Category: stuff

Software, toys, gadgets and computers

iTunes 5 adds lyrics

One thing that has barely been noticed about the new iTunes 5 upgrade announced yestereday by Apple is that they have finally added Lyrics support to their MP3 and AAC files.

Plaxo-AIM signin

iTunes 5 adds lyrics, originally uploaded by tychay.

To get to the lyrics, simply choose “File > Get Info…” on a song. Apple also has added a property called “lyrics” to the AppleScript dictionary so full automation is now possible: imagine a small AppleScript that automatically adds lyrics from a website into your tunes.

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Posted on by tychay 2

Karma catches up with Jack?

Trent is reporting that MacMice has shut down.

I’ve alluded to Jack Campbell’s abusiveness and deceptiveness before. One thing I never understood about the Mac world was their willingness to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Granted, you shouldn’t hold a man’s criminal record against him, but it should bias your opinions. I mean how many time does the community need to be clocked on the head to realize that enough is enough? MacTable, MacWhispers “rumor site”, Griffin/DVForge, his verbal abusiveness and lying on multiple comment boards, Kensington/DVForge, and finally this marketing stunt.

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Posted on by tychay 1

Why I need an “abject stupidity” category

CNN:Police try to control the crowd rushing to get cheap iBooks.

So what sort of braintrust in Henrico thought up this clusterfuck?

Here is my favorite quote:

“It’s rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response for the purchase of a laptop computer—and laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes. But I think that people tend to get caught up in the excitement of the event—it almost has an entertainment value.”
—Paul Proto, director of general services for Henrico County, to CNN

“rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response” You knew it was going to be bad which is why you required proof of residency and changed the date.

“laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes…” STFU. You already had to issue a redaction because you said these iBooks were always broken and Apple wasn’t repairing them according to contract when the real reason you wanted to switch to Dell is because of MS Office (a totally valid reason).

“it almost has an entertainment value” Porquoi? What is so entertaining about your neighbors getting injured and peeing their pants?
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Posted on by tychay 2

Pirates of Silicon Valley DVD

Pirates of Silicon Valley DVD

MacMinute clued me in to the fact that Pirates of Silicon Valley is coming out on DVD. I recorded this movie when I last had cable (back in 1999) because I was out the days it aired. I enjoyed this movie, and because of it’s high geekfest quotient, right up there with Real Genius.

I think Dave still has my videocassette of it. I had forgotten I had recorded it until a few years ago when I saw part of it with him. We had great fun watching all the 1999 dot-com boom commercials that were aired on TNT along with it (too bad the DVD doesn’t have that as a special feature.)

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Posted on by tychay 6

Switched back to DSL

I’m back up.

Comcast was very funny.

For the last half-year, if the cable modem goes down, by the time they address the problem, it is gone. Since addressing the problem means sending an engineer which costs me and Comcast a lot of time and money, I resolved to wait until it was down for a day before calling them about it. The strange thing about cable modem is that sometimes it seems so slow, I am sure that a phone modem would be faster.

Then the internet went down, I waited 24 hours and called them. And then was given a sequence of successive lies about when it would be up. Somehow, there was a “scheduled service outage in my area” at that time and that I must have been one of the 4 out of 419 people whose cable didn’t come back up after the outage. Pesky little details like the scheduled outage occurred well after my cable went down seem to be unnecessary.

(There was this brief 30 minute episode with them on when their CS representative got offended that I called the so-called scheduled-service-outage-that-leaves-me-without-internet-for-five-days-minimum an “excuse.”)

By the time they acknowledged that this wasn’t a problem on my end, the earliest engineer they could send to look at the problem would be after I’ve already left for OSCON. Now it seemed reasonable to me that if a junkie like me who has been addicted to the internet since I was seven can tolerate being without internet in the home for two weeks, Comcast can tolerate not being paid for two weeks.

Comcast didn’t see it this way.

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Posted on by tychay 1

Regulating podcasts

This thread has been rated S

Now that Apple is offering Podcast integration into iTunes, an absurd argument has popped up concerning warnings vs. parental responsibility.

In typical polarizing fashion the discussion has been divided into a neat dichotomy: those who demand that Apple should censor/rate content for the sake of the children and those who think that you are just a lazy parent out-of-touch with today.

Even the people who disagree drop into the illogical and irrational. Take this high rated response from someone who claims to not “entirely agree with either of these guys” (but clearly is showing his biases):

It seems that they would, even by their own standards. We (meaning society in general, not just parents) expect such a system for movies, TV, video games, music, etc. And btw, we’re missing the point with some of this by focusing solely on children. I know plenty of adults who don’t care to see or hear “adult content” and would appreciate a warning in advance so a label system would serve people other than just parents.

My wife dislikes “adult content” in music and ironically, Apple does such a thing for iTunes Music Store (those little ‘explicit’ tags on some songs and albums.) It would seem even by Apple’s own standards they have come up a little short with their implementation of podcasts.

It would be very easy for Apple to classify podcasts in this manner (or ask providers to self-rate) and then give parents control over what podcasts their children could access via the parent controls panel.

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Posted on by tychay 0

“God’s Own” AppleScript?

AutomatorAbout a year ago, when Tiger was in Public Beta, Thies told me to check out Automator. I didn’t get around to it because Thies is in the habit of saying things like, “Skype is God’s Own phone.” When everything is “God’s Own” X, then saying something like, “Automator is cool” isn’t going to get me jumping onto BitTorrent, especially since I never grokked AppleScript.

Earlier this year, I gave a talk in Vancouver. After Cal, the lead developer of Flickr, complimented me on it, I decided to see his talk. Okay, so his doesn’t have cool Keynote transitions like mine, but in terms of content, it totally rocks. What he and Ludicorp were able to do building Flickr is textbook case of why LAMP rules in the right hands. Go see his talk! I was impressed.

I registered for Flickr.

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Posted on by tychay 7