Juvenall Wilson

Hi. My name is Juvenall Wilson and I’m addicted to music. Since I was 11, not a single day of my life has gone by without listening to music. I find I focus better, deal with life with less stress and generally have an improved outlook when there is a constant stream of good tunes playing. So for a junkie like me, it’s important to have the right tools to listen to and organize your music.

Music Player: Winamp

Yes, as obvious as it sounds, this is something that needs to be included. If I had a buck for every time I’ve had to explain to someone what it is, where to get it and that it’s easily the best music player around, I’d be sailing around the globe with Rachael Ray right now (chicks that can cook = teh hawtness). I switched to this shortly after Winamp2 hit and I was even among the brave who stuck with it through the disaster that was Winamp3 (which was the only time I seriously looked for an alternative).

To me, what really sets it apart from say, iTunes or foobar2000, is it’s amazing “Media Library”. This wonderful little tool lets me manage my huge archive of music (currently over 15,000 tracks) in a thousand different ways. While not exactly the most powerful tool, it is the most efficient. I can create playlists, add music, sort/play by type, year or rating right from the player. At the same time, if I don’t want to really add files to my library, I can just drag them into the playlist editor. I also perfer it’s smaller visual footprint by default. I’m not exactly a “skins” sorta guy, so the fact Winamp takes up just enough space to get the job done is a great bonus for me. iTunes lies to hog up all of my screen real estate and foobar2000, well, lets just say I’ve yet to find a skin that wasn’t ugly as sin (besides, I shouldn’t have to hunt around to make it attractive).

Tagging: MusicBrainz

So what good is Winamp’s great Media Library if none of your songs have the correct ID3 information? Any of us who lived through the good ol’ Napster days knows how often you would end up with that “Ultra_Rare_Metallica_Demo_Track.mp3″, only to find out later it was a Conway Twitty song. Even worse, if you weren’t exactly the Ken Jennings of the music world, you really were shit out of luck. That was, until MusicBrainz came around.

Think of MusicBrainz as a Wikipedia for your music folder. The client program, using acoustic fingerprinting, scans and analyzes your music and attempts to match it up with a known copy in it’s user contributed database. Most of the time, it can find a perfect match with even limited information, otherwise, you can browse around to try and find the correct data on your own. Once named, you can save the data to the file and use that information to automatically organize your music directory in any way you see fit (For me, it’s Music > Artist > ArtistName - AlbumName - TrackNumber - Track) In the 3 or 4 years I’ve been using the program, my archive went from a completely disorganized directory with files named as whatever they were when ripped or downloaded, to an easily navigated library of tunes.

There are a few issues, however. I like to have as much data attached to my files as possible, however, MusicBrainz doesn’t include album/track years, genre information or album art. For that information, I have to load up something like MediaMonkey or do a Google/Wikipedia search. In spite of this drawback, it’s still a fast, effective and easy way to get your ID3s in order.

Playlist: MusicIP Mixer

Back in 2004, I picked up a new Sony Vaio. This was, and still is, a kick ass box. When I first loaded it up, it came with a little program that supposedly would help you automatically generate playlists based on matching criteria of the track itself. This was an awesome idea, if only it had worked and didn’t cost something like $40 for a limit of 10,000 tracks. This sent me on a search for an alternative. Well, after a good hour of looking around, I stumbled upon something called “Predixis MusicMagic Mixer“. So I gave it a spin and was instantly hooked. The next day, I went into work and shared it with everyone there (notably, our VP of marketing). They were hooked on the thing and there was even considerable talk of trying to partner with it (though, if I remember right, it was back burnered for the more pressing, “Shouldn’t we try to be profitable first” stuff). In spite of this, I managed to get myself a license and I’ve been hooked on it ever since.

