I use MediaMonkey to play my music. I love it. It roxxorz. I give it 3 sneezes.
We (the wife and I) are currently listening through the Lord of the Rings trilogy in audiobook format. Due to the length of the chapters, the cds are broken up into 3-minute tracks. This means I have a LOT of LOTR mp3s in my music library. So [begin geekery] I wrote a custom playlist in MediaMonkey which grabs all of my LOTR tracks that have a play count of 0, and sorts them so that the beginning of the playlist will always be the first track we haven't listened to. It's like an automatic bookmark.
Then, I decided to update the tags and filenames of my LOTR tracks. At which point, MediaMonkey lost its database info for all of the LOTR tracks (presumably because it's associated by filename), setting the playcounts for all of the tracks back to 0. Which meant that unless I wanted to let MM play through all of the tracks we had already listened to (something like 6 hours of them) those tracks would always be sitting at the top of my playlist. Grrr!
So I did some lurnin' on the interwebs, and discovered that MM's database is stored in SQLite format. I downloaded SQLiteMan, and used it to hack my database, setting the playcount for the older tracks to 1, and solving my own problem. [/geekery]
Yay! Now I have geekhigh!
Showing posts with label wizard wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wizard wednesday. Show all posts
2010-01-06
2008-04-30
A brief Wizard Wednesday, and a preview
Over the past couple of years, I have been on a constant search for a music player. In my experience of music players since 1998, I have sampled the gamut, everything from the Linux-only Amarok, past Apple's inescaple iTunes, and into the obscure open source programs such as MusikCube.
Without a doubt, my favorite music player has been the previously mentioned Amarok, but the Linux-onliness of it interferes with the fact that I am thus far required to run Windows on my work PC.
iTunes has its upsides, but there are just a few too many maladjusted features which stem from the fact that it is the proprietary spawn of sata- err... where was I? Oh, right. Here are the criteria I have come up with for a media player to suit my needs:
- Must support the full gamut of audio codecs: Mp3 (duh), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC (I haven't used it yet, but I may want to some day) &c.
- Must allow for the maintenance and convenience of a media library. I remember the day when the standard mp3 collection was small enough that you just had a music folder you dumped everything in to, and when you wanted to listen to something you would drag and drop from Explorer into the playlist window. No more!
- A slew of features is nice, but more importantly, I want to be able to remove features I don't want to use. In otherwords, it should be basically an mp3 player, with a bunch of plug-in support for everything else.
- Customizable layout - I want to be able to arrange things so that the player window/pane goes here, the playlist pane goes here, the equlizer sits here, the media library is there, etc.
- It must be free. Now, there is free as in beer, and there is free as in Braveheart. In this case, I care more about the beerish 'freeness' than about Braveheartian 'freedom'. In other words, it needs to not cost anything to me, and that's more important than it being open source.
- It needs to run on Windows. If I had the liberty to run Linux, no doubt I would be running Amarok, since it truly is the best media player I have sampled.
After having sampled - as I said - a whole slew of players, I have settled once again on Winamp. Ah, Winamp! You won my love back in the 90s, lost it toward the early 'aughts', and I have once again returned to you!
Winamp combines the best of all of the above. It comes with more features than you can (or would want to) shake a stick at, but it also comes with the ability to uninstall pretty much everything that is attached to it. I recently downloaded and installed the latest version (5.something.something) and was dismayed with all the clutter in the media library. But I opened the preferences, and went to the plugins section, and low and behold, there they all were, and within 5 minutes I had it stripped back down to a nice, tight, slim little player.
The layout customization of Winamp is wonderful. Every section has its own window, which can be completely and independently moved around. If you want to, you can lock the windows together to create one big glom of media stuff, or you can detach them and organize them all seperately.
The default set of plugins supports all the codecs I care about (primarily mp3 and ogg) with additional plugins available for anything you might be missing.
And, Winamp basic (which is anything BUT) is free as in Beer! Yes, if you really want to, you can upgrade to Winamp Pro, but I'm at a loss for what features it might incorporate that aren't available either by default or as plugins.
