Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

Back in the old days (I’m talking 1993), I found an OctaMED module on Aminet, that I really liked, called Rainlight. Since then, I’ve often thought about this track, and today downloaded it again.

Finding something that would play, and convert it well was a bit of a struggle. I tried SoundApp, but that would have clicking errors, so I had to look elsewhere. (I later found out these errors were due to it trying to upsample to 22kHz, 11 works okay.)

I also tried CocoModX, which would only play the track too fast. I could change the tempo, but this song has tempo marks throughout it, and it kept speeding up again).

Finally, I used Sound Trecker, which, like SoundApp, requires classic, but it worked (I was able to change the sample rate), and I was able to export it to AIFF, and then import this into iTunes.

So, and important part of my computing/music heritage is now safe in my iTunes library. Yay Rainlight.

The Darth Side: A New Hope:

This has got to be the best idea for fan-fiction I’ve ever come across.

Do yourself a favour, read the Darth Side…

I’m sure I’ve talked about SubEthaEdit before.

Version 2.2 has been released. Reading the Release Notes, I see my fix:

- XHTML export and "Copy as XHTML" now export quotes as entities.

In the latest issue of Express, the TransAdelaide Newsletter, the main stories discuss the new tramline extension:

Passengers on the new tram extension will travel free, replacing the Bee line bus.

The 99B also services the West End, and is much more frequent than the 99C. If they do kill the whole Bee-line, they’d sure better increase the frequency of the City Loop!!

Playing around with WP tags, I discovered it’s easy to put Edit This links/buttons onto posts and comments, that will only appear when a user who is able to edit them is logged in.

So, there’s now a reason to register as a user: it means you can edit any comments you make.

Of course, it’s easier to just comment, and enter your details. Since I don’t get much comment spam, I won’t be turning on ‘Only Registered Users Can Comment’ any time soon, but a nice feature for me to have.

The code in my templates is:

1. To change the links at the top of the page to Login/Logout, and Register/Site Admin, depending on context, use the following Smarty Tags:
• {wp_loginout}
• {wp_register}
2. To put the Edit This in the post header:
• {edit_post_link before='<span class="button">' after='</span>'}
3. To put the Edit This in the comment box:
• {edit_comment_link before='<span class="button" >' after='</span>'}

I’ve been playing around with my template files under Blogsome, and have come across some limitations - I’m not sure if they are limitations of WordPress Mu, or Blogsome’s installation.

1. No Page Template. Without page templates it’s impossible to make Pages display a particular way, without writing the bare HTML code yourself. It’s also not possible to implement Smarty Tags in pages without a template file.

(I’m sure I had some others to add to this list.)

Found what could be a useful tool today.

Predixis MusicMagic Mixer

According to the website,

The MusicMagic Mixer is the ultimate music library power tool to create dynamic and interesting playlists, or mixes. MusicMagic automatically analyzes your music collection. Analyzed songs are used to build custom mixes for hours of listening enjoyment.

Basically, it (apparently) looks for songs that are similar in some quality to the one(s) you choose.

I don’t know how long it will take to index a 6000 track library, so that might be a nice test for it…

I’ll download and test it out tonight.

A while ago, I played around with my site StyleSheet, and set it up so that a paragraph of text with the class iTunes had a little icon placed next to it. This seems to have stopped working. Must look into it.
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I mused a couple of days ago about better headphones for my daily iPodding-commute. I looked at the Sony ones, and they varied in price between $75 and $119 (AU$). I wasn’t quite prepared to pay that much, so I found another, cheaper pair.

Enter the JVC HA-FX55W in-ear buds: @ AU$37. Still more than I have ever paid for a set of headphones (I think $2 was the most, and they were crap).

They are not noise-cancelling buds, or at least not active ones: they a more like the soft earplugs I use most days at work, and I quite like the feeling of them in my ear. The best feature is that they really do cut down on the amount of outside noise that gets in, so I can keep the iPod on a lower (constant) level, no matter where I am: be it on the train or next to a busy road.

I have found one possible drawback, when in medium-high wind, there is a whistling noise I can hear. Would not be good on a bike, but I’ll see if I can adjust them using one of the supplied covers.

I have been using a Toolbar Script called "Open Terminal Here" for a while now (thanks Marc), and the one thing about it that annoyed me was that when Terminal was not running, it would start the application, and then create a second window with my path in it.

I’ve fixed this, by altering the code slightly.
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