After finally getting around to pushing my bike to the bike shop for it to be repaired yesterday, I picked up some enamel paint which matched my frame in order to touch up some scratches.

I then went into town because I needed to pick a few things up, and spotted some Enamel aerosol paint in Wilkinson’s which I also bought,with the intention of making touch up jobs a tad easier.

I was a bit bored this morning, and after looking at my old Zen Xtra on my bookshelf I decided I’d get around to painting it, because it would look a lot nicer in shiny metallic blue.

As you may imagine, being clumsy I now have blue fingers waiting for an IPA wash to remove the stains!

It’s currently drying in the kitchen, waiting for me to apply a few more coats, I’ll  post the results so everyone can see how I turned it into something prettier, no before pictures because it’s a normal Zen Xtra, of which I can just grab pictures off the net.

I also asked the guy in the bike shop, if I supply him with the parts he’ll build me some wheels, so I should be going fixed as soon as I have some spare cash, damn expensive hubs.

Some of you might be interested how I solve the issue of listening to music on my Laptop, I could transfer files over, but that takes a lot of time and I’d have to create a new music collection. I solved the issue in a slightly different way by using mt-daapd, which is now (and has been for a while) known as Firefly.

What Firefly does is stream music and playlists to compatible audio players using the proprietary DAAP protocol (Digital Audio Access Protocol) similar to Apple’s iTunes.

The cool thing about it is the fact that unlike other streams used by people I know, shoutcast and Tunez for example, I can directly influence what I want to listen to my only adding certain tracks to my playlist, I can play these songs as often as I like, add things on the fly and all the other functions I’m used to when listening to music on my Desktop (including keyword searches of the collection).

I really like the ability to stream my music over my LAN or the internet, and if I had one of these Soundbridge Radio Wi-Fi Media Player – Wireless Home Audio System I could easily hook my mp3 collection up to a HiFi system, and even listen to Pandora.

If anyone’s interested I can write a more in depth overview of Firefly, such as what formats it supports and a How-to guide on setting it up.