Arion's blog

You may be wondering what the Streamsicle link is under Featured Content on the right sidebar. Well, Streamsicle is a cool MP3 music organizer and streamer. I spent years searching for the perfect MP3 collection manager. I tried a bunch of different programs but wasn't happy with any of them. Streamsicle isn't perfect, but it fits my needs the best of the available options out there. You see, all of my MP3s are stored on my file server at home in an Artist/Album directory structure. My goal was to find a MP3 software package that would allow me to be able to easily navigate through my music and listen to songs from any system at home (and potentially remotely). Streamsicle works well for me because:

• No database backend. It builds a runtime library by parsing my files when it starts (or on command)
• Browser-based. The user interface is all web-based. Therefore, easily accessible from any platform.
• Streamed. Music is served through a stream rather than playlists.
• Platform independent. Streamsicle is written in Java and runs as a servlet.
• Open-source! I can hack away at it. In fact, I've already added a feature (ID3v2.3 APIC embedded picture support - I'll post another article about that sometime).

One of the cool ways I've been using Streamsicle has been through my hacked XBOX at home. My XBOX is hooked up to my living room stereo system. Its loaded with the XBOX Media Player, which supports MP3 streams. So, I just point XBMS at Streamsicle and then control what's playing through my couch computer (there's another article topic: I'm a firm believer in the 'couch computer' as an integral part of the living room environment. hehehe.)

Sorry, but I don't allow access to my actual music stream right now. I'd probably get the RIAA after me if I did. However, if you see any "listeners," then you know I'm currently listening to the stream. Feel free to queue up a couple songs for me to listen to if you want.

Ever since I started my first job in Northern Virginia, I've noticed that there was an obscene amount of vanity license plates. You know, license plates that you can get from the DMV with your own personalized saying. Well, I started keeping track of all the ones that I saw, but quickly gave up. There were just too many! And, boy were there some really really dumb ones. So, I decided to shift my focus to seeing how many geek related personalized plates I could spot and keep track of. Since Northern Virginia has an extremely high density of computer and high tech jobs, the number of geek plates I've observed has been very impressive. Here is the list I've collected (with lots of help from my friends!)

I took a vacation to Japan and Hong Kong this fall with my good friend Brian. We took tons and tons of photos. Here's a scenic view of a temple in Kyoto.

If you have several hours to waste, you can find all of the pictures from our trip here.

Ok. Ok. Yes, my web site had not been updated in a long while. I could come up with plenty of excuses, but hey, who wants to hear excuses. To rectify this, I've decided to try my hand at blogging. I started by doing some research into the various blogging engines out there. Of the ones out there, Movable Type seemed the most full featured. After surfing through various Movable Type blogs for inspiration, I came cross Erik J. Barzeski's NSLog();. Erik's layout was very nice -- straightforward, easy on the eyes, etc. I wanted to put something together was was similar. So, after asking Erik's permission, I've adopted some of his style elements and hopefully the new Arion.Net will be around for a while... and now with new content! Woo hoo!