I got hella bored today while doing laundry. Like, super hella bored. So bored, in fact, that I didn’t even feel like starting up a game of Civ at the time--but I wanted to listen to the music. Like, crazy wanting to listen to the music. But I didn’t have the soundtrack to the expansions, and I wanted to listen to the soundtrack to the expansions, and maybe some of the pretty idle, nothing-is-going-on, the empire is at peace right now-music. You know, the stuff that rarely makes it into the final OST.

I had an idea then: Like the time I got around Steam to launch Kerbal Space Program during the time a beta bug, I could get into the local content to see where it was and listen to it from there.

With a few clicks, I was in the file explorer and looking at the Vanilla music, found in .ogg format. Interesting, I thought, looking at it.

Granted, I have the Vanilla OST—it came with the Bundle—but after wandering around I noticed that oh hey, there’s the pretty idle music!

…let’s poke around a little more, shall we?

After about fifteen minutes of poking around, I found what I was looking for.

I am now in the process of deciding which device to put this lovely ear candy on to listen to while I get the writing done.

“Whoa whoa whoa, you nerd! How am I supposed to do that on a Steam game?!”

Hold your horses, I’ll explain it. It’s simple. DISCLAIMER: You damn well better not otherwise manipulate the files other than a cloning. I am not responsible for any bricked installs. It also goes without saying this is personal use only (don’t be piratin’ yo). They all start the same:

1. Jump into your Steam.
2. Right-click the game in the sidebar.
3. Clck properties.
4. Click “Browse local content.
5. Find the folder with the music. DO NOT CHANGE OR MOVE ANYTHING.

After this you have a couple options.

Here’s a pair of methods:

SUPER RIDICULOUS EASY METHOD:

Sync the folder with the music with your Google music manager folder. Upload, refresh, boom, done, it’s in the cloud.

LESS EASY METHOD:

Clone the folder to the desktop, if space allows, and move it to a secure place—an SD card, a device, a sufficiently powerful phone. …depending on the device this could take a while. DO NOT MOVE THE ORIGINAL FOLDERS.

THINGS TO NOT DO:

DO NOT USE ITUNES. While it sounds like linking the original folders to the library is simpler, iTunes especially likes to tweak things’ metadata and can easily cause problems.

IN FACT, DO NOT USE ANY MEDIA MANAGERS THAT WILL CHUCK SETTINGS AT THINGS. Keep the entire process manual. It’s best you not have to need to turn around and reinstall anything, because—especially if you’ve got the kind of connection that I do—that can take hours.

Boom. =D Enjoy your new game music.

…No one who knows me at all is surprised by this. Prepare for a ramble.


( TL;DR ALERT )

Audio from Grooveshark's service. I do not own that piece of lovely aural gold.
</legal stuff>

 This is WebStory!

Sitting down to sprint. Having just recovered from a SURPRISE POWER NAP (hadn’t intended on falling asleep. It was a good thing I set an alarm) my brain’s being incredibly random. How random we talking here?

• Just before spending the last half-hour unconscious:  Ow my leg storms.
• Alarm goes off the first time:  Dizzy snooze button now.
• Second time: *didn’t wake up.  Out like a light.  Dreaming of a big temple full of vaulted ceilings, bunting-draped statues, and incredibly pretty priests.  One of them was giving me a tour of the place.  The music they’re playing in this temple is pretty.*
• Third time:  Woke up, hit snooze, fell asleep immediately afterward.  Had the exact same dream again.  This time I notice that the temple is the Grand Temple from my novel.  It doesn’t occur to me to check to see of these people are Illuminati, though.
• Fourth time:  Finally woke COMPLETELY up.  Hit “Dismiss" after listening to what the phone had set my alarm to.  Couldn’t help but smile.  Apparently having this on a loop fixed the GR ARG RAGE I had going today.  What was the alarm tone? 

This.

• Wondering if it’s too late to get stuff from the corner store.  Wind slinging HORIZONTAL RAIN and puddles deep enough to cover my non-waterproof canvas shoes suggest yes.
• Consider making soda.  Decide I’m feeling too lazy and mix the two half-liters I have left for something that tastes like a cross between a Red Bull and a Piña Colada

The moral?

If I want to make the stress of the day go die in a violent fire and disappear into sparkles, I’ll put Song of Memory on loop when I sleep.  That was a thirty-minute nap and I’m more rested than I was after a full night of sleep.

Secondary Moral:  Apparently this song makes me dream of temples.

EDIT:  For some reason, El Jay seems to hate Flash objects today.  Replaced the widget with a direct link.
EVERYTHING ELSE STILL STANDS THOUGH.  =D

A fine morning, indeed.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have soup and tea to get to.  I’ll be back soon.

In my efforts to restore my music library to its former glory (read: get everything again so that I can actually use my Last.fm page again) I’ve had to give my Zen Microphoto life support. I’m afraid that this just might be the last time I can actually do that. Regularly, now, I have to use Goblin Tech Support to get it to run—that just means you bang on it in the right place until it operates.

In light of this, I decided I’d pull everything off of it and put it onto an external hard drive.

(Actually, it’s an internal connected with a power supply connected to the machine with a USB bridge.)

To make sure I don’t lose the better half of my library though, I’m going to have to make sure I set it onto this drive. It’ll take a while—going from one USB devise to another after all—but the majority of the stuff on it is rares, and since the storage is disk based, it’s all transferable.

Call me sentimental though—I don’t want to get rid of it. This little white thing was the first big purchase I made. First high-tech device. First exposure to the awesomeness of having hours upon hours of music in the back pocket of a denim skirt.

And, I will admit, first session of random, iPod-commercial-style dancing with headphones attached.

If I can salvage the hardware, I will be quite happy. If not...well, I think what I might do, is I might put it up in one of those little clear cases with a plaque with something clever written on it: The Groovy Results of A Hard Day’s Work, or something like that.

I’m a nerd, so what?