This was then.

And this is now.

Beijing Olympic 2008

Moving house in about 2 weeks' time. Already dumped over 20 bags of used clothing and still have probably 10 more bags to go. Smaller house, cheaper rent, all good.

Feeling excited (deservedly so after emptying over USD7,000 from my pocket) for the set-up, I'd invite my 'friends' home to showcase my toy but only to find out that my set of equipment could hardly be classified as 'audiophile' - USD7,000 was barely enough to buy an ‘audiophile’ power amp. Not for a single piece of equipment? No, not for a McIntosh.

Embarrassed, dejected, I went on in pursuit of the true and sweetest sound for the next 15 years until one day I had to flee the country (stupid me again) and dumped everything I owned behind.

I have been playing through a pair of USD50 desktop speakers for the last few years now although I still have a set of so-called 'hi-fi' which I bought in a 2nd hand shop. At first, I was still trying to find a way to play music from my computer and stream it to my hi-fi because I thought the sound would be better and more realistic and for the simple fact that it’s not easy for an old woman like me to get up every 40 minutes to switch a CD. The simplest way to stream music from a computer to a hi-fi is to buy a Slimcenter which I couldn’t afford. I did, however, manage to find a software alternative to do the streaming after some hard googling. Having played with the streaming for a few days, I discovered that I actually didn't enjoy the sound of my hi-fi. I went straight back using my USD50 desktop speakers.

It’s not that my hearing is nearly gone. I can still hear if the notes are being played by the left hand or the right hand in Für Elise or A Certain Romance when a CD is played from my hi-fi. The problem, I believe, is the medium.

The delivery of Music has changed so much from my ‘audiophile’ days when people were still arguing if a belt-drive turntable was reproducing more realistic sound than a CD player. Those days when I would be willing to play a 30% premium for a Chesky CD were long gone. What we have nowadays are m4p, m4a, mp3 and wma (a few flac maybe but I’m not sure). Very few of us would mind when playing ‘Candle in the Wind’ in an iPod, Elton John would actually appear standing on top of the piano instead of sitting in front of it. The extra USD20,000 an 'audiophile' spent is to get: Sound Stage (simply translated - Elton John should be sitting in front of the piano, not on top or 5 feet away from it.) and accurate Sound Imaging (simply translated – John Bonham should be playing in the middle of the stage behind Jimmy Page and stayed there for an entire song instead of shifting his position sometimes 5 feet to his left and sometimes 3 feet to his right in the space of 5 minutes or the 1st and 2nd violin doesn't switch place in the middle of a concerto).

It is physically impossible to talk of these qualities in a flattened audio image. What was not immediate apparent to me, however, was the fact that the deficiencies of these popular audio formats tend to be hidden from a set of low-fi equipment. It’s crappy but sounds pleasant enough. A set of ‘hi-fi’, on the other hand, will lay bare the inadequacy of a lossy audio format and at times, to the point of becoming irritating. In this low-fi age, we should be happy as long as John Bonham doesn't appear to be drumming with a pair of chopsticks.

Here is my current setup and I’m fairly pleased with it.

These are no longer useful. Email me if you are interested to buy.

Check it out.

I have never been a fan of Microsoft because most of the things they did were Windows related and typically could not or did not interact very well with the outside world. Live Writer, at least, seems to be working seamlessly with my MT blog. It has taken Microsoft awhile to recognize that we, as customers of a machine bundled with XP or Vista, do have a choice to use non-Windows stuff.

Will do a test on my Wordpress blog and a diary in my localhost after this.

Cheers!

You may call the setup laid out below as ‘The Poor Man’s Squeezbox’ as it would be ideal for people who cannot afford a Squeezebox but still want to stream their music from a computer to their hi-fi or home-theatre sound system and to control the stream from any computers that have been hooked up to the home network (or internet if you want to make it accessible to the public at large).

First, my existing setup:

I have one desktop PC (let’s call it Bobby) and 3 laptops (let’s call them J, K & E) for my 3 girls. They are all connected to a wireless home network thro’ a Philips wireless router. We can play each other’s music collection simply by sharing the iTune library but control of song selections and playback remain with iTune itself, ie, if I hook up J to my hi-fi, I still have to get up and use the iTune (or whatever media player fancied) in J to select my song list, stop, pause or change its volume. It takes care of sharing but doesn’t get me any further in gaining control over what and how I would play my music. (just a side note here, Remote Desktop is possibly the simplest option but it tends to be an overkill because it takes over J completely and no one can use J once Remote Desktop takes over.)

Now, the ‘almost perfect’ setup using SqueezeCenter:

Requirements:

1. a server (I use Apache which imho is far superior and easier to configure than IIS that comes with my XP Pro)
2. perl
3. MySQL
4. SqueezeCenter
5. A media player (I use iTune. Winamp, Windows Media or the default player incorporated in SqueezeCenter will all work equally well.)

