What is Blofeld?

In short, Blofeld is a music server. You install it on a Linux PC and tell it where your music is, and it provides a web interface that allows you to listen to that music almost anywhere you have internet access and a web browser. Blofeld is fairly similar to applications like Jinzora, Subsonic or Ampache.

So, why not use one of those apps you just mentioned?

There are a few reasons I decided to write Blofeld. First of all, I really just wanted a project to work on and an excuse to learn some interesting technology. Additionally, I found most of the existing options to be severely lacking in a few areas. Particularly, I find that they’re…

• Very slow to import/update the library
• Difficult to install and configure
• Too complicated (have you seen some of the transcoding or ACL stuff?)
• Invasive (e.g., modifying tags or adding images to the music folder)
• Generally clunky and just not very friendly

Features

Blofeld is a very young project, but it still has a fairly respectable set of features. Currently it supports:

• Automatic on-the-fly transcoding
• Extremely fast library import/update
• Cover art (including embedded art)
• Nearly any audio container and codec
• A modern, friendly web interface
• Themes
• Song downloads (in a zip file, with artwork)
• Basic users, groups and permissions
• JSON based API

What does it look like?

Blofeld is completely themeable, but here are a few screenshots of the default theme.

Installing on Linux

If you’re using Ubuntu Linux, you can install Blofeld from my PPA. You can do that by running these commands in a terminal:

# Add the PPA to your Software Sources
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dwhayes/ppa
# Update the package list
sudo apt-get update
# Install the package
sudo apt-get install blofeld

Once you have it installed, you should be able to just run blofeld at the terminal and a configuration file will be created for you at ~/blofeld/blofeld.cfg. Edit it using your favorite text editor (you probably only need to change the path option, which should point to the folder that contains your music).

Run blofeld on the terminal again to start the application. Blofeld will immediately start scanning your music into its library. Point your web browser to http://localhost:8083 and you should be greeted with the web interface. You can stop Blofeld by hitting ctrl+c on your keyboard in the terminal where you started the program.

If you would prefer to have Blofeld run as a system service (i.e., start up when you turn your computer on and run in the background), then you’ll need to edit /etc/default/blofeld and set ENABLE_DAEMON=true and then run sudo start blofeld. This will create a configuration file at /etc/blofeld/blofeld.cfg which you need to edit (again, be sure and set the path to your music directory). Run sudo start blofeld again to actually start the application, and Blofeld will start automatically when your computer boots up from now on.

If you’re using Linux, but not Ubuntu, then download the latest release and follow the instructions in the INSTALL file.

Installing on Windows

Version 0.2.5 introduces Windows support. There are 2 different Windows builds available:

• Blofeld 0.2.5 (exe installer)
• Blofeld 0.2.5 (zip)

The installer will install the program on your system and all of the configuration, cache and log files will be stored as part of your user profile. CouchDB and GStreamer are included as part of the installer.

The zip file is intended to run the program out of a directory you could put anywhere you like. All of the configuration information, cached files and logs will be stored in the directory with the program. This is suitable for running as a portable application. If you plan to use this build, you will need to install CouchDB from Apache and GStreamer 0.2.17 Beta 2 from OSSBuild before you can run the application.

The first time you run the program, nothing will appear to happen. Blofeld will create a configuration file for you and then exit. If you used the zip file, you should find a file called blofeld.cfg in the directory with the application. If you used the installer, this file is probably in either "C:\Documents and Settings\[YourName]\Application Data\Blofeld" (Windows 2000/XP/2003) or "C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\Blofeld" (Windows Vista/7/2008). Obviously, you’d need to replace [YourName] with your actual username. Probably all you need to do at this point is check the configuration file and make sure that the path is actually pointing to the directory containing your music (e.g., path = C:\Users\Dave\Music).

At this point, you can run the program again. Once again, it will look like nothing is happening, but Blofeld is working in the background to scan all of your music into its library. To use the application, open up a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8083 and you should be greeted with the web interface. Hopefully you can figure things out from there.

Being that this is the first release with Windows support, expect to run into problems. If you do, please report it (you can just leave a comment on this post if you like).

What’s with the stupid name?

Blofeld is named for the Bond villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. I have no idea why.

