Simon and Lindsay: EasyTAG is indeed a useful tool for tagging many music files at once. While EasyTAG does automate a lot of the work, it is still quite a laborious process. This really grinds when you’re trying to manage a large music collection. What if your tagger worked more like your ears and brain — it just listened to the music and worked out what song was playing?
Enter Picard, stage left.
Picard ‘listens’ to your music and ascertains an audio fingerprint of each track. Using this information, along with more traditional data such as existing filenames and tags, it consults various online sources to deduce the details of the track and populate the metadata fields. I’ve found the results to be amazingly accurate. Sometimes it finds multiple matches, and it can occasionally get confused if the same track is available on different albums (e.g. a single, an original album and a ‘best-of’ compilation). If you have some idea of what the track is, you can lend Picard a hand by manually adding a more useful filename or some tags. This is where EasyTAG works well with Picard, since Picard isn’t geared towards manual tag editing. Still, it’s bloody impressive nonetheless.
As an album-based tagger, Picard behaves somewhat differently from file-based taggers like EasyTAG. It can take some getting used to, and it might be less accurate for people who prefer to collect single songs and not entire albums. If you’re like me and do compile full albums, it can do clever things like ascertain that you have the ‘White Album’ (or part of it) if it sees ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ as well as ‘Revolution 9’. The developers have recognised that the UI does need some love, but once you’re used to it it isn’t too bad.
Picard is a mass-tagger, so drag a whole stack of music files onto it and watch it do its work. It’ll try and group your music into albums. To correct allocations, drag their entries to arrange them in the way you please (or drag them away if nothing is suitable). Depending on how esoteric your music tastes are, you should find that most tracks are handled fairly accurately. If you sign up for a MusicBrainz account, you can submit your changes for others to benefit.
Addendum: If you’re using Ubuntu, don’t forget to install libtunepimp5-mp3 for MP3 support.
LotD: Excellent speech by Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop Per Child. I would especially recommend that the naysayers listen to it.
The unholy combination of work and study have devoured me over the past month.
One point of mention is an interview I had with James Purser for Open Source On The Air. Having never been interviewed before, I was rather nervous. I was also waiting to be accepted or declined as an Ubuntu Member at the Community Council meeting, which only increased my anxiety. It also didn’t help that it was past 10pm, and I was suffering from a lack of sleep. If I sound dopey, please keep those points in mind. With that disclaimer announced, I think I conducted myself quite well.
In other news, I’m glad to hear that my nomination of Elkbuntu for the Linux Australia People’s Choice Community Member of the Year Award (wow, that’s a mouthful!) was heeded. Congratulations, Melissa! I am looking forward to drinking that beer!
Link of the day: Paris Hilton vomits while singing
They say that the first step towards dealing with an addiction is admitting that you have one. For that purpose, I have a confession to make: I am addicted to Open Source On The Air. For the uninitiated, OSOTA is a weekly Internet radio programme hosted by James and Karin Purser. Being based in Australia, this podcast focuses mainly on issues affecting the Australian FLOSS community. It is broadcast live on Wednesdays from 21:30 (UTC+1000). Besides being a great show in its own right (even if downloaded afterwards), I love how I can hang out in #localfoss on irc.freenode.net and provide input while the show is running live. It is this sort of interaction that makes free software so great.
A few weeks ago, Karin decided to announce a competition. The question was simple: to suggest a question for a future competition. An idea sprung to mind fairly quickly, and I mentioned it over IRC to James. I neglected to e-mail it, however, and when Karin announced the following week that she had not received any entries, I realised that I had completely forgotten my idea. The ephemeral nature of IRC meant that I couldn’t just look it up (my logs were only short-term - curses!). I spent a day and a night wracking my brain before it resurfaced. I posted it to James, and the following week it was announced that I was a winner! Mind you, there were only two entries, and both were deemed to be winners 
The following week, I received my loot: a plush Tux penguin and an O’Reilly Linux Anatomy poster. At the request of James, I sent him a photograph of myself with my new penguin friend. Fittingly, it was taken just prior to a SLUG meeting, and in it I’m wearing my Software Freedom Day 2006 T-shirt.
So what was my entry? It’s probably best that I don’t spoil the surprise. Stay tuned for it to be announced on Open Source On The Air!
Unlike my last post, this one is serious. One of my favourite podacsts, The Linux Link Tech Show, interviewed RSI expert Deborah Quilter. The phenomenon of RSI has risen to prominence in recent years, largely in response to increasing computer use. That puts tech workers such as myself in considerable risk of developing injuries, and in fact I am certain that I have developed some already. Ignoring the problem only makes it worse. Anyone who works at a desk should listen to this interview and heed at least some of its warnings and advice.
The episode is available in Ogg Vorbis and MP3 formats.
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