Rough Draft

Blog Archive

This is an archive of the blog I kept from 2003-2006.

Blog Has Moved

My move to Vox for blogging apparently already unofficially happened, i.e. I've actually posted there in the last few months, which is more than can be said for this blog.

So let's make it official. My new blog is jaronmars.vox.com, and if you're reading via RSS, you'll want to update your feed.

And as a bonus for all you loyal readers, in conjunction with this switch, I'm launching a new homepage at JarOnMars.com. The new site is mainly an aggregation of the information on I have on various others sites across the web (Flickr, SonicLiving, Last.fm, etc). Let me know what you think.

Vox

Thanks to my friend Buzz, I have an account over on Vox, the new weblogging service from Six Apart. I haven't decided exactly how I will be using my Vox account yet. Right now I'll mainly be taking advantage of its ability to post streaming audio to share songs. I'll have to see if the community features and ease of media sharing it offers outweigh some of the technical and design freedoms I would lose by switching away from Movable Type,

Upcoming.org

Buzz recently told me about Upcoming.org, a social software site for keeping track of concerts and other live performances. There's over a thousand people registered for the San Francisco "metro", so it's got a decent user base. You can see my personal page here. I added all the shows mentioned in the previous post to my events.

The site has some cool features including RSS feeds, subscriptions for iCal, and "badges". I've added a Upcoming Concerts RSS feed for the site. You can subscribe here and I also put a link to it in the sidebar. I updated my concerts page to use their badge to generate my list of upcoming shows. I'm not taking advantage of the iCal subscription yet. The events are all listed as "all day events" rather than listing the event start time and they also don't show the venue. I'm not sure if that's a limitation in the webcal format or if they just didn't set it up to use those pieces of information.

I was hoping Upcoming.org would also be a good place to find out about new shows. There have been far too many times that I've found out about a show either after it's already sold out or after it already occurred. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how useful it's going to be in that respect though as the only event of the four I'm currently attending that I didn't have to create was Death Cab for Cutie. If anyone knows of a good central site (or better yet RSS freed) that gives listings of concerts (especially for indie shows) in the Bay Area, please let me know.

Update:
Buzz hooked me up with an invite to Sonic Living. It's a site similar to Upcoming.org, but seems to have fixed a lot of the problems I listed with Upcoming. First, they populate their show database on their own in addition to relying on users to add shows. All 4 shows I have tickets for in November were already listed on the site, so that bodes well. In addition the iCal subscription includes the show's start time and the venue so I should be able to use that as my concert calendar rather than keeping my own manual one. The site is currently in an invite only beta. I don't have any invite codes yet, but I imagine some will appear in my account soon, eventually so if you're interested let me know.

Also thanks to Jeff for pointing me to EVDB, I'll have to give that a look too. And thanks to Chris for reminding me of Pollstar. I wasn't aware of Pollstar's abilities to track up to 10 bands for you.

Now on DreamHost

If you're reading this, then you're DNS servers are hip to the fact that I've switched this domain over to DreamHost as my hosting provider.

My free hosting with 1and1 runs out in January, and while I haven't had any problem with them I decided I'd start seeing what other hosting companies offered. Quite a number of people I know are using DreamHost and have been quite happy with it. They also started supporting Ruby on Rails with FastCGI a few months ago, which I definitely plan to take advantage of. Lastly, their hosting plans are really cheap and have insane (one might even say Crazy Insane) amounts of storage space and monthly bandwidth.


I think everything is up and running smoothly, but if you notice any oddities, please let me know.

Update: Corey let me know that comments and email aren't working. I'll try to fix the comments after work. Email still seems to be trying to go through the 1and1 servers. Hopefully that will sort itself out in the next day or two.

Update2: Comments are fixed. Had to update my the Scode module to point to the correct tmp directory. Email also seems to now be working correctly.

Tunes on Rails

I've finally brought back the "Current Tunes" section of the blog. The sidebar now displays whatever song I'm currently listening to in iTunes and a list of the last 50 songs I've played is here. The song links take you to the iTunes Music Store.

All of this brought to you server side by Ruby on Rails. I hardly do any web programming, but Ruby on Rails has had quite the buzz about it, so I've been wanting to try it out for a while now. I've also been wanting to bring back the Recent Tunes section of the site, and RoR seemed like a perfect fit for that.

