Fay, Vonnie has an excellent classical collection. You might want to track her down.

Just a quick drive-by to confirm that the new Destroyer album is just as great as everyone has said it is.

The song that I am listening to right this second for the third time in a row, "3000 Flowers," even has that five-star, best-song-ever kind of feel that makes you run to you computer and post about how great an album is.

ION, I have a gigantic amount of work to do to get my mix ready to post by tomorrow... but somehow I will persevere.

Re: The Mix

I have a couple of questions, and a request. Questions:

1. What's the password to buffistarawk, and where is it?
2. Per rule G, and offering uncompressed mixes, are we supposed to post them to the account compressed? If so, what format?
3. If we're compressing them to something other than the compression iTunes uses (AAC, right?) is there an easy/free way to do that?

And my request is to be bumped back to week 5 if possible, as the shows I'm doing right now will be mostly kicking my ass through the posting date for week 4. The extra week will be quite helpful.

Sean -

I just sent you e-mail addresses and passwords for both of the buffistarawk accounts. (As I noted in the e-mail we are using a separate account from the original buffistarawk account for the purposes of this mix).

Also, it is fine to post your mixes as mp3s or AAC files. Usually posting a whole mix requires sending about 10 separate e-mails. You can compress them further if you want but you don't need to. The only type of file you can't post are ones that are 1) over 20 MB because gmail won't accept a single e-mail that big and most other e-mail services won't send one that big anyway 2) any protected file such as songs you buy directly from the iTunes music store because other folks' computers won't be able to play them.

2) any protected file such as songs you buy directly from the iTunes music store because other folks' computers won't be able to play them.

Crap. That complicates things. I was hoping to fill in some potential gaps in my mix with individual song purchases. Guess I'm limited to my actual current collection. Time to get creative.

There is a way around the protection on iTunes bought music, but it takes some doing.

You can burn songs bought from iTunes to a disc and then take that disc and import it. The ripped files SHOULD then be regular mp3s that anyone can use.

It's a lot of work, but it does make iTunes purchased music unprotected (and lessens the sound quality just a tiny tiny bit - but that's really not important for these purposes).

I'll keep that workaround noted, but I'll try to just use what I have, first.

2) any protected file such as songs you buy directly from the iTunes music store because other folks' computers won't be able to play them.

okay this is driving me CRAZY because I didn't realize this (der..it's like I'm just entering this century in some ways) until after I figured out the PERFECT NO OTHER SONG WILL DO song for one of the categories. And I don't have it on cd and I can't find the cd anywhere local and I don't have time to order it. I may have to leave the spot blank until I can get the cd delivered. But I did get it from iTunes so i've been listening to it and there's no way I can't use it. grrr.

ETA ooh i'ma try the workaround

I know - it sucks - did you see my really long-ass and dumb way to get around it, lisa?

eta: rock on. it's worked for me the one time i tried it.

That is a successful workaround, because the conversion from aac/mp3/whatever files to CDA effectively removes everything except the musical data, even (suckily) the ID3 tags.

I'm about 9 tracks away from finishing. Woot.

PS: Tina, can you forward me that email with the passwords too? Thanks.