Amarok Blog

Entries from January 2010

Saturday, January 16. 2010

Help Haiti (if you can) Posted by Mark Kretschmann in markey at 09:09

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Dear Amarok and KDE users,

I'm sure that you have heard of the terrible earthquake disaster that has happened in Haiti. Current estimations of deaths range from 100,000 to 200,000, and this number keeps rising. What we are looking at is very likely one of the worst natural disasters of the last 10 years.

I would like to encourage our users to help Haiti in this situation, if you can. One way of doing this is by sending donations to international humanitarian groups that support helping Haiti. I'm sure there are other ways, if you know some concrete examples, please add a comment.

Please do not voice your opinion if you have any bizarre theories (be it from religious motives, political fearmongering, conspiracy theories, etc) about how this disaster happened. I've heard many of them, and there is no need to hear any more. This article is only about helping, but not discussing backgrounds.

Thanks.

Disclaimer: I do not speak for the Amarok team, nor do I speak for KDE. This article is a private matter.

Thursday, January 14. 2010

let's get some smarts in there Posted by Leo Franchi in lfranchi at 19:02

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let's get some smarts in there

biased playlist with both new weekly top bias and last.fm similar artists bias with track mode

one of my longstanding goals as an amarok developer has been to expand the way that amarok helps you explore your own music collection, and discover your own music. for those of you who will be attending campkde a few days (my flight leaves tomorrow am...) i'll expand on this point quite a bit more in my talk on sunday. but here's a nice little precursor that shows the sort of features that I think media players should be able to do.

most people who use amarok are aware of this "dynamic playlist" framework, and I hope that a good percentage of users understand what it's for. for those who don't, basically, it allows you to modify the composition of The Playlist (right hand side) based on a set of pluggable criteria. historically in amarok 2.x these criteria have been things such as "artist name == FOO" or "playcount > 5" etc. I think 2.2.0 was the first release (or was it 2.1.0?) that had a lastfm similar artists bias--that is, amarok would try to play similar songs by asking last.fm what artists were similar to the currently playing one.

now that i've pushed another option to the last.fm similar bias, and added a completely new bias, i'm getting closer to helping amarok help you play music you want. so what's new?

playing-history based bias
if you've been a meticulous user of last.fm (which is easy thanks to the seamless amarok integration) you know that last.fm knows a lot about your listening history.

every so often I sit back and realize how much my music tastes have changed over time. the music I listened to 4 years ago i rarely hear today. but is that because my tastes have really changed? or is it also because i've simply forgotten some of the more obscure bands I was listening to? well, now you can tell amarok to play you music that was in your "weekly top artists" list between any two dates in your listening history.

that's right, so when you remember that you listened to a ton of electro-punk last july but can't remember all the bands, just set up the dates and let amarok rip. a trip through history lane indeed

new track-based similarity
for those who have used the last.fm similar artists bias, you've probably noticed that on the whole it's not super accurate. that's because it just asks last.fm for similar artists---and if you happen to like an artist that covers a wide variety of genres, this can get pretty inaccurate.

anyway, last.fm recently introduced a new track similarity function---you can ask it for similar songs to any given song. this, of course, is much more accurate. it's also harder to find matches (the odds that you have the exactly correct track in your collection is lower), but that's the tradeoff you have to make.

in any case, there is now a combobox that lets you choose between artist similarity and track similarity when using the bias.

enjoy!

Tuesday, January 12. 2010

The server that came from the Mist Posted by Mark Kretschmann in markey at 12:41

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The server that came from the Mist

Here's a little story I wanted to share with you. It's so bizarre, you might not believe it when you read it, but it really happened

Some back story:

A few months ago Amarok had migrated to Git, and then Konversation had migrated too. We had to write a special "commit hook" script for making the commits show up on IRC, via the CIA bot. This script was running on our Amarok server (called "Kollide"), and all was fine. At some point then we migrated our server to new hardware, as the old contract had expired. That also went really well.

What happened later:

At some point the CIA bot started to print everything twice. Yes, every single commit, all duplicated. I guess you can imagine how annoying that was. So we tried to debug this for weeks, looked at all scripts, at Gitorious, and whatnot. Noone was able to spot the bug, it was a mystery. Two days ago then we discussed this problem again in our #kde-git IRC channel, with Jeremy Whiting, and Eike Hein. Basically we were close to giving up on the whole thing. For fun, Jeremy said something like: "Hmm, what happened to your old server, btw?". That got us thinking. Then Eike compared the IP addresses of the server that sent out the commit message, and what did we see there: Two different IPs. What had happened:

The old server (we like to call it our "Shadow Server" now) had continued to run happily, because the hoster had forgotten to switch it off. So it was still running our web site, all sorts of other stuff, plus this little commit hook script!

