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Questions and Answers - Part 3

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08:30 / 08.08.08

Snoring. By day I may be the slickest, smoothest and most charming guy on the planet. By night, as soon as I fall asleep I apparently make the kinds of sounds you might expect to hear when you're watching David Attenborough approach a herd of sleeping elephants.

Help me Barbelith! Help me control my nocturnal emissions!

09:12 / 08.08.08

I understand that those little nose clip/plaster thingies you can get from a chemists work for some people. It's that, surgery, or playing Scandanavian death metal all night so no-one notices the snoring.

09:23 / 08.08.08

It is somewhat disconcerting to be told that you snore when you have never realised it yourself. My dreams of becoming a ninja have been dashed on the rocks now and never before have I felt more like I'm turning into my Dad.

14:20 / 08.08.08

You could try taping a racquetball between the shoulders of a shirt that you wear to bed, thus preventing yourself from sleeping on your back.

This is not a joke; it's an actual medical recommendation.

14:22 / 08.08.08

Roland Barthes! S/Z. I'll scan the bit leading up to it, if you like?

Ha! I've got a copy. Maybe even two. I recall liking an essay in Image*Music*Text better, but that's probably because it made not a lick of rational sense: "The Third Meaning." I'll have to pull S/Z off a shelf sometime. Haven't actually opened it in more than 15 years.

17:23 / 08.08.08

Proinsias - it depends what your priorities are. I use itunes for content managagement, and it does for that. It's also not too bad for playing through laptop speakers.

If you want to play tunes on a bigger soundsystem, though, itunes has poor sound quality to be wary of. Anything above tiny speakers can get be used to get better sound quality than itunes offers. I wouldn't use itunes to play tracks through a proper PA unless there was absolutely no other option.

I'd get VLC. VLC is better, and free.
Get VLC, and use it for moments that require decent sound(it also has a gain that goes above 100%, which can be handy) and keep itunes for content management.

itunes is great as a sound library but shit as a sound player, basically.

18:33 / 08.08.08

This is not a joke; it's an actual medical recommendation.

Not to be using advice picked up from clown medical college, grant!

18:57 / 08.08.08

I refer you to the third tip on this Mayo Clinic sleep apnea page.

Balls attached to pajamas save lives.

19:56 / 08.08.08

But what questions do you have? Wanna start a topic?
Questions? Relatively basic. At first, anyway. I suppose I may start a topic, though as usual I fear a lack of interest or participation.

01:16 / 10.08.08

Cheers for that Life Critic. I've been using VLC for video but not for tunes, I'll give it a shot.

I've not been too worried about sound quality recently as I've been surviving on very little music and a very poor music setup for the past nine months. This is changing as I sort out the stereo in the main room and have reclaimed the music on my old hard drive. I'd not really noticed a huge problem with mp3+itunes+wireless until I was visiting my brother in law last week and he turned up his stereo to max volume via airtunes whilst very drunk - nigh on a thousand pounds worth of speakers and a valve amp at cutoff volumes really does make a fool of the rest of the setup.

I need to get my turntable fixed.

iTunes it is, although it does put a bit of a damper on my plans to switch the xp laptop on my home network to linux.

05:58 / 10.08.08

on my plans to switch the xp laptop on my home network to linux

I have no experience thereof, but I hear good things about Banshee...

09:32 / 10.08.08

Okay, I wanna talk computer sound setups. There's two things I'd like:

First is a setup with a main 'pute downstairs, and the ability to play music from the library on this 'pute upstairs from a laptop. I currently have an iTunes library shared which the laptop can access and play through its own speakers, so I think I just need are some wireless speakers. Is that correct? And if so, is there anything I should be looking out for? Would I be able to use any old 5.1 ones or would that require a 5.1 sound card (which I assume an old iBook wouldn't have)?

The second setup I want is basically similar, but doesn't involve a desktop, only an external hard drive. Obviously keeping a hard drive plugged into a laptop isn't really practical, so I was thinking of a wireless router with a hard drive plugged into that, and another set of (I assume wireless) speakers, with the ability to play what's on the hard drive through the speakers using the laptop, without the laptop having to be plugged into anything. Is that possible? And if so what would I need (examples definitely welcome)?