• 26 die as terror attacks rock Israel
• 30 Are Killed in Sinai as Bombs rock Egyptian Resort City
• 350 bombs rock across Bangladesh, 2 killed
• 37 killed as 9 bombs rock Iraqi capital
• 4 bombs rock Baghdad; US kills 5, captures 30 near Fallujah
• 5 Bombs rock Philippine Capital
• 5 Car Bombs rock Baghdad in Effort to Disrupt Elections
• 50 killed as bomb blasts rock Delhi — Police suspect Lashkar-e-Toiba
• 60 die as car bombs rock two cities in Iraq
• 7 bombs rock Haiti as vote nears; 1 killed
• 7 hurt as car bombs rock Spain ; Separatists strike during EU summit
• 7 killed as blasts rock Assam towns
• 80 dead as three bombs rock Baghdad market
• Army officer killed as car bombs rock Madrid
• At least 18 dead as bomb blasts rock New Delhi
• Attacks, suicide bomb rock Israel
• Blasts rock Baghdad before reconciliation talks
• Blasts rock Baghdad, at least 13 killed
• Blasts rock churches in 3 states, 2 injured
• Blasts rock Iraq, Israel ; Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills 18
• Blasts rock Jakarta hotels; 3rd bomb found
• Blasts rock north-west Pakistan
• Blasts rock restive Thai south
• Bomb attacks rock S Thailand
• Bomb Blasts rock Algerian Capital, Kill at Least 24
• Bomb blasts rock Bali, at least 25 dead
• Bomb blasts rock Bangladesh terminals, one hurt
• Bomb blasts rock Burmese capital
• Bomb blasts rock casinos
• Bomb blasts rock Colombian capital
• Bomb blasts rock Indian state
• Bomb blasts rock Iraqi churches
• Bomb blasts rock Mosul, Baghdad
• Bomb blasts rock Nepalese capital
• Bomb blasts rock Pakistan
• Bomb blasts rock southern Thailand
• Bomb blasts rock three Pak cities, 45 injured
• Bomb explosions rock Iran, killing at least 9
• Bomb-blasts rock India for second day
• Bombers rock Baghdad university
• Bombings rock 2 Turkish Cities
• Bombs rock ‘safe’ heart of Baghdad
• Bombs rock Baghdad
• Bombs rock Baghdad and Iraq’s North
• Bombs rock Baghdad, Killing 70, as Unity Government Crumbles
• Bombs rock Buenos Aires’ banks
• Bombs rock central Athens police station
• Bombs rock Jerusalem as Arab summit convenes
• Bombs rock Jolo, Iligan
• Bombs rock pair of Indonesia churches
• Bombs rock Pakistan killing 20
• Bombs rock Taliban offices in Kabul
• Bombs, gun battle, rock Pakistan’s Peshawar
• Bombs, hostage-taking rock streets of Baghdad; 24 dead
• Bombs, Shelling rock Somali Capital
• Car bomb blasts rock Iraqi town
• Car Bombs rock Central Baghdad
• Car bombs rock Colombia’s city centres
• Car bombs rock Israeli town
• Car bombs rock Madrid
• Car bombs rock streets of Algeria for 2nd day, killing 11
• Church Massacre, Bomb rock Pakistan
• Coordinated bomb attacks rock 3 cities in northern India
• Deadly car bombs rock Baghdad
• Dozens Killed in Terror Attack Bomb Blasts rock Algerian Capital
• Dozens Killed in Terror Attack Bomb Blasts rock Algerian Capital
• Explosions rock Sri Lanka
• Fourteen die as suicide bombs rock Baghdad and Mosul
• Hamas bombers rock Jerusalem market
• Karzai Attack, Bomb rock Afghanistan
• Multiple bomb blasts rock India’s Assam state
• Multiple bombings rock Iraq
• Nine car bombs rock Iraq in one day
• Nine suicide bombs rock Baghdad
• Pakistan urged to focus on ‘internal enemies’ as bombs rock northwest
• Roadside bomb rock Kabul
• Serial blasts rock Bangalore; 2 killed, several injured
• Series of bombs rock Baghdad, dozens killed
• Series of loud explosions rock Baghdad
• Several Blasts rock Manila; 11 Reported Dead
• Suicide blasts rock Iraq
• Suicide blasts rock Quetta; seven killed
• Suicide bomb blasts rock Baghdad
• Suicide bomb blasts rock Tel Aviv
• Suicide bomb, missiles in Gaza rock Mideast
• Suicide bombers rock Baghdad
• Suicide bombers rock Israel
• Suicide bombers rock peace talks
• Suicide bombers rock Somalia during crisis talks
• Suicide Bombers rock Tel Aviv
• Suicide bombing, fierce fighting rock Baghdad
• Suicide car bombs rock the Baghdad Hotel, kill six
• Twin car bombs rock grieving city ; ‘It just doesn’t stop,’ Jerusalem…
• Two Bombs rock Tel Aviv Neighborhood, Killing at Least Six
• Two car bombs rock Iraq police stations, seven dead
• Two killed, 33 injured as eight bomb blasts rock Bangkok
• Up to 15,000 troops storm Fallujah, bombs rock Baghdad
• Violent attacks rock Afghanistan
• Wave of attacks rock Pakistan
• Waves of Bombs rock Baghdad