Now, I’ve talked about this before,and since then, it’s only gotten better (and changed it’s name to easier to pronounce MusicIP Mixer). The mixes have become more accuricate, the interface is dramatically cleaned up and it even seems as if the program is completely free. Without question, MusicIP Mixer is the easiest, most effective way to create great playlists. My music library, iPod and even mix CDs simply wouldn’t be as good had I not become a user.

Internet Radio: Pandora’s Box

I’ll admit, I’ve only recently become a user of Pandora. Blame it on my huge music archive, blame it on the cave I live in, whatever. Needless to say, it’s become my crack. I have to have my daily Pandora fix or I’ll start beating up old ladies with wiffle bats. This led to a problem for me: I don’t like being attached to my browser. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Daniel Mackey (gotta give it up for another boy from Cork) has created a great little wrapper program that takes the Pandora interface and throws it into a desktop client (perfectly) named “Pandora’s Box“. As a direct result of Dan’s program, I’ve discovered a whole pile of new music. Go me!

Now I’m more then sure there are other great apps or plugins floating around. Perhaps there are even better options to those listed above. Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, feel free to show off you’re knowledge and make a fool of me in the comments.

You’re thinking, “well no shit, smartass”, right? Well, hear me out. As much as us nerds bash the company for troublesome products, draconian license schemes, complicated product versioning and it’s willingness to use it’s money to try and smite the little guy, it does do a number of things better than anyone else. Frankly, noting else demonstrates this better then the newly released Internet Explorer 7.

Now, while I could talk at length about the addition of tabs, the integrated RSS reader, improved (though not perfect) CSS support, highly streamlined interface and the slew of other features and improvements, I won’t. Those things have really been talked about and debated to death on every other blog, news site and community online. Some are awesome, some need work, others feel phoned in. What really stands out to me is how well these features were developed for novice computer users. To me, this is the company’s biggest strength and they’ve certainly capitalized on that.

This is most evident with how well IE7 manages RSS feeds. I’ve said before that the browser handles this better then Firefox, but what’s really impressive is how damn simple it is to use. Take my father for example. He doesn’t have a clue what RSS is, let alone how to “get one” (as he puts it). Within minutes of my installing it (though, in beta form) on his laptop, he was preaching to me about what it does and had already set himself up to monitor feeds from his favorite sites.

Keeping with the example of my father, the tabs are another really strong point for those who’ve never used a SDI (single document interface) browser before. When I tried to explain to him the advantage of using tabs over loading new windows with Firefox as the example, it really went over his head. While the tabs are generally easy to figure out for “mid-level” users, those new or inexperienced ones tell a different story. Many complain about not knowing how to use them, open up a new one, closing an old one, etc. It didn’t take my father more then a minute to figure all of this out with IE7. It really blew me away how quickly he picked up this implementation over Firefox’s. Now, what I think really helped was the help window. See, when you create a new tab in IE7, you get a default page explaining what the hell tabs are written in easy to understand language.

At the same time, however, a power user such as myself finds that it is yet again, a typically Microsoft product. Features such as sidebars or extremely customizable interface elements are either extremely well hidden or completely nonexistant. Granted, MS did take a line from Firefox and create a system to allow for extensions, but as of right now, there isn’t exactly an over abundance to choose from. What’s worse (completely in my opinion), is that Microsoft’s IE7 plugin site, will eventually list both free and paid items. This has the potential to become quite annoying if all the good, popular Firefox extension are ported for cash.

So again, IE7 is clearly a Microsoft Product. It’s really well built and easy to use for the less technical or demanding, but it’s has way too many turn offs for anyone who’s been around the block. Maybe it’s just me, though. If you’ve tried it, let me know what you thought in the comments.

After a lengthy conversation on life, politics and religion with a devoutly Muslim friend of mine, I noticed that even educated people seem to have this impression that anyone who picks on Scientology is against it on the grounds of it’s “strange” belief system. While I won’t argue that there are large numbers of people who do just that, there are many of us who don’t. I, for one, don’t care if you if believe in a roving cave zombie that magically rose from the dead after being nailed to some lumber, a spoiled and lazy Indian prince who sat around long enough to figure out the smarty-pants answer to everything or space aliens that flew other ailens into a volcano with 747s thousands of years before Boeing was incorporated. Feel free to look stupid however you choose. My beef, however, is with how an organization preying on people’s need for spiritual answers treats those who put their faith in whatever is being peddled.