11:18 / 10.08.08

Setup 1) Where will the speakers be plugged into? When you say "wireless"...do you mean that they need to be entirely separate to the laptop (presumably so that you can move around with it), but beaming the sound from the laptop over to the speakers, which will stay in a fixed location?

Setup 2) Theoretically, I see no reason why you couldn't get something like a Network Attached Storage device, plug it into a router using its ethernet cable, and point iTunes towards it as a music library - the question then becomes the same as for 1) - where are the speakers going to be?

The tricky part is getting the music from the "computer network" into a decent set of speaker. Well, it's not tricky, it's just a little pricey.

It's very possible, though.

Now, have you ever heard of Squeezebox?

11:52 / 10.08.08

I've never heard of Squeezebox in my life. Probably, anyway. I just looked at their website and I still can't quite work out exactly what it does. I'm not quite sure about the NAS either - from the wikipedia article it sounds quite bulky and expensive (something with an operating system and keyboard and display?). I've already got an external hard drive (and the laptop) for setup 2, but nothing else - is it not possible to buy a router which will turn an attached hard drive into a network destination? I thought that some things did this - the Apple Airport things spring to mind, but I thought there'd be a PC equivalent.

With setup 1, what you say is exactly what I mean; the speakers can just stay put, and obviously the desktop downstairs isn't going to be moving anywhere in a hurry either. Again for setup 2 - the only thing which needs to be movable is the laptop.

12:20 / 10.08.08

Right, a Squeezebox is one of a class of devices called "media streamers" - you plug them into your hifi, and they pull music from your PC network (wirelessly, in this case) and output it to your hifi through the traditional analogue/digital outputs. You can devices from very low prices to very prices, with varying capability (like also streaming video to your telly, or full colour iPod-like remotes).
Squeezebox is 1) very good quality, and 2) uses open-source software, with a number of add-ons.

You can get a Squeezebox receiver for £99 (Amazon), and plug it into a pair of speakers, or existing kit. Then, you use the Squeezecentre software to control what you listen to from your laptop. Bonus - you can also listen to it from your laptop speakers as well, at the same time, if you happen to be moving from room to room. And on the desktop, if you happen to be down there.

Same principle applies for set-up 2. I don't think that you can plug an external drive into a router and turn it into a network location; what you can do, however, is get one of these: Linksys NSLU2, which you CAN plug into a router, and it will turn it into a NAS.

On NAS, these are not expensive as such, but are more expensive than normal external harddrives. They are simply an external drive with an ethernet port and (I assume) some extra software which makes them readable to the network as a whole.

Have a look at Network Harddrives under Data Storage on PC World's website for some examples of size and what they look like.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:42 / 10.08.08

More on the NSLU2. Looks interesting, actually - I have a whole mess of hard drives, but there are all USB/Firewire, and it seems wasteful to buy a NAS in the context - at present I run iTunes off a firewire disk. Any ideas how this works with OS X 10.5? It specifies Windows networking protocols there...

13:24 / 10.08.08

According to this it can be set up on a Mac, but I don't know anything about Macs, I'm afraid, and can do little more than point you at the link and hope it means more to you than it does to me, Haus.

13:32 / 10.08.08

I'm fairly certain a Squeezebox sounds a bit unnecessary for setup 1. What I'm envisioning is having a desktop downstairs on which I might sometimes want to play music downstairs, and a laptop upstairs using which I'd like to play music through speakers upstairs. Or is it that getting a Squeezebox and a set of decent speakers which plug into it is easier/no more expensive than getting a set of decent wireless speakers which will just work directly from the laptop?

The NSLU2 seems like it's probably the kind of thing I'd be looking for for setup 2; they seem to be around £40 on eBay. I's annoying that I can't just plug a hard drive directly into a router and access it across a network, but oh well. If I'm getting this right, it's either that or buy a network drive, which would seem a little silly if I already have an external hard drive to spare. And then playing it - would it be possible to just get wireless speakers for this (I assume you couldn't plug speakers into the NSLU2?), or is it a bit more complicated than just "buy a set of wireless speakers and tell your laptop to send its music to them?

My current thoughts then, are: for setup 1, buy a set of wireless speakers; for setup 2, buy any old router, an NSLU2 and some wireless speakers. Would that work?

Thank'ee for all the help.