Every day I become more convinced that journalism is a haven for mentally defective people.

Ingredients

• 1 gallon apple cider
• 1/2 gallon apple juice
• 750mL Everclear
• 750mL Captain Morgan’s
• 3 cups regular sugar
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 8 cinnamon sticks

Instructions

Heat the apple juice and cinnamon sticks in a large pot until almost boiling and then stir in the sugar until it’s all dissolved. Then mix everything together, leaving the cinnamon sticks in. Chill and serve over ice. Awesome.

Notes

You can use all regular sugar if you want, I don’t think it will make a difference. It might be worth it to check with a couple of local orchards and see if you can get good apple cider. If so, I’d just use all apple cider and no apple juice. If you’re going for authenticity, the kids from Alabama that gave me the recipe were serving the stuff out of a gas can…

Given some of the grumblings about Firefox performance on Linux, and the current debate about WebKit vs. Gecko, I thought it might be fun to take a handful of popular Linux browsers and see how they compare from a purely performance standpoint.

This is not a particularly complicated or scientific test… I just navigated to the Peacekeeper website and ran their benchmark in each of the browsers. The system on which I ran the benchmarks is a Core 2 Duo E7400 at 2.8GHz with 4GiB of RAM. It’s running an up-to-date Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit with the 2.6.30-9 kernel from Ubuntu Karmic.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox performance on Linux is, as others have mentioned and proven many times over, horrible. My tests don’t show anything different. Here’s the performance breakdown for the Ubuntu packaged Firefox 3.0:

Firefox 3.5, which was just released today, provides an ever so slight improvement on the previous version:

If you take a gander at the Peacekeeper website, however, you can see that the Windows versions of Firefox are consistently faster than what I’ve been able to produce here. In case you were wondering, I did run both of these benchmarks in safe mode so no extensions would adversely affect Firefox’s performance. It doesn’t appear to have helped.

Opera

I’m not sure how popular Opera is, to be honest. I know of only a couple people who use it every day, though their dedication is borderline religious. Opera has never really been my cup of tea (if for no other reason than it’s built with Qt and I’m a Gnome user), but one of the arguments I always hear is about how fast Opera is. In my limited interaction with the browser during these tests, it felt very, very fast. Unfortunately, the numbers tell a different story.

Opera 9.64 posts numbers that are comparable with Firefox 3.0. The new Opera 10 Beta provides a marked improvement and actually manages to edge out Firefox 3.5 by 175 points:

Konqueror

Konqueror is probably the biggest surprise (disappointment?) in this whole round of testing. Konqueror uses the KHTML rendering engine, which is the foundation upon which WebKit is built. Given that, I was expecting Konqueror to open up a huge lead over Firefox in the performance department. To my surprise, Konqueror was only able to best Firefox 3.5 by about 100 points, not nearly the margin I was expecting.

Arora

Arora is a WebKit and Qt based browser that’s relatively new.

