Listen to Your Home iTunes Collection from Work

It’s a well-known bummer that the iTunes “Share” feature only works over your local LAN. You may have no intention of sharing your music collection with the world, or of running your own little public radio station from home, but you simply can’t connect to an iTunes library from another network. It’s a feature, not a bug.

feature-bug

Of course, iTunes Match is meant to solve exactly this problem, but Match has a fatal flaw that makes it unusable by the people who need it the most – its 25,000 song limit. For those of us with legit collections of 50k or 75k tracks, Match isn’t an option. Shame, too – I’d happily pay 2x or 3x the subscription price to get Match working. It’s the answer to my prayers, but off-limits. Apple won’t take my money to solve this problem.

So what if you just want to be able to listen to music on a Mac at home from work? It is possible, but it’ll take some setup work, and 60 bucks (which is one-time fee, and money you won’t have to pay to Apple, Pandora, rdio, MOG or Spotify). And, in my experience, those streaming services only have about half the music in my collection – if I want to listen to my music from work, this is the only option.

The setup works like this:

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Edwardian Ball 2013

Awesome time last night at the Edwardian Ball in San Francisco. Have been meaning to go since forever, but finally made it happen, and so glad we did.

shacker as Sir Dragonfly

THE EDWARDIAN BALL is an elegant and whimsical celebration of art, music, theatre, fashion, technology, circus, and the beloved creations of the late, great author Edward Gorey. Set in our own version of “Edwardian” times, this multi-media extravaganza has grown over the past decade from a small underground club night into an internationally recognized event, now operating with the blessing of The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust.

We’re not really dress-up people, but managed to pull some pretty good outfits together thanks to the charity of a few friends. And I sacrificed a perfectly good beard for the opportunity to wear a cartoonish fake mustache (still not sure what I was thinking, but it kinda worked).

Hard-core Gorey fans out-do themselves each year; some of the costumes are drop-dead gorgeous. My favorite (not pictured) was a full-on hard-hat diver complete with air hoses, weight belt and boots, accompanied by his lady-friend, who was being attacked by a giant squid. Astounding.

Maker Faire, Burning Man, and the Edwardian Ball – three totally different venues for creative group expression that had no analog 15 years ago. So glad they exist.

Scot and Amy - crazed couple

Full Flickr Set + slideshow (with a brief video)

Chinese Checkers Elephant

Shot tonight over the edge of the couch.

Chinese checkers elephant

The reason you don’t see a full complement of marbles is that the cats methodically knock them to the floor one at a time and then bat them around the room endlessly – their favorite make-humans-crazy game.

Farewell, Aunt Ellie

Feeling sad now because my dear Aunt Ellie passed away today, surrounded by her children and family. As a child, my brother and I spent many summer weeks at her house, being inspired by her kindness and cheer. She was a rock for the ages – a tireless mother of seven who dedicated the last few decades to the library where she served her community.

This evening, Miles and I hiked up into the El Cerrito hills, where we found a stand of eucalyptus at sunset. I said my farewell to Aunt Ellie through tears, thanked her for life, and offered blessings for her journey. Miles said he had never seen me cry before, and we walked back down the hill in silence.

Thank you, Eleanor Hastings, for all of your wonderful years. You will be sorely missed.

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Aunt Ellie’s obituary in the San Jose Mercury News.

The Modest Case for Atheism

Quite good article at exchristian.net, which kicks off by making an important distinction that most people unfamiliar with atheism overlook. In a nutshell: Contrary to popular belief, very few atheists are certain (in the mathematical sense) that God does not exist; rather, we believe that the very notion of there being a God is implausible. Since it is unsustainable to hold implausible beliefs, we are atheists. It really is that simple.

Most of the time people have this impression that atheists are absolutely certain about the non-existence of God since they claim to know that God does not exist, however this impression is misleading. While there are atheists who claim to be absolutely certain that God does not exist, not all atheists are like this. Most atheists are not committed to the view that the non-existence of God is some kind of axiomatic or self-evident truth… What most atheists would agree is that the belief in the existence of God is implausible, hence unreasonable belief. Most atheists do not feel compelled to produce and reproduce absolute proof that God does not exist; it would be self-defeating and futile to even try. This is because most things in life cannot be shown to be true by absolute proof, especially in science.

Blue Dragon Mollusk

An animal so impossibly beautiful, so psychedelic, it leaves us slack-jawed in the face of nature’s awesomeness. From Wikipedia:

The normal size of this species is up to about 3 cm, depending on the animal’s age. It is silvery grey on its dorsal side and dark and pale blue ventrally. It has dark blue stripes on its face. It has a tapering body which is flattened and has six appendages which branch out into rayed cerata. Its radula bears serrated teeth on their blades.

bluedragon

Tons more shots of the Blue Dragon Mollusk here.

shacker’s Jam Odyssey

thisismyjam.com encourages users to post one new track per week, with embedded video. I wasn’t religious about keeping up with in 2012, but did manage to post about half the time. The end-of-year twist is that they can (on request) produce a compilation of snippets for the entire year, as a “Jam Odyssey.” Pretty cool idea. Here’s mine:

shacker’s Jam Odyssey

Cheeze Doodle Nirvana

When was the last time you experienced this much bliss?

Aleksander Gamme had been trekking the South Pole for 86 days, living on a meager diet of health food. He had lost nearly 50 pounds. Before he began, he had planted caches of supplies at 200k intervals. He had purposely not kept track of what each cache contained. Nearly out of food, he came across one of his last caches. This was his moment of extreme bliss, discovering a bag full of Cheeze Doodles, chocolate, and Mentos.

Part of Radiolab’s excellent Bliss episode.