Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Why iTunes 7 (7.0.1, too) SUCKS

Sunday, October 1st, 2006

When I heard that iTunes 7 was out, I was excited. Then I found a massive list of bugs that made it next to worthless. iTunes 7.0.1 came out, and I was hoping it would fix the following problems, but it didn’t. From what I read on the Series of Tubes, other people are having similar problems.

  1. I can’t listen to music on my PC while I play UT2004. I could with 6. If I try, the music starts stuttering more than Bob Newhart.
  2. When I listen to my shared playlist streamed from my PC to my laptop, it frequently stutters. Occasionally, when Song A ends, iTunes will say it’s playing Song B but I will hear Song A again.
  3. Randomly when I’m listening to a shared playlist, one song will end and, despite the fact that it’s not the last song on the playlist, playback will stop. Then, I will not be able to play anything from that playlist unless I eject it (eating one of my 5 per day connections, by the way) and reconnect.
  4. For no apparent reason, I’ll get this really washed-out, overdriven sound when listening to a shared playlist.
  5. Grats, iTunes: You now use 40% of my CPU all the time.
  6. I cannot view iTunes Store movies on my laptop anymore. I downloaded a few pre-7.0 Mythbusters episodes that ran fine, but I tried to watch the first episode of Heroes and all I could get was A) stuttering audio and B) my laptop locked up. Also, iTunes was eating 99% of my CPU.

I should point out that with the exception of the last one (maybe Apple’s using a fancier codec than my 2.4-gHz, 1GB RAM P4 can handle), all of these things were not a problem with iTunes 6.

It seems that the transition from iTunes 6 to 7 is going much worse than the transition from (Mac OS) System 6 to 7.

Not everything about 7 is bad. I like the CoverFlow feature, and gapless playback, but neither alone is worth the constant slowness, stuttering, distortion, and strange behavior that iTunes 7 brings to the game. I don’t want 6 back, I want 7.0.2, and I want it to work this time.

First Impression of Front Row

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

I had some doubts about Front Row on my new iMac, especially its requirement that it only play files that QuickTime recognizes. I have a whole bunch of videos ripped from my DVDs in DivX or XviD format. How to play them?

I tried the official plug-in and an open-source version, but Front Row still wouldn’t play any of my Lost or Battlestar Galactica episodes. After some digging around on the web, however, I found a beta of the Macintel version of DivX, and installed that. Lo and behold, the episodes appeared! Not only that, but I made aliases from my file server and put them in my Movies folder, and Front Row saw them and used them!

Unfortunately, some of the videos crash Front Row — it just quits when it gets to certain spots in the episode. I have VLC, which plays them fine, but I’m still a bit upset. It would be nice to sit down and watch a few episodes without having to screw around with different programs for bickering codecs.

One downside is that I’m running a lot of beta software. The DiVX codec I found is a beta release. The version of VLC for Macintel is also beta. Also, Apple’s software sometimes seems like beta stuff — how hard is it to give me an error when Front Row hiccups playing a video file?

Of course, now that my iMac is the hub of my ‘media center’, I need to get a Dolby Receiver with digital inputs so I can get my 5.1 setup working with DVDs. The purchasing never ends…

But aside from that, Front Row is impressive. I like the iPod-like interface for music. I like that it recongized aliases that point to files on a Windows server. Except for the few bugs (which should be blamed on beta software), it’s a solid program.

Google and China

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

I’ve been thinking about Google and China, and I don’t understand why Google would concede to the Chinese Government’s demands that Google China censor its search results. The billion potential customers might be a potential draw, except for one fact — capitulating to censors would be against Google’s informal corporate motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Although evil is indeed a subjective quality, here it is not. The fact that a government (which laughingly calls itself the “People’s Republic of China”) would keep any information from its citizens automatically disqualifies it as being a republic of the people. Such a government is a republic of… the republic. Google is only skirting evil by acquiescing too China’s demands; Yahoo! is being downright evil by providing China with information it needs to prosecute dissenters.

A corporation should not be evil and in the United States, at least, Google isn’t. But what a difference a government makes. Google as a corporation (and all American companies for that matter) should stand for truth, equality, and making a profit — but the last goal should never come at the expense of the first two. If anything, Google should be doing everything it can to fight China’s censorship. It should answer the “People’s” government’s demand with a fuck you gleam in its eye, and a list of search results that inexplicably returns links to information about the Tiananmen Protests. And if the the PMRC doesn’t like it, then it can look elsewhere for a search engine for its sandboxed Internet.

