I've just [re] read Tony's excellent FAQ entry on Soup mode in the Emplode software.

Now Tony says that Soup was a term used by the Empeg software guys to describe the dynamically built views of your playlists using the ID3 tag info.
[And if anyone would know, Tony would I guess].

So, was "soup" ever a acronym for something [you know a "TLA" or "Three Letter Acronym"] ? If so, what was the original meaning of Soup?

And, can we come up with something to make SOUP a valid acronym that accurately describes what Soup mode actually is?

I have a suggestion:

SOUP = "Simple Overview for Unorganised People" (or .. Unorganised Playlists)

But better ones are welcomed.

Standardized Organizational Unit Protocol.

-Zeke

So, was "soup" ever a acronym for something

I always figured it was meant to be descriptive of what it actually was. Like alphabet soup or vegetable soup. A mishmash of everything in the same pot. Rather clever, really.

Tony's excellent FAQ

Thanks, by the way.

And let me just say that "soup" was not supposed to be something you have to think about. When the soups actually get implemented on the player, it will become the main mode of operation and playlists will be secondary.

For those who own a Rio Central or a Rio Receiver, you know what I mean. The thing just has a "Play Music" menu underneath which is artist, album, all tracks, etc. And one of the entries under that menu happens to be "playlists".

See what I mean?

Shit OUtta Playlists

In reply to:

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And let me just say that "soup" was not supposed to be something you have to think about. When the soups actually get implemented on the player, it will become the main mode of operation and playlists will be secondary.

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And lets us pray, oh brothers & sisters, that this day shall come to pass sooner than later.
And when this day does finally come to pass
Let us then offer up all our thanks and gratefulness up to those
Who toiled in the darkness, amid half-empty pizza boxes and slowly putrifying source code,
To bring forth this wondrous new mode of operation and usefulness.
Which will henceforth become the very heart of the next [non]-beta release of the once glorious, but now EOL'ed player.
And further more, let us pray that this mode become known by its proper name and not merely as "soup mode".

;-)

In reply to:

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For those who own a Rio Central or a Rio Receiver, you know what I mean. The thing just has a "Play Music" menu underneath which is artist, album, all tracks, etc. And one of the entries under that menu happens to be "playlists".

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I know what you mean, but both the Rio Central and the Receiver have a grunty "always on" OS [with powered up disk drives] behind it to provide this wonderous mode of operation.
And in any case, Emplode is the software I find Soup mode most useful to use in, to quickly sort out those rogue ID3 tags.

Its a real pity, I can't use emplode to sort out the ID3 tags on my MP3 files on my PC BEFORE I upload them to player, rather than AS I upload them to the player!

So, was "soup" ever a acronym for something?

No. I'm not sure who used the word first for Empegs, but whoever it was nicked the word from the Apple Newton, which used it to mean the internal free-form database: something given structure only by the various indexes into it. The Sonicblue Tigard boyz who did the Rio portables called the same feature Rio LogiTrack (TM). I think we should call ours Rio TheObviousWayOfDoingIt (TM).

Peter

I think it was either you or me, Peter, as I'm not sure anyone else in the office knew about the Newton "filesystem" being called a soup...

Hugo

Funny, I thought it was Mike. And that it was a coincidence picking the same name as the Newton.

an apple newton sounds tasty.

Which will henceforth become the very heart of the next [non]-beta release of the once glorious, but now EOL'ed player.


Hey! I still glory in my empeg...

Repeat after me:
The empeg is glorious.
The empeg cannot be rivalled.
The empeg is glorious.
The empeg cannot be rivalled.
...ad infinitum.

If that doesn't work - may I suggest a remedial course of in-car CD usage.

In reply to:

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The Sonicblue Tigard boyz who did the Rio portables called the same feature Rio LogiTrack (TM).

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Wasn't LogiTrack a IBM invention to do with putting a specially encoded "servo track" on the top or bottom surface of every disk drive to ensure the heads moved accurately (courtesy of the servo track) to the correct cylinder everytime?

In any case, SOUP mode is WAY better than LogiTrack - but I guess trying to Trademark SOUP(TM) after Apple had used it in the Newton, would be, well, like, trying to sell a bunch of Apple Newtons to those who couldn't write.

I don't think TOWODI [The Obvious Way of Doing It] has quite the same "ring" as SOUP either.

Can't quite see this marketing message taking off:

"the new Rio Saturn(TM) from SonicBlue, allows you to forget tiresome playlists, as it now comes with the new TOWODI feature that lets you organise your music anyway you like simply by using the existing song data in a new way..."

"Soup" could be made to stand for "SOUP On User's Player", where SOUP stands for "Soup Of Unordered Playlists".

As we often consider soup to be the raw ingredients of playlists, perhaps we should consider it as a "Soup Of Uncooked Playlists"?

