Imagine a thousand MP3 (or wma or other digital music) files which are either missing ID3 tags completely, or have incorrect tags. Absence of metadata such as album name, artist information, release year, genre and others makes it really difficult to organize a digital music collection. Complex directories-and sub-directories organized by album/artist do not really do justice to the variety of ways in which one listens to music. By genre, by artist, by album, by mood, by year and a thousand other idiosyncratic ways.
This is a notorious problem, even with legal copies of CDs, since most "free" MP3 encoding software tools do not have the capabilities to retrieve track info from online databases and write it while encoding the file. Also, many non-english language albums, and those on little-known labels do not even provide their data to CDDB or other online databases. Add to this mix the songs that you download from peer-to-peer file sharing services. What you have is a digital music collection, with highly unreliable/absent metadata.
Windows Media Player (and a lot of other players nowadays) let you overcome the organization problems through intelligent use of song metadata, allowing creation of such
playlists as "music from the 70s only", "1968 Beatles tracks only", or "hindi only" without resorting to complex directory structures in storing songs on the hard drive.
An elegant, free, open-source solution is provided by MusicBrainz. It provides a tool that analyses a music file on your hard drive, identifies it, fetches album and artist information from its database and corrects the tags in your file. In case of the song being absent in its database, it lets you identify the song yourself, and attempts to fetch data from FreeDB. Nice!
Contribute by supplying information about albums/ artists absent in their database, providing corrections for existing database entries, and approving other people's suggestions. Its free, its open source, and its distributed. I love this.
Money for MusicBrainz? An interesting "public goods" problem.
February 28, 2003
February 25, 2003
The Life of David Gale
Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet - a very interesting lead pair (which is not really a pair!), an inmate on death row- an unusual plot. I picked this movie after finding out that the theater supposedly showing "The Pianist" was not showing it (or any movie) at all!
Turned out to be a decent choice. Kevin Spacey was excellent as "David Gale", a philosophy professor turned murder convict. Spacey lecturing philosophy in the classroom is a perfect fit, though his exaggerated swagger after a few whiskies, and quoting Socrates in streets in his drunken state is probably taking it a bit too far. Controlled, but a bit over the top I felt.
Kate Winslet is likeable, in the role of the prototypical "reporter". All others, except the murder victim (Laura Linney portraying Spacey's colleague at DeathWatch), do not have a significant role.
The basic theme concerns the volatile issue of the "death penalty" that is the common penalty for convicted murderers in several US states. The protagonist, Spacey, leads a group opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds. Set in orthodox Texas, that's a difficult liberal view to hold. The chief argument is that a wrongful conviction will lead to murder in a state which issues the death penalty. How David Gale's life becomes entwined with the beliefs he fights for is the movie in short.
An up-and-down film most of the time. It builds interest and suspense in some sequences (most notably, the murder scene, and the videotapes). The mysterious truck following the reporter around from day one is too simplistic though.
Turned out to be a decent choice. Kevin Spacey was excellent as "David Gale", a philosophy professor turned murder convict. Spacey lecturing philosophy in the classroom is a perfect fit, though his exaggerated swagger after a few whiskies, and quoting Socrates in streets in his drunken state is probably taking it a bit too far. Controlled, but a bit over the top I felt.
Kate Winslet is likeable, in the role of the prototypical "reporter". All others, except the murder victim (Laura Linney portraying Spacey's colleague at DeathWatch), do not have a significant role.
The basic theme concerns the volatile issue of the "death penalty" that is the common penalty for convicted murderers in several US states. The protagonist, Spacey, leads a group opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds. Set in orthodox Texas, that's a difficult liberal view to hold. The chief argument is that a wrongful conviction will lead to murder in a state which issues the death penalty. How David Gale's life becomes entwined with the beliefs he fights for is the movie in short.
An up-and-down film most of the time. It builds interest and suspense in some sequences (most notably, the murder scene, and the videotapes). The mysterious truck following the reporter around from day one is too simplistic though.
February 20, 2003
February 19, 2003
East-West fusion music
There has been much news of late about the increasing "Bollywood" influence on entertainment in the Western world. The Oscar nomination of Lagaan in 2001, along with the bollywood-inspired revival of the hollywood musical, as shown by the hit "Moulin Rouge" and the west-end success of Andrew Lloyd Webber's presentation of A. R. Rahman's musical Bombay Dreams have just been the high points of the increasing influence of Asian culture, especially in the UK.
