So I think that my next real.. project of sorts will be to write an MPD client. MPD is a pretty neat music manager I found a few days ago. A fair amount of Linux programs and services run on the client/server idea, most notably X the graphical display server (what draws the pretty graphics and frees you from the “horrors” of a command-line only interface). This seems like an odd idea for a music manager and player, but it’s a neat way of approaching it and I think it does a great job. The obvious connotations of “client/server” are a user connecting to a remote box from his home desktop or whatever. I do not know if this was the express purpose of MPD, but I assume that it would work very well if one had a multimedia computer hooked up to their stereo/TV (I do not have such a computer, so I do not know). Using another computer in the house, one more easily accessible, they could just connect to the server using one of the many clients available and change the music playing from the stereo in the other room. All fine and dandy, but fairly useless to me. Within the past few months, Amarok has started to shit out on me. I don’t know what it is. I got rid of all my user settings and ran it fresh and it still had terrible slowdown and hanging issues when doing things such as loading playlists (some of mine are huge, yeah) or switching tracks (that should NOT happen). I’ve tried Rhythm Box, Audacious (which seems to be a prettification of xmms, which is basically a winamp clone; a.k.a. amazing), Exaile, etc. None of them ever felt… right.
I have always been of the minimalistic point of view. This is evident in my no icons on the desktop belief as well as my attempt to use programs that take up the least amount of resources. Amarok did get a bit heavy at times, but it was really nice so I kept using it. That is until I just got fed up with its performance (it’s really a good piece of software, no one else seems to be having the same problems as me). Well, I haven’t really listened to music much on my computer in the past few months. Until I found MPD the other day. Because it’s server/client, it’s inherently light on resources. The server end runs as a daemon, it plays your music and manages your collection in the background. When I want to switch tasks or load a playlist, I can load up one of the quick-launching client programs (I currently switch between a nice command-line one and a Rhythm Boxish GUI one), load a new playlist/song, and close it and everything is great. This also frees up a spot in the system tray that would have an icon for the program (though I just installed an XFCE panel MPD controller that takes up like quadruple the visual space a system tray icon would). It really is a neat way to implement a music manager. There’s also a webclient that I am interested in trying that will stream my music to another computer over the internet. That’ll be nice when I’m back at the reg office next semester.
So, basically, with the little bit of python I have done for extending the Mumbles Pidgin plugin, I decided that I should learn more about the language ad use it to develop a client for MPD. I could then stick in what features I want and make it exactly how I want it; I could even make it send dbus messages and intercept them with Mumbles! I bet the hardest part will be figuring out GUI stuff. It’ll be interesting getting used to Python’s method of Object Oriented programming, I’m sure, but once you’ve done that stuff once, you’ve really done it a million times (I’ll probably end up eating these words).
So, with the recent discovery that my graphics card no longer displays low resolutions (boot screen, Linux TTYs, etc.), the possibility of my computer failing has suddenly become very real. While I really do not have the money for a replacement (nor should I spend the money on one in the near future), I should at least ready a list of parts so that I can make a sudden order just incase AndrAIa decides to call it poops. What? Yeah, I could just buy a new video card, but I’d essentially be wasting money. Why should I buy a graphics card for a deprecated interface? AGP cards are no longer the standard. It’s all about PCI-X. But to get PCI-X, I’d have to upgrade my motherboard and with a new motherboard comes a new everything else. I wanna go something midrange, sorta like David’s which was a total cost of $450 while reusing as much as possible from his old machine. Mine’ll probably cost maybe $100-$300 more than his due to the fact that I will be reusing VERY little from AndrAIa. Andy originally cost $850 when I bought her four or five years ago. I’d say she was fairly high-end at the time. She’s served me well, and I hope she would continue to do so even after I build Ophiuchus (which I hope you’ll remember is the thirteenth zodiac, because I’m an asshole like that). Maybe she could be that media centered machine hooked up to a TV and stereo. Maybe. She’ll serve some purpose, I just don’t know what yet. Anyway. Back to Ophiuchus. I’m thinking he’ll (yeah, Ophi is a he) look good in either this case or this one. Neither seem to have all too powerful power supplies, but I haven’t done my research yet. The problem with whitey there, despite how sexy it is, is that the power supply is of an incredibly ODD shape and quite weak to boot. The only other similar power supply that newegg sells is… well… the same one. So, whitey is out of the question. Blackey seems to be using a regular power supply, but even at 400W, it seems a bit… weak. But again I must first do my research and confirm that I should actually buy another power supply. At least blackey is still pretty cool looking.
But wait Tony! I know computers and that case looks kinda small!
Yeah, it is. It’s a Micro ATX case. Brian got a Micro ATX machine last summer and, while his case is a normal ATX Mid-Tower case, it’s a fair bit smaller than a normal ATX motherboard and… I could do with a size reduction. As stated earlier, I am not going for a high end machine here, it’s not going to need everything a full ATX motherboard will offer (namely PCI slots). Plus, you know, size.
Ugh, I wish I were in Windows so I could whip this up really quickly in Fireworks… I haven’t quite gotten used to The Gimp yet..
It’s not a whole lot, but is definitely enough. Considering that, at the moment, I lay Andy on her side so that I can place a fan on her graphics card to account for the fact that the card’s fan died almost a year ago. It actually keeps it pretty cool, I’m surprised. But yeah, imagine skinny little Ophi taking up no space on my desk. I would have so much room to.. do things with, maybe. It’d be nice.
This was probably a pretty boring post to you not-so technically inclined/interested. I’ve been writing a lot of stuff down while at work lately. Maybe I’ll post that eventually?
