Mar
29
2012

Don't Let Them Get Ya Down

(Add / View Comments) (0)Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 06:12:47 pm
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music)
So a few weeks ago, or maybe closer to a month now, we saw the Black Moods and picked up their new CD. Although we have known about it, and a slew of songs from it for quite some time, it was kind of a shock to us that it was "out", since we'd heard nothing about the fact. It's still a mystery to us whether it just came out that night, or if we missed the announcement, or the more plausible explanation that there wasn't really one made.

Whatever the case is, the moment we had our grubby mitts on the thing, we'd flipped it over to see what was one it, with a particular desire to see whether Don't Let Them Get Ya Down was on it.



It's a newer song that we've seen played a few times over the past few months. One that on the first listen had us at "hello". And I won't lie, at the last show at the Rockbar, I was dying to hear it again.

Alas, it was not to be found on This Is Lights (Not Sound). Of course, we did know via Josh that it was going to be on the next recording.

Last night I got my first listen of the studio version, with it appearing on Reverbnation. It's not that I didn't already know that the song is fantastic, but I think I may have a new favorite Black Moods song.
Now Playing: The Black Moods - Don't Let Them Geet You Down.
Mar
26
2012

Tapes In The Mail

(Add / View Comments) (0)Monday, March 26, 2012 - 04:42:57 pm
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music)
One of life's joys is finding old school cassettes you never knew existed.

Another one is when the arrive in the mail. Sweet.
Mar
21
2012

Mounting A WD Elements Drive At Boot

Gentoo Init Script Hacking

(Add / View Comments) (0)Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - 10:44:23 pm
(Posted Under: Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux)
So, this was a fun way to kill an afternoon. I picked up a WD Elements drive over a year ago. The 2TB drive has saved my life, despite the fact that it's been teetering on being almost full for months. I can not be trusted with disk space.

Anyways, I've never had the thing successfully mount on boot. Which is somewhat of a pain, since it contains a number of other loop files that need to be mounted that I rely on. Though, given how infrequently the machine gets rebooted, I've just done that manually. However, when the server crashed today, I decided it was time to probably fix that. Especially since I've had the mysqld data directory temporarily moved to that drive for some time (though, after tonight now moved back to /var on a fixed disk).

Through trial and error, and countless reboots I was able to finally work out the culprit - the slow spin up time on the drive. At the point that localmount is executed, the system doesn't know about the partitions on the drive - fails to mount it, and subsequently all of the loop files also fail.

The trick to fix this was to move the mounting of usbfs to the beginning of the script. Following that, probing /dev/sdb1 (for 2 minutes) until it's available. Not sure exactly how long it takes, but it's at least 10 seconds. Once that it is, mount the usb drive, and then mount everything else as per the original localmount script.

   # Wait up to 2 mins for Elements partition to be available
   ebegin "Probing /dev/sdb1"
   i=0
   while [ $i -lt 120 ]; do
      if [ -b /dev/sdb1 ] || [ -b /dev/sdf1 ]; then
         eend 0
         break
      fi
      ((i++))
      sleep 1
   done
   [ -b /dev/sdb1 ] || [ -b /dev/sdf1 ]
   eend $?
   # Mount the elements drive
   mount /mnt/usb/elements
   [ $? != 0 ] && mount /dev/sdf1 -t reiserfs /mnt/usb/elements
The checks against /dev/sdf1 may be unnecessary. In the past I've seen the drive fairly randomly assigned to /dev/sdb and /dev/sdf (seemingly thanks to the numerous USB card readers the machine has) so I added this to make things "just work", since I don't have a monitor attached to the box, and don't care to have to go back to this. But after implementing this, the device seemed to fairly reliably get assigned to /dev/sdb. The explicit mounting of the drive is probably also unnecessary, but I included it for the same reason.

This wasn't really how I had planned on spending 3 hours after work, but finally having the system come up right on boot without any manual intervention makes it worth while.
Mar
10
2012

Stephen Ashbrook @ 910 Live

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSaturday, March 10, 2012 - 11:09:52 am
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music, Live Shows)
Photobox ImageTonight's Stephen Ashbrook show is definitely the coolest I've seen. Surprisingly different to all those times we've seen him at Martini Ranch. Typically at those shows we don't know anyone. Tonight we knew everyone. And the setlist was much longer, and more varied, than what we typically see at Martini Ranch. I guess that's what you get when you don't have to finish before 10:30 for a cover band to play.

Photobox ImageHighlight of the night would definitely be Steve Larson's guest appearance on Folsome Prison Blues, Mr S.O.B and About Last Night. Yeah, that's right. There's was definitely something cool about seeing half of the original Dead Hot Workshop lineup doing Mr. S.O.B. Andy Jensen also special guested on bass, and Jim Swafford taking Ashbrook's Guild for the closing moments of Rock N' Roll.

Can we please have Stephen always play 910 Live when he's in town?

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