Uncle DT's Random Image Thread

[Kruger]

I could see where having a specific playlist that shuffling could work.  That's one point that I did like about Subsonic though, you could create playlists and shuffle them, or shuffle album, artist, genre, and even year.  So it was easy to just select hard rock and get a bunch of Guns N Roses, AC/DC, Scorps, and Zeppelin all mixed together with no jarring or amusing interjections.  And you could select how many songs to include in the shuffle and it would create a playlist of that shuffle that would be saved and is then editable.

However it would be cool if a song could have more than one genre, then you could label the Real Men of Genius under all genres and have one pop up no matter what you were listening to...

[Blaze]

My playlist started with grabbing every song in my library and whenever a song came up that I didn't like I would just delete it from the list. And for some strange reason I still have two tracks of just crickets chirping. I've been looking for a new hosting music streamer. I looked at Subsonic and played with their demo, but I'm still on the fence with that one. There's a bunch of other self-hosted streaming servers that I need to evaluate...

[Kruger]

A couple of guys at work swear by Jellyfin for everything, I just need to jump in and do an evaluation.  But honestly, I like the Plex UI for video and Subsonic for audio...

[Blaze]

I've been trying a few so far and the key thing I'm looking for is playlist management. They all have multiple ways of adding songs, albums, artists, etc... to a playlist, but trying to remove a track out of a playlist is a lesson in futility and frustration. I found one (forgot what it was called) that ticked all the marks except for one: It had no indicator of what song was currently playing. How do you screw that up? The plus with all of the ones I did check was that they supported the Subsonic API so getting a client that works with these shouldn't cause any drama...

[Kruger]

I seem to remember that Subsonic had some pretty basic playlist functionality including deleting entries.  But it's been a while, I still haven't rebuilt my music library, I'll pretty much just rip whatever cd I want to listen to and copy that top my sd card in my phone so it's available in the car and when I'm cutting the grass...

[Blaze]

I'm going to need to rebuild my entire VM hosting server. It's got a ghost in the machine that's been blocking CPUs until it just stops responding. Nothing in the logs and motherboard diagnostics return all good. I'm looking at putting everything except the router on individual Raspberry Pi machines. I could get away with the router on a Pi5 if I wasn't using a VPN, but the horsepower needed to keep a 500Gb line saturated through OpenVPN just isn't there. I'm thinking of a dedicated Vault appliance for that. I'll still keep my Plex server because that's been working fine for movies, but the music server really needs an overhaul...

[Kruger]

I've been combining all of my services on a single box, which is pretty much just Plex, Subsonic, the database, and at one time the weather station.  I don't do enough to really warrant separating things out to different boxes, but I might consider looking at playing with Raspberry Pi's for the fun of it.  I'm not sure how well Plex would run on one since when I travel I downrender the streaming connections...

[Blaze]

I've had both methods where everything was on one box running in VMs (router, plex, NAS, DNS, home automation, game server, dev box, and a misc playground server) as well as individual bare metal servers for all that stuff. I liked the VM method since it was easy to bring up/down servers and only had one physical piece of equipment to maintain. On the flip side (as I'm experiencing) one machine brings all those servers/services down when it goes down. The separate hardware was a pain to keep maintained, but those were also specialized built servers to sit in the rack. I'm thinking with small Pi machines I would have a standard image for the most part. Similar hardware to maintain and if one goes down, it's not taking the rest with it. I think a Pi Plex server would be OK. The transcoding isn't top notch, but if all your clients can handle the same video format (.mkv, .m4v, etc..) making sure your videos are converted to that format, then you shouldn't have to worry about transcoding at all. I use Handbrake for videos that I get that happen to be 4K and convert them down to a 1080p MKV format...

[Kruger]

I Handbrake everything to 1080 also but have thought about upgrading my tv and getting a newer one in the family room.  It's quite a few years old and only a matter of time before it finally dies.  It still has a great picture, it's a plasma that's 1080p, and I'm sure a comparable image is going to be oled 4k or something like that.  I haven't looked at TVs in a while so I'm not sure what's really out there right now.  But when that happens I'm sure I'll be bumping my Blu-ray to 4k and then also adding 4K titles to my Plex server as well.  So at that point transcoding will be a bottleneck when I'm remotely streaming, but who knows when that will happen since I don't watch too much TV in the family room anyway, most of my tv is about ten minutes when I'm heading to bed before I nod off...

[Blaze]

I'm kinda in the same boat. I picked up a new TV last year that's 4K, but so far it's only been used for the wife's Switch where she plays her Animal Crossing. I just have too many projects and building the TV stand for it is one of them. I usually hit some videos to help put me to sleep. PBS Space Time is a great one for that, then GreatScott! and the handful of electronic builders and code devs like Ben Eater...

[Kruger]

Some of my go-to Tube of You channels are The Why Files (gotta love Hecklefish), Rick Beato, and Joe's Classic Video Games...

[Blaze]

Out of your list, only Joe's Classic Video Games was one that I haven't watched before. Not too bad content he's got there...

[Kruger]

No I dunno if it's sad, or smart on my behalf.  Joe's shop is just 20 minutes from me.  But if I ever stepped foot in there, I would be going home with a game.  Probably.  I had thought about seeing if he has any "unused" cabinets that I would be able to repurpose as a MAME cabinet.  One, it would be cool to have a nostalgic real arcade cabinet, and two, I wouldn't have to build one from scratch...

[Blaze]

I would be in the same boat as you. Although, you can buy $1 games there (according to his website). I would still like to have a pinball machine - but there's so many cool ones out there I wouldn't even know which one I would be the most happiest with...

[Kruger]

If I had a game room, it would most definitely have a pinball machine.  But it would be a toss up whether that game would be some classic from the 60's or 70's with classic bumpers, lights, and an analog score.  Or the Rush pinball that Stern released a couple of years ago.  I got to play it at a hall not far from me, and while it was noisy and I couldn't really hear the songs, it was still pretty cool...