It even incorporates global hotkeys, which allow me to start, stop, fast forward, rewind, and do just about anything else I want to from any application or window in Windows.
So congratulations, Winamp. I hereby award you a 3 Sneeze rating in the category of media players! You can pickup your plaque at the back of the auditorium.
COMING SOON:
I've been having ideas for a series of posts about the Fruits of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22) rattling around in my head for the past week or so. Hopefully, if I put something here about how I'm going to post them, it'll actually get done ("He intoned the magic words 'Ala Kazaam!' and waved his arms in a big circle, and the spell was complete").
Without a doubt, my favorite music player has been the previously mentioned Amarok, but the Linux-onliness of it interferes with the fact that I am thus far required to run Windows on my work PC.
iTunes has its upsides, but there are just a few too many maladjusted features which stem from the fact that it is the proprietary spawn of sata- err... where was I? Oh, right. Here are the criteria I have come up with for a media player to suit my needs:
- Must support the full gamut of audio codecs: Mp3 (duh), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC (I haven't used it yet, but I may want to some day) &c.
- Must allow for the maintenance and convenience of a media library. I remember the day when the standard mp3 collection was small enough that you just had a music folder you dumped everything in to, and when you wanted to listen to something you would drag and drop from Explorer into the playlist window. No more!
- A slew of features is nice, but more importantly, I want to be able to remove features I don't want to use. In otherwords, it should be basically an mp3 player, with a bunch of plug-in support for everything else.
- Customizable layout - I want to be able to arrange things so that the player window/pane goes here, the playlist pane goes here, the equlizer sits here, the media library is there, etc.
- It must be free. Now, there is free as in beer, and there is free as in Braveheart. In this case, I care more about the beerish 'freeness' than about Braveheartian 'freedom'. In other words, it needs to not cost anything to me, and that's more important than it being open source.
- It needs to run on Windows. If I had the liberty to run Linux, no doubt I would be running Amarok, since it truly is the best media player I have sampled.
After having sampled - as I said - a whole slew of players, I have settled once again on Winamp. Ah, Winamp! You won my love back in the 90s, lost it toward the early 'aughts', and I have once again returned to you!
Winamp combines the best of all of the above. It comes with more features than you can (or would want to) shake a stick at, but it also comes with the ability to uninstall pretty much everything that is attached to it. I recently downloaded and installed the latest version (5.something.something) and was dismayed with all the clutter in the media library. But I opened the preferences, and went to the plugins section, and low and behold, there they all were, and within 5 minutes I had it stripped back down to a nice, tight, slim little player.
The layout customization of Winamp is wonderful. Every section has its own window, which can be completely and independently moved around. If you want to, you can lock the windows together to create one big glom of media stuff, or you can detach them and organize them all seperately.
The default set of plugins supports all the codecs I care about (primarily mp3 and ogg) with additional plugins available for anything you might be missing.
And, Winamp basic (which is anything BUT) is free as in Beer! Yes, if you really want to, you can upgrade to Winamp Pro, but I'm at a loss for what features it might incorporate that aren't available either by default or as plugins.
It even incorporates global hotkeys, which allow me to start, stop, fast forward, rewind, and do just about anything else I want to from any application or window in Windows.
So congratulations, Winamp. I hereby award you a 3 Sneeze rating in the category of media players! You can pickup your plaque at the back of the auditorium.
COMING SOON:
I've been having ideas for a series of posts about the Fruits of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22) rattling around in my head for the past week or so. Hopefully, if I put something here about how I'm going to post them, it'll actually get done ("He intoned the magic words 'Ala Kazaam!' and waved his arms in a big circle, and the spell was complete").
2008-02-27
What's Your Vector, Victor?
Yesterday I rediscovered the joy of Vector Graphics. I downloaded and installed Inkscape, which I have played with briefly in the past, but never gotten quite into it. But yesterday I was inspired and had some free time at lunch, and so I drew up a few cartoon characters, just for fun:
The inspiration for them came during our weekly staff meeting yesterday morning. I was doodling, as I usually do, and came up with them. Hopefully I'll add a few more to the entourage, just for fun.
