Changes and catching up
January 19, 2010 2 Comments
It’s been eight days since I posted anything. I have many possible excuses, including “busy” and “uninspired,” but I’ll make none. I don’t have to… but I have been busy and uninspired, for what it’s worth.
I made some updates to the site today. It wasn’t my intention to do so, but I logged on and somehow made my way back to Vomi Mot, where Kara turned me on to a new feature she had found: An RSS feed from her WoWarmory.com profile that can be placed on the sidebar of her site. Thinking this was the bee’s knees, I went to work figuring out how to make this happen for my page. I was able to get mine to work, sort of… it would list each item twice, for some reason, and it looked really messy. So I set off in search of a new theme that would make this possible, and started looking at some other things on my site. Here are the changes:
- New theme. I had been using Mistylook, which is apparently no longer an option, so I changed it to Connections, which is very similar to my old one but has some added features, including the inclusion of bullet points on my sidebar, which cleans things up very nicely.
- WoWarmory.com RSS widget on the sidebar.
- New title! Swipe, for the win! is retired, I guess. Since I can’t think of anything cool that is both non-WoW-related and something I want to use, I changed the title to reflect the fact that my druid does her best work from behind. [Shred] is where a lot of the damage I do comes from, and [Swipe] does not reflect as well on my play style (except on trash), so I took a page from the Pantera song and changed it. We’ll see how long it lasts.
- New Header. Since I changed the theme, I found that the header picture went back to default, and since Anacrusa had changed a lot in the past couple of months, I figured that a new screenshot was in order. She has a lot of new gear, as well as blue hair instead of purple, and a sweet new weapon, so I went back to the Sun Touched Pillar in Sholazar Basin and took a new photo. Why Sholazar? I don’t know, lots of plants and stuff?
- Cleaned up the Tags section a bit (there were too many – still are).
- Changed my nickname to my first name. I’m not a total noob anymore…
- Added a list of music, books and games I am currently into more than others.
- Subscription widget. I stuck one of these on the sidebar for the heck of it.
- Search widget. Ditto.
Things have been pretty busy lately. I’m not going to talk about work, but that’s been a major stressor.
Also, I’ve played WoW at least a little (and sometimes a lot) each day over the past couple of weeks. A quick look at my new WoWarmory.com widget will give you an idea of some of the stuff that I’ve been involved with. Each day it’s easy to run quick randoms on my druid and paladin, simply for the Emblems of Frost. We’ve attacked Icecrown Citadel weekly, and I’ve managed to get a couple of nice items (Ashen Band of Unmatched Vengeance, Whispering Fanged Skull) out of there. Feral druid drops have been sparse, and hunter mail has been plentiful, so I’ve mostly missed out there, but I’m hanging in there. I also got the Battered Hilt, and decided that the upgrade from doing the quests was good enough to do them. So now I’m sporting the Lightborn Spire, which is a pretty sweet mace! Combined with the trinket mentioned above, my unbuffed Critical Strike Rating rose from 59.16% to 64.44% in cat form, which is just amazing to me. I’m excited to see how well it works out this week in Icecrown.
Also, we finally took down Anub’arak as a guild to get the Call of the Crusade (25-man normal) achievement. No significant loot from there – I was rolling for trophies, but didn’t really come close, as usual.
I’ve also begun playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) this past few days. I like it! The puzzles are fun, and I enjoy the problems they pose. They help me get ready for sleep, ending the day with a little challenge and the satisfaction of solving them. I’m definitely going to pick up the second one; although I’m not too keen on slogging through the story, I’m enjoying the game in general, and I know I’ll want to play …Diabolical Box when I’ve finished this one.
Finally, I have been continuing to load CDs onto my computer as Apple Lossless files, and that is going well – the music sounds great!
That’s about all to write about for now. I’ll have more sooner than later, I promise!
Music pricing: physical product vs. downloads
June 25, 2010
Today I was putting away a batch of CDs that I had recently ripped to my iMac, and picking out some others to upload (Apple Lossless-style, of course), when I noticed my Leonard Cohen CDs sitting there, neglected.
