Music Freedom... Today's struggle with my PSP and Windows Media Player

PSP -- apparently this stands for "Proprietary, Shitty, Platform".

Okay, I had a moment of desperation, and I got a Playstation Portable. No big deal, it plays games, I like games... and it plays music, which I also like... rather than get an iPod, or use my CD player, or play music ripped to my work computer's hard drive from my CD collection, I figured it'd be a good way to enjoy some tunes at work.

So, I'm at work, I grab a CD that I have, put it in my laptop, rip it to WMA, which the PSP supposedly supports in recent firmware versions. (I'm running 2.95.)

Some immediate frustration... I'm at work, and I have *work* to do. I don't wanna futz around. I got a compound directory structure that put the songs in a folder (album name), and then wrapped by another folder (artist name). I plug up the PSP with my usb cable, copy the folder(s) to the "MUSIC" folder and get ready to rock out. But the top-level folder shows the artist name folder with no tracks... and no sub-folder.

Windows Media Player 9 sucks... but hey, I'm at work on a laptop that doesn't belong to me, and I didn't consider upgrading to 10 or installing some better ripping software.

So, I copy the files directly to the "MUSIC" folder and find out that I need to change a system setting to "allow" WMA playback and accept some User Agreement to use WMA... fine... but then I have to connect to the Internet to get my groove on with WMA files, apparently to enable WMA playback.

"Man, now thass sum ol' bullshi', dawg!"

Not all of that is my fault. It is my fault for buying a PSP, and then not ripping my songs at home. Not all of that is the PSPs fault, either. They're a company, and I assume they've got to pay something to Microsoft to use their WMA format.

Here's the real problem. If I had a device that played files not encumbered with fees and licences and other restrictions (Ogg Vorbis anyone?) and had used my Fedora box at home to rip all my CDs, I'd be gravy.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'm willing to sit in front of my computer and gradually build up a collection of .ogg files from my CDs. But, what will play them? I could set up some sort of dual or triple transcoding scheme to make .ogg .mp3 and .wma files (and maybe a lossless version).

But what device do I want to play oggs on? I had a Rio Karma... but it died. I could get an iPod, and rockbox it. Maybe there's some kind of hack to play ogg files on my PSP.

The PSP is great for what it is for, but it'd be better if I didn't have to use an encumbered format to play music on it.

Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey

Okay, seriously... Mariah and Nick Cannon? I'm just envious. That is all.

Weddings...

So, today, my wife hits me up with the "weekend agenda". Lots of times we wait until Saturday morning to do this, but we've got quite a few things to make happen.... Julie's birthday celebration, various shopping, and arrangements for child care for my sister-in-law's upcoming wedding reception.

Anyway, the groom, Paul, asked me to be in the wedding party this past weekend. I'm happy to do it. His friend can't make it up from home, and I know it can be difficult to find the right person on a compressed schedule. I'm sure he was being pressured to go ahead and ask... In fact, my wife told me he'd be asking, but he wanted to wait for the right time to ask.

Paul's a good guy. He's sentimental. Oh, and he helped me assemble my kids swingset! Heh, seriously, I'm glad to have him as part of our family.

So, I gotta get over to G-Wood Men's Wearhouse and hook my self up with a fitting, drop a deposit, and hope that the clothes arrive in time. I'm sure everything will be great.

Oh, and a colleague of mine at the office is getting married. I mentioned getting fitted, and she said how difficult weddings can be. I sympathize. However, I sincerely hope that her event turns out as wonderful as it can be. She's dealing with lots of the same issues that my sis-in-law is dealing with. Basically people stressing over the details of the event, when the person getting married is probably more focused on the marriage and their lives together.

Oh well. I think we're going to have to take the day before the wedding off to get our house in order, lots of relatives will be in town for "the event". I think I'll see if I can work a 4-day, 10-hour week.

AOL Open Mail Access

So, I have an AIM account, which is a free, unlimited storage mail option. But, I hate ads, and I want some additional functionality, so I use FastMail. Fine.

FastMail allows me to get mail from all my other accounts, by acting as a mail client using the POP protocol.

I thought it was working, but I'm getting failure messages about 2 of 5 times. I get those failures as messages in my mail box, which is pretty annoying. For some reason, I was using port 995, rather than 110. Probably trying to be secure, even though the FastMail POP Links don't have an option for SSL.

