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[Supermercado]

I just started up a 32.6GB, 6327 file transfer from my desktop to the server. That could slightly take all day, haha, considering that the server's on 802.11b. Too bad I don't have a long-ass cat5 that I could run across the house for the afternoon to do the transfer.

[LostArtofRolando]

how far apart are these computers? i know i had a cat 5 at one point in time that was able to go from upstairs in billys parents old house to his room in the basement (30-40+ ft?) i remember getting it from a friend at school, so i have no idea where he got it.

[Supermercado]

Probably at least 45 feet. The desktop is in my bedroom and the server is in my brother's bedroom on the other side of the house. Between our rooms are two closets, the bathroom, and the stairwell. Plus the computer is about halfway across his room. And the router's on the far wall of my room so it's almost totally across the house. At least 40 feet and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it's closer to 50 or even 60.

[LostArtofRolando]

haha, how hard would it have been to briefly move the tower into the other room to do the transfer? 

[Supermercado]

It wouldn't be so much hard as it'd be annoying, hehe. But it would entail disconnecting everything and then moving it, setting it back up, and then moving it all back. *shrugs* It took a long time but it's done now so I guess it's no big deal now, anyway. I just started the transfer from the desktop and set the ftp client to shut the computer off when it was done in the event that it finished while I was sleeping. It finished at like 4 or 5am, I dunno. I heard it shut off but wasn't awake enough to know what time it was.

[Catfish]

Just be glad nothing crashed

[LostArtofRolando]

ha, true.

[Supermercado]

Heh, and now that it's all over there, I only have like 2GB free on the 40GB drive that it's on. I should have bought one of those 80GB drives for $25 a few weeks ago. I need it right now if I want to avoid splitting my music across the 20GB system and the 40GB storage drive in the server.

[Catfish]

If you have your music standardized in terms of filenames, you could split it at an arbitrary letter... I had to do that for a period of time

[LostArtofRolando]

ive had music split across hard drives for quite awhile now.  thankfully itunes is nice enough to remember where all that stuff is for me, and organize it like its one library.  As much as i hate Apple, itunes is a very nifty programming.  For people who are willing to try something new, its a compact free package that lets you rip, burn, stream, manage, and convert music files.  I was very reluctant to give in, but i just got tired of WInamp crashing on me all the time.  Some people (Super?) prefer the old stuff though, and will use multiple programs to achieve their fancies.  but its all good, thats why they give us options.

[Supermercado]

If you have your music standardized in terms of filenames, you could split it at an arbitrary letter... I had to do that for a period of time

Yeah, my stuff is most definitely named by a standard. I've got 6 main music folders, #-C, D-G, H-K, etc. so I don't have one enormous directory that takes a month to load. I could easily split it across two drives and then just add the contents of both of the drives to my Winamp playlist. It'll just take like 20 minutes to create the playlist since it's being done on a mapped drive, haha. I've got the drives in the server mapped to my laptop and I just open up the m3u on the mapped drive locally and I essentially get streaming music from the server. 'tis quite nifty.

And yup, I'm an oldhead or something and prefer to use programs that I'm comfortable with and know where to find features, etc. I tried using iTunes and to be honest, I never really gave it a fair chance, but even with that said, I don't really see the need to switch to one all-encompassing program when I've got several small specialized programs that do what I need. *shrugs* That's what makes computers so great, I think. Everyone can customize all aspects of their computing to their needs.

[LostArtofRolando]

true, i dont have the time to sit around and mess with several different programs anymore, so out of necessity, i went with the easy program.  the features it does have work ok for me.

[Supermercado]

Yeah, they definitely put all the needed features into one program. Listening, ripping, burning, and even buying. I'll give them credit for putting together a program that does all the things as advertised and does a serviceable job with it.

Unfortunately, I found it incredibly difficult and cumbersome to use. Haha, ask Nathan about my opinion of iTunes and how easy it is to use. I was ranting to him one night about it when all I was trying to do was burn a CD. Which leads me to my next point... I ended up buying a song off iTunes because I couldn't find it anywhere else and the whole process was easy, etc., so they get credit for that. But when I got the song, it was in some crap .m4p format. I guess it was my mistake, assuming that it was going to be an .mp3. At any rate, I had to burn an audio CD (yay for having CD-RW so as not to waste a whole CD for one song), which proved to be harder than it should have been, and then rip and encode it using EAC and LAME. Surprisingly, after all that that file went through, the --ape rip still sounds pretty darn good.