I have been using Amarok for a long time now as my only music player. It has all those great features like

• last.fm scrobbling
• decent tag editing
• music library
• extras like: additional scripts; wikipedia info; lyrics display, etc.

But I have always been annoyed that also among the reasons I use Amarok was that there weren’t really any good alternatives – I’ve tried a few but fell in love with none of them.

Also, some problems with Amarok were really annoyning (in order of importance):

1. The database constantly f***s up. I mean, at one time you’ve got all your songs and albums. And after updating (not sure if this happens even without updating) you suddenly find out that albums and songs are all messed up – songs appear to belong to artist A according to Amarok but we all know that artist B released them. Some albums just become empty – others have only some songs, and so on. So I start rescanning the collection which helps sometimes and sometimes doesn’t. Then I probably delete the database or something like that.
2. It’s slow. It loads slow and feels kind of slow. Not very slow. But not fast in my book

I am not complaining – I know I should post bug reports – and I am not being arrogant – I know nobody owns me nothing. Don’t get me wrong – I love Amarok, and I’ll probably go back to it when (if?) I get disappointed with mpd and various clients.

However, for now I’m really going on the mpd side. mpd is a daemon that resides in the background and maintains your musical collection; playlists and it does the playing too. It looks highly configurable, although I have not played with much it yet. But pretty fast I was able to configure it (with the help of ArchWiki, of course – thanks, guys) to play through my sound card and put a httpd stream (also simultaneously), which I was able to play through a remote computer.

MPD has a lot of clients written for it. That is, you can use a bunch of different players to play your music! There are GTK, Qt, Java and even console client (there’s one that looks like vim!). Also, closing your client (or crashing it) does not stop music playback. You can close one client, continue hearing music, start another and see the same playlist and collection with a totally different interface! Or you can listen to music without having to hold a client open at all.

Also, I don’t know if it’s the subjective little guy in my left year talking but I hear better sound from mpd than Amarok.

So, I fell in love with mpd!

There’s mpdscribble – a last.fm scrobbling daemon, that also works fine!

Actually, I got this idea to write a client for mpd, that will be just what I want in a music player! It seems easy because I’ll be like implementing only the GUI (or CLI, don’t know yet), because the libmpdclient library has a really high level of abstraction – you don’t need to worry about ALSA (that always looked pretty scary to me as a library).

We’ll see. For now, I’ll be just rocking and switching different clients

My alters  - some of them at least, are embarrassing as hell.  One of them is calling herself Satin C*nt and she is, you guessed it, whorish in her actions.  This is the one that has gotten me into the most trouble.  I cannot bring myself to go into too much detail but to give you an idea of things, that particular alter has – on at least two occasions – gone to job interviews and had sex with the interviewer during the interview.  Unprotected sex no less.  Then one of the anti-sex alters comes out later and invariably tries to overdose on painkillers to kill the shame of what S.C. has done.

I don’t even mention this stuff to the Men In White Coats (psychiatric professionals) because they’d lock me up in a psychiatric unit for sure if the knew, right?

Like a shitload of snow. Why?

Because DC cops LOSE THEIR FUCKING MINDS.

Lt. Overreact Much aka Detective Baylor

Yeah, so. Not sure if you saw on any of the major websites today. But today a veteran MPD detective decided the best way to defuse a completely friendly snowball fight at the intersection of 14th and U was to get out of his Hummer and start waving his gun at civilians.

As you do.

Oh, and he saved everyone the trouble and went ahead and admitted it on video.

So it’s cool, you guys. You don’t have to be afraid of balls of frozen water. DC’s finest is out there kickin’ snow’s ass.

I feel like I absorbed the darkness and evil and filth of the abusers, when I was a child.  I’ve lived for decades with this overwhelming feeling of being chased by darkness.  I feel that my life is doomed; that happiness is impossible.  That I am dirty and unloveable and disgusting and that I, in some way, asked for it – even though I was about 18 months old when the sexual abuse first started.  At night, I feel I’m being chased by filthy dark unspeakable things and individuals and I wake at least twice every night, out of breath and terrified.  Pretty much every morning I wake up with a cloud of dread hanging over me and it takes me a good half hour or so to convince myself that nothing life-threatening or violent is (hopefully) going to happen to me that day.

