What I'm up to these days...
My name is David Jennings, but many people call me DJ.
I used to work at Macromedia as one of the Shockwave / Director developers (click here for a summary of my career with Shockwave and Director). You might be surprised to find out that I recently left the mother ship to try my luck at a startup. I'm now working at NetLedger.com doing some java programming to build new features for our site. If you haven't heard of NetLedger, click the link and check out what we're doing -- it's pretty interesting. I'm learning Java, Oracle and SQL, Javascript, Apache and a host of other 'cutting edge' web skills.
Any of you who know me know that I'm very much into music and I have been amassing a large MP3 collection. I believe that the traditional huge case full of CDs on the wall with all those skinny hard-to-read jewel case edges makes most peoples' music collections largely inaccessible. Most of us only play the dozen or so CD's on our "current" list with the rest basically in storage not being played. Have you ever had a friend come over and ask to play some of your old music? It's kind of refreshing sometimes to have someone else choose from our music for us -- we get to be such creatures of habit.
The beauty of today's software MP3 players is the ability to really access your music collection. You can sort and organize your music, search for songs, play music by genere, and even have the computer choose music for you. I'm using Real JukeBox 2.0 on Windows 2000 and playing the audio through a MidiMan Delta-66 digital sound card which has excellent fidelity. A sound distribution system lets me play music in every room of the house.
I know, I know, I should have used Linux because it's much more cool. And besides, Microsoft sucks, etc. I'm open to ideas such as using Linux and Gronk! as my music playback platform... I'm learning Linux, and it takes time. For now, I have something that works perfectly and is reliable. Moreover, it's so simple to use even my mom can select music.
My latest project is a web-based music catalog that lets me browse my music collection. I wrote it in Java, and it's my first non-work related Java project. Basically the way it works is I use Real JukeBox to export all my tracks to an XML file. My program then parses that file and generates an entire website for my music catalog. Want to try it? Want to contribute? Click here for the source.
There's no real reason for me to publish my music collection (sorry, you can't play or download music from me) other than because I can. What's the use of it? One use is if somebody recommends a CD to me, I can see if I already have it. Or, perhaps you'll look through my collection and recommend some music to me that you think I might like. Or, maybe you'll want to download the Java classes and modify them to do something way more cool than my first attempt.
Click to browse my Music Collection (sorry - no downloads)
Feel free to e-mail me at djsf@speakeasy.net