Microsoft’s ‘Evolve’ campaign

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

Does anyone else think that Microsoft’s ‘Evolve’ advertising campaign is way past due? The scenarios aren’t funny, the ads themselves (specifically, the ‘special effects’) look hideous, and the campaign boils down to Microsoft insulting its loyal customers who can’t afford to / don’t want to upgrade.

Still using Office 2000? You fuckin’ dinosuar! MS Office has evolved, and you’re still drinking your own piss. Get a life, upgrade, you loser. All the big IT departments are upgrading!

A Rant About iTunes for Windows

Thursday, March 30th, 2006

Or, more specifically, a rant about Windows.

One of the nice things about the Mac OS is that files are not necessarily referenced by pathname. This has been true all the way back to System 7, when aliases debuted. I remember being but a tiny lad back then, and strewing aliases for everything all over the desktop of my dad’s Mac IIcx. The neat thing about aliases (which are the equivalent of Windows Shortcuts but better) is that if you moved the original file, the link would not ‘break’ (this was only true on the same disk).

This magic worked because of the way the Macintosh file system works (note that this is my understanding and not a canonical explanation). Each file on a disk had its own unique ID number (probably the primary key in the database). So when you created an alias, it pointed to the original file’s ID number in the database. As opposed to certain, less urbane file systems, where an alias (*cough, cough*, shortcut) would only hold the path the the original file. In these OSs, move the file and you break any links to it.

Which is where my rant about the Windows version of iTunes comes in. I often download audio files — like the Video Game Pianist’s repertoire — that go on my desktop. To make sure they sound good, I’ll open them in iTunes and give the files a listen. Then, I move them to my music directory, rename the files to my naming scheme, and add them all. The problem? iTunes’ library is permanent, so that one file that was on the desktop (and is now probably deleted) stays in my library, with one of those exclamation point icons next to it.

It would be so much easier if Windows used the scheme described above to reference files. Instead, I have to do stupid stuff when I’m not 100% on the ball. For example, if I download the Something Awful 8-Bit Christmas album and load it into iTunes from my desktop, all sorts of stupid stuff has to be done when I realize my mistake. First, I have to remove the files from my iTunes library. Then, I have to move them to my music folder. Finally, I can put them back into the library. God forbid I actually rated the files or made changes to the meta-data in iTunes’ database — that information disappeared when I moved the files.

So I have to be uber-cautious about my files, always putting them away right away. I even have to name the damn things correctly before I even load them into iTunes — if there’s a typo in one of the filenames and it’s been in iTunes for a while, collecting metadata, I’m SOL. Renaming the file, or moving the folder, renders the tracks unusable in iTunes.

There has to be a better way.

Oh, wait — there is. And it’s called Macintosh.

Ha… No Updatey

Monday, January 2nd, 2006

I never update this thing. What can I say? I’m lazy.

Today was one of those days that make me question my direction in life. I’m a Computer Science major. Working with computers is my job, my path in education, my hobby, and eventually will be my career.

So why am I so easily pissed off by them?

The story: I was planning on going over to Chris Rose’s house to trade some local band CDs, check out his studio, etc. I have a punk CD I recorded last year, but I remixed some songs a few months ago. All I have that was ready to go on CD was the old mixes. I thought, hell, I can rebounce the unmixed files, remaster them, and be done in a few hours, right?

Wrong!

First, GarageBand apparently decided that it needed to fix the timing of the vocal tracks on some songs. Which is great, except they were already on time. So I listened to a song, heard it was off, and double-checked. The timeline showed that it was on time. “Whatever”, I said, and pushed the track forward by ear so the words were once again in time to the music.

It only got worse from there.

I use Pro Tools Free with free RTAS for mastering. But it’s only available with Mac OS 9. Luckily, my Dad has about 20 old Macs, and one’s a second-gen iMac. I started mastering, then realized that I was putting everything in mono. This was about 7:30pm, and my target time for getting over to Chris’s was about 5:00pm. It was only after another hour of mastering that I realized that I had no way to get the newly mastered songs off the computer. This particular iMac had broken FireWire. I had to burn a CD of the files just to get them on there in the first place. I tried two USB flash drives — no dice. They’re probably NTFS, while OS 9 demands FAT32. The thing didn’t see my iPod in disk mode, either. Blehhhh.

Then, as I was mastering the last song, the damn thing crashed. I rebooted, and got nothing on the screen. That was my ‘fuggit’ moment. I’d had enough. I burned CDs of the old stuff, and was off.

Chris’s studio setup was nice. The man got a Mac and some nice equipment. I’m jealous ;-). If I ever bought that much stuff, I think it would upset Carrie quite a bit. Right, too — I need to get a car, first.

Then I got on MySpace. I’ve hated it from the start, but finally got on there so I could keep up-to-date on Killing the Hare, the last of the ‘old skool’ Bitterroot Valley punk rock bands.