Looking at these numbers, I’m starting to wonder if maybe Konqueror and Opera’s less than stellar performance aren’t due to Qt. Taking into account the scores of some of the other WebKit browsers in this list, it seems like Arora should’ve posted much better numbers.

Google Chrome

Now that we’re moving into the WebKit based browsers, we can expect to see some more impressive numbers that should put into perspective how truly terrible Firefox performance is on Linux.

Being our first browser with WebKit underpinnings, Google Chrome does not disappoint. Chrome was able to more than double the performance numbers of Firefox 3.5, Konqueror and Opera 10 Beta (which is even more amazing when you consider those browsers are all running natively at 64-bit, where Chrome is 32-bit only at this point). Google’s browser made a huge splash on the Windows platform when it was released, and although the Linux port is still relatively immature, it is progressing quickly and is (at least in my opinion) suitable for everyday use.

Midori

I’m guessing most of you haven’t heard of Midori yet. Midori is a lightweight browser for Gnome built upon WebKit. Midori is insanely fast, just look at these numbers:

Midori scores almost 1000 points better than Google Chrome, a browser universally lauded for being blindingly quick. This browser, even in its current state, is a complete joy to use. I would highly recommend giving this one a shot.

Epiphany

Epiphany is somewhat of a testimonial of the performance of WebKit vs. Gecko. Some time ago, the Epiphany developers decided they would switch from using Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine to WebKit. That switch has been a rocky process, but as the WebKit GTK port matures, so too does Epiphany (and Midori and Chrome for that matter). The performance implications of the switch to WebKit are nothing less than mind boggling.

In Gecko form, Epiphany comes in dead last. Its abysmal performance numbers land in the same ballpark with Firefox 3.0 (which makes sense, seeing how they use the same rendering engine), and that’s not a compliment. However, if you fire up the WebKit variant of Epiphany, something wonderful happens…

Epiphany-WebKit absolutely blitzes the Peacekeeper and annihilates all of its competition (even Safari 4 and Google Chrome on Windows), besting even Midori by over 200 points. Seriously, what an amazing achievement. I’ll definitely be paying close attention to this browser as it moves closer and closer to maturity.

Conclusions

Just to sort of wrap things up and drive home a few of the points we hit along the way, here’s a graph comparing all of the browsers mentioned today:

I think the moral of the story is pretty clear: Gecko cannot hold a candle to WebKit when it comes to performance. And mercifully, WebKit brings decent browser performance to those of us who have been suffering on Linux under the growing weight of Firefox. Though I love my Firefox extensions, I will happily bid them farewell in favor of the speed Midori and Epiphany are currently delivering.

1. Use Your computer as a Home Theater PC. I personally use XBMC for this, but there are many other options including MythTV, Elisa, Entertainer, Freevo, GeeXboX and LinuxMCE.
2. Set up a media server. There are many, many ways to go about doing this. There is the old tried and true file server approach, using either NFS or Samba.

   However, if it’s only music you’re sharing, you probably want something more like Firefly or Tangerine, which can share all of your music with the other computers and devices on your network with DAAP (this is the same music sharing technology iTunes uses). Most Linux music players provide this capability as well. If you want to access your music from anywhere in the world, you could set up Jinzora, which is a web based music server.

   If you have an Xbox 360 or PS3 that you’re using to consume music and videos, you’ll want to use a UPnP/DLNA server like uShare (which is based on GMediaServer) or MediaTomb. Many of the aforementioned HTPC programs (XBMC, MythTV) provide this functionality as well.

3. Set up a download server. Centralize all your downloads to one Linux powered server. Get your Usenet downloads with HellaNZB or SABnzbd+. Get your torrents with Transmission, Vuze (formerly Azureus), TorrentFlux, Deluge or MonoTorrent. All of the software mentioned in this section has a web interface of some kind.
4. Have an enterprise class VoIP phone system in your house. Asterisk gives you the ability to have all kinds of crazy phone system features, probably surpassing whatever you have at work, for free (not counting the hardware, obviously). If you want a smaller project, you could always just play with Ekiga.
5. Set up your own surveillance system. Both ZoneMinder and Gspy will monitor your video cameras and optionally perform some action (playing a sound, emailing you, text messaging you, etc) when they detect motion. You could also use something like Motion to roll your own.
6. Be really, really paranoid (Act like a spy!). With Linux, you have so many security and privacy options it’s not even funny.