The main task is to get a server, perl and MySQL installed. If you are using Linux or like me who already have Apache, Perl and MySQL setup, you are nearly 80% done. The setup of Apache, Perl and MySQL are very well documented elsewhere and there are many excellent tutorials to help you get them up and running in a Windows box with minimum fuss.

(SqueezeCenter will have its own instance of MySQL installed. This is one big improvement as SQLite or any file base database will have a hard time storing a large music collection. For example, I have about 40,000+ songs and if I run amarok (the top favourite player in Linux) with SQLite, it will crash when importing my music library. It, however, works perfectly smooth when I use it with MySQL.)

Test to make sure that you can connect to localhost and run some perl scripts before installing SqueezeCenter.

SqueezeCenter is a daemon (or a media server if you like). It allows other computer to connect to it thro’ a web interface. I install it in my desktop, Bobby for the reason that my main music collection is stored in several local harddisks there and it will make importing my iTune library a little faster. In practice, it does not really matter whether I install SqueezeCenter in Bobby, J, K or E. All I need is one SqueezeCenter installed in any one of the computers in the network.

My local LAN address of Bobby is 192.168.1.88, J is 192.168.1.89, K is 192.168.1.90 and E is 192.168.1.99. After SqueezeCenter is installed, open up your favourite browser and enter the address http://192.168.1.88:9000 if I am at Bobby or enter http://192.168.1.99:9000 if I am at E (you get the idea).

SqueezeCenter web interface will warn you that it cannot detect any player, you have 3 options (to be exact):

1. Buy a Squeezebox
2. Use the default player (Read the entire warning message on the right pane if you are using the latest version of SqueezeCenter ver 7) and click on ‘SoftSqueeze’ – it will automatically install itself for you and is actually quite fun to play with as it emulates the actual Squeezebox using java. (Try this first as it saves you the trouble to open up a stream using your favourite media player. Once this is working, you can always switch to iTune or whatever.)
3. Use iTune (or any other media players) to open up a stream http://192.168.1.88:9000/stream.mp3 at Bobby or similarly http://192.168.1.90:9000/stream.mp3 at K.

After Squeezebox is installed and the music library imported under ‘Settings’ -> ‘itune’ in SqueezeCenter (bottom right corner), use the ‘select’ button at the top right hand corner of SqueezeCenter to select a player. Assuming I have launched a player in Bobby, J, K and E, I should see 4 players appearing in the dropdown menu. I will have to select the one I will be using (This can be done in any one of the computers.)

Say, if I hook up K to my hi-fi, I’d select ‘itune at 192.168.1.90’ from the dropdown menu, create a playlist or simply play any songs shown on the left pane. If one of my daughters wants to play some music thro’ her laptop speaker using J in another room, she would select ‘itune at 192.168.1.89’ from the dropdown menu.
You can expand what SqueezeCenter can do using plugins. Ver 7 is already budded with last.fm scrobbler and will scrobble to last.fm with minimum effort. Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Plugins’ and enter your last.fm details there. It also allows using multiple identities. I installed only one plugin - Lyrics is a handy tool to grab and display the lyrics of the current playing song in the left pane.

Finally, always take a look at ‘Settings’ -> ‘Players’. Here you will choose which last.fm identity you will use for a particular player and more importantly, the quality of audio stream. I use ‘highest’ in my wireless LAN environment and have found no skipping. If connection is made over the Internet, this may have to be lowered or maintained at the default level (which is at 9, lowest).

There is a lot more you can play with Squeezebox. If I want to play my home music collection while I am at work (assuming no one is at home to launch my SqueezeCenter for me), I will need SSH server and client. But if I just want to share my collection to the world while I’m playing at home, I can do so by simply replacing my LAN address with my WAN address (or using dynamic dns) and opening up the relevant port in my router.

Try this http://lastfm.mamafanfan.com:9000. If I’m online, you should be able to see and play my music collection. First, remember not to mess with other players in the drop down menu. Choose your own player to configure (your player will assoicate with an IP address of yours) . Secondly, as I have limited bandwidth, if it gets too busy or I suspect abuses of the system, I will have to close down the server. Good luck and enjoy!

The entire process was made easier as both my new and former hosts allowed shell access which enabled direct transfer of files from host to host. If I did not have shell access, it would have taken me at least 3 times longer to complete the transfer involving an extra step in downloading/uploading to and from my computer.

This is to document the steps I took for the relocation. It is not only for my own reference but may also help those who are contemplating a similar move.

1. First, make a note of the following:

Existing Web Server (this can usually be found in the web host control panel and is required because after the domain transfer becomes effective, it will no longer be possible to ftp using the domain name): web.old.com

Existing Web server: web.old.com

Existing MySQL server: mysql.old.com

Existing MySQL databases: db_1, db_2 … etc

Existing MySQL users: user1, user2 …. etc

New Web Server: web1.new.com

New MySQL server: mysql.new.com

2. Create domains in your new host. Note down the new DNS server.

These new domains will not become effective until changes are made in the Register. For example, hollymolly.com is registered in www.register365.ie. I will go to the register and update the DNS (typically in the form of ns1.xxxx.com, ns2.xxx.com).