As far music goes, collaboration between renowned artists in the West and the East goes back in time. Most famous of all is Pandit Ravi Shankar playing at Woodstock. Another group that went a long distance in finding common themes, and exploring musical possibilities is Shakti. Shakti, with John McLaughlin, L. Shankar, Vikku Vinayakram, R. Raghavan and Zakir Hussain, is often credited with pioneering the east-west fusion concept. This group came out with albums such as Shakti with John McLaughlin, Natural Elements, and Handful of Beauty. From this original 1970s group, some members came together again in the 1990s, to perform a series of concerts under the name "Remember Shakti" with other greats of Indian classical music such as Mandolin Srinivas, and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. The albums are Remember Shakti: Saturday Night in Bombay and Remember Shakti: The believer. Definitely worth a try, if you haven't already. I especially like "Shakti with John McLaughlin" and the "Remember Shakti" albums.
While on the topic, give a try to these other bands that also play a very interesting blend of Indian/Western music.
- Mangalam is a band that's inspired by Shakti's music. Listen to a few MP3s by Mangalam.
- Karyshma
As far music goes, collaboration between renowned artists in the West and the East goes back in time. Most famous of all is Pandit Ravi Shankar playing at Woodstock. Another group that went a long distance in finding common themes, and exploring musical possibilities is Shakti. Shakti, with John McLaughlin, L. Shankar, Vikku Vinayakram, R. Raghavan and Zakir Hussain, is often credited with pioneering the east-west fusion concept. This group came out with albums such as Shakti with John McLaughlin, Natural Elements, and Handful of Beauty. From this original 1970s group, some members came together again in the 1990s, to perform a series of concerts under the name "Remember Shakti" with other greats of Indian classical music such as Mandolin Srinivas, and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. The albums are Remember Shakti: Saturday Night in Bombay and Remember Shakti: The believer. Definitely worth a try, if you haven't already. I especially like "Shakti with John McLaughlin" and the "Remember Shakti" albums.
While on the topic, give a try to these other bands that also play a very interesting blend of Indian/Western music.
- Mangalam is a band that's inspired by Shakti's music. Listen to a few MP3s by Mangalam.
- Karyshma
Interpreter of Maladies
A lovely collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. She has an amazing gift for observing people and reading their minds. Her characters are very real, in their lives, emotions and actions. She possesses the gift of writing elegant simple prose. The book simply eases itself into the reader's mind, seemingly without effort, like eating a rasagulla! The lyrical beauty of her language, well-etched characters and powerful themes makes this collection a winner.
The Real State of the Union?
With reference to the US President George W. Bush's State of the Union address for the year 2003, "The Atlantic Monthly" published a sepcial report under the title "What is the Real State of the Union?". It contains analyses of critical issues such as national unity, health care, wealth inequality, race relations, education, welfare and poverty and others. In stark contrast to the more powerful media (CNN-ABC-NBC-Fox News) that carries the strongly nationalistic, often jingoistic message from the president and his administration, the Atlantic series focuses on the fundamental issues facing the American people.
February 17, 2003
Closed due to Winter...
What a weekend! 4 days back, I heard it was going to be bright and sunny, with 40 F temperatures. Turns out to be a storm, with a mix of rain and ice falling over the last 2 days. My car windows look as if they are made of frosted glass. No amount of scraping, de-icer and such help. Stuck in the apartment for lack of transport... :(
I took a walk down the street. "Closed due to weather" boards on a game parlor door, a couple of cafes open. Empty streets, and more frosted glass car windows.
And I used to think weather in Houghton was bad! Check out the Winter Carnival at Michigan Tech. Check out the photos, and statue cams.
I took a walk down the street. "Closed due to weather" boards on a game parlor door, a couple of cafes open. Empty streets, and more frosted glass car windows.
And I used to think weather in Houghton was bad! Check out the Winter Carnival at Michigan Tech. Check out the photos, and statue cams.
The Warmonger
"Normally, the warmonger is a person with an aura of outspoken piety and an outstanding capacity for blending his religious beliefs with his secular and who, as was said of the Spartans by the Athenians, is most conspicuous for believing that what he likes doing is correct and that what suits his spiritual and personal wants is always moral and best for the nation."
From Picture This by Joseph Heller
From Picture This by Joseph Heller
February 16, 2003
Blog-Surfing
I have been wandering blogs the whole week, especially Indian weblogs. Wow! People out there are doing some really cool things. I have been thinking of "blogging" from a HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) perspective.I am not so sure about the "Work" aspect, but there certainly is a collaborative aspect to blogging. Hmm, random thoughts right now, looks like I will have to do some literature searches.
Notting Hill
Just saw "Notting Hill" after a while (a few months I guess). Julia's smile is alluring. Life's little pleasures!
And to think its a winter-storm-warning day outside!
And to think its a winter-storm-warning day outside!
Picture This
Just as I start my Blog,
I near the end of "Picture This"
Strange coincidence,
or is it really?
"I am the strangest of mortals"
Picture This by Joseph Heller... a hell of a twisted book...
I near the end of "Picture This"
Strange coincidence,
or is it really?
"I am the strangest of mortals"
Picture This by Joseph Heller... a hell of a twisted book...
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