4AD Tape Chains Vol III: RareTwo

(For info on what’s this is about, see this blog post.)

So this is the third tape meant for the tape chains, and the second that collects versions of tracks from various compilations:

Mostly newer (at the time) stuff, but it also collects the 4AD-related tracks from two Pleasantly Surprised cassettes:

And those are the real rarities on this tape. Some cool stuff here.

I don’t know if this tape chain actually got started — after the previous one ran aground so quickly, I think it’s probable that people were just getting too disillusioned with the entire thing that it got abandoned. In which case — this blog post is the first time anybody can hear this tape.

Other than me, that is. So: Enjoy.

OK, OK, I’ll just use tmdb

After last night’s post, I realised I was probably just getting too invested in somehow using imdb for the “who’s that actor, anyway?” command for my Emacs-based video player.

Not only is it an extremely fragile setup that’s gonna stop working, but it’s also very slow — it takes half a minute to return the actor profile images.

So I just implemented a tmdb API shim and then I ask it for the actor profile photo instead. tmdb doesn’t have as large a data base, but… The API is free (for non-commercial use) and is extremely easy to use.

Things are now faster:

The main wait is from the response from the LLM — I’m using gemini-3.8-flash. I’ve tried gemini-3.1-flash-lite, and it’s much faster… but gives the wrong result most of the time. No, that’s not Roy Scheider, Gemini!

So now the setup is less Rube Goldberguesque. Sort of:

  1. I hit a key on my li’l wireless keyboard.
  2. It’s picked up by a Python script that listens for evdev events.
  3. It uses emacsclient to notify the Emacs running on the TV machine.
  4. Emacs there tells mpv to do a screenshot.
  5. Emacs waits until the screenshot arrives on disc.
  6. Emacs sends it to Gemini and says “who dis? JSON please”.
  7. Gemini responds and Emacs then creates an SVG overlay with the actor name.
  8. rsvg-convert converts to PNG and then imagemagick convert to BGRA.
  9. Emacs asks mpv to display it.
  10. Emacs asks tmdb for the actor profile URL and fetches the image.
  11. If it gets a response, it then recreates the svg with the image embedded.
  12. (repeat 8-9).

Couldn’t be simpler.