software

Applications to use.

Sleepy but searching

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It’s 4:15 AM and I’ve been looking for new electronic (as always) music for the past four hours. It’s ok, though, because I had a 4 hour nap before I started. I think it was four hours.

Anyway. So far so… potentially good? I’ve only been hearing samples so far, but soon I should have some tracks to check out properly. Jolly good. I needed to add some stuff to my iPod, anyway.

Unfortunately I’m a real anal prick when it comes to organising my iPod. Really, really anal. I can’t help it. I can’t stand seeing lower case names and unformatted ID3 tags. There’s just something criminal about it. I think Media Monkey might make it a bit easier, but I’m yet to try it properly. I do like it, however, as a general media player. It’s like a more power-user-friendly version of iTunes (not that I like iTunes that much, it’s just convenient).

The last couple of weeks have been pretty standard. I made it back down to Tartu for the first time in months, then got rather sick for the whole time I was there. Jolly good. It wasn’t until I had to leave that I started feeling better. Perhaps it’s an omen. I hope not.

Lots of old time slaves and staff are leaving the hostel, or have already left. Fortunately we have two more who’ve just signed aboard recently. Tim the Englishman and Thomas the Belgian. Maris and Britt are leaving at the end of next month, so we’ll need some lovely, talented cleaners to replace them or all hell could break loose. Fingers crossed.

I still want to increase the Internet speed here. There’s quite a few laptops floating around and they all suck up the bandwidth rather effectively. Besides, it’s nice to have fast speeds, ain’t it?

My credit card expires next month. I have to get it replaced ASAP. Ahhhhhhh.

Oh yeah, I didn’t read anything about the Oscars. Maybe I should now. When is the Olympics, by the way?

XMPlay

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Just a quick pimp. XMPlay is a much nicer portable audio player than VLC Media Player. It’s fast, slick (although I use the Windows Classic skin) and even has a media library function which sorts artists, album and track number! Finally. Now, if only it supported disc numbers, too.

So hot it's worth carrying

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It’s taken me much longer than it should have (being the self-confessed geek I am, of course), but I’ve finally started playing with portable software.

Normally I’d have no use for portable software as the only computer I’d spend serious time on would be my own desktop. This hasn’t been the case ever since I started travelling so I’ve typically been at the mercy of net cafes and their (usually shoddy) installations.

I’ve cranked up portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, OpenOffice and a few others onto my iPod along with VLC Media Player, just in case there’s no decent music player. Now I have practically my own computer housed on my 60 gigabyte iPod with my software, settings and music!

The best part is that none of my details or settings ever (well, shouldn’t) get saved on the actual PC I’m using. Of course, I run the risk of bloating up the poor little guy in the future. For the mean time, I’m enjoying it.

Hopefully I’ll be able to find even more fun things to run off him.

LAME.

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7

The encoder, I mean.

I’m re-ripping and re-encoding my CDs today, rather than doing anything useful. Audiograbber is now freeware (and sans-spyware), so you may as well go nuts, I say.

I wish I knew where my freebie, collectable TISM CD giveaway is that I received from one of their concerts a few years ago is. It’s a decent piece of memorabilia. Damn it. Oh well.

Life’s a piece of shit (wo-wo-wo)
Open your vein and slit (wo-wo-wo).Words to live by.

My computer still smokes it re: some weird video function called upon by certain games. Thanks, GPU.

I’m going to save up and buy a digital camera, new (good) headphones and perhaps a suckPod. 60 gigs is too tempting. Why can’t the other brands have decent sized drives in them? I hate them all. Rar.

Poo.

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15

I’ve been trying to work out a nifty way to export all of my 223 previous LJ entries in to a nice RSS format in order to have them all catalogued on my site. I could reformat the XML I’ve exported, but I’d still lose the URLs to the entries themselves. It’s a shame there’s no “historical RSS feeds” to flick back to and use.

In order to attempt this, I tried out ljArchive, a nice little application that can connect to LiveJournal’s servers and download your entire posting history and the comments that were made with it. Very handy if you just want to skim through your history. It even has some mathematical models and graphs that it can draw up if you’re in to those sorts of things. I certainly find it entertaining. For a program that didn’t do what I wanted it to do, I quite like it. I just discovered that it can export your journal in to a MIDI file, too! Now I can hear my journal played as notes. Useless, but sexy.

I just got back from Newcastle and saw Grant, my mystical elf cousin/uncle. I arrived at Lake Macquarie around 3pm and we went up around Civic to check out the developments around the waterfront. Very impressive. He’s just bought a terrace house a short walk from there in Cooks Hill. It’s a cute little place. We ended up watching the NRL final back at the shack with some Italian takeaway and had a few quiet drinks. We retired at around 10pm and I failed to get more than 1 hour of solid sleep at any one time, leading to my decision to sleep in until 9am instead of getting up at 6am like I’d originally intended.

This morning, at 9am, I got up and sat outside for a while after drinking the short black Grant made me at around 8am. I guess it took a while to hit me. It’s always pleasant just sitting out on the bench at the shack and doing nothing but enjoying the view of the lake. There’s something innately peaceful about the whole experience. How wannabe-artistic do I sound? Geez.

I zipped over to Caves Beach before heading off and had a dip. There was no surf at all and I was a little cold just standing around in the water so it wasn’t long until I showered off some of the salt and sand and got back in the car and made my way back down the highway and freeway to Hornsby. I wanted to beat the holiday traffic and left Swansea at 10am. I hit the Pacific Highway at Hornsby at 11am. Quite a good run.

On the way home I stopped in at Lou’s to give her a birthday card. I thought it was a rather appropriate one and felt impressed with myself for finding it. Self-congratulation is fun. It was nice being able to see her again and things seemed to go pretty well. The whole thing was reassuring, to say the least. Hopefully, if we manage to keep getting along like that I think things should be fine. I believe she’s drinking punch at the moment with her girlfriends. I could go for a fruity mix myself. I don’t believe I shall, though.

I’m spending the rest of the day preparing myself psychologically to sit down and completely dominate the work I have left for my project – tomorrow. I’ve always been a crammer and rather than fight against my nature I’m just going to ride with it then capitalise on my skills when the time is right. I feel so insightful.

Speaking of insight, it’s only been this last week that I’ve noticed a whole new side of music. I suppose I can now relate to a lot more themes in songs these days. Honestly, it feels kinda good. I’ve always been an experience junkie like that.