Category Archives: music

Guinness Jazz Weekender

Guinness Jazz Weekend

Last weekend I went to Cork for the Guiness Jazz festival. I’m not really into Jazz at all but I had been told that it is a good weekend regardless. I went down on Saturday afternoon by train – (first time in first class which I reckon is well worth it). Saturday night was spent in a non-Jazz pub with Live music which was class.

Sunday day was spent boozing in a pub in Douglas, live music from 1pm. Then back to Hotel for a very very nice meal, some Jazz and then out to meet friends.

Monday I was hungover.

Not too much Jazz but the atmosphere in Cork for the weekend was great. I’d recommend it and if I’m here next year – I’ll go again.

Listening to music

I’ve found I have a very weird way of listening to music. Since the relaunch of allofmp3.com as mp3sparks.com, I have bought over 300 songs. I listen to these on my commute and while coding or writing in work. What I’ve found is that every day or so I’ll find a song that I love and I will obsess over it and leave it on repeat for hours and hours on end. Over the last few weeks, the following have featured in repeat mode.

  • Soko – I’ll Kill her
  • Kate Nash – Nicest Thing
  • Guillemots – Love song 43
  • Josh Pyke – Middle of the hill
  • The View – Face for the radio
  • James Morrison – Wonderful world
  • Kate Nash – Dickhead
  • Willy Mason – Careless whisper
  • Kings of Leon – On Call
  • Plain White T’s – Hey there Delilah
  • Ray La Montagne – Burn
  • Ray La Montagne – Jolene
  • Editors – An end has a start
  • The Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #1(Tunnels)
  • My Chemical Romance – I Don’t Love you
  • Mundy – July
  • Jet – Shine On
  • The Magic Numbers – Love me like you
  • Jamie T – Back in the game
  • Paolo Nutini – New Shoes
  • Dirty Pretty Things – Bang Bang your dead
  • Arctic Monkeys – Despair in the departure lounge
  • Arctic Monkeys – No Buses
  • Nerina Pellot – Confide in me
  • Zero 7 – I go to sleep

Theres quite a few others but there the most recent. They’ve all clocked over 30 repeats in Itunes (and that’s only in work). Is it normal to listen to music like this.

mp3 id3 tag whatsit

I bought a few mp3s from mp3sparks (formerly allofmp3) and was annoyed that the mp3s were not tagged with their track numbers but they were in the filename.

I had a quick look to see if I could fix this somehow. I found id3-py which I used to write a python script that fixes this and the artist,title and comment. One thing I noted was that you can only have a max of thirty characters in your track title. With a “Various Artists” album you want the artist in the title (Album artist is not in the id3 spec but it is supported by itunes and WMP). The concatenation of title and artist is quite often more than 30 characters – not good. Anyone found a way to write “Album Artist” to an mp3 using python?
mp3sparks is great but why in all things upside-down-monkey-drunk do I have to download each file individually and why do I have to right click (it is possible force a download guys).

I’ll upload an exe for installation that fixes your mp3sparks mp3s later.

m4a whoopsie – bonkenc fixie

My housemate Colm (aka. Donkey Dolittle) encodes some of his tunes in m4a AAC format which my wonderful iRiver S10 does not play. Last night I put the new Kings of Leon album on but it was in m4a so alas there was no Kings of Leon goodness for this mornings commute. When I got to work I found the very good bonkenc which transcoded them and kept the id3 tags in tact (probably loosing some quality but I don’t really mind that). Good work Bonkenc (classic name!).

Airport observations and a tonka truck of a hangover

I went home last weekend to visit my pals and family. It was awesome. For various reasons, I needed to go home and get pissed and good lord, that I did.

This is what I can remember from Saturday night-

  • Leaving twelfth lock
  • chatting to conor on train
  • going into odeon
  • Dancing by the table
  • Dancing my ass off on the dancefloor – alot of which involved kneeling or lying on floor
  • buying shots for everyone – €60
  • drinking quite a few of those shots
  • someone taking a picture of the shots
  • chatting for ages with the aftershave guy in the toilets
  • eating a hotdog
  • singing oasis on grafton street with buskers
  • sitting on bottom step of nightlink stairs
  • getting sick in some clonsilla road garden
  • crawling up endas stairs

Quite good really but these are my flashbacks – I can rememember nothing in between. All evidence points to it being a great night.

Sunday was not good. Enda very kindly fed me bacon which helped but I felt like crap for a day and a half after that. It’s a sign of age I think (I’m a whopping 27 now).

On my way home on Wednesday morning I made a few observations at the airport.

  • Nobody seems to notice the cone instructing not to walk beside the killer jet engine
  • The best seat to get on a Ryanair flight is the very back seat. It means you’re first off and it’s always free when you wait till the end to board.
  • 5.30am chicken salad sandwich for breakfast is fucking disgusting
  • Ryanair have no clue about organising the boarding of flights – it’s a bloody free for all
  • Despite their flaws – Ryanair absolutely rock. £48 return within one week of flying. Awesome

I’ll be back in Eire next weekend and hopefully my body will be more accustomed to the onslaught of Guinness it shall receive (it is Paddys weekend and Guinness must be drunk (as must I)).