July 2021

Music

Bulk Editing Last.fm for Better Stats

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Last.fm Logo

Ok, this isn’t as exciting as you might think. One “social network” I have used for a very long time, possibly longer than any other, and I have used Twitter since 2006 and Facebook since 2007, is Last.fm. I’ve been scrobbling, off and on, since 2005. Only Flickr may rival Last.fm for my length of use and I don’t use Flickr anymore.

One issue that any user of Last.fm regular will be familiar with is the inconsistency of ID tags on music. My current annoyance, which spawned actual action, has to do with CHVRCHES. I’ve listened to CHVRCHES quite a bit on MP3s, I recently bought their discography in HQ FLAC files. the FLACs have the artist as CHVRCHΞS. The stylized E is cool, but it means that they show up in my scrobbles as two different artists. Not great for tracking stats.

Fortunately, I found a neat and useful script that will bulk edit this, so I can quickly and easily change all of the “CHVRCHΞS” into “CHVRCHES”. I also edited my FLAC files so they show “CHVRCHES” as well.

This script requires subscribing to Last.fm pro, which I’ve considered doing anyway, for better stats, and to support a service I have used for a while. Especially since it’s ridiculously cheap to do for a month or two. Plus is means I can go through and clean up some of the other discrepancies in my scrobbles.

I almost wish that subscribing would let me bulk import Scrobbles, because I have a couple of other accounts. The thing is, both of those accounts were just unattended semi-random plays from when I was messing with running a private streaming radio. They sort of represent my library at the time, but they don’t represent my streaming habits. The only real benefit would be that it would bump my total scrobbles by around 30,000 tracks. Which is cool, but it also would destroy my top artist, album and track lists.

These top lists are already a little iffy because there were periods when I was unable to scrobble for various reasons, and there are times when I listen to CDs in my car instead of through my phone, or some other device capable of scrobbling. And while pushing Pink Floyd to the top of the list as my most played artist would be semi accurate for my life of music, it’s not that accurate for the last 15 years. Plus Shiro Sagisu, Death Cab for Cutie and Nobuo Uematsu definitely aren’t top ten on my listening, I couldn’t name any Death Cab for cutie tracks despite 500 “scrobbles” on one of those secondary accounts. (Side note, Nobuo Uematsu, might be up there, plus I saw him live once).

So there are some limits to what could and should be added. As much as I would love to somehow travel in time and collect up all the music I have listened to since the 80s into a perfect representation of my music history, that’s just not possible and the current representation is plenty sufficient for now and going forward.

Opinion/Editorial/Life

Reddit Rate-Limiting VPN Users

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Yesterday I started getting these annoying pop ups on Reddit.  “You’re doing that too often, please wait X minutes”.  This most often happens with new accounts that are low in Karma.  It’s a sort of trust trap that prevents spam.  My account is almost 10 years old.  I have almost 500 thousand Karma.  I don’t meet any of the new account nonsense.  This block, is very suspicious.

I’ve seen it before though.  It seems individual subs can enable something like this for accounts that post infrequently to that particular sub.  But this block seemed to span across many subs, so it was clearly site wide.   I assumed at first Reddit was blocking 3rd party apps in an effort to push people to use the shitty official app.  So I installed the official app.  And good fucking God does it suck.   The problem persisted though, so I uninstalled the app.  I also tried just using the web interface in Firefox mobile.  No go.

So I decided to try on another account.  Not only did this still happen on the other account, but the block from the first account, applied to other accounts.  So clearly the block is IP based.

Now, on mobile, when not on my home network, I use a VPN basically full time.  Why would fill a blog post on it’s own but all we need for this is to know that I use it all the time, I’ve done this for something like 5 years.  It’s not a cheap freebie VPN, I use a paid service that’s trustworthy (I am the customer, not some other advertisers).  I also use Reddit basically daily, a lot.

I disabled the VPN for a bit, the problem went away.

