mpd on a local network

So I've done this more than once, and had to "recreate" my success. So I'm writing it down this time.

To access mpd on a local network, you need to:

add a line to /etc/hosts.allow, for example:

mpd:192.168.1.:6600

It could be that you should (?) restart the portmapper

/etc/init.d/portmap restart

And make mpd "listen" on something other than localhost. This is
affected by the line

bind_to_address 127.0.0.1

in /etc/mpd.conf

This line should be "commented out".

GMCD December 2008

Disk 1:

01. Nomo - New Song (from: New Tones)
02. James Moody & His Bop Men w. Art Blakey - Tin Tin Deo (from: Blue Note Trip: Lookin' Back)
03. Sound Directions - Dice Game (from: The Funky Side of Life)
04. Gerardo Frisina - Gosto De Que E Bom (from: A History of Schema - Tokyo's Dream)
05. Suba - Felicidade feat. Cibelle (from: Sao Paulo Confessions)
06. Randy Weston - In Memory Of (from: The Kings of Jazz)
07. Alice Russell - All Alone (from: Pot Of Gold)
08. Baby Charles - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (from: Baby Charles)
09. Yaw - Where Would You Be (from: Brownswood Bubblers Three)
10. Little Dragon - Scribbled Paper (from: Neujazz)
11. Beady Belle - Boiling Milk (from: Belvedere)
12. Elizabeth Shepherd - Sicilienne (from: Parkdale)
13. Yegelle Tezeta - My Own Memory (from: Ethiopiques Volume 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale)
14. Nostalgia 77 - Stop to Make a Change (from: Everything Under The Sun)
15. Build An Ark - River Run (from: Dawn)
16. Irene Kral - Going To California (from: Gilles Peterson Digs America 2)
17. Dave Pike - Regards from Freddie Horovitz (from: The Basic Principles Of Sound 2)
18. Sonar Kollektiv Orchester - Run / Fedimes Flight (from: Guaranteed Niceness)


Disk 2:

01. Waldeck - Jerry Weintraub (from: Ballroom Stories)
02. Elizabeth Shepherd - Parkdale (from: Parkdale)
03. Loopless - Is The Phone Broke Or Something? (from: Loopless)
04. Little Dragon - After The Rain (from: Little Dragon)
05. The RH Factor - I'll Stay (from: Hard Groove)
06. The Stance Brothers - Dynamite (from: Kind Soul)
07. Jazzanova - Dial a Cliche (from: Of All The Things)
08. Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis - Ain't Nobody's Business (from: Two Men With The Blues)
09. Beady Belle - Tower Of Lament (from: Belvedere)
10. Christian Prommer's Drumlesson - Claire (from: Drumlesson Vol 1)
11. Two Banks of Four - Dead Afternoon (from: Junkyard Gods)
12. Yesterdays New Quintet - Street Talkin' - Kamala Walker & The Soul Tribe (from: Yesterdays Universe: Prepare For A New Yesterday (Volume One))
13. Spaceways Incorporated - You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks (from: Radiale)
14. Alice Russell - Crazy (from: Pot Of Gold)
15. Waldeck - Bei mir bist Du schon (Dub).mp3 (from: Ballroom Stories)
16. Changes (live) - Nostalgia 77 Octet (from: Sevens & Eights Recorded Live At The Jazz Cafe)

Pynchon's "Against the Day''

So I'm several pages into Against the Day. And I've discovered the Pychon Wiki and the Chumps of Choice weblog -- these appear to be good resources... The moniker "Chumps of Choice" being some deformation of "Chums of Chance", I suppose.

My reading begins shortly after a second reading of Mason and Dixon (I first read M&D in 1999, I believe). And I now wish I had taken notes, or at least scribbled thoughts during that second reading.
So I'm hoping to do better with AtD.

Somehow I've missed most of the reviews. I read one in the Boston Globe perhaps in November -- it was alright but seemed to me to overplay the identification of Pynchon with some sort of "sixties-ness"; that identification seems to trivialize matters, and it grates on me. I enjoyed the review of Michael Moorcock that I just found -- linked by a poster to the Chumps' blog. That review appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and in part MM writes:

Against the Day is a fine example of successful marriage between the popular and the intellectual, between fiction and science.
...
Aldiss, Burroughs, Ballard and Vonnegut predicted, long ago in the 60s, that the arts and sciences would be reunited in speculative fiction, that the novel would not die if it could rediscover vulgarity.

Gloriously, demandingly, daringly Pynchon has rediscovered vulgarity...

Musical web-surfing

If you are a music fan of the right sort, you should look into Last.fm (http://www.last.fm)

My last.fm user page is here: Stencilv (http://www.last.fm/user/stencilv/)

Here are some regular web-radio programs and shows:

Royal Groove (http://www.royalgroove.org/) from Amsterdam.
Bending Corners (http://www.bendingcorners.com/)
Beyond Jazz (http://www.beyondjazz.net/radio/) ...Belgian...
NuJazz Soul (http://www.nujazzsoul.com/njs) ...from Portugal
Urban Landscapes (http://www.urbanlandscapes.org/) from San Luis Obispo CA

Also, Properly chilled (http://www.properlychilled.com/index.php) is a nice resource.

Random gnome2 desktop backgrounds

I found some "randomizer scripts" for the desktop background in gnome at various places on the internet, but none of them use the existing list of desktop images found in ~/.gnome2/backgrounds.xml.

So I wrote one that randomly chooses one "undeleted" background from that xml file and then sets the desktop background using that selection (the setting is done via gconf2). This script has also the advantage - over others that I have seen - that the user's customizations of the background image (i.e. if it is "centered", "scaled", etc) and the background colors are set, as well.

The script is written in python, and you can grab the code here (http://dizzy.math.tufts.edu/~george/storage/background.py)

Rising Tide

I just finished reading the book: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, by John M. Barry. The title more-or-less tells you what the book was about, of course. It was an interesting read; it discusses a number of -- sometimes suprising -- topics.

cycling near Boston

The greater-Boston area turns out to be a reasonable place to bicycle. On Sunday, I did a nice ride...

On the other hand, the street sign situation here is pretty frustrating: there seems to be a "New England custom" of not (always) regularly identifying main streets. Exaggerating a bit, I guess the thinking is: if you don't know the name of the street, you shouldn't be on it.

A year or so ago, I found some online discussion about this street-sign trouble, but now I can't locate the URLs. I did find the following related link, which illustrates related problems:

General problems with traffic signs --mostly in the Boston area

I Heart Huckabees

I liked this film quite a bit. You can read about it at IMDB.

This was one of the in-flight films on an Air France flight (Paris-->Boston) that I took recently. I'm not used to finding good films on airplanes, so I was quite surprised; it was enjoyable, thoughtful, and funny.

I note that there seems to have been a fairly large flame-fest in the "postings" at IMDB about this movie. So I suspect that some will not agree with my assessment.