Schinckel.net

Tonight on Channel 10 (the only commercial TV station in Australia not to yet align itself with a web portal: c.f. nineMSN, yahoo7), we saw the premiere of the intellectually stimulating Australia’s Brainiest Radio Star at 7:30pm. I only saw the last two minutes, enough to see the winner fluke the last question. What I want to know is: where were Dr Karl and Adam Spencer, of Triple J/ABC Local Radio? Surely they have to be amongst the smartest Radio personalities. And Dr Karl is hardly not a star! The first question I saw was something about a cricket ball vs. a pendulum, asking the question a cricket ball has more degrees of … freedom. The joker answering got this wrong, which I’m fairly sure both of my champions would not have. The determinant question asked What is the correct term for a group of 7 musicians? The contestant ummed and aahed, before shakily guessing (correctly) a septet.

Mr. Bojangles • Robbie Williams • Swing When You’re Winning ★★½

I used to work at a Swimming Pool. I can category deny ever doing the following: We used Polywaffles! Just kidding. We had to fish it out when kids shat in the pool. And then just put more chlorine in. While we are on the toilet functions theme, this one caught my eye: It’s still a bodily function week: At last, something about non-bodily functions: Damn, these pretzels are making me thirsty.

Whenever I need to do any calculations, I generally drop into python and do them from there. However, I came across a neat tip over on Mac Geekery: When You Need A Calculator. I’ve modified is ever so slightly so it goes into a .profile instead of a .bashrc:

1     function calc
2     {
3         awk "BEGIN {print $* ; }"
4     }

Sweet.

I thought I’d already written up a post on this, since I discovered it about a month ago, but apparently not. Blogsome has a nice little function called {is_asides}. It allows for easy alternate formatting of posts within a category called Asides. So, to have these fancy little numbers, the first thing you’ll need is an Asides category, with a post in it. Then, in your Post Template, try the following code: <div class="post {is_aside}{if $is_aside=='true'}Asides{/if}" id="post-{the_ID}"> This sets up the class of the post to also be Asides if it is in that category. I’ll make a note here that this could be done with any category, and just use {the_category seperator=" "}. This would allow alternate styling for any given category, but I wanted to use the {is_asides} Smarty function. That’s all of the code you need, the rest is just pure CSS. In my stylesheet, I have the following code, that looks after all of the Aside related stuff:

 1     .Asides
 2     {
 3         border:#E1D6c6 1px dashed;
 4         padding:6px;
 5     }
 6     .Asides .post-info
 7     {
 8         display:none;
 9     }
10     .Asides .post-footer
11     {
12         background:none;
13         padding-top:0px;
14     }
15     .Asides .post-content
16     {
17         border-top:none;
18         padding:2px;
19         background: url(/images/blockquote.gif) no-repeat left top;
20     }

The first stanza sets up the border and layout for the actual post. The second hides all of the post-info, such as Date, Title, etc. I later decided to move the Comments Link, else there is no way to view/add comments. The third removes the fancy symbol that appears between posts, and the last one removes the line at the top, and puts some lovely quotes into the background. I’m still going to tweak this a little: on an individual post page, the next/previous post links overlap with the bottom of the border.

A track just came onto my iTunes via Party Shuffle. It’s one I haven’t heard for a while, but reminded me of the time we went to see this band live. Especially notable, as it was at the Speigeltent, during the Adelaide Fringe Festival some years back, and it’s that time of the year again. It was, I believe, just before Derek left Adelaide for the big smoke of Sydney. Well, Wollongong, anyway. He did work in Sydney… Anyway, we went to see this band, on my birthday, and were the only customers there. That’s right, the whole venue was empty, and because of us, they had to perform. And there were good! I enjoyed them, and bought a CD. It’s about the only time I’ve ever bought a CD right after going to a gig. Maybe I felt a little sorry for them, maybe I didn’t. So, I just switched over to iTunes to see when the CD was released: 1999. That means it was probably 2000 when we went to see them. Six years ago. Has it been that long since Derek left? This is one of my favourite of the tracks on the album:

Wish • Honey • Honey ★★★★

More than anything, I wish that you were here; To laugh at all my fears; To hold me in your arms, and laugh at all my shame; And to love me still. But you’re gone and I hold my head down, And I wonder where you are; And I see you when I’m sleeping, babe; I Wish I’d Loved You, I Wish I’d Loved You, I Wish I’d Loved You More.

Here are some random links I found on Google about them: DM3, Honey @ Mojo’s Bar, September 25, 1999 Honey, Self-title album Review (This one I had to scroll back up a bit from the anchor point to read it, the link seems a bit broken.) I wonder if they are still together/performing/recording.

iTunes displays half-star ratings, and stores all ratings from 0-100, not just the full star value. However, if you Get Info on a file, and go into the Options tab, you will lose any non full-star rating information that is stored for this track.

