Hey Royals: This St. Louisan still believes

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , ,

OK, OK. So I was in Kansas City over the weekend for a Promise Keepers event, and I saw the Royals’ obituary in the Kansas City Star yesterday. It was a great season, they said, but it’s over.
Well, it wasn’t technically over. It could have ended today, if the Minnesota Twins had beat the Detroit Tigers (which they did) and the Royals had lost to the Chicago White Sox. But the Royals thumped the Best Team Money Can Borrow 10-4, helped in part by their own borrowed gun, Rondell White.

So now what? The Twinkies have five more games. They’re off tomorrow, then they host the Cleveland Indians for two games before wrapping up their season at Detroit.

Meanwhile, the Royals have six home games against Detroit and the White Sox.

The Royals need to win five of six against a team they’ve dominated and against the only team in the division they’ve played poorly against.

Meanwhile, Cleveland has to revert to its old form and beat the Twins twice, and Detroit has to temporarily forget how to play like the 1962 Mets and sweep the Twins in three games.

Long shot? You betcha. But then again, in April everyone thought the Royals were a long shot to just finish over .500.

There’s a sign hanging outside the Fellowship of Christian Athletes building just across I-70 from Royals Stadium Kauffman Stadium. It still reads, “We believe.” In reference to the Royals–belief in God, I hope, is a given for those guys.

I still believe in both too.

Mice and motherboards and keyboards

Dave Farquhar Hardware

Well, I was wanting to build a computer last night but those plans got messed up. My shipment from Software and Stuff came in today, but instead of the lovely Socket A mobo I ordered, I got a Socket 7 board. My 1.1 GHz Athlon won’t like that very much. So I packaged that right back up. It would be a good board for building a supercheap computer, since it has video built in and Socket 7 CPUs often sell for less than $10, but I want something with a little more punch.
It’s the first time they’ve ever messed up one of my orders, so I’m not terribly worried about it. And if I were to end up being stuck with it, I’m sure I could come up with some use for a Socket 7 board with built-in video.

On the plus side, my new mouse works. I’ve never owned an optical mouse before, so it’s pretty neat. Between the USB interface and the optics, it’s a lot more precise than any other mouse I’ve had. (I have noticed my Logitech USB mouse is more precise than the PS/2 version I have–USB’s sample rate is higher.) I can’t stand modern keyboards but modern mice are very, very nice. An optical, USB version of the plain old 3-button Logitech Mouseman would be even nicer but I know that won’t happen. But there’s absolutely nothing to complain about a Microsoft optical mouse for 8 bucks.

As for keyboards, I really wish I’d bought a couple more IBM Model Ms when one of the surplus places had them cheap a couple of months back. I just didn’t feel like I could afford it at the time and it only took about a week for the supply to dry up.

Cheap computer gear for the week of Sept. 15

Dave Farquhar Hardware

What kind of cheap stuff have I uncovered this week? Socket A microATX mobos are still 20 bucks. For those of you blessed with tower cases, 47-gig full-height 5.25″ SCSI hard drives are 20 bucks. If your storage needs are more modest, a 23-gig version is 8 bucks. CD-RW drives are very close to the dollar-per-X mark (32X drives for about $30, 40X drives for about $40, 52X drives for around $50). CRT monitors are dirt cheap because everyone wants flat panels. For that matter, so do I. I guess I need to go find a couple of consulting gigs.

Time to review Beautiful Lumps of Coal

Dave Farquhar Music

It’s not exactly new but I think
Beautiful Lumps of Coal by Plumb is overlooked, and not necessarily given a fair shake when it is noticed, so, by George, I’m going to review it. It’s my website and I’ll review six-month-old stuff if I want to.
In the words of the immortal Elvis–Costello, that is: When in doubt, go to track 4. It’s usually the one you want. On this album, that advice unearths “Boys Don’t Cry,” a somber, hard-rocking attempt at cheering up someone who seems to be beyond it. But who’s talking? Supposedly the song was inspired by her husband trying to counsel a boy whose parents didn’t care about him. Certainly it sounds like an attempt to display Christian love to someone who isn’t used to it.

Track 7 is another gem: “Taken.” Essentially it’s a thank-you letter to an ex-girlfriend of her husband’s who died tragically. Again, there are certainly Christian overtones. It’s a driven acoustic piece–a nice pop song. I seem to recall one of Third Eye Blind’s recent hits was a hard-driving pop song that was mostly acoustic that sounded a little like this song. Like Track 4, no mention of God. There’s implication that the departed person is still living and in heaven, as it mentions her in present tense. Well, and then there’s the whole idea of someone being grateful to a romantic predecessor.

