So, here is a howto in getting linux to recognize and manage your iPod.
Note: Tested for iPod nano 3rd and 4rth generation, should work for with older models, but for most recent (iPod touch and so on) dunno.

1. Connect your iPod to your pc.

2. Your distribution may recognize it as an iPod (or just a mere media player) or as a flash stick. If it isn’t recognized even as a flash stick, you have a general usb recognition problem. If it is recognized as a flash stick proceed to the “2{letter}” steps (working in all distros). Otherwise, go to step 4.

2a. Probably, your mp3 player is mounted somewhere in /media perhaps under the name you have given to it, let’s say /media/iPodMountPoint. Open a terminal and give as root:

# lsusb -v | grep -i Serial

You will get a list of several serials, pay attention to the one that has no hyphens or colons; yeah the one that is like that: 00A1234567891231.

2b. Then, give (as regular user):

$ cat /media/iPodMountPoint/iPod_Control/Device/SysInfo

2c. If (among others) you get anything like
FirewireGuid: 0xffffffffffffffff
where ffffffffffffffff is the serial you got in the previous step, you are ok.
If the file is empty, or simply doesn’t have the “FirewireGuid” line, edit the file and add the above line (replacing ffffffffffffffff with the serial you found in step 2a).

3. Unmount and remount iPod.

4. You’re ready (as regards the part of the recognition).

5. There are many applications out there preaching that they let you manage your iPod, as Apple hasn’t (and most likely will never) given out a Linux iTunes version). Decision lies in your hands, FOSS wha da fuck. My choice is gtkpod. If our choices correspond, continue reading, otherwise bye bye. If you are still with me, install gtkpod with your distro’s package manager (or compile it from source).

6. Open gtkpod.

7. If there isn’t any record in the left panel with your iPod’s name, go to Edit->Repository/iPod Options.

8. Click Add new repository/iPod…

9. Provide your iPod’s mountpoint (/media/iPodMountPoint) and model.

10. Click add and from now on gtkpod will recognize, mount, and let you manage your iPod!

I will come back when I will give a (serious) try to iPodLinux.

The photo “iPod Nano Thing (Explored)” is Steve Wampler’s under CC-by-nc.

For some months now, maybe a year, I keep saying that someday I will sit down and write a CD/DVD(/MP3 mayb) organizing program. The number of my music CDs has turned big enough and I would like to know every time where are my CDs (lend to somebody or anything) what tracks they have (“do you have This track?”) and have some data for statistic reasons, for example which period of my life I used to buy many CDs, how have the prices gone, which CD shop is the most expensive and so on.

Anyway, as regards this project, I have done nothing. Except PMP today! I thought that checking a new album in the (not ready yet ) database with the names of the tracks and all the other info would be time-consuming (and boring, thus inapplicable), so I decided to make a parser to retrieve as much data as possible from gracenote.com, which appears to be the most accurate and complete music database in the internet. I spent some hour and here is Php Music Parser.

It works like this: you ask for an album, it searches over the gracenote.com database, it brings you back all the results, you specify which album you want in particular and it outputs its info. Of course, since it will be passed into my (wannabe) project, it has no interface, only the class, that it is.
I upload the code here (right-click, save as, and then rename to take out the .pdf, stupid blog won’t let me upload .txt/.php). It is under CC by-nc-sa

The photo “websitegraph for www.rsv-arloff-kirspenich.de” is fester_franz’s under CC-by.

p.s.: the title, soft chromatic genus has to do with byzantine music, it is one of the three geni used in it. Ok, it has something in common with soft(ware)