I don’t want to live like this anymore but I don’t know how to live differently.  It is all I have ever known.

To thank the super heroes that work really hard in the back offices of the national MPD program we had a crazy end of year thank you dinner at our home last week. Without this team we would not be able support the 140 campus and youth missionaries working around the world reaching the nations. Thank you so much to this absolutely incredible team of super-heroes.

It also turns that they are crazy. During the evening a handful of water-pistols were discovered much “wetness” was applied to everybody as a water war erupted in the garden. Ethan had an absolute blast chasing and being chased around the house.

We also had a strong competition of “Throw the Big Ball closest to the little ball game” (I don’t know the proper name of the game). This turned out to be a really close encounter which lasted about 2 hours.

Here you can see Jason giving his best with much focused attention. It unfortunately did not help him here, he completely missed the little ball. Even Ethan jumped in and gave us a run for our money

By the way we also had dinner. Doesn’t this picture simply make you hungry. Even Jadon shared in the spoils

I’m feeling really isolated, terrified and lonely.  This week’s meeting with the evil bitch from hell (aka the NHS psychiatrist) has really upset my system and disrupted the relatively balanced, calm state I’d achieved.   The panic has set in again.  The little ones inside are terrified and afraid.

To give some background: despite being relatively nuts, at the same time I am relatively functional.  I am currently studying for my Master’s degree at university and I am making good grades.  I am also working on a freelance basis.  The bitch from hell from the NHS has advised me that DID cannot be “contained” by any of their doctors and that I am too traumatised to be suitable for any form of therapy from then.  Further, she’s said that I’m not suitable to be treated as an outpatient and that I must attend a three-day-a-week, 9 to 5 centre for serious nutcases where I will learn “basic living skills, how to apply for welfare benefits, how to cook, how to interact socially with others and how to take basic care of myself.”   I pointed out to her that I have a job, I have a great apartment and a circle of friends and I’ve been working – successfully – in the same industry for 11 years now.  She told me that if I am serious about ‘getting well’ I need to give up my Master’s degree and my work and go to this three-day-a-week centre where people sit there drooling and shaking.  I would need to attend this shitty centre for 10 months and then she would ‘review’ my situation and see if I was now ready for therapy.

Thankfully, behind this bitch from hell’s back, I’ve managed to find a highly qualified and experienced DID psychotherapist who works in the private sector.  This therapist says that for someone with DID I am actually high-functioning and most certainly suitable for therapy.

The NHS frickin SUCKS

These are things I usually experience when switching between my different personalities:

1. Severe headaches

2. Lightbulbs blowing every time I touch the switch/electricity tripping

3. Opening the fridge to find I ate all the food/drank all the wine, with no memory of doing it

4. Finding emails I have no recollection of sending

5. Enormous gaps in memory and losses of time

6. A feeling of melting and dissolving or literally spinning and feeling insubstantial

Just to echo Linux.com’s starting line in “CLI audio players for Linux”: What would life be without music? That’s the number 1 thing every self-respecting 21st Century man does in his free time—lip-sync to Britney Spear’s mp3 playing off their computer at eardrum shattering volume. Alsa is also the first thing I install in Arch Linux. Not X, not openssh or anything fancy. Just a good command line audio player with the ability to play mp3, ogg and streaming Internet radio.

Even if you’re running some instance of X like: Gnome, KDE, Xfce or some other window manager, there are reasons why you might want to use a command line audio player even though there are GUI audio players like Audacious, Rhythmbox and Amarok:

• You cannot or will not install X
• You are using an old computer with limited resource
• You’re crazy

The last point doesn’t really count as a reason, but I have been trying to learn the Linux command line for the longest time. Even though my 4 year old Toshiba laptop with 1Gb RAM can do Gnome or KDE with relative ease, I’m challenging myself to make my way around Linux using only the command line—for education purposes—not as if I’m such a whiz with an obscure OS like Linux. :p

Ncmpcpp is the frontend for MPD featuring a ncurses TUI(Text User Interface). Instead of typing something like:

archer@oldlappie ~ # mpc search artist 'Lisa Ono' | mpc add
archer@oldlappie ~ # mpc play

You can have something like the image below to easily manage your playlist, browse, add, play, delete and even download lyrics for singing along when your favorite song is playing.