When we realized what had happened there: There was just one possible reaction: Headdesk

Don't know about you, but we found that quite bizarre and funny, as noone had anticipated that (not even our admin)

Tuesday, January 5. 2010

About "Good Music" - Part ... Posted by Mark Kretschmann in markey at 21:13

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About "Good Music" - Part 2: Rock

This is the second part of my series of articles about "good music", which was originally planned to become a series of three. In the first article of this series I had talked about Progressive Rock. The plan was to do a follow-up on Electronic Music, and then one on Classical Music, but somehow I got inspired today to write about Rock Music instead, so I'm changing the plan a little.

As a preface I should again say that this is of course highly subjective. Tastes differ wildly, and talking about art is especially subjective. Why am I writing this? As a developer of a music player I simply get to hear a lot of music (all day, basically), and I've always been fascinated by music, although I'm personally not a musician. So, take all of this with a grain of salt. What motivated me to write this second part is that I did actually get some very nice feedback on the first article, including a fellow KDE developer talking to me at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit about this article, which I thought was really nice. Apparently there is some interest in talking about music, so let's just do that

Now I should explain why I originally didn't plan to write about Rock Music. The reason is a bit weird: I am somewhat ashamed of admitting that I do enjoy Rock, simply because there's so much crap in this genre. Again, this is highly subjective, but I just don't consider run-of-the-mill Rock very exciting. However, some bands managed to do Rock with a twist, either by adding components of other genres to it, or simply by being freaking good. Most of these "freaking good" bands also are versatile though, and they do incorporate different styles into their music.

Queen

It is pretty hard to describe Queen briefly. It's also pretty hard not to hit superlatives when talking about them, because they were very super in many regards. I personally consider Queen the best rock band of all times, that's probably the best way to sum it up. Queen also happened to be my first "love" in music, and to this day I love them just as much as I did when I was 14. What made them so special? First of all, their singer Freddie Mercury was simply as good as singers can get. Incredible vocal range, fantastic and unique voice. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 from AIDS, one of the first prominent victims of this virus. Back then this caused quite the media stir, as Freddie was more or less openly gay, and the media tried to do the best they could to explain that "the guy died because he was gay". I'm missing words to describe this stupidity, so let's switch to Brian May, their guitarist. May is in fact "Dr May" now, as he has recently completed his PhD in astrophysics, and he's currently listed at #39 of Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". It's hard to call the man anything else than a genius, if you have ever listened to his compositions and guitar work.

Freddie Mercury was able to switch effortlessly between Falsetto voice and Modal voice (what you would consider the normal voice), without really pausing or causing a hitch in the transition. As far as I know, this is pretty difficult to do, and not mastered by many. In my mind, I always had the image of him using his voice more like a musical instrument than just a voice, much like a trumpet. He was able to start deep, and then lifting it up, higher and higher. If you try that at home, chances are you'll end up with a sore throat next morning.

If you care about music at all, you should listen to some Queen songs. Some recommendations for especially good songs: "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Who Wants To Live Forever", "The Show Must Go On".

U2

This band is a bit of a strange bag. I have some sort of love/hate relationship with them, caused by a moral dilemma: Their music is among the best you can get. Their believe system is comparable to a fruit cake.

U2 is an Irish band, but these days they are more like a worldwide corporation. Their singer Bono is a bit of a controversial person. On the one hand, the guy is simply a good singer. On the other hand, he tends to get a bit over his head, meddling in politics, trying to cure world hunger, and kissing the Pope's ring. One of his latest escapades even made it to Slashdot. You be the judge if this man can be liked. My opinion: It's important to separate the personal from the professional. And professionally, this band simply is damn good. Bringing us to the next important band member:

The Edge, who is the guitarist and main composer of U2. I personally find him more likable than Bono, but all this is of little relevance. What is relevant to me is that Edge is a very good guitarist, with a unique style that is different from most other guitarists. His electrical guitar soli are rarely there for showing off, but more for creating a mood, and that he does masterfully.

It is important to note that most of U2's brilliant albums (they also made some crappy ones) were co-written by Brian Eno, who is widely known as one of the most influential persons in the music industry. My suspicion is that Eno is the true mastermind behind U2, as all albums with him tend to be masterful. The rest, not so much.

Some recommendations for U2 songs: "One", "With Or Without You", "Unknown Caller".