Justin William's tutorial on MacZealots got me up and running with Rails on my Powerbook and the OnLamp tutorial got me 90% of the information I needed to get the app working. I feel like I should go into more detail about the development process, but there's really not much to say. After doing the OnLamp tutorial, getting my app working was extremely straightforward. I guess this is why people love Rails.

So getting the app running on my local machine was a breeze, but getting it running on my server was another story, since 1and1 does not support Ruby on Rails out of the box. Fortunately, I did find this script which helped me get most of what I needed installed in my home directory on the server. Then I had quite a time getting a symlink from my web directory to the app's public directory setup and working. Since the symlink was not at the root of my web directory, I had to modify the .htaccess file to properly point to the dispatch.cgi file. Unfortunately, the first time I did this I apparently deleted a crucial space between the $ ending a regex and the path to the dispatch.cgi file. It took me a good while before I figured out that's why things weren't working.

The other issue at the moment is loading the Recent Tunes page is quite slow since I haven't set up FastCGI, and I'm not sure that I can with my current hosting plan. I'll likely be switching hosts in the near future, so I'm not too concerned about that right now.

I guess the last bit of info on this topic is the client side part of the app. It's just a small Cocoa app that registers for the com.apple.iTunes.playerInfo distributed notification (which I found thanks to Notification Watcher). I also make use of the spiffy CURLHandle framework.

Interestingly, I just noticed that the notification does not include Rating and Play Count information for all songs. I'll have to figure out why that is. Other than that though things seem to be working after having the client running for about an hour on my laptop. And I just fixed the bug that caused a song to be listed multiple times if I pause and then played ([album isEqualToString:m_currentSongArtist]? that'd be a typo, though it would be true for self titled albums). The true test will be running the client all day at work tomorrow.

At some point I'll probably clean up the code a bit and package both the client and server and put it up for download, but no promises on when that might happen.

The Mixed Tape

In honor of the recently released single The Mixed Tape by Jack's Mannequin, I decided it'd be a good time to add a new section to my site where I can post the various mix cds that I've made / will make. Eventually I'll probably add some descriptions about each of the CDs, but for now it's just a track listing.

Where are you now?
As I'm swimming through the stereo
I'm writing you a symphony of sound
Where are you now?
As I rearrange the songs again

And this is my mixed tape for her
It's like I wrote every note
With my own fingers

CD List Updated

I finally got around to updating my list of CDs. Recent purchases include From Under the Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy, The Everglow by Mae, Stop All the World Now by Howie Day, The Laptop EP by MC Lars, Final Straw by Snow Patrol, and Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta. On Tuesday I'll definitely be adding The Starting Line's Based on a True Story (definitely one of my favorite albums so far this year).

I'll be updating the rest of the Media Collections as well as book and concert lists very soon. With the recent release of Tiger and me actually having some free time I've started playing around with Core Data and have started whipping up an application to help me manage these collections. I made a model for my CDs, hence the update to the CD page and the only code I had to write (under 50 lines) was to export it to a php file so my script can read it. Very good stuff.

Long Month

Wow, so all of April went by without a single post from me on this site. First time I've had a whole month go by without a single post. I was insanely busy at work all of March and April and made two trips (Cleveland and Las Vegas). I managed to make it to a couple concerts as well. I'll definitely be posting more on all of these things in the near future.

But for now I've spent the last couple nights doing some work on the site, prompted by a post made by Josh. I've started to revamp the sidebar, although there's still some things I want to change about it. I removed the Recent Entries as they didn't serve a lot of purpose since they are all on the main page and my posts aren't insanely long. I also moved the Monthly Archive links to an Archives page since that too was just eating up space without a whole lot of usefulness. In the same style as Jeff I added a Navigation section to the sidebar. This gives quick access if you do want to browse through the monthly archives or the categories. The Navigation section also points to the newly created About Me and Contact Info. pages. The last thing I added to the sidebar is a Music Recommendations section. I plan to update this every few weeks as I come across new albums and "songs of the moment". The album links point to the iTunes Music Store if it's available there while the song link either points to the ITMS or PureVolume if the song is available there for free. The artist link points to that artist's homepage.

