So here’s the deal: I’ve got myself a swanky new NAS (an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+), and I’ve started re-ripping all my CDs. (For those that are interested, I’m ripping them as AIFF files, at a sample rate of 44.1 KHz (the same sample rate used for creating audio CDs), in 16-bit stereo. This seems to be the most future-proof format, and should give me an exact CD-quality copy.)

But then it comes to classifying the music. I’m using iTunes to rip my music because it’s convenient; one of the useful features being that it downloads the track names and album info from CDDB (or some such site). It also downloads the genre information, but the problem I’m having is that very little music is a perfect fit in any specific genre.

Take for example the last CD I’ve just ripped: The Best of Donald Byrd. This has been described as R&B, Jazz, Funk, Jazz Funk and Fusion amongst other things, but iTunes (and all media players that I’m aware of) only lets me select one genre. It’s only just dawned on me (though I’ve never given it any thought until now), but this is so short sighted of the developers (or the people that wrote the spec.). How do you classify music that spans genres? If you label an album or track as “Jazz-Funk” then it won’t be played when you select your Jazz tracks, and that’s not what I want.

Is there a point to this post? Perhaps not a big one - it was something to do while my tea brews - but if we can’t add multiple genres to our music catalogue, is there really any point in doing it? We can’t even limit the genre selection to a handful because there is still going to be a crossover with some music. Perhaps there is only one genre that is applicable: Music.

So what we need is a music player that supports genre tagging. Anyone know of any?

Tags: ripping, readynas, music, tagging, genres

Nah, you can never have gadget overkill! Long time no blog. So what’s been going on? Well, not a huge amount hence the lack of content, but today was a bit of a gadget frenzy. I got a Blackberry Perl to replace my work phone (a brick of a phone in the shape of an Orange SPV M5000), and so far I’m fairly impressed with it. I guess most notably it’s a lot smaller than the SPV. It’s too early to write a long review on the thing, but the sound (when using it as a telephone) was a bit poor. Other than that it seems OK. It’s small and I can get my email on it nice and easily.

But a new mobile phone doesn’t make a gadget frenzy, does it?! So what other goodies did I get then?! Well, seeing as you asked, my Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ (or Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ since they got bought out) arrived today. This is a networked attached storage (NAS) device, and I’ve got it to store all my RAW images from my camera. It has four disk bays, and my version came with 2 x 500GB drives. This gives me a total storage of 500GB, but with disk mirroring for redundancy. As I run out of space I can add more hard disks to the two spare bays to increase the storage space.

So far I’m extremely impressed with it. Performance-wise it seems much quicker at both read/write activities than my older Lacie single-disc NAS, and the configuration interface is very good. I also picked up a cheap APC UPS. The ReadyNAS detects the presence of the UPC (via a USB lead), and it improves the buffering/writing speed to the NAS because it knows it has a more reliable power source (so can rely on the RAM in the NAS for buffering more). My UPS is still charging up, so I’ll find out tomorrow if this all works as expected.

So that’s the gadgets done. In other news, I had a short ‘break’ in Marrakech a few weeks ago. My one tip from that trip would be to never fly Royal Air Maroc! They seem to be the most disorganised airline on the planet — or at least that I’ve encountered. I took some photos but they’re not that great. I’m sure if I hadn’t been delayed for 7 hours in Casablanca airport I wouldn’t have been so tired for the next few days, which would have meant I could get up early to take some photos in the best light. Instead I mainly snapped around midday!

Ho hum.

Tags: Infrant ReadyNAS NV+, Infrant, ReadyNAS, NAS, Netgear, blackberry perl

IMG_1562: Perseid Meteor Shower, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

(Hmmm, I’m a poet and I didn’t know it….).

I popped up to Leith Hill Tower this evening to try and get some photos of the Perseid meteor shower. I only realised it was madness while I was stumbling around in the pitch black wood trying to find the right path that goes to the tower. The tree cover rendered my GPS useless, and at one point I really thought I was going to spend the night in the woods!

Anyway, I eventually found it, and bumped into a local warden and his wife who were also star gazing up there. Leith Hill is the tallest point in South East England, and you can see London to the North and the sea to the South. On a clear night like tonight London stood out like a sore thumb - really spoiling the sky IMHO.

I saw loads of meteors, but as you can see from the photo, I failed to catch any on film (or digital). It’s all about the journey though, not the destination… (read: “I don’t care what the photos came out like, so long as i had fun taking them!”).

Right: it’s a school night so I really must get to bed!

Tags: Perseid, Perseid Meteor Shower, meteors, Leith Hill Tower, surrey

Credit: my sister in law…

Tags: ripley, surrey, duck, silly, driving

Royal Albert Hall - IMG_0857, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

More evening shooting, this time the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington (London, UK). I wasted about three quarters of an hour on the other side of the building as I thought I might get an interesting photo with the traffic going past, but when I got home and inspected the results I wasn’t too impressed.

I’m still getting to grips with my new camera, and last night I fell into the trap of not looking too closely at the histogram, relying instead on the preview picture in the LCD. This image looked a lot brighter ‘in the field’, and the sky was pretty impressive. Maybe I need to tweak it a bit more, but I guess the learning is half the fun….

I used my flashgun to fill in the pedestal in the middle of the frame as it was a bit dark compared to everything else. Anyone watching must have thought I was mad - running from side to side during the exposure firing my flash!

Although the camera was level, I think I was positioned a bit too far to the left — the statue isn’t quite in the centre of the building and the paving slabs aren’t parallel to the bottom edge of the frame. However, the verticals are nice and square, so that’s something to be pleased about

Tags: royal albert hall

IMG_0755, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

Popped up to London last night to take some photos of St. Paul’s and the Millennium Bridge with a couple of friends. It almost didn’t stop raining, but it was worth hanging around…

IMG_3859, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

I’ve been off work I’ll for the last few days (well, Friday and Monday, with the weekend in between just for good measure), and this gave me the chance to finish sorting through my Croatia holiday photos from last September.

The above photo is about the last one I took while away, and I think perhaps my favorite.

You can view the full set for now, and when I get around to it I’ll work out how to do something cunning with my GPS tracklog, google earth, and flickr.

Don’t forget to look at my flickr map for this holiday now that I’ve spent ages hand-geotagging the photos!

IMG_0674, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

I went to the Saturday evening portion of the annual Linton Festival last weekend, which gave me a chance to try out my new camera (Canon EOS 5D).

The festival was great, with a nice selection of real ales and some good bands (mainly blues while I was there, though there was some jazz too earlier on).

I was messing around with my 17-40mm lens most of the time, which on the full frame sensor gives an amazing wide angle view! As it got darker I switched to my 24-70mm lens, which is great for low light and was used for the photo above.

Although I’ve still not really put the camera through it’s paces, I’m very pleased with it so far! It looks like the EOS 5D Mark II is still a while off, so glad I finally jumped in now while the prices are (relativley) low!

The low light performance of the camera seems excellent (with very low noise), and the bigger viewfinder makes it much easier to see if the subject is in focus! I still feel that it slightly over-exposes the images compared to my EOS 20D, but I guess I just need to get used to the meter.

Tags: linton festival, eos 5d, beer festival, blues