The inspiration for them came during our weekly staff meeting yesterday morning. I was doodling, as I usually do, and came up with them. Hopefully I'll add a few more to the entourage, just for fun.
2007-11-21
Wizard Wednesday: OSS Pt. 1
This is the first part of a series of my thoughts about open source software (OSS). The following information is my impressions and understandings of open source software, and is not necessarily reflective of the beliefs and intentions of the open source movement and the GPL (although I do my best).
So what is 'open source' anyway?
There are two main competing views of software design and distribution today, about what it takes to design, produce and distribute a good piece of software.
The first one has been - and continues to be - the most common. It states that a good piece of software requires a large budget, usually supplied by a large corporation with a good design team, bug testers and support department.
The second one is less well known, and is a direct offshoot of the internet generation, which recognizes the power of the internet in bringing together people who have very little in common geographically, but much in common in their interests. It says that a good piece of software just requires someone to get it started, and then others will pitch in to help make it better. This is the guiding principal behind OSS.
So why is it called 'Open Source'?
When a program is written, it is written by a programmer in a programming language. The programming language is basically a set of commands with a set of syntax rules which allow the programmer to tell the computer what to do. When the program is in the process of being written, the files which contain these sets of commands are called the 'source code'.
With your standard payware software, the end user never sees this source code, and has no access to it; all they get is the final product to use. With OSS, this source code is 'open'. When you download or purchase the program, you also have the option of downloading the source code for it. This means that for those who have some programming knowledge, they now have the option of not only using the software, but of modifying it to suit their own needs and preferences.
For example, if you were to download Microsoft Internet Explorer (I know, I know, it comes preinstalled; just bear with me) you can only use it for browsing the internet, and regardless of features you feel it is missing, you just have to deal with it. But if you download an open source internet browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, you now have more options. Want Firefox to play music? Okay, you can download the source code and add code to enable it to be a media player as well.
This is how OSS develops. In most cases, there is a single group of developers who manage a given project, and if you have features you think the program should encompass, you have three options:
1) Submit a feature request to the developers. They will take your suggestions along with other people's input and decide which features to implement in the next revision. This is the same way that almost all closed source software (CSS) works.
2) Write a plug-in. Plug-ins are what makes Mozilla Firefox so popular. A plug-in is a piece of software that plugs in to the original code to add features. Much CSS contains the availability for plug-ins as well.
3) Rewrite the source code, and redistribute it under a different name.
But what about the legal ramifications of this last option? If you somehow managed to procure the source code for Microsoft Office, what would happen if you modified it and started distributing it as Macrosoft Orifice? Probably, you would quickly receive a Cease-and-Desist from Microsoft, followed promptly by a lawsuit.
We'll look at the open source licensing philosophy and the GPL next time.
For more information about the open source movement, you can look it up on Wikipedia or wait until next time.
So what is 'open source' anyway?
Design Philosophy
There are two main competing views of software design and distribution today, about what it takes to design, produce and distribute a good piece of software.
The first one has been - and continues to be - the most common. It states that a good piece of software requires a large budget, usually supplied by a large corporation with a good design team, bug testers and support department.
The second one is less well known, and is a direct offshoot of the internet generation, which recognizes the power of the internet in bringing together people who have very little in common geographically, but much in common in their interests. It says that a good piece of software just requires someone to get it started, and then others will pitch in to help make it better. This is the guiding principal behind OSS.
So why is it called 'Open Source'?
Source Code
When a program is written, it is written by a programmer in a programming language. The programming language is basically a set of commands with a set of syntax rules which allow the programmer to tell the computer what to do. When the program is in the process of being written, the files which contain these sets of commands are called the 'source code'.
With your standard payware software, the end user never sees this source code, and has no access to it; all they get is the final product to use. With OSS, this source code is 'open'. When you download or purchase the program, you also have the option of downloading the source code for it. This means that for those who have some programming knowledge, they now have the option of not only using the software, but of modifying it to suit their own needs and preferences.