13:45 / 10.08.08

Have you seen wireless speakers for sale?

I'm struggling to think that I've seen any that aren't "Bluetooth speakers for your mobile phone", and therefore not the greatest quality.

Or, they cost the absolute earth and are designed to blend in with your rockery in your swanky pad for you to listen to acid jazz on with your swanky mates whilst having swanky cocktail parties.

(which is something I aspire to, certainly, but not especially helpful in the current context)

14:47 / 10.08.08

Oh; I hadn't realised that. I did a quick search, saw things which looked alright for about £70, and thought "fine". I didn't look close enough, though, to realise that when they said wireless they actually meant "well, two of the six speakers are wireless, to avoid mess; the rest are just plain ol' speakers".

That said, while I'd perhaps like something a bit better than "speaker for mobile phone", I'm not really looking for audiophile stuff; unless anyone is able to say that they'd be really awful, I think I'd be happy with something like this. It's a step down from what I was thinking, but doesn't look like it'd mangle sounds.

14:52 / 10.08.08

... Or, possibly, my parents could be persuaded that I need a rockery. In my bedroom.

An indierockery.

15:09 / 10.08.08

I think I'd be happy with something like this

They've got decent enough reviews on Amazon, certainly. I've looked at them a couple of times, for similar purposes to yours, although I want to hook them up to a desktop box. I assume that you'd have to plug the silver thingie into your laptop headphone jack.

If you do get them, I'd be curious to know whether they're any kop.

And yes, you do need an indierockery in your bedroom. Playing the Stones and Roses, generally. With occasional bursts of the Stooges "Dirt".

But no Savage Garden.

15:29 / 10.08.08

You can get wireless speakers, decent ones. I've looked into them, but decided I didn't have any really compelling use for them.

Rockstar millions, though.... and I'm getting me a Freewheeler.

Less money? Try these.

Honestly, though; there are loads of them now, and there'll soon be loads more. You won't get the absolute best sound quality without paying hefty cash, but you will get sound quality so good that most folks wouldn't care as long as you take time to look.

16:13 / 10.08.08

Oh yeah, the silver thingie. That'd be a tad annoying, but unless someone can think of something less irritating (in my head there should be something super-small like wireless cards and dongles are, but I'd guess it's actually unlikely) I'm thinking for now that's my best option.

16:17 / 10.08.08

Oh wait! I am thread hog and have extra ever-so-important question: I lost my lovely cheapo Wayfarer-style sunglasses and want to replace them with prescription ones, because wearing them over my glasses is a bit silly. Is there anywhere that does cheap plastic Wayfarer-style sunglasses which aren't the brand name ones? All the prescription ones I can find are "real", and cost at least £90. I'd like a pale pink/hot pink/pale blue frame.

Mysterious Transfer Student

22:11 / 10.08.08

I can browse 4chan again! And into the bargain I learned how you refresh a DNS cache! Not sure if good or bad thing. But nobody's stopping me from taking part in Geass Sunday.

All Acting Regiment

13:29 / 17.08.08

Does anybody have any grave warnings for someone about to do some proof-reading for money, for the first time?

14:10 / 17.08.08

Beware the Ides of March.

All Acting Regiment

14:21 / 17.08.08

It'll be alright, I think, March; my mate Zorba's bringing me some cool stuff.

14:36 / 17.08.08

Yeah, that wasn't very helpful. Out of curiosity, what kind of proofreading will you be doing?

All Acting Regiment

13:02 / 18.08.08

It's a novel by someone who has english as a second language.

14:27 / 18.08.08

When you find your attention wandering, read pages backward, from bottom to top.

Dark side of the Moonfrog1

15:56 / 18.08.08

Read everything 3 times. Once to check basic sentence structure, second to check for punctuation, and the third time, read it backwards, one word at a time, to check for spelling.

Actually, add a fourth step to check for consistency and 'house-style' rules

Also, pick up a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and beat yourself around the head with it whenever you get tired or if your concentration starts to wander.

01:10 / 19.08.08

Chicago? Feh! AP!

All Acting Regiment

14:06 / 19.08.08

People on this side of the wizard's eye prefer MHRA, it seems.

Thnaks for your advice - this is all stuff I thought i knew but turned out not to, innit.

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