Another Bandcamp Friday is over and I've just finished mashing my keyboard with my forehead using some unchanged WIP scripts I wrote years ago that 'nearly' 'automagically' scrapes and imports all that new music into my custom music database/library/NAS server... Whew. Well it would always be easier if the music metadata was more consistent.

Code / project rant...

That is when artists change their online name, the same track being uploaded again in an album but the lyrics are less than 98% similar (magic number I previously deemed good with the sequence matcher), or some other edge case that my code will return an error code for but I kinda assume I've put breakpoints at all of those 55ish return False lines so I can manually handle it and continue execution. All that and setting up that project again since I've done a OS re-install after last time and needing nodejs and python with the correct libraries too (a function constant being deprecated and removed and it throwing an exception for that mid 'purchase item' processing so I have to manually delete files because: code bad, not handled. At least I wrote it so the SQL doesn't commit changes unless success).

I want to write and open source a way better version of this "Bandcamp Ripper/Scraper" but I've got so many active projects going I can't bring myself to release this garbage fire code that's got so many undocumented magic numbers and gotchas. But my music library web backend and frontend has been public for a while. I started all this because I needed a better way to playback my collection than the terrible Bandcamp app (it was even worse years ago) and for it to keep working even when I lose connection to the internet (reception black spots on car trips) which actually distracted me when driving up the off-road driveway in my old very-not-off-road capable vehicle and the oil sump caught a rock -_- That was the last straw before I dove in to doing this idea I had bubbling in the back of my mind also for a long time before that.

So I called this music app of mine "Campfire", a mashup of Bandcamp and sitting around a cozy-warm campfire with friends listening to, signing along with or actually playing music if you have talented friends (not I). https://gitlab.com/GlitchyScripts/campfire-web-client

Below, 'imported' is all the purchased items from my Bandcamp collection. The reason why that number is slightly bigger than what anyone can see on my profile is because ARTISTS KEEP DELETING THEIR BRONY MUSIC AND I ALSO LOSE IT FROM MY COLLECTION FOREVER >:(

Unless I download and import it before they do that of course! ;)

Yes that's 945 hours of (nearly completely unduplicated) music (instrumentals, acapela, karaoke variants etc are included in that however).

Here are some screenshots of the web front-end running on my desktop PC. Music ratings can be synchronised with other web browsers (on smartphone) also logged into the same account from that Campfire Instance/Site/Database. Of course the whole thing is authenticated so you can't anonymously download/pirate from my site. Free shoutout to the musicians in the screenshot involved in my most recent Bandcamp Friday spree, as well as some classic Discord lol. The HTML/CSS is CUSTOM don't hate me for trying but it reached minimum-viable-product so development stalled as it works well enough for me (the only user). Also I use "Dark Reader" browser extension to dark theme my light themed website.

P.S. This was originally going to be a short post but naturally like most things in my life it incurred some scope creep.

Tech problem rant:

So Bluetooth stopped working for me on my desktop PC on the latest Debian 12 Linux (stable) kernel 6.1.0-21-amd64. Luckily via GRUB I can reboot into the last one I had installed being 6.1.0-18-amd64. It works fine on my laptop on the same kernel and mostly the same packages installed.

If I try and run sudo rmmod btusb it just freezes and won't let me CTRL+C (SIGINT) it. I've occasionally had problems with BT being broken on boot in the past so I've run that command (plus modprobe, and on btintel) to restart and fix it... I wish I didn't buy a motherboard that has the WiFi/BT card built in to it instead of just on a PCIE slot. Modularity is something i strive for. If it breaks, replace/remove part.

Hopefully it magically works on the next kernel update, but if it doesn't I'll have to look into reporting/diagnosing the issue. If someone has some silver bullet for me lmk.

Tonight during a mini local Brony meetup I saw Baklava's on the menu and I knew in this moment I absolutely had to try them. They look like and have the texture of a spring roll if the pastry was a solid roll... and it tastes like pure sugar!

Now I understand why #AStateOfSugar named their most recent album after them. I shouldn't have expected anything less xD

Next meetup I'll have to find an Éclair to complete my album experience.

https://astateofsugar.bandcamp.com/

Not sure what to caption this with:

It aint broken yet.

I'm good at fixing things, with my hands and a bit of persuasion.

I refuse to let you break on me. You will behave this instant or you'll get a flogging.

My Glitchyness magic is not contagious. No it is not. Stop it. Stop it!