Interesting Links for 08-02-2025

[andrewducker]

1. The world's most breathtaking abandoned sites: From Pakistan's Bibi Jawindi to Italy's Palazzo Athena

(tags:beautiful architecture )

2. Magic: The Gathering Cinematic Universe On Its Way From Legendary And Hasbro

(tags:magic games movies )

3. How Do Music Listening Habits Change With Age?

(tags:age music )

4. 'Being a furry is like wearing a superhero cape' - inside Scotland's largest furry convention

(tags:Scotland costumes autism )

5. "What I learnt about feminism from raising a son"

(tags:children feminism society )

Comments

[cahwyguy]

Re: #3. I tend to be an anomaly, as I still listen to an iPod Classic, with more music being added constantly. I'm at around 56K songs, and every day I clear the playlist of songs not played in the last 3 years (daily, that's 2.5-3 hrs of music each day). I do discover new music, but that's mostly in specific genres, through podcasts (Celtic, through the Celtic Music podcast, and folk through Mostly Folk and Woodsongs). I also discover new music each year through the Tony awards. So although it is new artists, it is in familiar genres.

[mountainkiss]

What are you going to do when it finally gives up the ghost?

[cahwyguy]

First, you need to understand that my iPod is modified with the iFlash adaptor (see https://iflash.xyz/), so there is no solid state disk, just 1/2 TB of memory cards. I also keep all other components up to date. I only have about 39-40K of the songs in my library on my iPod, as the iPod likes to reboot after that due to cache sizes.

I also have the entire music library on an SD card on my phone (right now, I'm using Syncthing to back up from my PC to my phone, although I understand I might need to swap the Android version of Syncthing), and I use the Gone Mad Media Player to play my music off my phone (although I prefer the iPod, as the controls are easier to use when driving).

I have perl scripts that keep everything in sync. You can find a full description of my setup at https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=16608

[mountainkiss]

I am madly impressed.

[cahwyguy]

I've discovered it is incredibly handy to have my full music library on my phone: I can go shopping in a thrift shop or used CD shop, and I can easily look up to see if I already have the album.

[andrewducker]

This might interest you

https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara

[cahwyguy]

Thanks. There are a number of these Digital/Audio Players out there, and (at least to me) they all seem to have the same promotional flaw: They focus on the hardware, and say very little about the device OS or how it interfaces to the computer. In particular:

* Does the player support "smart" playlists, and how smart are they?
* Does the player support both music and podcasts, and how are they handled
* How is the library managed on the home computer?
* Is there a way to import data from iTunes without loss of metadata?

Many of these solutions are fine for small to mid-size libraries that people play mostly by picking specific albums. When you get to the gigantic libraries (like mine), pleyed mostly through smart playlists, the models break down. There's too much work to drag albums to the device. To manage playcounts. TO handle ratings back/forth. THat, in fact, is one reason I went with GoneMad Music Player as my Android solution.

In short: They need to focus on the total solution, not just the player.

[andrewducker]

That makes total sense. I'm sadly unsurprised that most people don't think it through that much.

[mindwanders]

I'm actually more excited by the Magic The Gathering cinematic universe than I was about the D&D movie. D&D has gotten very bland and generic as it's gotten more popular, but MTG seems to have done much more to make their individual worlds distinctive and flavourful.

[andrewducker]

They have lots of excellent background flavour. I'm curious to see how they choose to use it to tell a single story