Month: March 2008

Looking for a 48-port 10/100 rackmount switch

We’re still looking for a 48-port 10/100 rackmount switch for MusicBrainz. We’d love to have something like an HP ProCurve Switch 2610-48, but we’re not keen on forking over $800 for it. Do you have an old switch laying around that MusicBrainz could put to use? If so, we’d be glad to give you a … Continue reading “Looking for a 48-port 10/100 rackmount switch”

We’re still looking for a 48-port 10/100 rackmount switch for MusicBrainz. We’d love to have something like an HP ProCurve Switch 2610-48, but we’re not keen on forking over $800 for it.

Do you have an old switch laying around that MusicBrainz could put to use? If so, we’d be glad to give you a fair market value tax-deductible receipt for it.

Leave us a comment if you can help!

Two More Servers Donated!

Ben Chobot donated two spiffy new servers to MusicBrainz last week! We received 2 dual quad core Xeon 2.33 Ghz servers with 8Gb Ram and 1TB of storage a piece — these servers will go towards handling our ever growing search traffic. Thanks for your generous support, Ben!

Ben Chobot donated two spiffy new servers to MusicBrainz last week! We received 2 dual quad core Xeon 2.33 Ghz servers with 8Gb Ram and 1TB of storage a piece — these servers will go towards handling our ever growing search traffic.

Thanks for your generous support, Ben!

FreeDB Gateway scheduled maintenance

Our FreeDB gateway has an upset table that needs mending. Inhouseuk will do that this coming Sunday, March 23rd between 09:00 – 12:00 GMT. The downtime should be less than an hour total. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Thanks for baby-sitting the gateway, inhouseuk!

Our FreeDB gateway has an upset table that needs mending. Inhouseuk will do that this coming Sunday, March 23rd between 09:00 – 12:00 GMT. The downtime should be less than an hour total.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Thanks for baby-sitting the gateway, inhouseuk!

Using MusicBrainz with Exact Audio Copy

Simon Bennett-Smith shared this tip with us for using MusicBrainz with Exact Audio Copy: I was delighted to recently discover your “MusicBrainz to FreeDB” gateway, as it is exactly what I would have wished for had I thought of it myself! However, following your directions I did encounter a problem in configuring “Exact Audio Copy” … Continue reading “Using MusicBrainz with Exact Audio Copy”

Simon Bennett-Smith shared this tip with us for using MusicBrainz with Exact Audio Copy:

I was delighted to recently discover your “MusicBrainz to FreeDB” gateway, as it is exactly what I would have wished for had I thought of it myself! However, following your directions I did encounter a problem in configuring “Exact Audio Copy” to accept the server URL:

I found that EAC will not accept a server that has been typed into the “Freedb server” box – it will only accept one from its own list of available servers, ie. one from the drop-down list.

Fortunately EAC creates this list in the Registry and it is updatable. The mb2freedb URL can be included by adding the Registry Key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAWSoftwareEACInternet OptionsHostshttp://freedb.musicbrainz.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi

From the next time EAC is started, the mb2freedb URL will be selectable from the drop-down list.

Maybe you could offer a downloadable .reg file containing, simply:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAWSoftwareEACInternet OptionsHostshttp://freedb.musicbrainz.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi]

@=””

I use EAC v0.95 beta3 and do not know if other versions use the same key, or even exhibit the same behaviour.

Thanks for sharing Simon!

Google Summer of Code 2008

After a bumpy ride in 2007 we plan to participate in Google’s Summer of Code project again. However, we’re going to change quite a few things since only one of our three projects reached completion last year. At the Summer of Code Mentor Summit in 2007, I learned quite a few things about Google’s project … Continue reading “Google Summer of Code 2008”

After a bumpy ride in 2007 we plan to participate in Google’s Summer of Code project again. However, we’re going to change quite a few things since only one of our three projects reached completion last year. At the Summer of Code Mentor Summit in 2007, I learned quite a few things about Google’s project that give me a much better clue about what to do for this year.

At the summit I learned that the most successful projects are the ones that are proposed by the students. And, given the number of students who spammed us by pasting our project ideas into their GSoC applications verbatim, we’re likely to not accept any projects based on our own ideas this year. This forces applications to dig into MusicBrainz, if they’re not already part of the project and understand what the project needs before submitting an application.

I will actively encourage students in the MusicBrainz community to participate in GSoC. Even though students may respond with: “I’m not good enough for that!” we’ve seen these students make excellent contributions outside of GSoC that are on par, if not better than accepted students. Students from our community already understand open source and MusicBrainz. Bringing in new students, especially students who are new to open source, can be a lot of work and result in culture shock.

If we do not have enough qualified applications to fill all of the Summer of Code slots that were allocated to us, we won’t fill all of our slots. We’ll give them to other organizations who have too many qualified students, but not enough slots.

This year we will conduct detailed interviews with all of the students applicants who make it close to the final round. We may even devise some sort of test to ensure that the students possess all the skills they claim on their CV.

Summer of Code 2008 should be kicking off very soon — once we have any information for students, we will post them here. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Leslie let me know that providing an idea list is actually required. It is, however, not required to accept any proposals for these ideas. The above has been updated to reflect this.