   Encryption capabilities are already integrated into most desktop oriented distributions that allow you to encrypt certain files. You can encrypt your home directory or your entire hard drive with dm-crypt.

   You can use GnuPG to encrypt and sign email messages (most email clients support this). You can also encrypt your Pidgin chats with Pidgin-Encryption or Off-The-Record Messaging.

   Lock down your network (especially wireless) with FreeRADIUS and IPCop.

   When you’re not at home, you can use Tor for secure web browsing or SSH tunneling to encrypt just about any type of traffic.

   Steghide can conceal secret messages within images or audio, using a technique called Steganography.

   When you’re done with all that, don’t forget to clean up after yourself using either shred or dd.

7. Poke into other people’s business (Act like a spy some more!). Wireshark will let you look at all the network traffic happening around your computer. This is especially cool because most instant messages and emails are unencrypted, meaning you can read them as they go by. You can also see what web pages people are visiting.

   This is even more fun if you get on someone else’s wireless network to spy on them. Find a wireless network with Kismet, then use the Aircrack-ng suite to gain access.

   You could also use Ophcrack to get into a physical computer for which you don’t have the password…

• Broke and trying to save money by eating frozen burritos and oatmeal for a week
• Shopping for a specific recipe (my Christmas Cheeseball of Awesomeness, for example)
• Or I have some type of craving.

But recently I’ve become somewhat interested in keeping a stocked kitchen. This happened for a variety of reasons, which I won’t detail here, but there was a problem. I knew the limited subset of items I liked to have around, but past that… I had no idea what a well stocked kitchen could contain. Enter my mother, who in her infinite wisdom and forethought gave me a (very complete and thorough) Betty Crocker cookbook when I moved out of her house. The specific cookbook I own details the items that should be present in a well stocked kitchen (it is by no means exhaustive, but it is pretty thorough, as you’ll see).

Using this as a basis, I dragged Jon to the grocery store to help me fill out the list. It was quite a lot, if I’m honest. Probably $150 worth of food which I subsequently had trouble cramming into the meager cabinet space of my apartment. This was great… I had things around and could make whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted without having to leave the apartment. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.

I had reached a point where the things I had left weren’t really usable without something else. Rather than make a trip to the grocery store, I’d usually just go pick something up from a local restaurant or even do without on occasion. For whatever reason, the other night, I decided it was time to restock. Remembering what a chore it was to copy down the entire shopping list from my cookbook, I decided to make an electronic copy so that I could print one out whenever needed, cross off what I already have and head to the store to get the rest.

This, as you may guess, was slightly tedious and time consuming. But, I did it and I think it’s pretty useful so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s just a generic list of things you’d likely want to keep around, and I hope you find it useful. There’s both a 3 column PDF that’s perfect for printing out and carrying with you to the store and a plain html list (after the break, hit the “read” link down there) that you can copy and paste into whatever you intend to use.

Dave’s Butt-kicking Grocery Shopping List (PDF)

Pantry Essentials

• Breads
  • buns
  • loaves
  • pitas
  • tortillas
• Pasta
  • lasagna
  • spaghetti
  • penne
  • fettuccine
  • macaroni
• Canned beans
  • black
  • kidney
  • refried
  • navy
• Pasta sauces
  • Alfredo
  • pesto
  • spaghetti
• Canned broth
  • beef
  • chicken
  • vegetable
• Peanut butter
• Canned meats
  • chicken
  • salmon
  • tuna
• Pickles and olives
• Canned tomatoes
  • diced
  • seasoned
  • peeled whole
• Rice and rice mixtures
• Cereals
• Salsa and chips
• Coffee and tea
• Salt and pepper
• Cookies and crackers
• Soft drinks and fruit juices
• Herbs and spices
  • garlic powder
  • basil
  • oregano
  • thyme
  • curry
  • allspice
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • bay leaves
  • ground red pepper
• Soups (canned or dried)
• Jams and jellies
• Soy sauce and marinating sauces
• Ketchup and mustard
• Mayonnaise
• Syrups
  • butterscotch
  • chocolate
  • maple
• Main-dish mixes
• Tomato sauce and tomato paste
• Vegetable oil
  • canola, olive
• Vegetable cooking spray
• Vinegar