Lyrics window for your sing-along pleasure:

Even if you’re a little lost when you launch ncmpcpp for the first time, help is just a keystroke away:

MPD has features other than the more obvious ones I’ve listed above. I installed MPD on Arch Linux, so this post contains notes on how I got MPD and ncmpcpp rolling on my chosen distro.

MPD installation notes

1. Installing mpd, mpc and ncmpcpp
2. Configuring mpd
3. Starting mpd and playing from ncmpcpp

1. Installing mpd, mpc and ncmpcpp

Install using Arch Linux’ package manager(pacman) as root:


root@oldlappie ~ $ pacman -S mpd mpc ncmpcpp


That’s it! easy peasy, japaneasy.

2. Configuring mpd

create your mpd directory: /home/[user]/.mpd

archer@oldlappie ~ # mkdir .mpd

Copy mpd.conf.example from /etc to your .mpd directory:

archer@oldlappie ~ # cp /etc/mpd.conf.example .mpd/mpd.conf

Edit /home/[user]/.mpd/mpd.conf using your favorite editor. I’ll be using vim:

archer@oldlappie ~ # vim .mpd/mp.conf

uncomment and make your mpd.conf file reflect as below:


music_directory "/home/[user]/music" # where you store your music
playlist_directory "~/.mpd/playlists"
db_file "~/.mpd/mpd.db"
log_file "~/.mpd/mpd.log"
error_file "~/.mpd/mpd.error"
pid_file "~/.mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file "~/.mpd/mpdstate"
user "[user]"

audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "My ALSA Device"
}


Make the ‘playlist’ directory as specified in your mpd.conf:

archer@oldlappie ~ # mkdir .mpd/playlists

That’s about it for configuring mpd for a local user. We’ll have to update mpd’s database before it’ll read, display and play the audio files in your directory.

archer@oldlappie ~ # mpd --create-db

That will start your mpd and you can test if it’s working by adding and playing songs with mpc:

archer@oldlappie ~ # mpc search artist 'Lisa Ono' | mpc add
archer@oldlappie ~ # mpc play
Lisa Ono - I Wish You Love
[playing] #47/62 0:01/3:49 (0%)
volume: 85% repeat: on random: on single: off consume: off
archer@oldlappie ~ #

Ncmpcpp doesn’t require too much configuration, but if you’re going to use ncmpcpp’s in-built tag editor, add your music directory to ‘~/.ncmpcpp/config’.

mpd_music_dir = "/home/[user]/music"

Start ncmpcpp by entering ‘ncmpcpp’ in the command line. That should show you an empty playlist. Top most menu bar will should you the different mode ncmpcpp is capable of. If you’re unsure of the key-bindings in ncmpcpp, hit F1 or ‘1′ to get into help page. Minimal commands you should know.

        Up k        : Move Cursor up
        Down j      : Move Cursor down
        Page Up     : Page up
        Page Down   : Page down
        Home        : Home
        End         : End

        Tab         : Switch between playlist and browser
        1 F1        : Help screen
        2 F2        : Playlist screen
        3 F3        : Browse screen
        4 F4        : Search engine
        5 F5        : Media library
        6 F6        : Playlist editor
        7 F7        : Tag editor
        0 F10       : Clock screen

   Keys - Global
 -----------------------------------------
        s           : Stop
        P           : Pause
        >           : Next track
        <           : Previous track
        f           : Seek forward
        b           : Seek backward
        Left -      : Decrease volume
        Right +     : Increase volume

        t           : Toggle space mode (select/add)
        T           : Toggle add mode
        |           : Toggle mouse support
        v           : Reverse selection
        V           : Deselect all items
        A           : Add selected items to playlist/m3u file

        r           : Toggle repeat mode
        Z           : Shuffle playlist
        i           : Show song's info
        I           : Show artist's info
        L           : Toggle lyrics database
        l           : Show/hide song's lyrics

        q Q         : Quit

Hope you will enjoy using mpd and ncmpcpp as a low footprint audio player.

