Onwards and upwards. So far I don't have too much to complain about on this upgrade. I mean, normally I would still be trying to fix graphics drivers stuff from the console at this point and nowhere near posting a meandering, semi-coherent word thing to this sorely neglected word thing database. But here I am.

Ubuntu 11.04, aka Natty Narwhal, was released on April 28th and so naturally I chose to break my perfectly functioning laptop to see what was new. That "upgrade" button really needs to read something like, "download and install new software then spend a week scouring the internet for information and trying to fix all the shit that just broke." But that's probably a little too verbose for the UX people.

Recently I encountered a situation where I wanted to move some content to a new WordPress installation (not this one) from a piece of forum software that hadn't been attended to or upgraded in, you know, half a decade or so. Normally I would hit Google to try and find a solution for a problem like this, but I figured my particular circumstances were sufficiently esoteric that I could likely sort it out more quickly on my own. And it became a convenient opportunity to test and flex some basic XSLT muscle memory.

I listen to music pretty much constantly so I'm willing to expend significant time and effort optimizing my listening situation. That's why…this. Specifically, setting up a UPnP media server for streaming music from foobar2000 to a wi-fi enabled Creative Zen X-Fi, or to 2Player on Android, or presumably to any half-decent UPnP media client (iPhone, Xbox, PS3, another computer, etc.)

I have my music collection on my laptop, but I want to listen through my amplifier and speakers way over there—well, too far to reasonably connect physically via cable. I also have an mp3 player that contains the pretty much all of my music collection that I can hook up through my stereo. But I don't want to have to walk all the way over there every time I want to play something different. That's suboptimal. There Has To Be A Better Way!!