Last and best, there’s track 10: “Real.” I won’t do it justice by describing it but I’ll try. Great artists spend their entire careers trying to make a song as powerful as this one and a lot of them never do it. It’s got a spunky guitar line, it’s got something in the background that just inspires good feeling (something about the general tone of the instruments, as well as the notes they’re playing), and it’s got lyrics that say a lot. “Aren’t I lovely and/ Do you want me ‘cos/ I am hungry for something that will make me real./ Can you see me and/ Do you love me ‘cos/I am desperately searching for something real.”

The first time I heard it, I thought it was a song about someone seeking either a guy or God. Mishearing “Aren’t I lovely” as “I’ve been lonely” certainly contributed to that. Obviously the emptiness she’s singing about is something only God can properly fill. But the song is really just talking about the empty life of a manufactured pop star. It would have been an ideal soundtrack for Madonna’s publicity stunt with Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the MTV Video Music Awards. But explicit mention of God? None here.

The rest of the album is mostly love songs. Up until now, the only love song I’ve ever heard that I would agree to have played at my wedding without protest is “I’ll Stand By You” by The Pretenders. There’s one reason for that. That song isn’t about Hollywood romance, or sex, or anything else along those lines. It’s just simple, unconditional love. I remember hearing that song as I pulled into the parking lot at work, and I stopped and listened to it, and thought at the end, “I want a girl like that. I’d give anything for a girl like that.”

It’s precisely because I haven’t yet, to my knowledge, met a girl like that–but don’t get me wrong, there are some suspects–that I don’t like to dwell on Plumb’s love songs. But like that Pretenders song, they’re sincere. Like that Pretenders song, they don’t describe Hollywood romance. They describe honest, sincere love. Unlike that Pretenders song, there are several of them. And like that Pretenders song, they don’t mention God either.

Plumb gets a bad rap for not mentioning God explicitly anywhere but in the liner notes of this record, and, therefore, the thinking goes, how dare she get billed as a Christian artist? Let me tell you why that sentiment is unfair.

First, look at the love songs. They describe what a relationship between two committed Christians should look like. There are songs here about breaking up and getting back together–asking for forgiveness, expressing regret. Regretting bitterness and fixing it. Songs that admit that love between two humans isn’t always perfect. That’s a message that people need to hear, and, frankly, Carmen doesn’t seem to be the one to deliver it. I don’t blame secular artists for not knowing much about that kind of love. In their world they’re not generally exposed to it. Christian artists are supposed to know about it. And finally one had the guts to sing about it.

The other songs that aren’t about love don’t need to mention God. God’s influence is all over them. Mostly they dance around needs that only God can fill. They do speak of the inadequacy of the world to fill them.

This is a record that not only sounds really, really good, but you can use it in situations where a secular record might seem more appropriate. You can throw this on as background music when you’re having people over, and it won’t make people nervous with what it’s saying because it’s thumping them over the head with Jesus. There are times when people need to be thumped over the head with Jesus. This is a great record for those other times. And if you’re in a relationship, you can play a song like “Sink’n’Swim” and make both of you feel good, but the song’s not going to encourage you to take it too far if you’re not married. That’s a good thing; hormones usually don’t need much encouragement. After a fight, “Without You” is a lovely way to say you’re sorry that will, once again, not encourage you to take things too far.

Personally, I’ve marked “Sink’n’Swim” down for future reference. I’d very much like that song in my wedding. And I think that’s saying an awful lot, because that’s something I’ve never been one to give much thought to.

Yes, admittedly if you play this record in between “Evergreen” and “What Are You Going to Do With Your Life?” by Echo and the Bunnymen and ask someone to pick out the Christian record, 9 people out of 10 will guess wrong. It’s a Christian album that’ll slip under the radar, and in a genre where the current trend seems to be for everyone to re-record the songs that make you feel good in church for the hundredth time, frankly, that’s welcome. I don’t need 99 versions of “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” in my collection, and neither do you.

Selling out

Dave Farquhar General

OK, ok, I’m selling out. I don’t want ads on my front page here, but I signed up for a couple of affiliate programs. And one of those vendors–Software And Stuff/Surplus Computers, is selling $20 microATX Socket A motherboards. If you visit my ads page and click on a link and buy something, I get a kickback. They say the $20 price is only good until midnight. Regular price is $30, which still isn’t bad.

