The Shins have just announced a Nashville live date: Friday, March 9 at 8:00 P.M. at the Ryman Auditorium.
Tickets go on sale Friday, February 16 at 10 A.M. ($34.50 and $27.50). Thanks to iConcertCal I found out about this through my iTunes.
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Skype thinks Spanish is my first language
Skype just sent me an email with the subject line "Skype: Descarga la nueva versión con funciones agregadas." Even though I took almost five years of Spanish in school, I couldn't totally sprechen the lingity. I got the "hola" part...Someone at Skype needs to tweak the data warehouse.
Monday, February 05, 2007
See concert calendar based on your iTunes library
I love this new iTunes plug-in called iConcertCal. Download the freeware (Windows and Mac) and based on the artists in your iTunes library, the tool displays a localized concert calendar. Click the artist's name and your browser opens to the appropriate club or ticketing site. Change the city and state in the upper left hand corner for shows in other locations.Future versions promise listings for outside the United States and radius searches for larger geographic areas.
Monday, January 22, 2007
MP3 Tag Fixing with MusicIP Mixer
I'm a stickler about my digital music tags (the meta data about a song). I've been known to meticulously scour my collection and manually fix bad identifying information. Slow and annoying!
Enter MusicIP Mixer, which promises to fix improperly-tagged files based on their Music DNS database of over 26 million songs. A quick analysis of my collection tells me that about 21% of my collection needs some sort of data tweaking. After a few minutes of churning through my songs (7 seconds per thousand tracks if you'd like to benchmark), I now have (more) pristine data, and to me that means more accurate cataloging, storage, and mixing. During the process, though, I received a couple of errors telling me that the application AACTagReader.exe (installed with the Mixer) had unexpectedly quit.Not sure what that's all about (need to look into that one). I figured out that two problems were causing the tag fixing to halt: read-only files and any file names that were very very long. After repairing all of the bad files, re-running tag fixing worked beautifully for the most part.
Some--not all--files with quote marks (such as '12" remix') in the ID3 track name were an issue as well. Although the tag fixer told me it had repaired these files, re-running tag fixing continued to find the same problem files. I may have to fix these files manually.
The paid version of the Mixer (only $20) takes the fixing one step further and will normalize artist names for you, so all those "Eliot Smith" and "Elliot Smith" tracks become "Elliott Smith."
Disclosure: I've been paid by MusicIP for a freelance project unrelated to the Mixer.
Enter MusicIP Mixer, which promises to fix improperly-tagged files based on their Music DNS database of over 26 million songs. A quick analysis of my collection tells me that about 21% of my collection needs some sort of data tweaking. After a few minutes of churning through my songs (7 seconds per thousand tracks if you'd like to benchmark), I now have (more) pristine data, and to me that means more accurate cataloging, storage, and mixing. During the process, though, I received a couple of errors telling me that the application AACTagReader.exe (installed with the Mixer) had unexpectedly quit.
Some--not all--files with quote marks (such as '12" remix') in the ID3 track name were an issue as well. Although the tag fixer told me it had repaired these files, re-running tag fixing continued to find the same problem files. I may have to fix these files manually.
The paid version of the Mixer (only $20) takes the fixing one step further and will normalize artist names for you, so all those "Eliot Smith" and "Elliot Smith" tracks become "Elliott Smith."
Disclosure: I've been paid by MusicIP for a freelance project unrelated to the Mixer.
Friday, December 08, 2006
"What's a vector?" is the new "Where did I come from?"
My kids are harnessing technology in amazing ways. This week I've discovered I have a future email spoofer and future game developer in my house.
First my seventh grader. He is in a heap of trouble at school for figuring out another kid's password and sending an email to the entire class as the other kid. Bad.
