blog.erik.rainey.name

I was thinking to myself that it's amazing that rental music services still exist on the internet, because I thought that it was basically a losing proposition. I decided to test my hypothesis though...

Auf Ruby Bitte!
>> AvgLifeSpan = {"male" => 74, "female" => 78}
=> {"female"=>78, "male"=>74}
>> serviceFee=5
=> 5
>> CurrentAge=28
=> 28
>> YearsRemaining = AvgLifeSpan["male"] - CurrentAge
=> 46
>> MonthsRemaining = YearsRemaining * 12
=> 552
>> EstimatedServiceCost = MonthsRemaining * serviceFee
=> 2760
>> CurrentSongCount=2872
=> 2872
>> CostPerSong=0.99
=> 0.99
>> TotalCurrentInvestment=CurrentSongCount * CostPerSong
=> 2843.28

So given a flat service fee for life (impossible given inflation), I'm just about to hit the tipping point. But then I remembered...
>> AbilityToPlayMyMusicAnywhereOrAnyhow="Priceless"
=> "Priceless"


Forwarding your iTunes library to your work computer is not as hard as one might think. All you need to do is follow these steps.

1.) Enable Library Sharing on home machine's iTunes.

2.) You have to be familiar with ssh tunneling (try here for a tutorial) or if you don't use a tunnel, add the port forwarders to your firewall. For ssh tunnels, you want something like this:

$ ssh -g -L 3689:192.168.0.86:3689 my.home.net

Where "192.168.0.86" is the local net IP of the home machine and "my.home.net" is the name of your computer on the internet. Of course, you'll have to be forwarding the ssh port to your home machine too.

3.) Get RendezvousProxy, which mimcs some of the UDP traffic that won't come through some firewalls. Add an entry for the tunneling machine if you are using that. Be sure to use the iTunes protocol (_daap._tcp.local.).

4.) iTunes should automatically detect your machine. You might want to add a password to your library so other people at work don't cruise your stuff.