So, I visit the About Open Mail Access page, to try and see if I should be using a certain port. As it turns out they have this to say:

"About Open Mail Access

You can now send and receive your AOL/AIM e-mail using any e-mail program, as long as it supports the IMAP protocol. You get all the great features AOL/AIM e-mail has to offer and the flexibility to read and send e-mail via a third-party e-mail client.

Note: IMAP and POP3 are the major standards for reading e-mail. IMAP allows you to read your e-mail directly from the remote e-mail server and the e-mail will remain accessible on the e-mail server even if you use a different computer to access it later. POP3 requires you to download your e-mail to your computer before you can read it and the e-mail is deleted from the e-mail server as soon as it is downloaded, so the only copy of your e-mail is on the one computer used to read it. Due to security issues, e-mail programs that only use the POP3 protocol are unable to connect to the AOL/AIM Mail servers."

Fabulous. I'm going to change to port 110, and see if the message goes away. I'm really getting tired of deleting the failure messages. If not, then I'm going to get upset that FastMail doesn't support IMAP retrieval.

I guess I shouldn't be too upset. It isn't as if I receive mail at that address anyway.

I miss my router...

So, I sold my wireless N router, thinking... oh, I'll just make a better "server box" that does that, and stores files, and serves up my printer(s) and all that such.

I made a SmoothWall box, and that was great, but I hated giving up a running machine. I tried ClarkConnect, but I still hated giving up a "big" box for it, and using "slow" hardware.

In the meanwhile, I just hooked up "raw" to my DSL, which uses a PPPoE connection. Fine, I run "pppoe-setup" in a terminal, and everything is gravy... until I reboot, and have to bring up the interface again by running "/sbin/ifup ppp0" as root.

I'm really starting to think that D-Link Wireless N / Gigabit router and the Gigabit storage box aren't such a bad idea.

Commit... failure

I seriously need to just promise myself to write one entry per day, no matter how small or insignificant....

There, done.. a fresh install of Fedora 8 Live x86_64 using a USB stick... and gnome-blog.

Today, we took Scott outside to play on the swingset. Took a few pictures, but they won't be up for while, because we just don't get around to posting/organizing that often.

Also signed Holly up for the "Everything" plan from Sprint. She's porting from the T-Mobile prepaid we used as a backup when she lost her (my) unlocked GSM Motorola RAZR. A bit excessive on the cost, but maybe she can use the extra features... at least she won't have to worry about running out of minutes. Thanks to my buddy Brandon for the hookup.

Still pondering dropping AT&T Completely, but DSL is awfully cheap, and I'm not ready to commit our home phone to Comcast, or drop it entirely. We finally got our vouchers for discounts on the digital converter boxes. So, now I need to decide which one to buy. OTA digital/HD TV is working pretty good for us on the upstairs HD 30-inch TV, but it's kind of crappy downstairs. Need to get the media center going...

Oh, and the Internet... pppoe-setup on Fedora is quite lame. I might have to build a router, seeing as I sold my Wireless N one, for lack of gigabit switching. Smoothwall has always worked well, but I hate dedicating a whole box to that. I'll probably go with the D-Link Extreme N one. I'm not sure I really want to do ClarkConnect either. If I'm going to go that far, I might as well just run full-out linux on a box for a server. Configuring Fedora doesn't really sound like much fun though... I've got a Celeron 700 with two 10/100 cards and a wireless-b card that works... sigh...

My son went potty...

This morning, my wife called me at work. I thought it might be something with my kids, but this message was definitely more positive than I could have ever hoped.

My two-year-old son, Scott, used the potty. Number 1! Yeah!

Last night, he just kept wanting to play around with it, and we were trying to go to bed. Before going to the sitter today, he used it. Then stuck his head in and said, "yuck". My wife called me after dropping them off and noted that he tried again at the sitter's house

Woot, pull-ups are official now! We got the first set from Holly's aunt and uncle. We were really just kind of using them out of convenience. Scott is now Two, and we've had these two packages of pull-ups since Christmas. We'll have to finish off the packages, and maybe get another, or just move straight to big-boy underwear.

So, now... the real question. what kind of cartoon do I need to get for my two-year-old son's underwear. Spider-Man? Cars? I think I remember wearing "The Incredible Hulk" underoos... maybe I should ask my parents... a poll on my blog might be cool, if only to reveal that nobody actually reads it yet.