Game Show Host • Lo-Tel • Planet Of The Stereos ★★★

I’ve updated my Insert iTunes Data (HTML) script for generating a block of text that describes the current playing iTunes track. This version links to the iTunes Music Store, rather than Google. It is relatively smart, in that the track name link also has the artist name, and the album name does too, as long as the album isn’t a compilation. The only (slight) bug is that the track name seems to need to be just the way iTMS displays it, so having (Live) might stuff up a link. This might be only if there isn’t a Live version in the iTMS.

I Can’t Tell You Why (Live) • Eagles • Hell Freezes Over ★★★★★

Code after the jump.

 1     -- Insert some data about the currently playing iTunes track into browser.
 2     
 3     property star : «data utxt2605» as Unicode text
 4     property half : «data utxt00BD» as Unicode text
 5     property quarter : «data utxt00BC» as Unicode text
 6     property threeq : «data utxt00BE» as Unicode text
 7     property browser : "Firefox"
 8     property URLprefix : "itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?"
 9     
10     on run {}
11      
12      tell application "System Events"
13          try
14              get process "iTunes"
15          on error
16              return "No Track"
17          end try
18      end tell
19      
20      tell application "iTunes"
21          set theTrack to current track
22          set theArtist to artist of theTrack
23          set theAlbum to album of theTrack
24          set theRating to rating of theTrack
25          set theComp to compilation of theTrack
26          set theTrack to name of theTrack
27          --set trackInfo to {theTrack, theArtist, theAlbum, theRating}
28      end tell
29      
30      set trackLink to "<a href='" & URLprefix & "songTerm=" & HTMLify(theTrack) & "&amp;artistTerm=" & HTMLify(theArtist) & "'>" & theTrack & "</a>"
31      set artistLink to "<a href='" & URLprefix & "artistTerm=" & HTMLify(theArtist) & "'>" & theArtist & "</a>"
32      if theComp is true then
33          set theArtist to "" -- No Artist if album is compilation!
34      end if
35      set albumLink to "<a href='" & URLprefix & "albumTerm=" & HTMLify(theAlbum) & "&amp;artistTerm=" & HTMLify(theArtist) & "'>" & theAlbum & "</a>"
36      
37      set theString to "<p class='itunes'> " & trackLink & " • " & artistLink & " • " & albumLink & " " & myRating(theRating) & "</p>"
38      
39      set the clipboard to theString
40      
41      tell application browser
42          activate
43          tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using {command down}
44      end tell
45     end run
46     
47     on HTMLify(someText)
48      set someText to replace(someText, "&", "&amp;")
49      set someText to replace(someText, "\"", "&quot;")
50      set someText to replace(someText, "<", "&lt;")
51      set someText to replace(someText, ">", "&gt;")
52      set someText to replace(someText, " ", "+")
53      set someText to replace(someText, "'", "&apos;")
54      return someText
55     end HTMLify
56     
57     on replace(theText, find, replace)
58      -- Nice replace function
59      set OldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
60      set AppleScript's text item delimiters to find
61      set newText to text items of theText
62      set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replace
63      set theResult to newText as text
64      set AppleScript's text item delimiters to OldDelims
65      return theResult
66     end replace
67     
68     on myRating(theRating)
69      set theResult to ""
70      repeat 5 times
71          if theRating ≥ 20 then
72              set theResult to theResult & star
73          else if theRating ≥ 10 then
74              set theResult to theResult & half
75          end if
76          set theRating to theRating - 20
77      end repeat
78      return theResult
79     end myRating

One More Time • Daft Punk • Triple J Hottest 100 – Volume 9 ★★★

I googled for HTMLify Applescript, wanting to find out some simple code for how to escape the text in an AppleScript string, so I can pass it as arguments to a URL. My site came up with the top link. I was hoping for a better solution to the one I had come up with!

I’ve been busily rating all of my iTunes tracks, and consider that I’ve done a very good job. My Unrated playlist (Rating is 0; Played Count is 0; Genre does not contain Classical; Podcast is false) has only 224 tracks. My total library is 7741 tracks, so it’s about 97% done. Not counting Classical tracks and Podcasts, obviously.

Actually, if I take this into account, my Music Library is only 5962 tracks, and I’ve rated about 96%.

Anyway, you get the picture. An overwhelming number of my tracks are rated. So now, I just sit back, and count the money as it rolls in let iTunes choose my music.

I’ve got a Smart Playlist called Party Shuffler, which I set my Party Shuffle to use as the source, and turn on Play higher rated songs more often. The Party Shuffler playlist has the following Logic:

• Genre is not Classical
• Last Played is not in the last 3 days
• Genre is not Holiday
• Comment does not contain re-import
• Genre is not Books & Spoken
• Genre is not Interview
• Match only checked songs
• Live Updating

I might be able to get rid of some of the Genre stuff, by having the Skip when shuffling item checked on various tracks, but then I’d need to remember to do this to new music I import.

Oh, and I keep my rating window open, and every now and then re-rate the track that’s playing – especially if I’ve decided I don’t like the track quite so much anymore.

Wipe Out • The Beach Boys • Still Cruisin' ★★