Idle musings on the world around us
Neon
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Home page: http://www.squaresphere.co.uk
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Posts by Neon
Ubuntu and Beryl
I managed to find a day to backup my spare pc and take the dive into Linux in the form of Ubuntu. I have to say it’s the easiest install I’ve ever had, yes, better than Windows. The Synaptic package manager is an amazing innovation in software installation, that coupled with Automatix made installing all the software a breeze. The biggest thing I found when running though the LifeHacker Linux Roundup articles I mentioned previously, is XGL and Beryl. This amazing application converts your entire desktop environment into a fluid and more usable work space. It’s all well and good watching the screen casts and the YouTube movies, but having it on your own pc makes a huge difference. Be sure to check out thier website, at beryl-project.org.
SongBird Wins!
Songbird wins the battle of the media managers. Although there is a late arrival in the shape of http://www.mlipod.com/ which is an iPod plugin for WinAmp’s media manager. Which I am yet to try. The main reason was that iTunes doesn’t allow me to copy my music off my iPod to my computer. This caused it to lose more points than the RSS podcast downloading feature (probably the best thing in itunes) gained.
The next stage is to clean-up my library and perhaps actually swap my iPod over to a SongBird library instead of an itunes one. The application can only get better with time, as development thunders ahead and more extensions are released. So go and give it a try for a while, you’ll not go back to itunes! Try it, http://www.songbirdnest.com/
In a late review of the media libraries, I actually got some time to read the Lifehacker articles mentioned in this post. Which led me to the excellent, if rather ugly looking, Media Monkey. This ace application can tag all your mp3′s using folder names or amazon as a base. After about 4 hours, I finally had all 5,000 odd tracks tagged and named properly along with artwork. The only real drawback is that the information is stored locally in an mdb file so when I arrived at work and plugged the iPod into my work pc, it didn’t quite all work out.
I guess I will have to store the mdb on the iPod and install Media Monkey at work, in order to transfer the database over. I guess Apple didn’t think that people might want to have more than one application and more than one “library” pc, shame on you Steve.
Finally a fantastic fighting fit fifty!
Finally got my scrapper Midnight Dragon to level 50 in City of Heroes! Awesome achievement, big thanks to all the people who helped out.
Check out the movie, apologies for the crappy quality, kind of rushed and I don’t have a good encoder.
New things afoot
Time for change is the spring they say. So I recently got myself a 60gb video iPod to replace my tired old 20gb Creative Zen. So now the battle is on to find a good media application for managing my music collection and the ipod. The obvious choice is iTunes, but I have heard more nightmare stories than good stories. A quick google led me to SongBird, which looks quite interesting. So the race is on to test quite a few applications and see which one makes the least amount of mistakes.
Swiftly followed by a trip through the Lifehacker school of mp3 organising,
Then the tides will change as I install Ubuntu on my spare machine, so the quest will continue into Linux based music managing software. Which places Songbird as the front runner, being multi platform.
Again, a foray into Linux under the watchful eye of Lifehacker.
MPAA rips off software!
That’s right folks, the Motion Picture Association of America have warezed blogging software written by a hard working Britain! The so called “Guardians” of intellectual property have decided they are above buying a £25 license! Tut-tut.
Full article, over here : http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-steals-code-violates-linkware-license/
Source : http://www.patrickrobin.co.uk/default.asp?Display=4
Get retro
I recently started playing the most excellent Transport Tycoon Deluxe again. I’d forgotten how ace this game really was. I can’t say that I found Locomotion overly enjoyable.
Anyhow, if you would like to play, there is good news, the title is abandonware. So it’s free!
“..and there was much rejoicing..”
- Grab the game from Abandonia: http://www.abandonia.com/
- Grab the awesome OpenTTD patch: http://www.openttd.com/
Learn me a book
Having always had a mild interest in sociology, philosophy and psychology, I figured I’d try and learn something about it. As always I bought blind! Ended up with this book.
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
(The Collected works of C. G. Jung)
See how we fare with it, I may have to read it a few times though!
