Our boss and King: Calvin The Great!

Thanks for letting me know. I’m not from an English speaking country and the only very old songs i know are Oh my Darling Clementine and Lovesick Blues. This one will fit right in. To Calvin!

What tune do I sing it to?

Oh man!

I’ve written a python script that fetches a random image from an immich album using its API, every 30 seconds and sets it as my media pc (Ubuntu) wallpaper. Serves as a frame when no windows are open. Recently updated the code to fetch images only when the desktop has mouse focus, to save unnecessary HDD reads when I’m watching something.

And when all wars are done, a butterfly will still be beautiful -Ruskin Bond

Pen is mightier than sword, France is Bacon.

Pen is mightier than sword. France is bacon.

The Iranian movie Bachcha-e-Aasmaan (English name: Children of Heaven).

Italian movie Cinema Paradiso. This movie is the embodiment of my love for cinema.

Both of them feel so raw and genuine it makes me come back to them time and again.

Can’t believe no one has said the dramatized version of LOTR broadcast by BBC in 1981! 12 hours plus of pure magic. Fun fact: Ian Holm gave the voice for Frodo in the radio version, the same guy who plays Bilbo in the movie trilogy.

Looks like it is on internet archive already: https://archive.org/details/lord-of-the-rings-10_202401 though I first downloaded it on high seas many years ago.

Yes, very nearly the easiest fermented drink I’ve made. There is a vegetable and fruits shop near that slices up pineapples when you buy. He was very happy to give away the rinds and peels in a bag. I just gave it a wash and put it in a large glass jar (around 3 litres) of water with a stick of cinnamon and half a kilo of jaggery. It was done in 4 days and was a hit with my friends at the office. Now three of them are fermenting some of their own. But the weather is mild where I am. I’m not sure it’ll be as easy to ferment in summers without temperature control.

I’m curious about your Bollywood folder. How big is it? I want to build a structured collection of old songs, and new ones too in as high quality as possible. I have nicotine+ installed but so far I couldn’t find anyone with an authoritative collection.

That actually gives me an idea. I have an LED light that can be mounted on the head with a strap. I can diffuse its light with a paper, as suggested by you. Thanks!

I’m going to use this post to ask for a fix. I have an old generation kindle with no frontlight. What would be the easiest way to get a decent amount of diffused light on it? The device even has exposed power leads at the back for specialized covers for such things but frontlight covers aren’t available for sale in my country now.

I’m not sure if it is unique to the subcontinent, but Hindi songs need to be tagged differently since we like to search the songs by their singers, music directors, lyric writers in addition to albums they belong to. I explored musicbrainz with this in mind but I found it lacking to the best of my understanding. I’ll have a look at it and the other databases once again. Maybe it is time to be the change I’m looking for. Thanks for your suggestions nonetheless.

The aspect ratio crime was something I wanted to write in my comment too but it was getting too long already. For the amount of money these music companies earn the least they could do is to create/fund a proper database and digitize from master recordings wherever available before it is too late. It was so nice to see the restored versions of Satyajit Ray classics like Charulata but I am afraid most Hindi films will never get that kind of love ever.

I will explore the Russian site that you mentioned and see if I can find something useful there. I’ll also look again at musicbrainz, as suggested in the other comment, to see if it can serve the purpose I want to use it for. Meanwhile, will it be okay if I DM you to stay in touch regarding this common pursuit?

I’m with you in loving hindi songs from 50s and 60s and want to build a collection of best possible versions available. The saddest thing is that even the companies owning the rights (Saregama et al) don’t care at all. They don’t even seem to have a definitive catalog of movies/songs/artists.

I tried looking up for such songs through nicotine but it is a futile pursuit. The few hindi songs available there are a jumble of artists that seems impossible to make use of.

A while ago, i poked around in the saregama endpoints that appear in their website through developer options and was able to scrape metadata for around 200k hindi songs. I need to clean it up and maybe try to download them using the JioSaavn APIs that are floating around.

I have come to respect YouTube users like TommyDan who are digitization and cleaning best possible versions of old movies that are out of copyright (he’s reached into 60s now). There are people who are digitizating vinyl records and I wish they would also upload them in places other than YouTube.

More than anything, i want to compile a database of the songs/movies/artists but don’t really know where to begin so that others could also collaborate.

/RANT

Wait till they find out that your are capable of GOSUB - RETURN too.

I look forward to it everyday too. I came looking for it since I felt something was missing from my daily routine.

According to Wikipedia it was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995.

Bill Watterson took two sabbaticals from the daily requirements of producing the strip. The first took place from May 5, 1991, to February 1, 1992, and the second from April 3 through December 31, 1994. These sabbaticals were included in the new contract Watterson managed to negotiate with Universal Features in 1990. The sabbaticals were proposed by the syndicate themselves, who, fearing Watterson’s complete burnout, endeavored to get another five years of work from their star artist.