Fantastic song and video.

There are three basic kinds of headphone designs that are currently popular:

1. In-ear – the little earbud design that you insert into your ear. These typically provide noise isolation.
2. Open air – an over the head design with big ear cups that are open to let sound escape and create a more natural sound. These are considered to deliver the best overall sound quality.
3. Closed – an over the head design with big ear cups that keeps sound in. Also referred to as “monitor” style headphones. These often include noise isolation or active noise reduction (for travel on airplanes, etc.).

I’ve read a bunch of reviews and gotten a series of recommendations regarding specific models. I’ve always been pleased with Sennheisers and they seem to be well regarded; Grados seems to be universally considered even better for open air headphones. I’ve also had recommendations for Shure and Bowsers & Wilkins for closed options. These aren’t cheap, but they seem to be a reasonable balance between budget cans and the ultra-expensive models. I expect to get a few years out of them.

For use at the office, with our open floorplan, it seems that open air style headphones are probably not appropriate. They, by design, allow sound to leak out which means people nearby can also hear what you’re listening to. I don’t really like the in-ear design due to comfort preference and concern over durability.

This is the first time in ages that I’ve done research in detail like this for something to buy and to be honest, I got fatigued by it. I guess I don’t enjoy this type of immersive shopping as much as I used to.

Ultimately, I ended up getting the Shure SRH840s¹ and I’ve been pleased with them. They are balanced, monitor-style headphones – you get a sound true to the original recording (if you want heavy bass, look elsewhere). From what I’ve read, they should sound even better once I get more hours logged on them and they “break in” a bit more. Initial feedback from the rest of the team on them has been positive as well.

1. Actually, I got them for the whole team. We will be in temporary office space in early 2011 while our office is remodeled, so this will help give everyone a quiet work environment no matter where we end up during that time. [back]

1. I blame Geof Morris for his generous gift of bootleg CDs and getting me to experiment with torrents. [back]

I should really start trying to find time to play more often.

My tip for any acoustic guitarists out there, try the Jim Dunlop Nylon Standard picks. I prefer the .88mm – soft enough to mute the pick/string click you get with hard plastic picks but still stiff enough to pick with. If you’re mainly playing rhythm, the .73′s are worth trying out as well. For electric, I like the Tortex Black Gold Standard.

Here is the direct link.

Thanks to everyone who commented or contacted me to let me know that this is available now.

The jazz version of O Holy Night at the end of tonight’s episode of Studio 60 knocked my socks off. When the voiceover said to go to nbc.com for more on tonight’s music, I was very hopeful. I thought, “perhaps they really are getting it!” After all, they are offering video of the episodes over the web now – maybe there will be an MP3 version of the song to download or purchase.

Unfortunately, all this hope turned to utter disappointment when I arrived at nbc.com, poked around for a while, and found only this:

A listing of the musicians and a pointer to a web site to support the rebuilding of music in New Orleans. Sure I think this is a good cause, but I was really hoping to get myself a copy of that O Holy Night performance.

If you missed the show, you’ll be able to see it online in a couple of hours. Jump to the end to watch and listen to the musical performance – it’s breathtaking.

I’ve been enjoying watching Studio 60 this season. It isn’t as good as the West Wing, but I really enjoy Sorkin’s writing. And I’m not the only one – love this quote (emphasized below).

Sorkin is at his best when dealing with conflict, and this episode takes on conflict. It’s not the explosive kind of conflict that is the result of the John-Wellsification of NBC TV, but the strive to explore both sides conflict that TWW thrived on. John Goodman’s character delights in thwarting the Hollywood suits’ expectations of him by messing with their heads, and Sorkin delights in showing it to us. Matt at one point sums up the culture wars by saying that “Your side hates my side because you think we think you’re stupid, and my side hates your side because we think you’re stupid.” These kinds of semi-in-depth looks at the culture wars could be the bread and butter of Studio 60.

It’s just on a different level then the rest of what I see on TV.

UPDATE: The let down continues:

UPDATE #2: Here is a direct link to the musical performance. Just beautiful.

I’ve seen Vienna perform a few times in smaller venues, but not since I’d moved to Denver from the Bay Area in 2004.

As you would expect, her performance skills have matured quite a bit after spending the last few years on the road. She seems completely confident and at ease on stage, and her voice is strong and true.

She played a lot of the tunes from her new CD, which definitely has a different feel than her earlier albums. Adam has a nice write-up about the album on his blog.

If you haven’t seen her perform live and you enjoy her music, you really need to make sure you catch this tour.

Besides the great show, it was a treat to see Eric² again as well. Eric had the forethought to bring his camera, so perhaps we’ll get some photos from the show on Flickr or his blog. Also, great job on the new site Eric!

1. Nice venue, the French Dip sandwich was tasty as well. [back]
2. Yes, the infamous “the other Eric”, or if you prefer, “the all-powerful god of sex Eric”. [back]

I think he’ll have more success sticking with the ballads that really showcase his voice than with some of the uptempo tunes, but what do I know.

While woing my little workout, I hook up my iPod to the little stereo in there using the Kensington Stereo Dock for iPod³. It works quite nicely.

I created a smart playlist of songs I’d rated 4 or 5 stars and songs that were in my ‘Allegro’ playlist, however that doesn’t end up being enough songs⁴ and I’m getting a bit of repetition. Hence the question:

What are some good “workout songs”?

Please post recommendations in the comments and I’ll happily drop a few bucks at the iTunes music store. The more I can do to make the working experience good, the longer I’m going to be able to keep this up.

One other note, the Denver Craig’s List has way more workout equipment listed for sale than it does technology toys.

1. Since the workout room has been complete in the basement. [back]
2. I pulled the nordic track out of storage this weekend, so I’m going to try using that on the off days from lifting. [back]
3. Which can be controlled by a Harmony remote – pretty cool. [back]
4. I tend towards more mellow tunes and have only started building the Allegro list – why can’t I tag songs in iTunes? [back]

Download version 0.2 beta.

Reports are now individual files in the ‘reports’ directory. Each has a header block (similar to a WordPress plugin) where you specify the name, description, etc. All reports in the reports directory are shown in the reports list on the Home screen.

Ok, now go make some cool reports!

Download

What it does right now:

• Imports a Library.xml export from iTunes into a MySQL database.
• Runs a couple of queries as example reports.

This is totally unpolished at this point and requires PHP 5+ and MySQL 4+.

Installation

1. At the top of the index.php file is the SQL for creating your database.
2. After you create your database, put your database settings in the config.inc.php file.
3. Export your iTunes music as ‘Library.xml’ and put the Library.xml file into the itunes_stats folder.
4. Load the index.php page in your browser and click on the “Load data” option to import the XML into MySQL.
5. Click on reports, etc.

I’ve added forums for ideas/mods/support. I’d love for you to write your own reports and send them in or post them in the forums.

Now that I have all this data, I want to see some stats on it. I’d installed an old version of Goombah at one point, but recent installs had resulted in crashing. Tonight, I downloaded it again and, before launching, trashed any relevant data I could find. That seemed to work, and I’ve got it up and running again.

The thing Goombah seems to want to do most is find musical neighbors for me, but what I’m most interested in is things like:

• What artists have the higest average song ranking?
• What about a highest average rank with a weight modifier based on total number of songs rated for that artist?
• What artists should I purge entirely since I’ve never rated any of their songs at even 3 stars?

Maybe I should just dump my iTunes library into MySQL and run some queries…

In particular, I’d like songs to be in alpha order when I go to Artists – [Artist Name] – All Songs, but also within an individual album.