Refrigerator Essentials

• Cheeses
  • cheddar
  • cottage
  • Monterey Jack
  • mozzarella
  • Parmesan
• Milk
• Eggs
• Packaged salad greens
• Fruit juice
• Sour cream
• Butter or margarine
• Yogurt

Freezer Essentials

• Ground beef or turkey
• Chicken (boneless skinless breasts)
• Ice cream or frozen yogurt
• Fruit juice concentrate (lemonade and orange)
• Vegetables (packaged)
• Berries (for smoothies and desserts)
• Bread crumbs

Baking Essentials

• Baking cocoa and baking chips
• Chopped nuts
• Cake mix and canned frosting
• Baking mix (Bisquick®)
• Flour
• Baking powder and baking soda
• Sugars
  • brown
  • granulated
  • powdered
  • raw for gourmet coffee
• Brownie mix
• Vanilla and almond extract

Nonfood Kitchen Supplies

• All-purpose spray cleanser
• Paper towels
• Aluminum foil
• Plastic wrap
• Dishwasher detergent and antibacterial hand soap
• Sponges or dish-cloths
• Resealable food-storage bags
• Storage containers
• Toothpicks
• Napkins
• Waxed paper
• Nonabrasive scrubbing pads

Eh, I’m probably just being overly negative. I just want something interesting to read for a change. Come to think of it, can we please do away with the “Top 10…” thing all together? It’s pretty played out and annoying at this point. Just like the overuse of the adjective “quietly” in headlines. Just take a look at Digg or Google News. “Apple quietly intros this…” “Microsoft quietly does that…” Please, stop.

See, I haven’t really worked on music much lately. I got burned out on it pretty bad after I moved to Nashville, and it wasn’t really enjoyable for a long time. I’ve worked on a few little things, mostly tuning vocals for a song here and there, but nothing really big. In the midst of this gigantic hiatus, some interesting things have happened. Namely, the release of REAPER. Ever since I heard about it, I’ve been dying to get the chance to do some real work with it. This remix was perfect for finally getting to dig in and start learning some of the nuts and bolts.

The workstation I’m using is an Athlon FX62, 2GB of RAM… it normally runs Ubuntu Linux and works as a home theater PC. But, for working with REAPER, I needed Windows. Thankfully, some months ago when I set the computer up, I had enough foresight to know I would want to do this and installed Windows Vista. Now, Vista was not my first choice. I wanted to install Windows XP. Unfortunately, Windows XP needs a driver floppy for my SATA controller. Not only do I not have the driver floppy for it, I don’t have the floppy drive to put it in. So, XP thinks I don’t have any hard drives. That leaves me with Windows Vista. And really, it wasn’t that bad. I used it to play through Call of Duty 4 (which, incidentally, is the greatest game ever in the history of everything) and a few other things aside from playing around with REAPER.

Fast forward to last week, when I started working on the remix. I was having fun, learning my way around REAPER, exercising some musical creativity and whatnot. Everything was good. Until yesterday that is. Yesterday, Jon came over to hang out while I finished the track up (I was going to turn it in today). As it turns out, Microsoft pushed out an update for Vista that locked my computer into an endless cycle of reboots. Turn the computer on, it says something like “Installing updates state 3 of 3 0%” or something and then reboots. Microsoft have not offered a fix other than to reinstall Windows. How ridiculous is that? They pushed out an official update that kills who knows how many thousands of people’s computers and essentially all they can say is, “Oops.” Needless to say, the song wasn’t finished. I haven’t quite decided what to do with the 45GB of new hard drive space I have now that I obliterated that Vista partition. Maybe you have some suggestions.

I’ve always had a distaste for Microsoft products, but I would use them as a necessary evil to partake of some of my favorite software… things like REAPER and CoD4. But, not anymore. I’ll just run REAPER in Wine from now on and if I want to play games, I’ll buy a PS3 or a Wii. Microsoft will not be getting any more of my money.

There’s also a Yahoo News article on my issue if you’d like to read a little bit more about it.