Venice Sign Rebirth

We rode the bus to the Venice Fest today. Venice was celebrating the rebirth of the lighted sign that used to hang over Windward Ave in the early 1900's. They had a lineup of bands including the band Venice.

Back in college I played in a saxophone quartet. Some guys from the Venice (the band) saw us playing on the 3rd Street Promenade and asked us if we would open for them at one of their concerts at the Mayfair Theater. We did, and it was a lot of fun. It was cool to see them today after all these years.

We also spent some time today hanging out at the beach near the dancing rollerskating area. I love to watch those people dance and skate - there are so many talented people there.

Patio Furniture

After living in my house for almost 7 years, we finally decided to buy some patio furniture. This morning we went to Ikea in Burbank looking for a table and chairs. We ended up buying an oval glass table, 6 chairs, a bench, and 30 wood squares that can be used to create a pseudo-deck on our cement patio.

We ignorantly thought that we could fit all that in our Honda Accord, but we were way off. In fact, the only things that fit were the wooden squares. We ended up having to pay $49 to ship everything else to our house - not such a bad price for shipping from Burbank to the Westside of LA.

I setup the wood squares right when I got home. I laid them out in a 6 X 5 rectangle, alternating the direction of the wood with each consecutive square. It looks pretty good, kind of like a wooden rug. I think it is the type of thing that some people will love and some will think is strange. Once the table and chairs arrive, I will place them on top of the wooden rectangle. Finally we'll be able to hang out on our patio.

BuzzDash

A friend of mine once dreamed of making a website that made it easy for people to create polls that would gage how the public felt about many different topics. So-called Web 2.0 sites are popping up all over the place now, and today I discovered one on social polling called BuzzDash. I think it is along the lines of what my friend wanted to build.

I wonder how much money sites like this make off of advertising. I am constantly kicking myself for not building a site like this myself. I keep telling myself I am going to make some website after I get better at developing with Ruby On Rails. I am one chapter away from finishing Ruby for Rails, and after that I will likely try one of my many crazy ideas.

Audio CD Creation on Ubuntu

My wife asked me to make a compilation of R.E.M. songs for her father and burn them to a CD that he could play at home or in his car. Believe it or not, I have never tried to make an audio CD before. I hardly knew where to start.

The first thing I checked was what programs came with Ubuntu that might help me. In the Applications --> Sound & Video menu, I found Sound Juicer CD Extractor and Serpentine Audio CD Creator.

Sound Juicer pops up when I put an audio CD in my computer. It was very easy to see how to rip the music off the CD, but I didn't know what format I should rip it in so that it could be burned onto a CD-R and played in a normal CD player. I figured that if I created MP3 or OGG files, only special, modern CD players could read the data. After some Googling, I found that I was right - I would need to rip the music as .wav (WAVE) files if I wanted to support normal CD players.

Unfortunately, Sound Juicer did not contain a gstreamer audio profile for the lossless .wav format. I had to add one using these instructions. After that, I was able to easily rip music into the .wav format and then setup a playlist of music to burn onto a CD using Serpentine. With Serpentine, it was as easy as opening the audio files, ordering them, and clicking one button to burn them to a CD. Serpentine also kept track of the time taken up by the playlist, letting me know how much more room was left on the CD. Easy as pie.

The resulting CD, however, was not perfect. It plays fine on Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, and in my new car CD player, but it fails to play in my portable Sony CD player and an old Toshiba DVD player.

I assume there is something special about newer CD players and computers that give them the capability to play an audio CD created on a computer, but I have no idea what it is. I am wondering if there was some different CD-R type or some way I could have burned the music so that it would play on the oldest of CD players. If you know anything about this, please share.

Del Rey Arts District

At the Del Rey Planning and Land Use Committee and Transportation Committee meeting tonight, a representative from the Sugarman Communications Group came to speak about the naming of the Glencoe-Maxella area where they're developing a lot of new lofts-style condos like Del Rey Lofts.

The rep said that they were considering naming the area bounded by Del Rey Ave on the west, Beach Ave on the north, Redwood Ave on the east, and Maxella Ave on the south. If the area had a name, he argued, it would make it easier for the developers and surrounding businesses to advertise and attract people.

There were two names that were under consideration:

1. Marina Arts District
2. Del Rey Arts District

The term Arts was chosen to reflect the fact that many of the new units under development are live/work lofts in which they expect a lot of artist-type people (graphic designers, media producers, and others that can work out of their home).

It probably isn't a surprise that the people at the meeting unanimously voted for the latter option, Del Rey Arts District, since the area is technically within the Del Rey boundaries and it would greatly help the neighborhood council's effort of establishing a Del Rey identity. A motion was made for the joint committees to endorse the naming of this district as the Del Rey Arts District.

I think it would be cool if this name is chosen and the area becomes well-known by that name. I am generally in favor of establishing a sense of place, and I think the artsy image being associated with Del Rey will favorably help the home values in the surrounding areas.