The death of everything

[hirez]

[Poll #158956]

Comments

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Or:

Multiply number of hours of effort required to catalogue CDs by hourly monetary rate.

Shudder.

Buy big fat HD.

Rip CDs to [mp3|ogg|flac|wav|midi|soundTracker|whatever]s on big fat HD, and store the cddb cache somewhere.

Sort LPs by colour of spine.

Drink beer.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

:p

I could employ a minion to do the job, I suppose.

(And at least I'm not thinking about writing a one-off record-cataloging app in $MFTL.)

The basement swerver + lumping great RAID is in the five-year plan...

... But that involves ripping all the vinyl because that's where all the good songs are. And the vinyl's sorted by artistic merit anyway.

[redcountess]

You should see if Hank Rollins has recorded his schtick about his record collection. David and I went to see his spoken word in 2001 and this, as well as his jokes about Slayer not wussing out like some bands, had us nearly falling off our chairs, tears rolling down our faces :-)

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

... But that involves ripping all the vinyl because that's where all the good songs are. And the vinyl's sorted by artistic merit anyway.

Ah, yes, the "popularity pile" method of storage...

I've still not got round to ripping my vinyl. Partly because there's plenty of hassle there, partly because I like the fizz and crackle of vinyl, but mostly because my record players gone tits-up and is so old and flaky you can't buy the cartridges any more..

Mind: I've just had a thought: which is that you may want a list for the insurance: it's usually a pretty good proof that you owned what you claim to, and means that you may get some of it back.. Especially if you have a sizeable chunk of obscure vinyl...

Although that would be a task I would leave for a soggy winter month, when the call of beer gardens is somewhat less strong...

[reddragdiva]

Although I ticked "Yes. It'll be jolly useful.", I have certainly never done any such thing myself in twenty years' record-accumulating. Alphabetical order by artist for the vinyl, rip to hard disk and shove in a box for the CDs.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I used to keep a loose-leaf-bound paper log of the things as I shelled them out of the Driftin' carriers and plonked them on the gramophone. But that stopped circa 15 years ago.

[glitchdrei.livejournal.com]

go weld something instead. or eat ice cream.

save this for when you're ninety four and need something to keep you busy for your last few years ;D



[that's what i'm doing anyway]

[codepope.livejournal.com]

Go to Collectorz (http://www.collectorz.com/) and download their Music Collector. Feed CDs to it. Watch it make database for you. Press magic buttons and get Mmmm... XML files out. Apply XS(a)LT to taste.

[reddragdiva]

Or buy shevek's l33t CD beast.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oh indeed. Had I anything even approaching an application for that, I'd be having a toy-frenzy right about now.

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

The real question is not "wither catalogue" but "whence order by?"

Mine used to be ordered by genre and then by dancefloor popularity, with the exception of crossover acts which would always be listed betwixt the most appropriate two genres. This is an incredibly useful method when you're DJing on-the-fly, as I always did.

In effect, the collection was sorted by time; starting with the interesting but undanceable stuff for the early hours, moving on to the specialist "I know Bloke X And His Mates are guaranteed to start dancing to that", then to current hits, extended play dancefloor classics, and then back down to significant-minority subgenres, culminating in "Time At The Bar!" chucking-out novelty crap.

Then I lost touch with The Kids ("I used to be with it, then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it and what it is I find weird and scary.") and when called upon to DJ, I had less and less "with it" tracks and found it better to have my records sorted directly by a prepared playlist that I had worked out in advance. Problem was, what with my collection now approaching two cupboardloads, I tended to take only an extract of 50-100 or so records sorted thusly which were then never successfully re-integrated into the older genre/popularity index of my home collection.

So this month's task is to accept the fact that I'm never going to buy that many more records, nor am I likely to get called upon "in an emergency" to be a surprise DJ any more. Even more depressing, related to acceptance of a static record collection, is having to accept that I already know *everything* in my own collection and I am able to pick suitable records simply by artist name, rather than having such an exciting and ever-growing collection that I need an aide-memiore built in to the cataloguing system simply to remind me what I bought last week.

Alphabetic by artist. Has it come to this? Alphabetic by artist is a sort method for people who don't care for records.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Alphabetic by artist. Has it come to this? Alphabetic by artist is a sort method for people who don't care for records.

But this was the only way I could find anything...you've seen my vinyl/CD collection...and it works for me.

[reddragdiva]

Ripping a record library to .shn for burning to LOTS of DVD-Rs? I think that's the level we're working at here.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

So that's where a certain local DJ learned his technique from?

Sort by what you last played near the top/front and rank old stuff you wonder why you bought in the first place at the bottom/back. Occasionally dive into the dusty lower reaches and surprise or horrify yourself.

Works for me, but then I have a pitifully small collection compared with the cool lads who virtually lived in 'Driftin' and 'Storm'

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

ach! no bloody excuse now.

we've got the Moth, we've put the old iMac downstairs again and it's cabled to the headamp via the Edirol. All I need is some 24-bit editing software and tuits...

And therein lies the rub.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I don't think I was the only hopeless NME-reading Peelite that Roj Driftin' sent out to do his shopping or fetch a pint from the Axiom. (When the bar was downstairs.)

... But hell if I can remember where Storm was.

P-Nutt, the arcade version of Badlands and Our Price, yes...
(There were many others that I can't remember)

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Just around the corner, opposite what is now the back door to Debenhams, in that strange little 70s precinct style row that still contains the book exchange place.

OK, so maybe it didn't exist in *your* Cheltenham.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Duh.

Now I remember. I bought a portastudio from the hifi shop in that row.

Now what the hell was the record-shop called that was on the same street as Chelsea Girl (I think)?

(And who can forget Ray Electrical?)

[ex-halja931.livejournal.com]

That's how I do it! (It would be ridiculous otherwise.)

[ex-halja931.livejournal.com]

Just steal a database, list, whatever format, from someone else who has a similar collection to you. That way you'll have less typing.

It's not stealing, really ...

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Chelsea girl was on a corner of the High St. so that's a bit of a trick question. As is the Ray Electrical one, cos it's still there isn't it?

God bless Norman Harding.

Enough of this waffle, the young folk will be crowding round to point and jeer if we carry on much longer.