I just want a media player that ignores id3 tags
As part of the TMBG fanclub I got an album of a live show in Ashbury park. The songs weren't new but it was fun to hear the guys chat between sets and I wanted to load it to my phone so the next time we were stuck on a long car ride I could listen to it with Amanda. I copied the files to my phone, putting them into a new folder under the system-designated 'Music' directory.
Last weekend I found myself in a position to listen to those songs during the drive to elkhorn slough. Unfortunately I forgot this is the wrong way to listen to music.
I have an android phone running lineageos (a version of android without tracking or advertisements) and I don't have any google apps including the google app store which is a cesspool of malware and marketing. I rarely listen to music on my phone and I've used the built-in media player to my collection on shuffle. It doesn't matter what the files are called when you listen to everything on shuffle and it was only when I wanted to listen to my tmbg songs in order that I remembered there are no android media players that will ignore id3 tags.
About 60% of the 7000 files in my mp3 collection have missing or misleading tags. Also, the entire collection consists of individual songs - not albums. I had albums once decades ago (before id3 tags even) but I aggressively delete songs and my collection now looks like a cabinet of curiosities; a vast assortment of unique gems. There might be 3500 different artists in my collection.
I've tried some of the automatic mp3 tagging tools that using naming heuristics and online fingerprinting but they don't work. They assume you have a collection of albums (I don't) and they otherwise require manually typing in artists and albums - an exercise I have no interest in that would take weeks of work.
I use filenames to tell mp3s apart. It works well and I hate that the rest of the world has decided we should use invisible metadata to identify media files. You might ask why I don't use playlists. A playlist is just a text file with a list of songs in order - simple right? m3u's have a specific format. You can't just make a text file with a list of songs.
It's insane that I can have a list of files:
tmbg_song_1.mp3
tmbg_song_2.mp3
tmbg_song_3.mp3
tmbg_song_4.mp3
But the media player will only display this as:
(1)_unknown
bad tag
bobby_\;droptables
(99)_''
Because the id3 tags are messed up and the recommended solution is to use a separate playlist file, with it's own unique format, to refer back to the sensible file names.
I spent 20 minutes of our car ride to the slough messing with my media player. It refused to show me the files (because they were in a subdirectory? ) - but I could see them if I looked at the 'recent files' tab. All of the files had tags but the tags don't indicate the order in which they should play (like the filenames do) so there was no way for me to know if I was playing things in order. Eventually I gave up in frustration and deleted the whole album (using the file manager) because I was so irritated I never wanted to feel this way again and there was a chance, some time in the distant future, when I might forget and go looking again for the setting to just show me the damn file names.
Moving away from github
Everyone was outraged by the take down of youtube-dl from github including, supposedly, the current owner of github, microsoft. It's funny because microsoft is also a member of the RIAA, the same organization that shut down the project.
My response, like many others was to scramble to find the latest repo and start keeping track where the developers move next because youtube-dl is useful both for it's utility and also as a model for learning how to structure projects of that type.
A few days ago I saw a post indicating a new release of mitmproxy (also hosted on github) and realized every project hosted on that site was threatened.
That got me thinking about other projects hosted on github of critical utility but whose existence frustrates assholes in power.
- libtorrent
- bitcoin
- sabnzb
- openssh
- openvpn
- gnuradio
- wireshark
- wine
- dolphin and every other game emulator ever
Open source and git makes censorship difficult but without a vibrant and secure darkweb, it's easy to make things disappear. Just ask all the nintendo fans who had their projects shut down after years of development.
Update 20201116
As of today youtube-dl has moved back to github.. They changed their tests to avoid explicitly mentioning RIAA owned music but the tests still remain in the git history.
This is just depressing. My first though was this suggests youtube-dl guys feel they have no other option for hosting - because why else would you return to a hosting service after they had shown you who they are? But after some consideration I realize they're probably more protected from the shitty laws than if they hosted it themselves.
Election 2020
Back in 2016 I predicted a recession, violence, and suffering. We saw the violence and suffering but I didn't realize you could postpone a recession by just printing money and giving it to rich people. As for the future I don't expect to see any of the last administration's crimes prosecuted. When you're rich the rules don't apply to you. I expect the next ruling party won't be as nakedly corrupt but we'll continue our wars and make no effort to address the vagaries of laissez-faire capitalism. The republicans and evangelicals will return to their preferred role as victims and will refuse to concede an inch while the democrats dither and bicker and relent.