The only CD by Cohen that I’ve ripped so far is Cohen Live, which is one that has not, to the best of my knowledge, been remastered. I also have the original CD versions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Songs of Love and Hate, and The Future. The first four of these were remastered in 2007, and I have yet to pick them up. However, I’ve been waiting to load any more Cohen into iTunes until I do buy them, because the difference in quality should be remarkable.
Anyone familiar with Cohen’s first several albums knows that the music does not suffer from high levels of compression. His voice often sounds naked and imperfect, even when he’s singing through a mountain of reverb (Songs of Love and Hate). When he’s almost whispering, he’s difficult to hear, and when he shouts, it’s right there in your ear. Whereas the dynamics in much of todays music are artificial creations, many albums from that time period, particularly by singer-songwriters, have a sonic honesty and purity that is compelling to someone like myself.
With that in mind, I am very interested in hearing these albums in their remastered forms.
Currently, I don’t have a lot of cash to throw at re-buying these albums. I suppose that I could, and I likely wouldn’t suffer. However, while I have relatively strong personal beliefs about paying for music**, I have always had a difficult time throwing my money at music for myself. I think this is because I know that it’s very easy for me to fill a shopping basket with music in five minutes… so I control my addiction by stifling my shopping habits (for the good of my wallet).
You could say, “Dude! you know you want them, because you already have the originals, and you obviously like him, so buy them!” And you’d be correct. I’m just a little neurotic and over-analytical when it comes to music purchases though, so thanks for understanding!
Moving along… knowing that Cohen’s first few CDs retail at $7.99 (regular price) on Amazon.com, I checked out the prices of the albums on iTunes. I was unsurprised (but still irritated) by the fact that the iTunes prices were a dollar or two more than the physical product.
I’ve talked before about how I’m loading music onto this computer in the Apple Lossless format, since I have the hard drive space. I’ve downloaded several songs from iTunes in situations where I only like one tune from an album, but for the most part everything else is at the highest fidelity possible.
There’s a catch to all of that: I have a nice chunk of a balance from an iTunes gift card that I got for Christmas, and so I considered just snagging the Cohen remasters on iTunes if they were priced right. That way, there’d be no out-of-pocket expense, and I could enjoy some Leonard Cohen again, likely without having to crank the volume just to hear the music whenever one of his songs came on.
So now I have this little conundrum: suck it up and buy the physical albums at a lower price with cash, or suck it up and “pay” more for the albums on iTunes, even though it will cost me nothing out of pocket at the moment.
I’m leaning toward the first option. Here’s why: this computer will be obsolete in five years, and I’ll probably buy another at that time. Unless I keep this computer on a network and continue to stream music from it on other computers in the house, those albums won’t be easily transferrable if I don’t have physical copies. As music isn’t a disposable commodity to me, I won’t be happy about having to re-download them or purchase physical copies later on. So I’ll probably just buy the CDs.
(I guess I figured out the solution by myself.)
However, I am still disappointed about the apparent blindness that Apple, along with other companies that offer downloadable music, seems to have with regard to market pricing. (Amazon lists the Songs of Leonard Cohen CD at $7.99, but the MP3 album is listed at $9.99 right below it.) In my opinion, the convenience of buying “catalog” does not outweigh the values of physical product: its reusability, collectibility, and other intangibles that come with owning your own copy.
* * * * *
Conclusions? I’m neither old-school nor hip. I guess I’m a little bit of both. I like to hold a record, cassette (yes, cassette), or CD in my hand, but I also like the convenience of downloadable music from time to time (I just downloaded Eddie Vedder’s new song from the upcoming Eat Pray Love soundtrack yesterday). I just feel that downloadable music should be priced appropriately. I applaud the fact that new albums are often $9.99 (or less when they’re on sale), which beats the physical price more times than not. I also like the “99 cent-per-song” model that is prevalent. However, pricing a download higher than the list price of the physical equivalent is short-sighted.
**I believe artists should be paid for their product. Therefore, I almost never buy used music, and I never download it “illegally,” although I respect the fact that people can make their own decisions about it, so I don’t preach what I practice.
Filed under music Tagged with Apple, Apple Lossless, commentary, iTunes, music