Dave’s MP3 jukebox of his dreams–almost

Dave Farquhar Software

Edna is a very easy-to-setup up MP3 jukebox written in Python and licensed under the GPL. I think a radio-like mode can be added to it pretty easily. Here’s the routine that selects songs to play:



  def make_list(self, fullpath, url, recursive, shuffle, songs=None):

    # This routine takes a string for 'fullpath' and 'url', a list for

    # 'songs' and a boolean for 'recursive' and 'shuffle'. If recursive is

    # false make_list will return a list of every file ending in '.mp3' in

    # fullpath. If recursive is true make_list will return a list of every

    # file ending in '.mp3' in fullpath and in every directory beneath

    # fullpath.

    #



    if songs is None:

      songs = []


    for name in sort_dir(fullpath):

      base, ext = os.path.splitext(name)

      if extensions.has_key(string.lower(ext)):

        # add the song's URL to the list we're building

        songs.append(self.build_url(url, name) + '\n')



      # recurse down into subdirectories looking for more MP3s.

      if recursive and os.path.isdir(fullpath + '/' + name):

        songs = self.make_list(fullpath + '/' + name,

                               url + '/' + urllib.quote(name),

                               recursive, 0,	# don't shuffle subdir results

                               songs)



    # The user asked us to mix up the results.

    if shuffle:

      count = len(songs)

      for i in xrange(count):

        j = random.randrange(count)

        songs[i], songs[j] = songs[j], songs[i]


    return songs

A question for Python programmers: I added a few lines to the shuffle routine, right after the line count=len(songs).



      # radio mode -- DLF, 9/7

      blacklist = open('blacklist', 'rb').readlines()

      overplay = open('overplay', 'rb').readlines()

      countb = len(blacklist)

      counto = len(overplay)

      for i in xrange(count):

        for j in xrange(countb):

          if songs[i] = blacklist[j]:

            k = random.randrange(counto)

            songs[i] = overplay[k]
      # end radio mode hack

What it’s supposed to do is load a blacklist and overplay list and, when shuffling, compare the current element against the blacklist, and if it finds a match, randomly substitutes a song from the overplay list.

What it actually does is nothing. Anyone have any ideas?

Hacking Mozilla Firebird

Dave Farquhar Software

Nothing frustrates me more than unfulfilled potential. And that’s why Mozilla Firebird, in spite of its amazing strengths–great speed and small footprint, aside from the things it inherited from Mozilla like good standards compliance, tabbed browsing, popup blocking–well, it bugs me. Why settle for being great when you can be the best there ever was and make people wonder if there ever will be anything better?
Every other modern browser I’ve seen lets you turn off GIF animation. I always do. Still ads very rarely bother me. Moving ads do about 99.999% of the time. As it turns out, Firebird still has the capability, the control panel option is just gone now, in order to make the browser less confusing.

To get it back, locate the file prefs.js inside your profile. In Linux, search your home directory; in Windows, use the Find File option and remember that every Mozilla-derived browser you have installed will have one. Once you find it, open it in a text editor and add the following line:

user_pref(“image.animation_mode”, “none”);

Another good option, if you like movement but don’t like looping distraction, is to replace the word “none” with “once”. Then the animation cycles once and terminates.

Shut down your browser if it’s open, then save the file. Close the file, then reopen your browser. You’ll now be able to browse in peace.

There are bunches of other good tips at this page. Here are my favorites:

Disable blinking text by creating the file user.js in the same directory as your prefs.js file if it doesn’t exist (it doesn’t by default), and insert the following text:

// Put an end to blinking text!
user_pref(“browser.blink_allowed”, false);

Disable the marquee tag by creating the file usercontent.css in the same directory as your prefs.js file if it doesn’t exist (it doesn’t by default), and insert the following text:

/* Stop those marquee tags! */
marquee {
-moz-binding : none !important;
display : block;
height : auto !important;
}

Speed up browsing on fast machines by creating the file user.js in the same directory as your prefs.js fileif it doesn’t exist (it doesn’t by default), and insert the following text, which removes a quarter-second delay before starting to render the page:

// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref(“nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 0);

Turn on pipelining to speed things up some more by creating the file user.js in the same directory as your prefs.js file if it doesn’t exist (it doesn’t by default), and insert the following text:

// Enable pipelining:
user_pref(“network.http.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(“network.http.proxy.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(“network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”, 100);

