bookmark_borderTilt head for info

click. bsssszzz, k-chunk. click-klack. Bzzzzzz kvrrrummm whiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

“Importing….”

“Import Complete”

click. bsssszzz, k-chunk. click-klack. Bzzzzzz kvrrrummm whiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Or, as has been the case, for about 10 CDs at one sitting.

I have a lot of CDs and one day they will all be in the loft, gathering dust, replaced by their digital cousins. It’s a slow process, mainly because it’s so tediously manual but at least iTunes helps by detecting the CDs, finding the CD data, and importing them to sensible locations.

This process stalled until recently when my new PC arrived, and has started up again as I now have plenty of legroom in which to stretch my digital legs. I also have a nice powerful graphics card which means I can use iTunes Cover Flow view. This allows me to flip through my music collection by CD cover, or rather by MP3 “cover art”, and offers a nice graphical way to interact with my digital content. It means I don’t need to scroll endlessly down lists of tracks when I simply want to browse for some music and pick whatever takes my fancy.

But there is a flaw with this system.

I don’t know the covers of all my CDs.

I know the spines.

I doubt many would have stored their CDs face out, unless they worked in a music store maybe, and without that view of my “analog” music collection it’s next to useless. So whilst Cover Flow view is all nice and whizzy and LOOKS v.impressive, it’s not really. So I guess the question is, who wants to take photos of the spines of all my CDs??

bookmark_borderGripes and Groans

I know a few of you use Movable Type. If so, how do you build a test system? For WordPress work I use XAMPP on my PC, it’s an absolute doddle.

There are Perl add-ons for XAMPP, and I found a guide to installing Movable Type in a XAMPP system but the buggering thing won’t work. I’ve checked and double-checked paths, filenames and all that gubbins but still get errors. There MUST be an easier way.. or is that why people switch to WordPress (or something else?).

~

At the risk of illiciting “told you so” style comments… I’m having hassles with iTunes. For some reason it just stops working. I was working at home yesterday and listening to music quite happily. I restarted my PC at one point after having installed some new software and iTunes refused to start!

A couple of un-installs later and some not inconsiderable time spent browsing the iTunes support forums found me uninstalling QuickTime only, repairing the install and it works. So far. I’ve not yet had to reboot and try it again so I’m reserving judgement. From what I can tell, once again, it seems like Apple haven’t tested their software properly, and the forums suggest that’s true as well as there are many people having issues with the fact they have different logins on their Windows boxes and iTunes is ‘losing’ preference files, then crashing when it can’t find them. Not elegant and pretty basic if you ask me.

~

My other blog has stalled. Mainly because I want to tweak the design a little before I publish. I have a few articles written up but can’t find the enthusiasm to get it going. What happened? Less than a month ago I was raring to go, fired up and… ohh what. That’s what one of the articles is about. As a quick aside, has anyone taken the Belbin team role tests? If so, what ‘team role’ are you? And can you guess which one I am??

~

Anyone know of a flat, vertical, wall-mountable, radio alarm clock? Thinner the better, must have digital clock and radio alarm and be wall-mountable. In case you didn’t get all that the first time…

~

And yes, I’m still “twittering”.

bookmark_borderChirpy chirpy cheep cheep

OK. Despite the fact I bemoaned this very web service a few weeks back I have since signed up and sent…

Actually, hold up a minute.

You know, I have stood infront of a room full of strangers, the midst of a presentation on blogging, and said “I hate the word blogging”. Blogging is an ugly word. UG-LEEEEE. Throw in… ohh god.. “blogosphere” and I’m practically retching.

Thankfully, “twitter” brings to mind birds chirping at dawn, or perhaps a chorus of ladies-wot-lunch. Either way it’s not that bad a word. Alas the surrounding verbiage is already starting to grate. Do I really “tweet” when I send a message to Twitter? REALLY? I digress.

Meg recently pondered the explosive growth of Twitter:

“… the Twitter value proposition is thousands of people answering one simple question: “what are you doing right now?” All these tangential services and derivative extensions are in danger of warping that proposition entirely, turning Twitter into a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.”

Which, to a point, is true, but as I suggested in her comments, I think that “warping that proposition” is entirely within the business plan for Twitter, and is probably the only reason that it exists.
Continue reading “Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep”

bookmark_borderNot simple, Civic

I KNEW this would happen, in fact I should’ve publically predicted it and made it look like I had this planned all along.

Hey, wait a minute… you don’t KNOW that I didn’t have it planned. Shoot. Oh well…

Yesterday I was prattling on about how I was increasingly favouring simple, functional things and slowly weaning myself off my techno-lust. I guess it can be best summarised by the phrase “simplicity loves company”. Of course, no sooner had I posted that than I go an shoot myself in the foot. Not really of course, as I don’t have a gun (Americans may note that this is an entirely agreeable way to live your life (he said, succumbing to stereotype)). Figuratively my entire left foot is just a bloody stump.