*****WARNING: this content may be upsetting for the squeamish****

I’ve had dissociative symptoms since I was a girl of about 4 or 5.   I am the daughter of a mother who has what is known is malignant narcissism.  Malignant narcissism is a cross between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and being a psychopath.  My mother quite frequently enters into narcissistic rage, at the smallest slight, where she will attack, attempt to murder people and so on.

As well as severely beating me as a kid my mother also peddled me to various local paedophiles.  I believe the paedophiles gave her money.  According to medical records and family testimony, my mother first began pimping me out to grown men when I was about 18 months old.  My earliest memories are of being about three and a half and being forced to have oral sex with a man who must have been about 30.  When I was quite understandably unable to perform this task properly, I was beaten in the head with my mother’s shoe.  By this age I had also been raped several times.

Even now, decades later, I still have nightmares where I’m back there again as a little girl, being raped and laughed at by grown men.  My mother would be present during many of the rapes and assaults and she’d get very angry if I didn’t ’satisfy’ the man who was abusing me.

My mother has never been prosecuted or even arrested for any of this.  She has acknowledged what happened but has never directly apologized to me.  I strongly get the impression that she was also raped or molested as a child herself and that she doesn’t realise how wrong it is for such a thing to happen to a little girl.

As a result of all that trauma at such an early age, my personality “split” into lots of different fragments.  As a result I have Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder.  I have about eight different personalities or “fragments.”  There are amnesiac barriers between my main personality and most of the sub-personalities so when the sub-personalities take over I often remember nothing about what has happened during that period, or I will have just very vague, dull memories of it.

http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder

Brand B, Classen C, Lanins R, et al. A naturalistic study of dissociative identity disorder and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified patients treated by community clinicians. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. 2009;1:153-171. The prevalence of dissociative disorders (DD) in clinical settings ranges between 5-20.7% among inpatients, (Friedl & Draijer, 2000; Gast, Rodewald, Nickel, & Emrich, 2001; Ross, Anderson, Fleisher, & Norton, 1991; Tutkun et al., 1998), 12-38% among outpatients (Foote, Smolin, Kaplan, Legatt, & Lipschitz, 2006; Garcia, Rico, & Agra´z, 2006; Sar et al., 2003; Sar, Tutkun, Alyanak, Bakim, & Baral,2000)….

Information modified for readability
Table 2
Patient Characteristics – 280 total
Abuse History  – 272
% and # in study
Was the patient physically abused as a child? 79 (215)
Did the patient witness domestic violence as a child? 49 (133)
Was the patient emotionally or psychologically abused as a child? 94 (255)
Was the patient neglected as a child? 68 (184)
Was the patient sexually abused as a child? 86 (233)
Perpetrator(s) – 275
Father 55 (151)
Stepfather/mother’s lover 10 (28)
Mother 21 (58)
Brother 22 (62)
Other relative 42 (117)
Adoptive family member 3 (9)
Nonrelative 58 (159)
NA 8 (23)
http://www.towson.edu/topddstudy/images/Brand%20et%20al%202009.pdf

Ross CA. Errors of logic and scholarship concerning dissociative identity disorder. J Child Sex Abus. 2009;18:221-231. The author reviewed a two-part critique of dissociative identity disorder published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. The two papers contain errors of logic and scholarship. Contrary to the conclusions in the critique, dissociative identity disorder has established diagnostic reliability and concurrent validity, the trauma histories of affected individuals can be corroborated, and the existing prospective treatment outcome literature demonstrates improvement in individuals receiving psychotherapy for the disorder. The available evidence supports the inclusion of dissociative identity disorder in future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19306208

By Wendy Osher

Eleven recruits joined the ranks of the Maui Police Department, as members of the 71^st recruit class graduated during a ceremony held at the Maui Beach Hotel in Kahului.

