MP3's

[Shawn T. Rutledge]

Yesterday I was trying to figure out the best way of getting an MP3
archive of my CD's going (thus the question of how to do it automatically).
I ended up using GRIP.  It has a checkbox to automatically assimilate any
disc that is inserted but of course that only works when GRIP is already
running.

I also tried two jukebox products, GlobeCom Jukebox and Digital DJ (the
latter by the same author as GRIP).  GlobeCom is much more full-featured
but rather buggy and one of the most difficult packages to set up; it has
a lot of dependencies (other packages by other authors) and the dependencies
have dependencies.  Not being a Perl guru I gave up on debugging its problems.
However the idea is admirable - provide a very complete web interface that
allows terminals on the network to put songs in the queue, vote on which
songs are most popular, put new songs into the jukebox, etc.  It's a neat
case study of how to run programs via a web interface (for instance
even the process of ripping a CD is web-based... the PHP code enqueues a
job into the database, and a Perl daemon notices this and starts ripping
the disc that is in the server's drive).  I'm thinking what I want to do
ultimately is extend the DDJ schema to include more of the GlobeCom features
for ranking songs, and build some kind of remote interface to it (such as
a browser-based one).  Then I could still use GRIP to rip CD's and insert
them into the database.  And the database gives me the flexibility to store
the songs on CDROM's in my CD changer eventually, when I get that working,
even if I don't find a way to amalgamate multiple CD's into something that
looks like a single directory.  Not that I have the time though...

Anyway I'd still like to know how to have an arbitrary executable be run
whenever a disc is inserted into the drive; then I could write a script
which checks to see if it's a music disc, and if it hasn't been ripped
yet, does so, mp3's the tracks, puts them in the database, etc.  And when
enough MP3's have accumulated to fill a CD, something (a cron job perhaps)
prompts me for a CDR and offloads them to that.  When it's done, I can
stick the CD in the changer, and automagically the database gets updated
to point to the directory representing that disc on the changer.  When 
the randomizer selects a song to play, it first copies it to the hard drive;
that way the next song can be copied while the current one is playing.
Wouldn't that be slick...
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