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With all the work I have been doing outside of school I have very quickly fallen behind. With only 4 weeks left before graduation I have much to catch up on and much to make up for grade wise. Strangely over the last couple of days I felt more inspired than I have in a long time to create and work on projects. Not only this but to plan for the future. I have set some more goals for myself. I definitely want to be moved out into my own place in the next 6 months. I also want to take the Introduction to Piano course that Saddleback offers in the evenings. I have always loved the sound of the piano and the music that has been created for it. I came across a long time composer I had not heard of last night thanks to the TV show House. In this last weeks episode the show opens on a ballet rehersal and the piece the orchestra is playing I had not heard before. I decided to research and see if someone had recognized it. Sure enough someone else had posted the question and someone whom recognized the song was kind enough to post it as the Second Movement of a piece entitled Company by composer Philip Glass. I had never heard of Mr. Glass before and started sifting through his work on Amazon playing various samples. I came across a Piano Solo Collection of his with a multi part piece entitled Metamorphosis which I have not stopped listening to in over 12 hours. It is a contemporary piece that is minimalist in how few notes are actually used to create the many moods the piece takes you through. It is repetative to those that aren’t big on Techno or any other type of beat based songs where all you have is an instrument and time to create feelings. I purchased the CD through Amazon’s MP3 Download site this morning and am very satisfied. I must say Amazon is impressing me a lot recently. I love my Kindle and am quickly growing to love their MP3 store. The downloads are incredably fast and they have a wide selection of niche artists.

I have begun working on a personal project that I will be undertaking with my aunt in the Real Estate market. I’ve started to construct a prototype and hope to have a beta version completed shortly. That is coming along quite nicely. I also have picked up another work project involving net booting servers and hope to learn a lot with that project. I have considered setting up a netboot server at home for a while. I’m not entirely sure what I would use it for or what I would netboot exactly, but I have always been facinated with the idea.

I also am looking through open source music database projects and music managers. I have used Amarok in the past, and tried Songbird. Both players have features I like, but have things missing that I want. I’m looking for something like a cross of both plus some more features. Here is a list of features I looking for:

• MySQL database (for expandable programming)
• Intelligent Shuffle (IMMS style)
• Wireless iPhone Sync (including playing stats)
• Multi Room Audio Expandable
• Network Audio Playback (PulseAudio)
• Intelligent Playlists and Play Times (i.e. no Christmas music in February, but an emphasis in late November/December)
• Automated Indexing (Purchase a song and it should be auto categorized and added to the appropriate playlists)
• Songbird Style Visualization using Flickr photos in a PS3 style slide show with falling photos)
• Playback Music Videos when available in place of a given Song for visual aspect

These are just a few of the things I’m taking in to consideration. I will be storing my music on my server in an SMB share off of Windows. I want to have new music placed in there well organized and managed.