Category: Music

Crankypantsing, Music

Instant Review: Songbird

Shelly

I ended up returning the refurbished iPod I bought. It was supposed to have a one year warranty, but Apple wouldn’t honor it. Hrmf. The main reason I wanted that particular older model is that new iPods require iTunes 7.4 or above. iTunes 7.4 and above require service pack 2 if you’re using WinXP. I don’t have service pack 2, and I have no intentions of getting it. Hrmf again.

What to do? As much as I’m not an Apple fan, the iPod Classic seems to be the sweet spot, in terms of providing a large amount of storage for a reasonable price. But, if it won’t work with my set-up, then I’m screwed.

I spent a couple of days thinking over my options and reading up on possible solutions to the iTunes-SP2 problem. I found several programs that came close, but nothing that was guaranteed to work. Some of the work-arounds were convoluted enough that I didn’t even want to try them. I was not a happy camper!

And then I found Songbird.

Songbird is open source, so it’s sort of like Thunderbird for your iPod. It installs easily (seriously, it’s 100% foolproof). It can pull music from your iTunes folder, if you have one, or it can automagically search for music on your drive(s), or you can manually add selected songs. It can play audio files and streaming audio. Other than that, it’s pretty basic. It does not (yet) rip or burn CDs, so you’d have to use another program for that. (There are approximately eleventy brazillion free ripping and burning programs out there.) Video playback is also supposedly forthcoming.

The user interface is basic, as well. It supports multiple tag editing (as far as I could tell, iTunes 6x did not) and playlist creation. I have not found an easy way to check/uncheck which songs to include/exclude when syncing (one thing iTunes did manage to get right), but there is an “add manually” option when syncing that might fulfill the same function. You could also create an iPod playlist, and export just those songs. My solution is to remove everything I don’t want on my iPod from the Songbird library. Since I’m using an old version of MusicMatch Jukebox to manage my real library, the “master library” is unaffected.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that Songbird does, indeed, sync beautifully with the iPod Classic. It took about 14 forevers to transfer everything to the iPod, but it did so without any problems. I give it 11 stars out of 10 for A) solving my headache and B) freeing me from Teh Eeevil iTunes.

And now I have more music-to-go than I can shake a stick at. There’s something kind of mind-boggling about having ALL OF THE SONGS on shuffle.

Music

Going to the Dark Side

Shelly

I bought an iPod. The price was right (20G iPod Classic kit for $99, which is half the price of an 8G Shuffle), and since I’m participating part time in the library’s Google Books project, I need music to listen to while I pull books from the stacks. Otherwise, my brain might collapse into a black hole.

I still hate Apple with the heat of a thousand suns, though.

Music

Musical Interlude

Shelly


I’ve Got Asthma by Toy Dolls

I think the pollen count must be high. Or maybe there’s something blooming that I’m especially allergic to? Ugh. I can’t stop sneezing, my eyes are burning, and my throat hurts. Howsomever! I do not, thankfully, have asthma.

Actually, what initially made me think of The Toy Dolls was that there was a spider in the bathroom this morning. (Not exactly a dressing room, but close enough.)


Spiders in the Dressing Room by Toy Dolls

Music

Margaret vs. Pauline

Shelly

I’ve been cat sitting for folks who live out in the country, so I’ve been doing more driving than normal. I grabbed some random CDs, because I wanted new car music. One of them was unlabeled. It had a couple of Neko Case songs on it. I love this one, but every once in awhile it sneaks up on me and makes me teary.

Margaret is the fragments of a name
Her love pours like a fountain
Her love steams like rage
Her jaw aches from wanting
And she’s sick from chlorine
But she’ll never be as clean
As the cool-side-of-satin Pauline

Genealogy, Music

Happy Accidents

Shelly

One of the things that makes genealogical research difficult is transcription errors. I think I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’ve got a wonderful visual example of what I’m talking about, so I thought I’d share. Also, it’s a minor triumph. I spent four hours last night trying to connect up a couple of stray Basquills. I wasn’t entirely successful, but in the process, I stumbled across the 1871 English census for a family I’d given up on. Huzzah!

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce y’all to Rennie and Eline Basguel. Or, rather, Denis and Ellen Basquill. For a start, the enumerator bolloxed up Ellen’s first name. And then, for good measure, the transcriber turned Dennis into Rennie and Basquil into Basguel.

1871 England Census

Denis is my great-great-great uncle, by the way (Walter’s elder brother). He and Ellen Carney were married in Forkfield, County Mayo, on 15 April 1862. They emigrated to England by 1871, then to the US (Denis came over in 1883 and Ellen brought the children in 1890). The family finally settled in Fall River, Massachusetts. (Yes, the home of Lizzie Borden. I wonder what they, as newcomers to this country, made of her parents’ murders?)

I’ve filed corrections with Ancestry.com, and they ought to show up in the next few days. In the meantime, I’m delighted with this minor accidental victory.

Genealogy, Music, Photography

Talula, Talula

Shelly

Talula, Talula
I don’t want to lose it
It must be worth losing
If it is worth something
Talula, Talula
She’s brand new now to you
Wrapped in your papoose
Your little Fig Newton

100_5386

I spend most of the weekend doing more genealogy research. I found out two things that were interesting. Well, three, but one of them is a little tangential.

1. My great-great-great grandmother was named Tallulah. I don’t know anything about her family, because I haven’t found her maiden name. She married Henry L. Hoover, and their daughter Estelle married a Thompson, and their son Louis married my great grandma Nell Basquill.

But! Tallulah! How awesome is that? A quick Google shows that it’s a Choctaw name meaning “leaping water.” My mom said that grandma immediately identified the name as Indian, which I thought was odd. To me, it’s just an old-fashioned southern name. It’s funny how associations change over time. Here’s something interesting, though–Tallulah came from Alabama. The only Tallulah I know of is Tallulah Bankhead. She was named after her grandmother, who was from Alabama. I wonder if there’s a link there?

2. It appears as if my great-great aunt Margaret wasn’t quite as widowed as I thought. I don’t know that it was a big secret, so much as just how stories get told and how assumptions get made about them. I’d always been told that she was widowed, but I found Margaret in the 1930 census, and she was listed as divorced. At first, I thought it was an enumeration error, because my great grandma Nell was living with her at the time, and the census listed her as widowed. We know for sure that that wasn’t true. She divorced her husband, Louis, and he later remarried. So, I assumed the enumerator had mixed them up.

However! I also came across a record for Sterrett Pooser in the 1930 census, only he was living in a boarding house in Massachusetts. He was born in Georgia, so I’m fairly certain he has to be Margaret’s husband. I refuse to believe that there was more than one Sterrett Pooser in the world. Ever! So I talked to my mom, and she talked to my grandma, and apparently Margaret and Sterrett did separate before he died. God only knows what the heck he was doing in Massachusetts, though. His family were southerners.

Which brings me to my next, and tangential, point of interest.

3. Margaret’s husband’s people were, as I said, southerners–from South Carolina and Georgia. And, they were apparently slave owners. Not surprisingly, several of them were soldiers in the Confederate army. It’s not a pleasant thing to stumble across, but you have to be prepared to unearth the bad with the good, if you’re going to dig around in the past.