Personally, I prefer real playlists, and think that abandoning them in favour of soups is a symptom of underdeveloped personality.

Personally, I prefer real playlists, and think that abandoning them in favour of soups is a symptom of underdeveloped personality.

We wouldn't abandon them, they would still be there for those who liked them. It would just make it simpler for people who want to throw music on the player without creating playlists. There have been a few newbies on this BBS who have had that very problem: They put the music on the player but don't know how to play it because it's not in a playlist.

It would make my music easier to organize, because I primarily do artist/album trees with a few specialized playlists.

Indeed I believe the vast majority of people spend a lot of time manually creating soup style playlists. I find that custom playlists are great for special situations, but 99% of the time I search for music by Artist.

Rob

the new Rio Saturn(TM) from SonicBlue

Sh*t! Who leaked that?

Peter

lol

the new Rio Saturn(TM) from SonicBlue
Sh*t! Who leaked that?

I still love the time I saw the planet-name of an internal project on the bug list, and asked Rob about it in chat. When he asked me how the heck I knew about that one, I told him I didn't, I just picked a random planet name and he fell for it.

Indeed I believe the vast majority of people spend a lot of time manually creating soup style playlists.

Saves On Unnecessary Playlist-making?

I find that custom playlists are great for special situations, but 99% of the time I search for music by Artist.

On mine, I mostly listen to the whole lot on random, but searching for Artist and then Album is probably the second biggest user-story.

Peter

the planet-name of an internal project

The last time I was in the US, we went to a very surreal electronics shop in a building that looked like Disney's idea of an Aztec temple. They had a completely out-of-control washing machine in there called the Saturn: it actually had a little screen on in on which you could choose wash cycles, temperatures and so on from little menus. Some passing geek had programmed the names of the three user-defined wash modes to be "All your", "base are", and "belong to us". But the funniest thing of all is that it used exactly the same, instantly recognisable, purple-and-yellow screen as the Rio Central.

In fact we've moved away from planets as project names. One of the codenames on our last project, the Rio S10 (and I'm assuming I'm allowed to mention this, now it's actually shipped) was Kimchee. I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up and it turns out to be a Korean pickle made by burying vegetables in the garden all winter and coming back when they really start to stink. This didn't strike me as portending very well for the project, but fortunately it all worked out reasonably well.

Peter

But the funniest thing of all is that it used exactly the same, instantly recognisable, purple-and-yellow screen as the Rio Central.

Rio Central -- Hah! I have it on good authority that the Spin Cycle on the Rio Central doesn't work worth a darn, and that no matter how much detergent you add, it still doesn't get your clothes very clean.

tanstaafl.

I've actually eaten Kimchee, and its not bad.

Tthe idea of eating half-rotten vegetables may sound repulsive to you.
A lot of Asians think the same way about eating rotten milk [we call it Cheese].

I also know that most grass eating animals prefer that stinking stuff made of grass piled in a heap for 6-9 months+ (called Silage, or whatever its called) over dry hay anyday.

So, I guess its horses for courses


So, what were the code names for the S30S, S35S and S50 then?
yes I'm sure you can mention all these - they are released (or at least announced as released) products now.

I thought that that was odd. I can buy jarred/bottled kimchee in probably about half the mainstream grocery stores around here, and this is certainly not an area rife with Asian immigrants (although there are probably more Koreans here than any other Asian nationality).

Heh. Bug number 5 in our internal database is as follows:

Summary: Spin Cycle doesn't work
Opened: 2001-02-19 14:11
Description: When attempting a silk wash, the spin cycle doesn't kick in. Have attempted to reproduce the problem with a normal wool wash, but the spin cycle works in this case.

Obviously, this was a test bug from back when we were testing the database. We don't actually have any announced products with spin cycles.

I've actually eaten Kimchee, and its not bad.

In fairness, I'm sure I'd quite like it too. It's just that Korean food isn't really on my culinary radar: unlike Chinese or Thai or even Japanese. Are there any Korean restaurants in Cambridge?

The description came from the Oxford Companion to Food (which spells it "Kimch'i"), except I slightly sensationalised it, and OCF is sometimes rather sensationalist itself about exotic foodstuffs.

Peter

** Woosh! **

(That's the sound of the joke going past you, Tony. Perhaps I should have used capital letters in the last sentence, too. And another smiley. Sorry!)

Symptom Of Underdeveloped Personality.

Haha, good one.

Sorry, I get too focused some days.

And "Symptom Of Underdeveloped Personality": Good one, Deezy.

hey man, it's not deezy. That makes no sense at all. It was Yz33d which was just randomly typed letters and numbers for no rhyme or reason. Then it was reversed to d33zY. It looks like hacker cryptology but it's not.

It was Yz33d which was just randomly typed letters and numbers for no rhyme or reason.


Sounds like a SOUP to me