The pot grows bigger at the end of every week

Well, I'm home from work today. ( Once for the squeamish )

I'm also still completely exhausted, despite having had a full night's sleep last night: indicator #2. Here's hoping I can go back in tomorrow, since I do have work to get done this week.

Computer just crashed. Luckily, Semagic saved a draft before it died. I love smart programs.

I don't know how much I'll be online today, but I'll try to stop by to say hello, at least. :)

And now, the Song of the Day:

( Twice for the meek )

Music format thoughts

So I did some experimenting with the Ogg Vorbis format today. It's been recommended to me a few times over the last few weeks, so I figured I'd check it out. Actually, the whole thing was started by my wanting to put a particular song on a MiniDisc. The Sony software does not, inexplicably, understand VBR, so I opened Easy CD-DA Extractor to re-encode the song from 201kb VBR (Variable Bit Rate, for you non-music-tech-geeks out there) to ...well, it ended up being 128 kb CBR (Constant Bit Rate). While I was doing that, I noticed that the program could convert to .ogg files - although all of the offered bt rates were VBR - so I decided to experiment.

I experimented with four songs: ALI Project, "Coppelia's Casket"; No Use For A Name, "Dumb Reminders" (the song I was recoding in the first place); Warren Zevon, "Mutineer"; and W.G. "Snuffy" Walden, "West Wing Suite".

All in all, I'm kind of disappointed. I'm not sure how bitrate relates to file size (although I know it does), but the Ogg format's file sizes seem about in line with an MP3 of the same average bitrate. In addition, the Ogg files universally sound thin and cold (and have a lower average volume) compared to the MP3 versions of the same songs - and I have WinAmp set up to maximize warmth and density.

I can see how under certain conditions, people would like this file format - and I acknowledge the limitation that I'm converting from MP3 to Ogg, instead of ripping both directly from CD - but this just isn't something I'm going to get into anytime soon.

Porta-tunes

So I mentioned my MiniDisc player in the last entry, and I wanted to ask for opinions on it. Because, really, I love the thing - it's a rare day that I don't use it to provide music while I'm driving - but I kinda have to face facts: it's over two years old, the interface doesn't quite work right anymore, and new MiniDiscs cost something like $2 apiece. So I've been thinking about getting another Portable Music Device.

The obvious choice, to me, is the Apple iPod, but I barely know anything about them; literally the only experience I've had with an iPod was a few weeks ago when I was trying to get telerib's iTrip thing to work right. (Did you figure it out, telerib? I think I can get it to work now.) And there are other music players out there (as Gizmodo delights in showing me).

So what do you all recommend? Should I stick with my MiniDisc player until it really dies (instead of just randomly remapping "Play" to "Skip Forward" every now and again)? Should I start saving for an iPod? Or should I be looking at something else?

Card games

This one's for people who are familiar with both Chez Geek and Munchkin (or one of the variants thereof). (And, seriously - if you read this journal and you're not familiar with both of those, you should be.) Note that these are generalizations about the mechanics.

When I say "profession", I mean things like Chez Geek's Job and Munchkin's Class and Race.

[Poll #361525]