Snapraid takes care of the parity feature of Unraid and mhddfs handles the drive spanning.  The best part of all this is that you can run Snapraid on pretty much any OS and mhddfs on any version of linux.  So now I have an Ubuntu box setup with Snapraid and mhddfs.  I’m exporting my media shares as NFS for XBMC and also am exporting as Samba for access from other clients.  It’s also running the MySQL backend for XBMC, and it takes care of downloading my media.  Basically, it is setup to do exactly the same things that Unraid was doing for me, but I now have total control.

I got up this morning earlier than I ever do to so I could bike the 9 miles to work. I made sure to give myself enough time so that I could go at a leisurely pace. I didn’t want to be dripping with sweat when I arrived at the office. There was not a lot of traffic and I thoroughly enjoyed the morning ride. I got to the office and reapplied deodorant and changed into a clean set of clothing. I was changed before almost everybody showed up to work and I don’t think anyone was able to tell that I had biked to work. That was really the only thing I was concerned about. In fact, I didn’t wear a helmet for that very reason. Maybe I’ll have to buzz my hair so it won’t be an issue (don’t count on this happening anytime soon).

The Sigg backpack I wore today to carry my Macbook, clothes, and lunch is incredibly bulky. It’s not very conducive for wearing while biking. I did leave my computer at work, so tomorrow I’m going to be able to use my small Jansport backpack. That should make the ride a lot more comfortable and cool, I hope anyway. I think I will eventually get some kind of messenger bag, but not until I get a new bike. My brother will be wanting his road back bike sooner that I’ll be ready to give it up (I’ve got my eye on a Trek 1.2).

Picture from the 1987 Scwhinn Catolog

Ultimate Dog Tease via Reddit

I don’t know why it took me so long to notice, but GitHub user antons has picked up the torch and has been continuing work on Ben Gummers ScrobblePod. You can download it here or from the GitHub repo. It will even scrobble multiple plays now.

Canabalt

Canabalt [ $2.99 - iTunes Link ]

Carcassonne

Carcassonne [ $4.99 - iTunes Link ]

Flight Control

Flight Control [ $0.99 - iTunes Link ]

The Incident

The Incident [ $1.99 - iTunes Link ]

Tilt to Live

Tilt to Live [ $0.99 - iTunes Link ]

Pitchfork: Now that you’re on an independent label is your music going to be more “indie” i.e. less polished and pop-sounding?

RC: No.

You have to love that answer. It pretty much sums up everything. I discovered Weezer through the Buddy Holly video that came with Windows 95. I think it’s great when great bands get big and experience success, they deserve it. When great bands get big and become awful bands, that’s when I have a problem. I’m not even going to talk about their new album cover that features a character from Lost. First the Snuggie and now this? Such a shame.

[Pitchfork: Weezer Reveal Ridiculous Album Cover]

iScrob supports iOS 4 multitasking and will continue to play and scrobble your music while it is in the background.

[free - iTunes Link]

Pros

• Scrobbles directly from your iPhone to Last.fm as tracks are played
• Unlike similar apps, iScrob works like iPod app
• Includes all of your playlists
• Works in the background
• Did I say it scrobbles plays directly from your iPhone?

Cons

• Can’t use iPod app (this one can’t be helped)
• No way to have iScrob hold on to tracks until you are on have wifi (to save bandwidth & battery)
• Can take a few seconds to pull in all your music when the app opens
• Lose Voice Control to choose music to play

Verdict

If your phone is jailbroken I’d stick with Scrobl, otherwise iScrob is the best way to scrobble plays directly from your iPhone. For other methods, see this article.

Today, a new jailbreak went up at http://jailbreakme.com. So I went to the website in Mobile Safari and about a minute late my 3GS was jailbroken. While I can appreciate the neatness of http://jailbreakme.com I find it a bit scary that a website can gain that much access over my iDevice. That being said, I hit up Cydia and downloaded Scrobbl (which does work with iOS 4 even though it says iPhone 3 only). Once again, all my plays are scrobbled directly from my device.

I’m guilty of being addicted to Last.fm and the charts that it creates of my listening history. I guess I just love statistics. However, my OCD wants my play counts on Last.fm to accurately reflect what I have listened to. This of course means that I need to be able to scrobble tracks not only from iTunes, but also from my iPhone. I have spent more time than I care to admit trying to find the perfect solution. At this point there aren’t any perfect solutions, but there are few working methods to pick from.

Note: I’m running Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

Official Last.fm Client

According to the Last.fm website the official client is supposed to be able to scrobble tracks from iPod Touches and iPhones. It hasn’t been updated in a while and I’m not sure if it has to do with a iTunes updates or something else, but the Last.fm client routinely crashes iTunes when I try to sync my iPhone. Making it close to impossible to scrobble my tracks. It also doesn’t like it if you sync more than one iPhone with your Mac (even if under different users) if you use Fast User Switching. To be fair, when it used to work for me it would scrobble multiple plays of the same track. One caveat though, is that the timestamps for your plays are likely to be inaccurate if you listen to your music in iTunes. This is do to the Last.fm site not supporting scrobbling tracks before the most recent scrobble. While the official Last.fm client hasn’t worked for me in a while, you might have better luck. Download it at http://www.last.fm/download.

ScrobblePod

ScrobblePod is my preferred app and it works great. It solves the timestamp issue that the official client has by queueing up all of the iTunes plays and holding them until your iPhone is synced. It then combines all of the plays and scrobbles them all at once. There is only one caveat with this method, that it can’t detect multiple plays on your iPhone. Since I don’t even always listen to the some track more than once between syncs (and you might not either) it’s not usually an issue. I will say that it does bug me that after listening to an album on repeat it only sees it as played once. The developer was working on a solution to this but he hasn’t been active since last year (he hasn’t even scrobbled a track to Last.fm since last September). To further complicate the matter the ScrobblePod webpage is currently suspended. That being said, it still works beautifully with the current version of iTunes and iOS 4. Thankfully, I still have a copy of the download so you can snag it here.

Scrobbl (requires jailbroken iPhone)

Scrobbl is a Last.fm scrobbler that runs in the background of your iPhone. It can scrobble tracks as they are played directly from your iPhone. If you have a jailbroken iPhone then this is definitely the way to go. You’ll need something else (such as Audioscrobbler) for scrobbling from iTunes. One more note, the version of Scrobbl for iPhone OS 3 still works in iOS 4. Scrobbl is available as a free download via Cydia.

In Closing

The bottom line: use ScrobblPod unless you have a jailbroken iPhone. In that case, use Scrobbl. If you have any better ways let me know in the comments.