Pbeidy
I swear that we have almost reached the denouement of this exercise in self indulgence.
So having secured an almost ever green source of cheap music, and set up the basic infrastructure needed to digitize, store and and play it back, by all metrics, I should have been perfectly happy. Right?
Alas, it’s been my experience, that once the chains of habit/brand loyalty have been broken, the switching costs shrink and the compulsion to tinker and improve takes over. I had already pushed the Jellyfin Android app off a cliff due to it’s terminal shyness whenever asked to actually play anything (it survives on the family central entertainment slab, as it thus far has proven itself capable of playing an MPEG4 file without unaliving itself). In it’s place had stepped Symfonium, a beautiful music app that is capable of far more than I currently ask of it. It could cache a certain number of albums to take with me when out and about town, and that was fine for about a week before the itch started up again.
I already planned on getting a mini PC to serve as a dedicated media server. My gaming rig was more than a tad overpowered for the job and I did not fancy having it chug away in the corner just so I could listen to Stankonia in the kitchen. A short trip to kleinanzeigen.de (a German version of Craigslist - also owned by eBay) catalyzed a very fortuitous encounter with serendipity - a local willing to let go of their no name brand mini PC for half the original price. A short trip uptown, a wad of cash and a short, friendly chat and the little screamer was mine. The prior owner was a Cyberpunk Red style techie of considerable skill, who had scoured the device for any possible digital peeping toms and used it to run a set of AR goggles to watch movies. I admit, I just barely understood what he was talking about, but it was very cool in a way that the actual tech industry hadn’t been in over a decade. Yes I know about Meta glasses, that is exactly my point.
The weekend after, I committed myself to the task of ushering my media home lab to its final apotheosis. A new 9 plug power strip, some LAN cable, a five port ether-net switch, some swearing, Jellyfin, Emby, returning to Jellyfin, more swearing, Tailscale, YouTube and then it was done. I tend towards hyperbole, but in fact, the entire process fit comfortably in a 90 time slot. Now, no matter where I go, I have my music, that I own and that no corporation can take away from me because their licensing agreement with EMI wasn’t renewed. Just don’t look under my desk.
Now I just have to do the movies. I fear I may need a new NAS…