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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

This blog will serve as a dumping ground for browser-based security research and vulnerability disclosure. To kick off this blog, we are announcing the Month of Browser Bugs (MoBB), where we will publish a new browser hack, every day, for the entire month of July. The hacks we publish are carefully chosen to demonstrate a concept without disclosing a direct path to remote code execution. Enjoy!

Since most of the bugs are reported to be Internet Explorer issues and considering how slowly Microsoft is known to address problems, it’s likely these could turn into something far worse then a simple crash (since that’s really a gateway to code execution). To be fair to MS, I’m assuming that most of these are unknown to them. If that’s the cause, you can’t really blame them for their existence; it’s just the nature of coding software. So this could be a great test of the company’s recent commitment to protecting it’s users.

Update: I’m retarded. Most of the bugs listed so far indicate they were reported to Microsoft. Many of them months ago.

This office represents the L. Ron Hubbard Library, the owner of the copyrights to a number of scriptures and trade secrets, the founder of the Scientology religion, has issued the following notice to Verio Inc, a subsidiary of NTT Communications. The website “codebot.org” under your control registered to IP address 161.58.73.89 is in violation of federal trademark and copyright laws.

This information summary contains the details necessary for you to understand the events, background and issues of the equity and law that pertains to the Church of Scientology’s fight for its property and First Amendment right of free religious exercise.

A small portion of the Church’s scriptures were broadly released on said website, and made available to the general public who have not completed the prior steps of religious study and counseling. Conspiracy to disseminate Scientology’s copyrighted and trade secret scriptures is a crime and will result in arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisoned for theft. Additionally, The Church faces economic harm from what would be essentially black market trafficking in its protected works and attempts to dissuade individuals from becoming Scientologists by holding its scriptures up to derision. As a result we request you suspend the account holding this website, and place this notice up in reparation for our damages. Your prompt attention to this matter will result in no further legal action.

We appreciate your attention.

I would *love* for the “church” to explain to me how I’m not supposed to think this is a dangerous cult bent on hiding the truth about itself from the public. Until then, here are a few great resources about why Scientology is a dangerous cult and should be stopped.

Scientology Murders People
Time: “Scientology: The Cult of Greed”
Scientology’s Human Rights Abuses
Scientology Uses Brainwashing
Scientology Attacks & Spies on America

Two men kicked in the front door of the home, and the property owner grabbed a firearm.

At that point the invaders left… but as they were going, a shot was fired at their vehicle and hit the driver.

The culprits drove to Russell to complain to the RCMP.

The driver was treated for his injuries and released to the police.

Now, 28 year old Harvey Joseph Young is charged with Attempted Murder, along with eight other weapons and firearm-related charges.

So what this tells me is that the government of Canada wants to protect the rights of criminals to break into the homes of it’s citizines. They’re telling their own constituents that if you defend your home and protect your family, you are guilty of a crime. I’m glad to see they have everything in order.

Those of you who know me, know I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment and the right of free speech it provides us. The ability for anyone to express their opinion or beliefs is the cornerstone of the success of the modern world. That’s why, as much as it pains me, I will always defend the rights of the of vile groups like the KKK, Neo Nazis, Canadians and even the Westboro Baptist Church it’s perversion of Christian teachings. At the same time, however, I will also defend the rights of others to put your stupid ass in it’s place. Take this example from the Fox News show “Hannity & Combs”. They exercise their right to free speech right up this wackjob’s ass.

Go on, watch the video. Ill wait.

Damn, dude. You know you were just served a big plate of shut the fuck up when Alan Combs is man enough to make you look stupid. Just try and tell me he wasn’t the guy everyone would urinate on in the locker room back in his high school days. Though, the highlight for me was Hannity’s “What are your sins?” Her reaction was just pure gold.

As fun as this is though, there’s still the question of why the media sees the need to put them on. It’s only giving them the pulpit they’re looking for to spread their dumbass thinking. I mean, you don’t see them invite the The American Nazi Party on, do you? Just like trolls on the Internet, if you ignore them, they will go away.

Normally, I would have worked on fixing it right away, but I started working for a health food company a few days later and the design took a back seat. Clearly, I had to put work before personal sites. Little did I know that the company was in such a sad state, that it would take up 95% of my day. It was so bad, that I even found myself unable to post as much as I had in 2005. For a while, it was looking like this was going to turn into a ghost town.

So two nights ago, I spent a few hours in Photoshop and comped out a new layout. Then, at 6am, I finally hit upon something I liked and started to work on the build. Then last night, I worked it into Wordpress and let it go live while I knocked out some bugs. Today, I finished off the photo gallery, cleaned up a few IE bugs and now I think it’s ready to go. Sure, it’s not the best work I’ve ever done, but for 2 days of work, I’m happy with it.

Now, I’m sure some will jump on me for using a fixed width layout that’s wider than 800px. To them, I say “piss off”. First, a “liquid layout” is a retarded idea for a site where text is the primary content. The vast majority of people (and a number of well funded studies) show that people find reading monitor text uncomfortable when the lines are longer than 10-15 words. With a liquid layout, an entire paragraph could span into a line or two. Aside from the fact that’s ugly as sin, it’s hard to follow the point when vertigo sets in. Really, just try reading a really long Wikipedia article on a 21 inch monitor and see how long it takes before you find yourself slumped over the back of your chair vomiting and praying for death.

With respect to the width of the page, I can see several good arguments for this. Some people have a hard time reading things at a larger resolution, some simply can’t afford a modern monitor and yet others don’t browse at full screen. So we, as designers have been locked into this 800×600 death trap. This, in spite of the fact that for the last year or so, the majority of uses (on most sites) are using 1024×760. The numbers here show that 800×600 only accounts for 8% of uses. At that point, you have to ask yourself why you’re dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator? After all, bigger sites like ESPN and Yahoo’s new beta are giving them the boot, why not me?

I would love to hear what you think about the changes. Post or die!