Not really, just the first one we were able to catch on camera.

I have  VM running Emby that I set up a while ago on an low spec machine that had been the guest computer before everyone got Chromebooks and tablets. But it only had 2GB of RAM and I gave 1GB to the VM. So I added some new RAM to bring the system up to 8GB and wanted to start off by giving the VM 4GB to see if that improved performance.

I came across this in Target during Christmas time. Now, I am not a fan of the concept of the Elf on the Shelf and I’ve heard quite a few anecdotes of kids becoming freaked out - like the girl who called 911 because it fell and she didn’t want to touch it because kids are told that if they touch it they won’t get any presents. But between companies looking for a cash grab and those Jewish families who want to celebrate not-Christmas (like the ones where I went to high school that had Hanukkah Bushes (Christmas Trees with blue lights) and Hanukkah outside decorations), I guess this was inevitable.

Recently I’ve been having a problem where the Emby server kept dying. I haven’t been able to figure out what is causing it. So while I’ve been trying to figure it out with the Emby folks, I fixed up the systemd script for Emby so that it would restart itself whenever it died. It was incredibly simple to do this. Here’s the original script:

[Unit]
 Description=Emby Media Server
 After=network.target

[Service]
 EnvironmentFile=/etc/emby-server.conf
 ExecStart=/usr/lib/emby-server/emby-server.sh start
 Restart=on-abort
 TimeoutSec=20
 ExecStopPost=/usr/lib/emby-server/emby-server.sh clear

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

And here’s how I fixed it:

If you want a full-size version for printing out, email me.

Upgraded the final computer - the server host that has the VM with our Kodi stuff. It was the least complicated upgrade - didn’t have to remove anything - it just worked. And that was a great change, for once. (Not that the others were too much of a pain).

Lots of artists made their spot because I attended a concert or discovered them this year and got very enthusiastic about listening to this new artist. There are also lots of Spotify scrobbles, but not as many as there would be if work’s firewall didn’t keep scrobbles from being counted.

Artists

1. Anberlin (427 listens)
2. Fall Out boy (239 listens)
3. Jim Guthrie (221 listens)
4. I Fight Dragons (214 listens)
5. Paul and Storm (190 listens) - A nerdy folksy group that I really like. Their irreverence is my kind of fun.
6. The Beatles (136 listens)
7. Anamanaguchi (130 listens)
8. Lionize (130 listens)
9. Five Iron Frenzy (128 listens)
10. Louis Jordan (113 listens)
11. The Protomen (104 listens)
12. Beebs and Her Money Makers (104 listens)
13. Willy Chirino (93 listens)
14. Katy Perry (93 listens)
15. Ignacio Cervantes (92 listens)

Songs

Interestingly, only two new songs made the list this year - Talking Body and Know Yourself. Because I don’t listen to the radio, I discovered these via Spotify. The rest are all older songs that I happened to listen to a lot. And Chandelier came from Danielle getting the album and asking me to play it in the car.