I read an interesting argument recently.
- The United States of America has the highest prison population in the world (both per capita and in raw numbers). source 1
- We have so many people in prison allowing them to vote could swing an election. source 2
- A government that denies it's prisoners the right to vote is government with a vested interest in jailing it's political opposition.
- A disproportionate number of black and latin americans make up the prison population and more than half are being held for non-violent offences. source 3
- Prisoners still get counted in the US census which means the more prisoners a county has, the more representation it gets source 4.
- The southern states have the highest prison populations in the world. source 5
So the southern states can increase their political power by jailing minorities.
Our election process seems designed to favor the right wing.
What would all those professional victims would say if the colors in these maps were reversed?
- Before the 2020 election the 'justice department' closed more than 1000 polling stations in areas prone to racially discriminatory voting practices.
- Voting isn't compulsory (but jury duty is) and the people who neglect to vote are typically left wing.
- Puerto Rico, Washington DC, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Mariana Islands, and Samoa are American territories without political representation.
- Monterey county has a population almost as large as Wyoming but we don't get any senators. My opinion counts for less because of where I live. One could argue that because I live in California, I'm less of an American.
- Puerto Rico has a population greater than twenty other states but has no representation at all.
This election might have gone to the less openly racist and authoritarian candidate but it seems like everyone is ready to go to war.
For once I wish I could vote for a candidate who supported the things I find important rather than being given the choice of selecting the least worst of two.
update 20210120:
I didn't expect a coup. Today there's a lot of relief that the inauguration wasn't violent and the guys on metafilter are getting emotional about having adults in charge again but I'll reserve my judgement to see if they squander this opportunity to close the loopholes that got us into this mess to begin with. Americans are clearly excited to elect a fascist - it's only a matter of time before a competent one comes around.
Streaming DRM
I'm sifting through a new batch of music at the moment and it's tiring because most new music is bad. After a day spent programming and deleting files my brain was tired and I decided to take a break by bringing up a link from an email I got from John Flansberg of TMBG advertising his online radio show
This is it! https://www.mixcloud.com/radiocatskill/low-stakes-w-john-f-oct24/ Flansy’s next radio show will be broadcast Friday night on www.wjffradio.org, and will post at https://www.mixcloud.com/radiocatskill/ the next day.
I tried to get the link working in my locked down browser but after unblocking 5 different external sources in umatrix I got tired of guessing which 3rd party script they wanted me to run next and I brought up my insecure firefox profile.
firefox -P insecure
I have several firefox profiles with a variety of security settings and plugins and I keep one called 'insecure' which has ublock and nothing else. I use this profile when I get shitty but critical requests from work or online when I'm willing to sacrifice my privacy for stuff like, earning money to live.
I brought up the mixcloud stream in this browser and after watching all the elements move around for several seconds as all the unnecessary scripts wrestled for position, I started the stream. It was nice for a while then he played a song I didn't like so I skipped forward a bit. Then there were several good songs followed by one I really wished to know more about but when he started listing the artists and song titles I missed the name of the one I liked and when I tried to scroll back to hear it repeated the click didn't register. I clicked some more thinking it was a window focus issue or an issue with my new mouse and a few seconds later a popup appeared on the screen for a few milliseconds and I realized they were deliberately preventing me from rewinding the stream.
I guess this is some very stupid DRM preventing me from rewinding their livestream over and over again, illicitly listening to that one good song and robbing some poor record executive of the fruits of a middlemans labor. Of course since I'm not allowed to rewind I don't know the name of that artist so I couldn't give my money to a record executive even if I wanted.
You know browsers make it really easy to play media these days. You can basically just serve a mp3 and it will show a nice media player.
<audio controls>
<source src="horse.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
<source src="horse.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
Your browser does not support the audio tag.
</audio>
Here's what it looks like in your browser.
Sorry John, I like you and your taste in music but this sort of bullshit is the reason I will never listen to your audio show again.
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