Hey, I almost forgot: New David Crowder

Dave Farquhar Music ,

Somehow I missed this. The new David Crowder Band release is Sept. 16. And the band’s site is streaming a track a day until the album’s release.
Today’s track, “Revolutionary Love” is what it sounds like–it owes a lot to a certain Beatles song. In the tradition of the songs like “You Alone” and “Our Love is Loud” that gave the band its reputation, the song’s pretty heavy, and it also mixes in synthesizers and other sounds that are all too infrequently heard in alternative music these days. Elements of pop, punk, New Wave, and even hip-hop. The lyrics don’t sound terribly profound at first, but there’s more depth to them than first appears.

Now I wonder if they’ll catch flak for not mentioning God. Because I don’t think He ever gets mentioned, although with words like “Never changing” it’s pretty obvious he’s not talking about his wife or any other human being. And so do, I think, the opening words of the first verse: “Desperation leads us here.” Assuming anyone catches those.

If I don’t quit talking soon, you’ll run out of time to go listen.

Who wants to build an MP3 jukebox when you can go shopping?

Dave Farquhar General , ,

I was going to cannibalize a computer to turn into a Linux-based MP3 jukebox–I figure get the OS up and going on it and figure out later what software to run on it. It’ll take me a while to get the sound card and wireless NIC working in it, I’m sure. Especially in Debian. If it turns out to be too much of a struggle, I can cave and run Red Hat or SuSE on it since they’re likely to just autodetect the stuff. And then I’ll be a Linux wimp, yeah, but hey, I’ll be a Linux wimp with a really cool sound system.
I ended up going to the store. A couple of stores. I needed vitamins and shampoo and fabric softener. It was really weird hearing “A Letter to Elise” by The Cure as background muzak in Kmart. Not that I was complaining.

I also wanted that Plumb CD I asked about yesterday. I could have saved some money by ordering it online, but I was impatient. It had a once-in-a-lifetime song on it and I wanted it. It was a longshot but I looked. Nope, no Plumb at Kmart. Just Newsboys and DC Talk–the kind of stuff my post-college girlfriend Rachel tried to get me into in 1997. I know a lot of people like them but I just couldn’t get into them.

I guess for me it was a good sign. As far as secular music goes, if it’s sold at Kmart I probably don’t like it. So I should probably expect the same for contemporary Christian music too.

Best Bait-n-Switch had it. So I got it, hopped in the car, put it in the CD player, and turned the volume up a bit. Maybe it’s just how my brain is wired, or what’s been on my mind lately, but “Real” just resonates. To me, it’s an instant classic, like “Day After Day” by Badfinger or “If You Leave” by OMD or “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division.

I’d tell you about the rest of the album but I’ve had that one song on repeat play for most of the night. I think the last time I did that was six years ago with “Want” by The Cure–which turned out to be a smart move, since there wasn’t much else listenable on that particular record.

Time for me to ask the questions for once

Dave Farquhar Music

OK, I’ve got some questions for once.
I heard a song that held my attention for about four blissful minutes tonight. Of course the DJ didn’t tell me the artist or song title. I grabbed a pen and transcribed a couple of lines:

I am hungry for something that will make me real/ Can you see me and/ Do you love me cause/ I am desperately searching for something real

Google tells me the artist’s name is Plumb, and the song is, appropriately, titled “Real” and it’s off an album called Beautiful Lumps of Coal. The song is supposed to be a protest of our sex-crazed/centered society.

Question #1: Anyone familiar with Plumb? Is this one of her best songs? The lyrics for the rest of her stuff look promising, but I figure I might as well ask for other opinions.

Now for my other question… I finally put in some wireless networking equipment, which makes connecting a computer to my stereo practical. I can control it over the network so I don’t have to have a keyboard and monitor there, and I can make it play MP3s through the stereo, or make it broadcast them over the LAN with Icecast or something similar so I can listen when I’m in the office or somewhere else. I’ve found a few Linux-based MP3 jukeboxes, several of them with nice web-browser interfaces that include a “Never play this song again” button–perfect for when a song like “Where the Birds Always Sing” by The Cure comes on–but I haven’t found one with a function that emulates a radio station’s “heavy rotation” orders.

So, Question #2: Has anyone out there messed with LAN-based MP3 jukebox software? Anyone have any recommendations? The one I’ve found that looks most promising is Gronk, by the legendary jwz, but there’s no heavy rotation option.