In the case of Scientology, you’re not a spiritual believer, devotee or follower. Instead, you are a customer being recruited into a grand pyramid scheme. The church is constantly encouraging it’s members not to preach, but sell. Existing members earn commissions from new recruits, courses and classes about the religion can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, “auditing” sessions with the pseudoscientific “E-Meter” can also run Scientologists into the thousands of dollars and when I tried to investigate the religion itself, they attempted to up sell me on a “package” costing several hundred dollars. Now sure, it costs money to do anything in life. However, any bonafide religion is capable of finding followers willing to conduct these sort of things free of charge. Christians aren’t required to pay for confession, a local mosque gladly answered all questions I had about Islam without trying to sell me anything (they even gave me a copy of the Qur’an so I could study it further) and it’s unheard of for Buddhists to demand a fee to attend a meditation session. Hell, even small pagan groups managed to distribute expensive books and information freely to those truly looking to learn.

So why all this focus on money? Why, to pay for the expensive legal team used to scare and suppress those who are critical of the way the church runs and to keep it’s “copyrighted religious texts” from the non-paying public. You know, because a sign of an honest faith is deeply hidden secrets and intimidation. The legal team has managed to keep web sites from explaining the Scientology creationism story, preventing non-church scientologists (little “s”) from using religions terms and symbols and even attempting to confiscate servers.

Then you have to pay for all those pesky criminal proceedings. For example, there’s the case of Scientology’s founder’s wife and attempting to infiltrate the IRS to remove unfavorable documents on the cult. I could imagine charges for spying on the US Government and obstructing justice would cost a a heap of cash. Not to mention the charges of violations of basic human rights, kidnapping and even murder.

That’s right. This legitimate religious organization has on many occasions used it’s power to harm those who are blind enough to follow it. The most notable example of this is the case of Lisa McPherson. Not only was she held against her will for 17 days at Scientology’s Clearwater compound (Fort Harrison Hotel), she was denied access to the vital medical care and eventually died from malnutrition and dehydration. Lets not forget about Margarit Winkelmann, a bipolar woman who drowned herself after the church encouraged her to stop taking her medications. As if letting people die wasn’t enough, you have members such as Scott Mayer who testified that he was ordered to murder someone. There are even multiple allegations of people being held against their will. They even go as far as to require anyone participating in services to refuese any psychiatric treatment prescribed to them by a medical doctor.

Look, I am a very spiritual person. So if anyone honestly believes the Xenu story or even that Scientology is capable of helping you, more power to you. I strongly believe in many paths to enlightenment. However, understand that cults masquerading as a religion are out for themselves and will use anyone to whatever ends they see fit to protect themselves and the income they receive. If that’s alright by you, then perhaps you should stick with that prescribed psychiatric treatment just a while longer.

A few months back, I managed to get the time to sit down and try to hash out a new layout for this site. At fist, I was really on to something and loved where I was going. However, right in the middle of development, something major came up in my life that sorta forced me to cut a LOT of corners with respect to the design. I even found myself unable to finish off some of the most basic of features (like the completely missing footer that reader Omar constantly yelled at me for). Now, in a professional capacity, I wouldn’t let things go like that, but since this is simply a personal site, I didn’t have the same qualms.

Well, after working (and getting thoroughly burned on on) another project, I decided it was time to finish this up or just dump it all together. Luckily for me, I still had all of the original PSDs I created for the design. That shaved a lot of time since I didn’t want to do a major overhaul (I don’t hate it that much). So after a few hours, I had something I liked, built it out and finally threw together the theme.

