Terabyte Blues

“A Terabyte Ain’t Enough!
Notes from the Sidelines of Digitization Hell”

There is still life in these old bones and while they were plunked down in front of a shiny new 1 terabyte PC, they regularly reached over to the keyboard to keep the digitizing of their CD collection alive while trying – at the same time – to keep their day job running as well.

Fact is, I have to spend a shitload of time in front of my PC or next to it and although I have already transferred a sizable number of CDs to my PC, I’ve started in earnest to make sure that while I can’t listen to my music as much on my stereo in the living room as I’d like, I can do so in my office … or elsewhere.

I’ve often stated that we collectors are plain nuts, and we are, but sometimes I get the feeling that I’m an extreme case of that rather rare subspecies. If you add to that the fact that we Germans are often considered to be anally retentive in regard to keeping order in our stuff and arranging things at right angles on our desks, what we have here is the worst case scenario: A German digitizing his CD collection. Continue Reading →

The Software! The Software!

Collecting is perhaps the most stupid hobby a human being can submit to. I mean, really, I could have taken up knitting or keeping my somewhat flabby frame in shape, but, no, I had to go for collecting … of all things.When I was young (yeah, right) I collected stamps, especially those with any space-related depictions. At that time I didn’t care that most of those were geared towards collectors or came from states that were not much bigger than the stamps they issued. Then I focused on Scandinavian countries because I lived there for years and today I have limited my activities to getting newly-issued Danish presentation packs. Still, I ended up with several cupboards full of albums. Continue Reading →

Brian 4

Most cataloging and archiving applications available today are really good at helping you fill out a million data fields, automatically look up a CD on the Internet or download covers. But they have one big problem: they don’t produce reports suitable for displaying chronological recording sessions for print discographies. If you are used to those, most programs are inadequate.

Enter Brian4. This free and, I’m sorry to say, butt-ugly application impresses with it’s ability, not its looks. It is named after Brian Rust, who perfected the chronological recording session format for print discographies and Brian 2.1, for example, was used to compile the discography in the Sinatra Singles box from Capitol. It is a deceptively simple application that helps the user enter data in a way that he/she can produce a (jazz) discography when done. So, what we have here is a discographical tool as opposed to an inventory tool. Continue Reading →