spc. Donald M. Young, 19, of Helena, Mont., died Aug. 8 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations Aug. 7 in Baghdad.
• Cpl. Reynold Armand, 21, of Rochester, N.Y., died Aug. 7 in Balad, Iraq.

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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