It makes no difference whether to effect the change in DNS now or later after the entire transfer process is complete. If yours a busy site, do it after so that your site will remain accessible during the entire transfer process. Mine is not and I prefer to doing it right away as the change will take a few hours to propagate and my site will be up and running by the time the transfer is complete.

Doing it now will also enable logging onto MT control panel (in the new host) to make a few necessary adjustments by the time the transfer is done.

# mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database db_1;

mysql> grant all previleges to db_1 to user@yourhost identified by 'password';
mysql> flush previleges;
mysql> quit;

5. Backup the existing databases.

mysqldump —all-databases -u root -p > ~/db_backup.sql

(it is possible to do the above thro' phpMyAdmin but take note of the size limitation imposed by it. The shell command is a lot easier.)

6. Backup the existing domain

tar -cvf domain1.tar ~/domain1.com

This will compressed the entire content in domain1.com into a tar file domain1.tar. This file will be in your home directory.

tar -cvf domainXXX.tar ~/domainXXX.com

7. Transfer and Uncompress the files

Logon to the new host web1.new.com

ftp web.old.com
(use sftp user_name@web.old.com if possible. It is more secure. Many hosts are now phasing out ftp)

ls -l

get db_backup.sql
get domainXXX.tar

mysql -u root -p < ~/db_backup.sql

tar -xvf domainXXX.tar ~/domainXXX.com

This will copy all the content in domainXXX.com to your new host (repeat for other existing domains as required).

Almost there.

There is no need to delete the backup files. Move them to a backup directory as they provide a valuable snapshot of your web sites at the time of the transfer.

cd ~/
mkdir backup
mv db_backup.sql ./backup
mv domainXXX.tar ./backup

a. Wordpress

Go to wordpress root directory (where you logon to wordpress) and edit wp-config.php using your favourite editor,

define('DB_HOST', 'mysql.old.com');

define('DB_HOST', 'mysql.new.com');

b. Movable Type

Edit mt-config.cgi

DBHost mysql.old.com

DBHost mysql.new.com

TemplatePath /home/old path to your mt tmpl/mt/tmpl

TemplatePath /new path to your mt tmpl/mt/tmpl

Logon to MT control panel (after DNS change became effective) and adjust the new site path under “Settings”.

c. Gallery

I took the opportunity to upgrade from Gallery 1.5 to the latest version 2.2.4.

Note down the albums directory. Install Gallery 2.2.4 in a new directory.

Towards the end of the Gallery 2.2.4 installation, there is an option to import existing albums. Importing existing albums by pointing to the albums directory.

Remap the old gallery url http://domainXXXX.com/gallery to point to the path of the new gallery 2.2.4 installation so that users accessing my old gallery 1.5 will automatically see the new gallery 2.2.4

d. Others

Some software may require a different version of php to run (for example, php4.4 instead of php5.0) or its own php.ini. Using a different version of php than the one provided by your web host or using a specific php.ini can be done:

Make a cgi-bin directory in the web-root directory if it does not already exist.

Copy php5.cgi or php4.cgi to cgi-bin
Copy php.ini to cgi-bin

Options ExecCGI
AddHandler php-cgi .php
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php.cgi

chmod 644 $HOME/domainXXX.com/.htaccess
chmod 755 $HOME/domainXXX.com/cgi-bin
chmod 750 $HOME/domainXXX.com/cgi-bin/php.cgi
chmod 644 $HOME/domainXXX.com/cgi-bin/php.ini

Whether it's due to a lack of professionalism or sheer incompetence, they screwed it up again by choosing the wrong sound. And this is the official reply from the Pentagon:

“We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there. It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't.”

The movie production department in Pentagon seems to have made little progress since Colin Powell's presentation in the UN some five years' ago. A lack of budget?

Perhaps, neither the warship nor the 5 speed boats are more threatening than a Fake Empire.

Stay out super late tonight picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

Tiptoe through our shiny city with our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
bluebirds on our shoulders
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything it wants
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

My all-time Top 5:

1. A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step

2. The Doors - The Best

3. Derek & The Dominos - Layla & Assorted Love Songs

4. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

5. Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

My top 5 which I am not supposed to like but I do:

1. Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts

2. The Black Crows - Amorica

3. The Car - Candy-O

4. Paula Cole - Courage

5. Madonna - True Blue

Top 5 Most Significant in my life:

1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

2. James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon

3. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

4. Carole King - Tapestry

5. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

Apart from Amazon, Album Exchange is a good place to look for album covers.

Chang'e 1 and the moon mission.