cddb information [3]

where did I get the information:

On wikipedia I read the articles about:

• cddb


• freedb


• Gracenote


• MusicBrainz

Description of the cddb file format.
Java example to calculate the id.

MusicBrainz Homepage
Calculation of the MusicBrainz DiscID.
Don't use the old RDF based libs for new projects. There is a new RSET WebService and the used XML meta format.
On cpan exists a perl module, but it is in a very early development state.
With the libdisci (see the example usage) I'm able to convert the cd-discid into the MusicBrainz DiscID.

cddb information [2]

In the original post I was thinking about changing my perl script to retrieve the cddb data only from freedb2. Unfortunately a lot of times more than one version is returned. Only in a view cases only the genre is different. And the other thing is that quite some time the slang spelling (by the author intended) of a title is corrected. Also the punctuation is often changed to be grammatically correct, but different to the one used on the album.

Surprisingly the old entires in the freedb are correct. But unfortunately the encoding is not defined. The posters system preferences define it. Quite often these are different to mine and umlaut or other language specific characters are not displayed correctly on my system.

What I also realized was that MusicBrainz returned mostly only one result. The spelling and punctuation matched the one of the cover. Reading through some of the FAQs I realized that lots of the limitations of the cddb format are solved. Therefore I will stop using the cddb gateway of MusicBrainz and move to there full featured REST interface.

play music stream with mpd

So far I played audio streams with xmms or mplayer. Music on my PC is played with mpd. I'm a friend of using the same program for the same task. Searching for an solution I found a desrciption on playing a playlist with mpd from the browser.

For a test I added an URL by hand and played it:
mpc clear
mpc add http://85.159.184.42:80
mpc play

The status showed the name of the stream, Virgin Radio - The music we all love.

The next step was to create a playlist (m3u) with more URL's. Unfortunately mpd will show you the URL used in the playlist. Only after the stream was played the name is displayed if you list the playlist.

Using an extended m3u (#EXTINF:-1,1.FM - 80s Channel) didn't change any thing at the behavior. To be able to see the name of a stream and not only the URL before playing is possible. But for this a m3u playlist for each stream is need and named appropriately.

Using mpc on a PC this is not a problem. But from remote with a palm listing the loaded playlist and select the stream to play would be much easier as to load a new playlist. My be there is a better solution for the palm.

get rid of floppy and zip backup

Searching for some old data I realized it was only stored on a floppy backup. As only may old computers still have a floppy drive, this is the last chance to read and save the data. The other thing to keep in mind is that the magnetic field on the floppy will decrease over time. Not sure after how many years a floppy will still be readable. And if you think about the HD sizes today, you will not notice the data you copy from your floppies.

The same is true for the zip media I have. As I have much less zips as floppies and the drive is external I decided to get rid of this first.

• copy the data with rsync of each zip into a separate directory


• backup all this data onto a second HD


• calculate the md5sum of the files and remove the double ones

There is no need to spend (loose) some time and sort the data. There was no need to access the data for some years, there will be no need in the future. And if, the new index and search tools like beagle will find the data anyway - and quicker as I am, no matter how the data is sorted.

Why keep the data at all, if I think I will not need it in the future. Nostalgic, like the stuff from university. Reference, some mails, letters, etc. And as I said the data doesn't take any space. We still talk about Mega Bytes in a time where HD's start to be measured in Terra Bytes. Way spent time to reduce the space used for the old data from 0.1% to 0.05%?

backdoors in cryptography

Bruce Schneierin his blog about a possible backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG. As I'm no security expert its difficult/impossible to follow all security discussions. I don't have the time and the knowledge.

One commenter maid a good point:
most of the programmers don't have crypto background and will just get the algorithm, test cases and go on implementing it
Probably the only thing I'm able to do about this is to use only a hand full of security programs and select very carefully one of the possible algorithm they provide.

But what is with the programs I have to use e.g. bank access. Are I'm now getting paranoid?