Like I said, overall, not a drastic level of change. The entire content area was pulled together under a rounded outline, the header was cut back a shade, the search box was restored and I iconified several parts because it was looking sorta sparse. The biggest change, however, was to the comment system. I had a good idea before, but damn was it a mess. I removed the rounded corners (not worth the extra markup, and little else here is rounded, so what was the point?), improved the overall padding, fixed the colors, highlighted the reply form and again, iconified things for sexyness. I’ve also updated the photos section, cleaned up some junk code, streamlined parts of the xhtml (div soup is icky) and just for Omar, added a footer so he knows when the page has ended.

Feel free to leave feedback and tell me how shitty everything looks. Then again, I guess it could be worse. It could look like Leo Laporte’s site (sorry Leo, it just feels so ‘98..lol).

As a natural born Opera fan, I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t exactly an early adopter of this newish browser on the block. Sure, I had heard of this Phoenix, err, Firebird, “thing”, but Opera was giving me everything I wanted. We had great features like tabs, “paste and go”, and sidebars, a far superior rendering engine, and easily the most customizable browser around. Why would I bother switching? Well, along comes 2004 and I was hit with something truly awful; Opera 7. What a nightmare. Constant crashing, massive feature bloat and, at least for me, an issue with memory leaks. That’s when a coworker at allmusic.com strongly encouraged me to give Firebird, no wait, Firefox 0.8 a shot. Well, after some moans and groans about missing features, I was hooked. Finally, a browser that would not only allow me to choose how it worked, but what features I wanted! So, I ditched Opera and haven’t looked back. That is, until now.

I’ve been playing with it on my laptop since beta2 was released and while I clearly understand what “beta” software is, I was really expecting a much bigger “wow” factor. This same feeling has been carried over with the release of RC1. Here’s my basic rundown of disappointments:

Theme
Someone please tell me they’ll bring back the 1.x default. This working version is simply ugly as sin. Now, I’m fully aware that Mozilla has hired a company to improve things and that (like Whistler theme from the XP betas..ew), but honestly, who approved this? From my end, it looks as if they just threw something together at the last minute so people would know there’s a difference between it and the current stable. I guess I was just hoping for a little more innovation here.

Anti-Phishing
Great. In an effort to pander to the unwashed masses who honestly think “Gee, this total stranger says I’ve won $50,000,000 MILLION FROM THE DEPOSED LEADER OF SIERRA LEONE and all I have to do is give him my banking information? Sweet!”, I now have to suffer through virtual hand holding? Yes, I can turn off the feature. That’s not the point. The whole reason I switched in the first place was I didn’t have features forced at me. Perhaps the best solution here is to take a que from the anti-virus industry and put a “Would you like Anti-Phishing on?” in the installer. Better yet, do like Wordpress and include it as a default-off extension (yes, I also know the same idiots who fall for that crap are the same ones who won’t bother activating it in the first place).

Built-in Spell Checking
I’ll admit, in my current 1.5.0.7, I use an extension called Spellbound to provide me on-the-fly spellchecking since I tend to have the spelling ability of a retarded 4th grader. However, this was something that had value to me personally. My girlfriend on the other hand, is a spelling wiz and has no use for such a function. Well done, Mozilla. More feature bloat.

Improved RSS Support
Thanks, but no thanks. I know a lot of people will argue with me on this, but I don’t like having to open a web browser just to get the headlines. At that point, why not just set Newsvine as my homepage and be done with RSS? I would much rather have a small reader live in my systray from boot where I can quickly glance at what’s going on without, say, leaving Photoshop to do it. FeedDemon does a perfect job at this (I know it’s not free, but there are plenty of good alternatives). Besides, next to IE7’s function, FF leaves a bit to be desired (but don’t take my word for it).

Mind you, I’m still reserving final judgement for whatever the final version has to offer. I know how software development can get off track, only to be saved at the last minute before launch. However, if this is the current track of things, perhaps Opera (or even *gasp* IE7) may be in my future. Only time will tell.