Hmmm, from the bewildered faces in the audience I guess I’d better explain.

[wibbly wobbly back in time sequence follows]

All in all we had a quiet weekend, with some gardening on Saturday, interrupted only by a haircut and the Scotland game, and we had similar planned for Sunday. So, after an early morning run (look, 10am IS early for a Sunday!) we headed home and started pottering. A little weeding, some tidying up in the house, and doing our best to avoid the “Everyone Loves Raymond” marathon on TV as we’d already lost an hour to it over lunch.

My parents had phoned to say that they were heading to IKEA so probably wouldn’t come over (although they did in the end and we all stuffed ourselves on Chinese food), and after a while we found ourselves sitting having a coffee, discussing the back garden and generally pondering what to do next. I’d picked up a copy of AutoExpress the day before, as we will be changing the car soon, and was leafing through it when Louise suggested why not just go and have a browse round the showrooms.

Some of you can probably guess where this is heading already. Don’t spoil it for the others though..

We’d already talked over a couple of different car options, both similarly priced and spec’d, both a ‘size’ up from our current Peugeot 206, and we’d narrowed it down to either the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra, or Honda Civic. Neither of us are that keen on the Focus, and as there isn’t a local Vauxhall garage we decided to head to the local Honda dealership. 15 minutes later I’m sitting in the showroom in the new Honda Civic. This, it seems, was a mistake.
Continue reading “Not simple, Civic”

bookmark_borderSimple is as simple does

I’m going to start this with something controversial, I do hope the following statement doesn’t shock you, so please take a moment to prepare yourself.

OK? All set? Maybe a few deep breaths first.

OK, here it is.

My new PC is fast, shiny and does lots and lots and lots of things.

Phew, that was something, wasn’t it! WOW! Everyone still with me? I realise that must have been a bit of a jolt. OK, some more deep breaths, calm calm.

[What IS all this nonsense? Get on with it! Ed]

OK, I wanna take about how my use of technology is getting simpler. Coming from a self-confessed gadget-freak, that statement wouldn’t even have been contemplated a few years ago, let alone typed, checked, edited and published!

Of course, technically speaking, it’s the software that helps me do all those lots and lots and lots of things. Over the years, and with much experimentation, I’ve slowly found good workable solutions for all my ‘tech’ needs. So much so that, increasingly, or rather DEcreasingly, I no longer spend much time searching for new applications that will help me do new ‘stuff’ on my PC preferring to, you know, actually getting things done.

I realise it’s not much of a revelation to most, if any, but it marks a change in my mindset and I thought I’d mark such a momentous occasion (for my mind is like an giant oil tanker, it takes several miles to slow down, let alone turn in another direction) by delving a little deeper. Yeah yeah, I know…

This ‘new’ way of viewing my PC means I no longer need to fight around the technological barriers I used to place in my own way. I used to download and experiment with a lot of software, trying different types of graphics apps, different email apps, browsers, 3rd party add-ons and so on and on and on.

But no longer! I’ve slimmed down (my PC), gone lean and mean and I’ve slowly begun to realise that, subconsciously, this is something that I’ve already started doing with my other ‘gadgets’.
Continue reading “Simple is as simple does”

bookmark_borderWebstar Cable Modem

I’m posting this in the vague hope it’ll help others, save them a few bob, and at the very least it’ll mean I have this info stored somewhere when I need to look it up again.

The problem
My cable modem was connecting, but dropping the connection after a few minutes. Rebooting the modem gave me the same result, as did rebooting the PC AND the modem. Annoying.

So I bit the bullet and phoned Virgin Media technical support.

Three minutes into the call (at 50p a minute I might add) I finally got put through to a young lady. After confirming that I had tried rebooting my PC, and switching the cable modem on and off again (with at least a 30 sec gap in between), she asked me to type open a web browser.

The solution
Open a web browser and go to – http://192.168.100.1/gscan.htm

Having done so (and I’ve NO idea what that’ll get you if you don’t have a Scientific-Atlanta WebStar Cable Modem) I was presented with a web page with some large numbers on it.

The downstream frequency and starting frequency were both set to 333250000, this is wrong so I needed to enter the proper value – 331000000.

So, enter 331000000 as the starting frequency, bash the “Click here to restart your cable modem” button and bob’s the brother of your mother.

You can reload the page to check the values ‘took’.

And no, I’m not entirely sure WHAT the values are but it worked a treat for me.

I also suspect it’s more to do with the switch from BlueYonder to Virgin Media than anything to do with my lovely, fast and shiny PC.