The Sect of Rama

Some time ago, when I set up a Slug as my home NAS, I thought my file organization woes would be over. Problem is I'm paranoid about my one attached harddrive failing and taking all my precious files with it (consisting largely of photos and music). So instead, I'd keep the local copies and sync it with the NAS. Problem being, not all my machines have sufficient storage to do that- so over time, I ended up with two copies of everything somewhere, spread out over (1) the NAS backup, and (2) the original on one of three PCs. Chaos.

Looking around my cluttered office, I see:
- a Windows/Ubuntu laptop with a 40G HD and an attached 200GB drive over firewire.
- a Windows/Solaris desktop with two internal 320GB drives, unmirrored.
- an OSX laptop with an internal 80GB drive.
- A Slug with an attached 320GB USB enclosure.

I've got a business trip to Prague shortly, and sorting out what I want on the iPod for the long flight has brought this issue to a head. (the setup would consist of a pair of Etymotic ER6's plus a MINT amp my brother built for me, but I'm afraid of getting a cavity search if/when they see the homebrewed amplifier, so its staying home.)

In an effort to organize the music mess prior to reloading the iPod, I'm currently running SyncToy on the windows box, snarfing files over Firewire and stuffing them down the net to the Slug (man I wish it was all Gig net), while on the desktop I'm running SharePod, which is backing up all the music from the iPod also over the net to the Slug. It will probably be completed in roughly 3 hours. Oof.

So whats the right answer? Hang another USB drive off the Slug and RAID them, replace the whole deal with a Terastation Pro, something else? I dunno yet, but whatever it is, I'm already thinking I need to build out another USB enclosure and do a off-site backup via sneakernet or regular rsync. (A thorough home robbery or fire would wipe out the only copy of a good portion of my data.)

Maybe I'm getting lazy, but this sort of problem used to be fun, now its just annoying...

No Fat Clips is a great blog of short music and other videos. Now if only I could get Quicktime to work well on my various platforms-- some things don't even play with the latest version on Windows. (you listening Apple??)

Levi shared this awesome music video from Hifana (probably 'cause I post stuff like this.)

I dig the waves, reminiscent of Hokusai's Great Wave. More misc. vids can be found here.

This is No Game, by Jack Handy.

Via Roy this morning, MC Hammer Visits Google. Closest I ever got to The Hammer was hiking by one of his old mansions in Fremont, of all places. Whenever I did that hike, I wondered if there was a secret room that was filled to the ceiling with parachute pants...

Check out this cool visual of the history of sampling music, dating back to the mid 70's. Just click on an album, and it shows you which songs were sampled. Reminiscent of musicplasma.

Plantage is the latest (non-interactive) music video done by Analogik, the creator of Samorost.

Dunno if I'd want my music video done in this format- the audio sounded fairly washed out- I would hope that's due to the format, and not how the band really sounds. But the video itself was the trippy surreal stuff I've come to expect from Analogik. Glad to see they're still producing stuff...

The November issue of Wired looks to have been released with a CD of 16 tracks all under the Creative Commons license. Sweet stuff.

Beastie Boys / Now Get Busy
David Byrne / My Fair Lady
Zap Mama / Wadidyusay?
My Morning Jacket / One Big Holiday
Spoon / Revenge!
Gilberto Gil / Oslodum
Dan the Automator / Relaxation Spa Treatment
Thievery Corporation / DC 3000
Le Tigre / Fake French
Paul Westerberg / Looking Up in Heaven
Chuck D with Fine Arts Militia / No Meaning No
The Rapture / Sister Saviour (Blackstrobe Remix)
Cornelius / Wataridori 2
Danger Mouse & Jemini / What U Sittin' On?
DJ Dolores / Oslodum 2004
Matmos / Action at a Distance

Is this the beginning of a new marketing technique that will ultimately squish the RIAA?

If you're a fan of DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, check out The Grey Video making the rounds this morning. (if you haven't heard the Grey Album yet, go Torrent it or let me know. I...err... might know someone...)

Better do it post-haste, before the video gets pulled by The Man.

Stuff like this belongs under the Creative Commons License. If anything, it will drive record sales for the White Album and Black Album. Sheesh.

Results 1 - 10 of about 654,000 for stupid record industry. (0.25 seconds) 

musicplasma is a music visual search engine. The closer the artists are, musically speaking, the closer to each other they will be displayed on the screen. Each artist consists of a circle, or "halo", the larger it is, the more popular they are- along with vectors to similar artists, etc.

The data is very similar to also-bought relations from Amazon, although for the limited searches I did, if anything there were a bit fewer relations. Its an appealing way of sorting through the Artists though, especially if you want to take several hops around while visually preserving the connection from where you started.

If you find something you want to buy, be sure to click on the album cover on the left so they get the referral points from Amazon.

Looptracks is an interactive music and visual experience. Ya, it sounds cheesy, but you can get some sweet rhythms going under the right circumstances.