Crap…

Monday, June 27th, 2005

US Supreme Court rules against Grokster.

This could set a precedent that might, in theory, make VCRs and tape decks illegal.

Not good, not good.

What Bugs Me About iTunes’ Party Shuffle

Monday, August 16th, 2004

I’ve been trying like mad to get a nice ratio of high-rated songs to low-rated or unrated songs in iTunes. the Party Shuffle feature is nifty, but it plays too many high-rated songs for every unrated or low-rated song.

I tried using Smart Playlists. One was for 5-star songs and was limited to 100, one was for 4-star and was limited to 80, one was for 3-star and was limited to 50, and the other was for below that and was limited to 120, so that for every highly-rated song, there would be one unrated/low-rated song. Then, I created another smart playlist that contained each of these playlists.

I should also mention that I added ‘last played’ criteria to the component playlists, so that I didn’t hear the same high-rated song too often.

So, I have four component Smart Playlists and one master playlist containing them all:

100 5-star songs

80 4-star songs

50 3-star songs

120 unrated/2-star or below songs

The problem with this method is that the lists don’t update; i.e. my big playlist, the one containing all the others, would always have draw from the same 350 songs. The only way to alleviate this problem is to go through and manually refresh the component playlists, defeating the purpose of smart playlists.

So, for now I’m keeping with the smart playlists, and using the ‘master’ smart playlist to play from instead of party shuffle. When it runs out, I’ll refresh the others. Not the best strategy, but at least the playlist deletes songs as soon as they’re played, so I don’t lose my place.

Update Actually, once a song is played, it removes itself from the component playlists, because is has been played in the last few days. So the system works fine with party shuffle. My bad! Still, it would be nice to set some sort of ratio for the Party Shuffle.

Learn to Speak English!

Friday, July 18th, 2003

I just got an e-mail that was indecipherable, except for one line — “Learn English the quick way!!!’ Strange!

Update and Poems

Thursday, March 13th, 2003

Sorry. Gotsta update this thing more often. I’ve been busy.

First, I’ve been working like mad to get the Nerds With Instruments website updated. I learned about Cascading Style Sheets on Wednesday and have been updating the website to include them. Now, I can switch color schemes by judiciously changing a few images a CSS files, as opposed to spending hours tweaking colors on thousands of HTML elements. Dave likes CSS.

I’ve also been writing poetry. Here is a sonnet I composed while eating lunch today:



I sold Satan my soul at midnight

on the crossroads (He did look quite a hoot

decked out in his wingtips and Armani suit);

all that I really wanted was a light,

but it was quite a treat to see that brute

cackling and chuckling with evil delight

(it was clear the fiend thought the price was right).

I showed no fear. I was resolute.

If he’s apt to trade a soul for a whim

(praying for the better end of the deal)

then he may collect after my last breath.

I forsee no torment after my death.

Lucifer believes his end was the steal.

I don’t want to spoil the bargain for him.

Here’s another one. It doesn’t have a name:



Down myriad aisles stretching miles long

Lie uncounted volumes, each one a door —

And one portal leads to a thousand more.

Here an adventure, there a book of song,

A tome of knowledge and a book of lore.

I yearn to leaf through them, to stroll along,

To grab a stack of books twenty strong,

Each one offers something new to explore.

Sitting on a couch, in a cozy nook,

I hear no hustle, no crash, no car horn.

It’s a silence of gold, of turned pages,

A moment lasting through untold ages.

My world seems neither hateful nor forlorn

It consists of only me and my book.


Pretty nifty, huh? I like the rhyme scheme (ABBABAAB CDEEDC). It’s a pretty simple one for the octave (the first eight lines), but the sestet is nifty: the “C” lines surround it, further offsetting it, and there is a third and final “sandwhich” quatrain in between them. The only problem I have is finding four A and B rhymes.

Speaking of boring pedantic stuff, in English we had a test. I hadn’t done any of the reading. I do not think I’ll get a good grade on this quiz; this time I’m serious. But I don’t care. As long as I get a ‘C’, I’m fine.

John called and I’m going to see “My Fair Lady” on Friday. I really don’t like going back to my alma mater so often (I went there last Saturday to see C.C.’s show, The Phantom Tollbooth), but John’s a buddy (and former Speech partner), so I’ll go. They only have two showings of it, though. I’d be pissed if I was in it and they only did two shows — they’ve been practicing since early January. Apparently, the school didn’t spring for performance rights for more than two shows. Typical.

Ha ha ha. My school is running Neil Simon’s Rumors for two weeks! And I have three stages! Not even the mighty Hamilton High School can top that!