Squeaky clean

[dr4b]

I think I accidentally pulled a leg muscle while building an IKEA CD tower.

I have too many CDs. No, really. I'm guessing it's up to 800ish, extrapolating from CD tower capacity. No, I'm not in the habit of ripping CDs. My computer still sucks. I should remedy that too.

My apartment is still not clean. Well, not clean enough to not worry about my mom saying it's a mess, that is. It's plenty clean as far as I care :) Maybe I'll figure out some way to keep my mom from actually coming over until Saturday, and clean more tomorrow night.

I think I need a duck tower, too. I went to put the Mall of America duck in the bathroom with the other ducks, except there's no more room for him. I think I'm going to go see if I can't stir up a little bit of a rearranging of the guard. Hopefully the duckizens won't rebel against my quackpot scheme.

Comments

Rip it! Rip it good!

[tg2k.livejournal.com]

I do recommend ripping CDs anyway; even Leslie's super-old iMac is powerful enough for MP3s. I do recommend getting a nice big hard drive though, and a USB2/Firewire enclosure for it. I love my external drive. And I can painlessly take it with me when I upgrade to another machine. For reference, my MP3 collectio now takes up nearly 50GB. Yours, if ripped the same way, could be 80-100GB. But 400GB drives are becoming affordable now, and enclosures are cheap. I got mine at CompUSA and it's really pretty; it has lights on the sides that change color and everything.

Ideally though, I'd like my MP3s/OGGs to be backed up, which means I need another external drive, because backing up music files from HD to DVDs (being so similar in form and function to CDs) just seems silly.

I have been on a ripping fest for over a year now. It began in my office in Mountain View--I'd rip 5-6 CDs a day, copy the OGGs to my USB key, cart it home, and copy to my HD. I'd also keep the OGGs (some anyway) on my work machine, so I'd always have music there.

Now, with my work machine at home next to my personal machine, I sometimes get through 10-15 CDs a day. I think I only have about 150-200 CDs left. I've ripped all my new age, soundtracks, and am on my miscellaneous pop/rock at Queensryche. Cool...I'm even replacing 128kbps MP3s from 1999 and older with 192 kbps OGGs.

Now if only there was more OGG support out there...if I ever buy a portable music player, it will have to have OGG support, and not otherwise suck or anything. My mom's little flash-based iRiver did it okay while I drove from CA to CO, and was tiny, but its menu interface is craptastic.

Re: Rip it! Rip it good!

[mithramuse.livejournal.com]

What program(s) do you use/recommend? Seeing as you actually have a plan, whereas I (and quite possibly Dee ^_- ) haven't looked into it much at all... though it would be nice to do, especially since right now I have less than 1/4 of my CDs with me, and I miss some of what I left behind....

Re: Rip it! Rip it good!

[tg2k.livejournal.com]

I use a shareware (registered many years ago) program called Easy CD-DA Extractor. It also includes a media format converter and audio CD burner. It has lot of options for error correction, is relatively fast, connects to freedb for track info, etc. I really like this program so I've kept with it rather than looking for freeware. (All updates have been free for me.)

Myself, I rip to Ogg Vorbis at 192 kbps for most CDs. The idea is that if I lose the CD, I won't lose much by burning from the Ogg. CDs that I don't care much about get 160 kbps or even 128 kbps. I'm a pig about open, unpatented formats, especially since studies have shown that Ogg is superior to MP3. Fortunately, since my software has a format converter, I can produce MP3s on demand, with a slight quality loss I'm sure.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

You'll know something's up if they start honking at you.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Convince them they're getting an upgrade and they should be happy. They'll fly back to where they were before if they aren't.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

1) Thats horrible, about the ducks.
2) That sucks, about your leg.
3) ripping cds is nice and all, but... i guess we'll keep all our forever no matter what. =)

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

I've ripped most of my CDs as insurance against losing / scratching a disc. I once lost a couple dozen (forgot them on the train), so I'm pretty sensitive about such issues.