For example, if you were to download Microsoft Internet Explorer (I know, I know, it comes preinstalled; just bear with me) you can only use it for browsing the internet, and regardless of features you feel it is missing, you just have to deal with it. But if you download an open source internet browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, you now have more options. Want Firefox to play music? Okay, you can download the source code and add code to enable it to be a media player as well.
This is how OSS develops. In most cases, there is a single group of developers who manage a given project, and if you have features you think the program should encompass, you have three options:
1) Submit a feature request to the developers. They will take your suggestions along with other people's input and decide which features to implement in the next revision. This is the same way that almost all closed source software (CSS) works.
2) Write a plug-in. Plug-ins are what makes Mozilla Firefox so popular. A plug-in is a piece of software that plugs in to the original code to add features. Much CSS contains the availability for plug-ins as well.
3) Rewrite the source code, and redistribute it under a different name.
But what about the legal ramifications of this last option? If you somehow managed to procure the source code for Microsoft Office, what would happen if you modified it and started distributing it as Macrosoft Orifice? Probably, you would quickly receive a Cease-and-Desist from Microsoft, followed promptly by a lawsuit.
We'll look at the open source licensing philosophy and the GPL next time.
For more information about the open source movement, you can look it up on Wikipedia or wait until next time.
2007-11-14
Wizard Wednesday: Google Analytics
In an effort to try and track some traffic (all 4 of you who read my blog) I have set up a Google Analytics account, and I have to say that if Google ever does become the next MicroSuck, it will be with good reason.
Google Analytics is like a hit counter on steroids. It gives you daily breakdowns of how many hits your site got, how many unique visitors you got, where those visitors hit you from (by country, state (if applicable) and city) as well as a bunch of other statistics I don't understand or care about at this point.
I'm playing with getting it to register my RSS hits, since I probably get about 10 times as many of those as I do actual site hits. For now - if you want to help out my ego - click the link at the bottom of this post so I can track you.
To sign up for a Google Analytics account, go to http://www.google.com/analytics and create an account, and it will walk you through how to copy the script code into the page(s) you want to track.
Google Analytics is like a hit counter on steroids. It gives you daily breakdowns of how many hits your site got, how many unique visitors you got, where those visitors hit you from (by country, state (if applicable) and city) as well as a bunch of other statistics I don't understand or care about at this point.
I'm playing with getting it to register my RSS hits, since I probably get about 10 times as many of those as I do actual site hits. For now - if you want to help out my ego - click the link at the bottom of this post so I can track you.
To sign up for a Google Analytics account, go to http://www.google.com/analytics and create an account, and it will walk you through how to copy the script code into the page(s) you want to track.
2007-11-07
Wizard Wednesday: Open Source 1 - Synergy
According to Wikipedia, synergy is:
"the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents."
According to SourceForge (the universal repository for all open-source software worth downloading), Synergy is a kick-a program which allows one computer to share its mouse and keyboard with an unlimited number of other computers - in any spacial configuration - over a network connection. What that means is this:
I currently have two 'main' computers at work, a Dell Latitude D820 (laptop) with an extra monitor, and an iMac Intel. Up until yesterday, that meant I had two seperate work spaces on my desk, with two seperate keyboards and two seperate mice. As of yesterday, I now have one workspace, with my laptop in the middle, my secondary monitor on the left, and my iMac on the right. With Synergy configured on both the Dell and the iMac, I now run my mouse cursor off the right edge of my laptop screen, and it appears on the left edge of the iMac screen, where I click on some stuff, type in a few commands, and then bring it back, off the left edge of my iMac screen and it reappears on the right edges of my laptop screen, where I resume using it.
But wait, there's more. Suppose (as happens fairly often, actually) that I have something - a web page, a serial number, some random bit of text, whatever - on my PC that I want to use on my iMac (or vice-versa). I can now select that bit of text - say a webpage's URL - and copy it to my Windows clipboard, and then move my mouse to the iMac screen, open a web browser, and paste that link from my windows computer into my Mac webbrowser.
The program is compatible with Windows, Mac/Unix, and Linux, so you could theoretically have 5 computers, each running a different operating system, with five different monitors, and operate fairly seamlessly between the three of them.
Here's a YTV of someone doing something just like that.