Other small changes I've made include making links blue and visited links gray. Before all links were a light gray which was unnecessarily difficult to see on the white background, so changing them to blue made links stand out more without them needing to be underlined. Visited links are now gray, but a gray that is a bit darker and easier to read. I also revamped the "Posted..." tag that appears at the bottom of each post. Previously clicking on the time took you to the permanent link which was rather non-intuitive so I pulled the Permanent Link out explicitly. I also added a link to the category archive the post is from, so if a particular post piques your interest it's easy to get to similar posts. Finally I added a link to the official Disclaimer for the site.

I've been keeping a list of changes I've made and changes I plan to make using OmniOutliner. Jeff has been telling me about the wonderfulness that is OmniOutliner for quite some time, but I had never really used it. But now I have finally seen how great this app is and have been using it for quite a few various lists lately. And now Ricci points out to me that you can make different column types like pop up lists, dates, durations, and the standard checkboxes. Cool!

2 years old

So, I missed it by a couple weeks, but Feb 13th marked the second full year I've been writing in this blog. As it turns out the first post (a review of a Something Corporate show) is very telling of the content of a large number of posts here.

I definitely plan to continue posting here, however sporadically that may end up being. But especially now that I've graduated from college and don't talk to people as often as I should, this is a good way for me to share what I'm up to with anyone that's interested. It's also a good way for me to introduce people to the music I listen to, and now more recently my NetFlix viewing habits.

Comments Feed

I've added a Comments Feed to the site. Mainly just so I could subscribe to it, but it's there if anyone else wants to as well. Thanks to Forty Something for the template.

LiveJournal

I have a Livejournal account. Username is jaronmars. I don't plan to actually post anything there, but Mike wanted me to be able to read his "Friends Only" posts, so I signed up for a free account. So anyone else that cares to share their secret thoughts with me can friend me up. ^_^

Books

I've added a list of books I've recently read and books I'm planning to read. Leave suggested reading material in the comments.

Movable Type 3

After playing with WordPress a little bit, I've decided to stick with Movable Type as my blogging software. I upgraded my MT installation to version 3 in less than 5 minutes this evening. I had been getting annoyed by the rebuilds in MT, but the rebuilds for posting a single entry aren't bad and WordPress is lacking templating, the whole site resides in index.php. I also didn't really like using mod_rewrite to create a virtual directory structure. I also toyed with CSS some and am working on a slightly new layout for my blog. If I have time, I may unveil that tomorrow.

New Domain and New Hosting

Several weeks ago I signed up with 1and1's free 3 year hosting deal. I had been hosting this blog on my laptop, but I've been taking my laptop to class most days, so that wasn't acceptable hosting anymore. Last night I finally got around to moving my Movable Type installation over to 1and1. It was actually really easy to do. I just uploaded my blog directory to the server, changed the database settings in MT, exported my database into an sql file and reloaded into the new database. I've also added

RedirectMatch (.*)$ http://jaronmars.com$1

to the .htaccess file in the root of the webserver on my Powerbook which is where the Rough Draft domain still points. Also, once I get around to playing with CSS I'm planning to redesign the layout of this blog.

Tagline

Finally added a tagline to my blog's title. They are lyrics from the amazing song Rough Draft by Yellowcard.

I'm Back

I installed Panther on my Powerbook over the weekend and yesterday finally got around to getting this blog back online. Moving a Movable Type blog from one place to another is actually quite simple. I just backed up my /blog directory and exported the SQL database. After installing Panther, I installed this MySQL package and loaded database into it. The only thing I had a problem with was installing Bundle::DBI and DBD::MySQL. Bundle::DBI installed fine, but DBD::MySQL wouldn't build. After a couple google searches, I turned up this page which provided me with the solution. Simply type perl -pi -e's/MACOSX/env MACOSX/' Makefile after building the MakeFile and all is well. Now with Panther installed and the blog back up, I can finish up Recent Tunes soon.

More Blog Changes

I wasn't tired tonight, so I spent a little time working on my blog. I've added links to individual categories in the sidebar, mainly because I want to keep track of how many entries I have for each category. (Only 2 video game entries?! I need to start playing more video games!) I still need to update the category template, so the category pages actually have a sidebar.