Class president Marvin Tevaga is among the list of recruits that begin their careers to protect and serve.

“If not us, then who,” said Tevaga.  “As we have gone through some intense training, these past nine months, these five words have become a mantra, a motivation each day, entuning my desire to becoming a police officer in the Maui Police Department,” Tevaga said.

“Nine months ago I thought I started a new career.  Today, I look at my 71^st recruit class:  my sister, my brothers, and I realized that it wasn’t just the beginning of a career, It was a start of a journey,” said Tevaga.

Keynote speaker and SHOPO president Tenari Ma’afala gave advice to the new members saying the thing that separates police as first responders is the split second decision to take a life or save one.

Members of the Maui Police Department 71st Recruit Class include: Brandon Asuega-Stark, Michael Bocon II, Aly Miyashiro, Miguel Munoz, Joshua Nascimento, Marvin Tevaga, Edward Ferreira, Joshua Kalb, Angela Kahoohanohano, Devin Pagaduan, and David Pachico. Photo by Wendy Osher.

“Are you ready, are you willing and able to do it,” said Ma’afala.  “Yes you are.  Based on the training that you all just went through in recruit school, that’s where it’s at.  You get on the road. You forge your own style, you forge your own man and womanhood and stand fast, face fear.  When there is a firefight, or gun fight, we run to it, when people run away.  That’s what we do, we bleed blue,” said Ma’afala.

The 71^st Recruit Class roster includes:  Brandon Asuega-Stark, Michael Bocon II, Aly Miyashiro, Miguel Munoz, Joshua Nascimento, Marvin Tevaga, Edward Ferreira, Joshua Kalb, Angela Kaho’ohanohano, Devin Pagaduan, and David Pachico.

Five awards were issued to select recruits for excellence is various skill sets.

Earning the Outstanding Recruit Award was Miguel Munoz , a native of Maui who attended Maui High School and UH Manoa.  He is being assigned to the Wailuku Patrol District.

Earning recognition in two categories was Michael Bocon II for both Scholastic Achievement and marksmanship for the Neil T. Endo Firearms Award.  Also taking honors were Devin Pagaduan who received the M. Cecil “Rusty” Dickson Award for Physical Fitness and Angela Kaho’ohanohano was awarded for Best Notebook.

Members completed 9 months of recruit training and will now be assigned to the Field Training Officer Program for the next four months.

Around 4 am Saturday, there was a robbery and stabbing in Columbia Heights, at Fairmont and 11th street. MPD says that two females were robbed by two males, at which time the females fled from the scene and “obtained assistance from several citizens” (um, why weren’t you calling 911 instead?). Then, these “citizens” confronted the two men who robbed these women, and one of the suspects had a knife and stabbed one of the “citizens” in the chest. The victim is in stable condition.

With the limited information that MPD released, I originally questioned these people’s actions. I apologize if I offended anyone. The only point I wanted to make was: a crime gets committed, you call 911. It’s dangerous to confront individuals that just committed a crime, especially one of like a robbery.

By Wendy Osher

Maui police have launched an attempted murder investigation following a report of a homeless man being set on fire while he was sleeping.

The incident was reported early this morning in Paia.  The 27-year-old male victim went to the Shell Station where he reported the incident.

He was transported to the Maui Memorial Medical Center where he was treated for second degree burns to 50% of his body.

Police are looking for a local homeless male who is considered a person of interest.  An investigation is ongoing.

By Wendy Osher

Maui Police have launched an investigation into the discovery of a body found at Honolua Bay early Wednesday morning.  The decomposed body was found by a local fisherman at around 1:15 a.m. on the beach between Honolua Bay and Windmill Beach in West Maui.

Authorities are making efforts to identify the body through possible dental records.  The cause of the death is unknown and pending an autopsy.

There is a recent Missing Person report and police at this time are trying to determine if the deceased is the same person.