If that isn't Wizard, I don't know what is.
"the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents."
According to SourceForge (the universal repository for all open-source software worth downloading), Synergy is a kick-a program which allows one computer to share its mouse and keyboard with an unlimited number of other computers - in any spacial configuration - over a network connection. What that means is this:
I currently have two 'main' computers at work, a Dell Latitude D820 (laptop) with an extra monitor, and an iMac Intel. Up until yesterday, that meant I had two seperate work spaces on my desk, with two seperate keyboards and two seperate mice. As of yesterday, I now have one workspace, with my laptop in the middle, my secondary monitor on the left, and my iMac on the right. With Synergy configured on both the Dell and the iMac, I now run my mouse cursor off the right edge of my laptop screen, and it appears on the left edge of the iMac screen, where I click on some stuff, type in a few commands, and then bring it back, off the left edge of my iMac screen and it reappears on the right edges of my laptop screen, where I resume using it.
But wait, there's more. Suppose (as happens fairly often, actually) that I have something - a web page, a serial number, some random bit of text, whatever - on my PC that I want to use on my iMac (or vice-versa). I can now select that bit of text - say a webpage's URL - and copy it to my Windows clipboard, and then move my mouse to the iMac screen, open a web browser, and paste that link from my windows computer into my Mac webbrowser.
The program is compatible with Windows, Mac/Unix, and Linux, so you could theoretically have 5 computers, each running a different operating system, with five different monitors, and operate fairly seamlessly between the three of them.
Here's a YTV of someone doing something just like that.
If that isn't Wizard, I don't know what is.
2007-10-31
Wizard Wednesday: Easy micro-clamps
For those of you who have ever done any kind of paper modeling, you probably know the frustration that comes from trying to figure out a good way to hold two pieces of paper/cardstock together long enough and flat enough for the glue to dry well. I myself ran into this problem a couple days ago when gluing some WhiteWings together. I started ransacking my garage looking for some small pieces of wood which I could squeeze between two clothes pins when I came across something better: Contrux! These handy little plastic girders are just the right size for clothes pins to grip (in either a parallel or perpendicular orientation) and provide a nice, flat, smooth, reinfored clamping surface. You could probably even use the 'curve' pieces to clamp around a curve!
In other news, I won an internet 'Caption-a-Comic' contest. Check it out here, and check out my winning entry from the link!
In other news, I won an internet 'Caption-a-Comic' contest. Check it out here, and check out my winning entry from the link!
2007-10-10
Wizard Wednesday: The Fountain of ... ink?
I like fountain pens. I have always liked fountain pens, from the time I was given one when the fam left Indonesia. It was a going-away/graduation/something gift from UPCS/MIS when we left. It came as a set, with a ball point and a pencil, or something. All three of them had my name engraved on them (they must have paid some engraver a good 50 cents for the work too; I miss cheap labor) and they were just all around awesome. Anyway, that was my introduction to fountain pens, and I've been a fan ever since.
That same fountain pen has sat in various of my drawers since about a year after I got it, because it stopped writing well. I think it was because the converter got squashed or something, so I couldn't fill it, and by the time I tried fixing the converter, it had dried up to the point that it was unusable.
A few years later, Mom found a three-pen set by Sheaffer, which I'm pretty sure was in their Award line, which is no longer being made. The two rollerball pens in the set were/are pretty nice, and I still have them (although I haven't purchased fillers for them since the originals emptied) but, of course, the highlight of the set was the fountain pen. It was a nice, hefty pen in stainless steel with brass or gold (not sure which, but probably brass) trim, and it had the nice, screw/piston converter, which was much easier to use than the squeezy converter on my first pen. I used that pen for years, until I left it in a denim shirt, and left that shirt in an airport.
A couple years ago, I found a little, hole-in-the-wall office supply shop which was a short lease thing where the guy basically had a bunch of office supplies he had accumulated somewhere that he wanted to sell off cheap, so I bought my third fountain pen, a Sheaffer White Dot cheap0, with a black plastic 'chassis', which looks like crap, but writes like butter. Something happened at some point which caused me to stop using the pen, which caused it to dry out, which confirmed my lack of use.