I re-enabled the VPN, the problem came back.

I did some searching on Reddit and Twitter and found a lot of other people having similar issues.  Reddit is rate-limiting VPN users.  It’s super annoying and super bull shit.  There are plenty of valid reasons to use a VPN, like I said, that’s a whole different blog post.  Blanked throttling VPN users is not a good solution.  I would dump using Reddit before dumping using my VPN.

Hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch that gets fixed, but for now it’s incredibly annoying.

My DIY Projects

Project – Puzzle Board

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I wanted to take a brief moment to talk about a fairly simple project I’ve done making a few Puzzle Boards. Though at the moment, wood prices are kind of nutty, so it’s a good project to do later. I’ve made something like 4 or 5 of these now in various sizes, for use by my family both at my house and extended family. They could be a bit fancier as well but the same concept applies.

Basically, we do puzzles as a group sometimes. Often these puzzles take several days to complete, which means they are often in the way. We also have cats, who like to destroy things because they are cats. This is where the Puzzle Board comes in, it’s a simple flat board with an edge and a cover, to protect the puzzle while it’s being worked on.

It’s extremely simple to make, though it’s best if you have a decent saw and some clamps. For these boards, we bought some medium sized sheets of thin wood. The size depends on how large you want the board to be, the one pictures was likely roughly a 4′ x 4′ sheet. Selecting the type of wood is fairly important and it may cost a bit more than a basic sheet. A lot of flooring or plywood (4′ x 8′ sheets) is too thick, it will make the thing super heavy. Some of the cheaper wood though is too flimsy, it needs to be reasonably stiff, tough the sides will add to the stiffness.

You also need some sort of trim piece. I used 3/4″ pre finished Quarter Round, but you could use something fancier. How much depends on the length of the sides of your board, but unless you are making something absolutely massive, 1-2 8 foot pieces should work. for smaller lap sized boards you’d only need one.

The top cover board is roughly 2 inches smaller than the bottom board, to account for the edge size. So, for example, if you had a 4′ x 4′ square of flat board, you would cut it in two just over half way at 25″ wide. Four feet is 48 inches, half would be 24 inches. Cutting at 25 inches gives you a piece 25 inches wide and a piece 23 inches wide. the 23 inch wide piece will need a couple of inches trimmed off one end, but then it should sit just inside the 25 inch wide base.

For the edges, trim them with a 45 degree angle so the outer side is the same length as the base of the puzzle board. Int he example above, these would be 25 inches and 48 inches, with the 45 degree angles all pointing “in”. It’s best to visualize each piece before cutting and how it will lay, because it’s easy to accidentally cut it incorrectly and then the corners won’t line up.

Once the base and sides are cut, you can stain or paint the base and top (and sides if they are not pre finished) to the desired color. It may also be a good idea to lay things out just to make sure the top board fits and doesn’t need trimmed down any as well. If you are really ambitious you could also potentially attach some sort of mat or fabric to the base piece at this point as well.

Next use some wood glue and glue the sides on carefully, keeping them as straight as you can along the sides of the base piece. Use clamps to hold the side pieces in place as they dry to avoid things coming loose. I also would recommend using an old sock or rag between the clamp and wood, to help keep the clamp for marring the finish. All four sides can be done at once, or a few at a time, depending on how many clamps are available. If you are careful you could also simply place everything on a flat surface (like a table or the ground) and balance something heavy like some large books on top if no clamps are available. Just take care that things don’t slide around. If you re doing this, it may be helpful to use some scrap pieces so the books (or whatever) sit “flat” instead of at an angle (where they will be applying some small sideways force).

Once every thing is dry, that’s it. It’s done. Construct your puzzle on the base, when you’re taking a break, cover it with the cover piece. When not in use you can store the cover in the frame and store it wherever you have room. The basic concept can easily be resized as well. I’ve made smaller lap sized versions of these as well, for single person use in a chair.