On to my fourth grader. For months Harry's been hinting at wanting to learn Flash because most of the games he plays online are built in Flash. I've been telling him it's a really complicated program and maybe he should start with something easier. Harry ended up putting Flash on his Christmas wish list; my wife asked me "what is Flash?" I told Harry he didn't need to ask for the software for Christmas. I have Flash on my laptop and immediately he started working through some online tutorials and quickly built his first simple animations.
A couple of nights later he was rummaging through the craft closet/recording booth and found a Flash 8 tutorial I had borrowed from work. He said "Dad, why didn't you tell me you had this?" as if I'd been holding back a great record collection or had been hiding a motorcycle in the basement. After flipping through the book he asked me "what's the difference between a vector and a bitmap?" Great moments in parenthood.
Last night he showed me his first shape tween. Proud papa I am.
First my seventh grader. He is in a heap of trouble at school for figuring out another kid's password and sending an email to the entire class as the other kid. Bad.
On to my fourth grader. For months Harry's been hinting at wanting to learn Flash because most of the games he plays online are built in Flash. I've been telling him it's a really complicated program and maybe he should start with something easier. Harry ended up putting Flash on his Christmas wish list; my wife asked me "what is Flash?" I told Harry he didn't need to ask for the software for Christmas. I have Flash on my laptop and immediately he started working through some online tutorials and quickly built his first simple animations.
A couple of nights later he was rummaging through the craft closet/recording booth and found a Flash 8 tutorial I had borrowed from work. He said "Dad, why didn't you tell me you had this?" as if I'd been holding back a great record collection or had been hiding a motorcycle in the basement. After flipping through the book he asked me "what's the difference between a vector and a bitmap?" Great moments in parenthood.
Last night he showed me his first shape tween. Proud papa I am.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
MusicIP Mixer Initial Reactions
Last week I downloaded the free version of MusicIP Mixer in order to catalog my MP3s and create mixes based on similarities between tracks in my collection. What this allows you to do is select one song and create a mix based on the sonic qualities of that first song. I've been using the Winamp plug in from the same company for a while now and this was my first experiment with the standalone mixer.
After about four days of indexing 30,000 or so songs, I was quite surprised to find that only 80 or so songs were considered "unanalyzable." To compare, my most recent indexing via the Winamp plug-in (formerly known as Predixis MusicMatch) rendered nearly 2/3 of my collection unanalyzable. This was unacceptable; I'm concerned about the future relationship between Winamp and MusicIP.
FYI, I treat my music collection as my own personal radio station so I want as much "predictable randomization" as possible.
My first impressions of MusicIP Mixer have been incredible. I can select one song and create an instant mix of 20 songs, 20 minutes, or 20 megabytes, for example. Great for party mixes or that special mood, and the mixes render very quickly. I haven't yet played around with the preferences but you can tweak the criteria for mixing such as limiting the genre and number of songs by the same artist.
I'll post more about this great tool so stay tuned.
After about four days of indexing 30,000 or so songs, I was quite surprised to find that only 80 or so songs were considered "unanalyzable." To compare, my most recent indexing via the Winamp plug-in (formerly known as Predixis MusicMatch) rendered nearly 2/3 of my collection unanalyzable. This was unacceptable; I'm concerned about the future relationship between Winamp and MusicIP.
FYI, I treat my music collection as my own personal radio station so I want as much "predictable randomization" as possible.
My first impressions of MusicIP Mixer have been incredible. I can select one song and create an instant mix of 20 songs, 20 minutes, or 20 megabytes, for example. Great for party mixes or that special mood, and the mixes render very quickly. I haven't yet played around with the preferences but you can tweak the criteria for mixing such as limiting the genre and number of songs by the same artist.
I'll post more about this great tool so stay tuned.
Friday, September 22, 2006
I'm loving LogMeIn
My dad turned me on to a remote admin-like tool called LogMeIn. When I see the URL logmein.com I want to pronounce it "LOG MAIN" as in Chinese food for beavers. LogMeIn is really easy to install and now when I'm not at home I can remotely fiddle with my home machines. Best thing is they have a free version.
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