Yesterday, I got to hankering after my old Sheaffer Award fountain pen, and started looking online for fountain pens, only to be reminded that a CHEAP fountain pen runs about $35. I managed to swallow my disappointment and went home, where I found pens 1 and 3 (the one from Indonesia and the black plastic one). While watching some tvd, I grabbed them and spent some time rinsing the old, accumulated ink sediment out of them, and managed to get Blackie working again (minus the bent clip, which is what happens when you clip them on your pocket and then snag them on something), but Silver (as in, Hi-O) still didn't want to write well without having to write slowly or press really hard, either of which experience is analogous to writing with a nail dipped in glue. But I stuck it in my pocket and brought it with me today anyway.
During a bit of down time, I looked up fountain pen maintenance and found this site, and learned a bit more about how the pens are made and how you can take care of them. After fiddling with Silver for a couple of minutes (most of which were spent removing the bit of paper I got stuck in the nib because I wasn't being careful enough), I am thrilled to say that I have restored this 15+ year old pen to working condition and it too writes - to borrow a phrase from VeggieTales - like butter on a bald monkey.
Hooray for decent craftsmanship, and for that personality quirk that says, "Don't throw that away, you may find a use for it some day!"
That same fountain pen has sat in various of my drawers since about a year after I got it, because it stopped writing well. I think it was because the converter got squashed or something, so I couldn't fill it, and by the time I tried fixing the converter, it had dried up to the point that it was unusable.
A few years later, Mom found a three-pen set by Sheaffer, which I'm pretty sure was in their Award line, which is no longer being made. The two rollerball pens in the set were/are pretty nice, and I still have them (although I haven't purchased fillers for them since the originals emptied) but, of course, the highlight of the set was the fountain pen. It was a nice, hefty pen in stainless steel with brass or gold (not sure which, but probably brass) trim, and it had the nice, screw/piston converter, which was much easier to use than the squeezy converter on my first pen. I used that pen for years, until I left it in a denim shirt, and left that shirt in an airport.
A couple years ago, I found a little, hole-in-the-wall office supply shop which was a short lease thing where the guy basically had a bunch of office supplies he had accumulated somewhere that he wanted to sell off cheap, so I bought my third fountain pen, a Sheaffer White Dot cheap0, with a black plastic 'chassis', which looks like crap, but writes like butter. Something happened at some point which caused me to stop using the pen, which caused it to dry out, which confirmed my lack of use.
Yesterday, I got to hankering after my old Sheaffer Award fountain pen, and started looking online for fountain pens, only to be reminded that a CHEAP fountain pen runs about $35. I managed to swallow my disappointment and went home, where I found pens 1 and 3 (the one from Indonesia and the black plastic one). While watching some tvd, I grabbed them and spent some time rinsing the old, accumulated ink sediment out of them, and managed to get Blackie working again (minus the bent clip, which is what happens when you clip them on your pocket and then snag them on something), but Silver (as in, Hi-O) still didn't want to write well without having to write slowly or press really hard, either of which experience is analogous to writing with a nail dipped in glue. But I stuck it in my pocket and brought it with me today anyway.
During a bit of down time, I looked up fountain pen maintenance and found this site, and learned a bit more about how the pens are made and how you can take care of them. After fiddling with Silver for a couple of minutes (most of which were spent removing the bit of paper I got stuck in the nib because I wasn't being careful enough), I am thrilled to say that I have restored this 15+ year old pen to working condition and it too writes - to borrow a phrase from VeggieTales - like butter on a bald monkey.
Hooray for decent craftsmanship, and for that personality quirk that says, "Don't throw that away, you may find a use for it some day!"
2007-10-03
Wizard Wednesday: Blogger Templates
I'm sort of in the process of trying to update the look of this site, but I'm running into problems getting Blogger to find the image files that I'm trying to use for the styling. I have tried three different hosting sites, including Blogger itself, but no luck so far. Anyone who reads this blog (all three of you :) ever played with this and can give me any tips?
I'll post more on this later if I figure anything out.
I'll post more on this later if I figure anything out.
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