I also saw that Jeff updated his archive paths to be more meaningful. I've been meaning to do this, every since I read about doing that on Erik's blog. So, I finally joined the crowd and updated my archive paths to be /blog/archive/Year/Month/Day/EntryTitle.php. I like having the more meaningful links, and this blog entry that I found in a comment on Erik's blog helped me easily set up a .htaccess file that should redirect all the old links to the new links.

I'm not sure why exactly, but I'm finally starting to get into this blog. For a while it was just a place for me to write stuff occasionally, but now I'm starting to actually want to work on site (both backend stuff and CSS/XHTML/PHP stuff). I think there's two main reasons why I'm getting into it. First, it gives me a chance to learn a bunch of stuff I don't know, but want to. Second, it's a nice change of pace from coding. I seem to be in a different frame of thinking when I'm working on the blog from when I'm coding. So anyway, excpect continued updates to the site both in content and design/layout.

Moved Blog

I just finished moving my blog from my tower to my PowerBook. Leave me a comment if you find anything that's broken.

CSS, XHTML, PHP

One last trackback to Jeff for today. Like Jeff, I don't know any CSS or XHTML and feel like I should. Since CWRU affiliates have access to Safari I'm planning to spend the weekend reading up on CSS, XHTML, and PHP. Hopefully I can spiff up the site a little visually. I'm using PHP to generate the various media tables I have, so hopefully I can do some cool things with those also. Looks like this is going to be a fun, tech heavy weekend. I'm also planning to go to the Computer History Museum that's less than 3 miles from my apartment. Should be lots of fun, and Andrew says they have an exhibit dedicated to Apple.

Blogs and Wiki

Jeff writes about combining blogs and wiki. His example to Erik and I was he writes about various restaurants he's been to and it would be cool to have individual posts about specific trips to the restaurant that could all autolink to a single page that has various general information about the restaurant. Interesting. I like that idea, and can definitely see using it on my site. In a similar way, since I post so much about various bands, it would be nice to have a pages for individual bands with things like recommended songs, links to the band's website, upcoming concert dates, etc. This page looks like it has some blog/wiki combination solutions. Maybe I'll get a chance to take a look at them this weekend.

ITMS Purchases

I added my iTunes Music Store purchases to the CDs media page. I've only bought one album so far, but there's already 2 more album purchases I'm considering and will probaby make as soon as I'm ready for some new music to listen to. The future purchases are the Ben Folds' Speed Graphic EP (which is only available digitally) and Thrice's The Artist in the Ambulance, which Mike told me is "really, really good" and from the 30 second previews I heard I'd have to agree.

Recent Tunes, Media Collections

With the concert page done, hopefully I can now start working on Recent Tunes again. (I know, Erik, I was supposed to start working on it a month ago.) The main functionality I'm looking to add to it is to allow uploading of the list of recent tunes to my blog, much like Kung-Tunes does. I've used Kung Tunes, but it has a tendency to randomly stop working. I'm also throwing together a quick little app that will make updating my various media collections lists a lot faster for me. So maybe I'll actually update those soon too. I need to add a new table to the CDs section for songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store.

Updates

Sarah keeps telling me to update my blog, so that's what I'm doing now. I'd rather be out of my room doing something, but there doesn't seem to be anything exciting going on now so I guess I'll sit here and write a bunch of blog entries.

Anime Music Videos

Added a list of some of my anime music videos. I have about 4 more CDs that Mike sent me a while ago that I need to add to the list yet.

CDs

I finally got around to posting my list of CDs. I only have a few but if anyone actually cares, they are listed.

Lyric Search

Now you can click on a song title of the Current Tune or any song in the Recent Tunes list and it will search songmeanings.net for the lyrics.

Music Video Comments

This post is for comments about my music video collection.

Recent Tunes Comments

This post is for comments about the songs in my Recent Tunes list.

DVDs

I've added a list of most of my DVDs here. I'm linking to this post from the DVD page, so comments about my DVDs, recommendations, etc can go in the comments of this post.

Media Collections

I added a list of the music videos I have on my computer. I still need to add the anime music videos I have and there's more videos I have burned to CD, but the CDs are at home right now. Soon I'll be adding lists of my MP3s, DVDs, and CDs.