Why bother downloading music?

Published on August 5, 2009 in Internet and Music. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

Who still bothers with risking a law suit from the RIAA by downloading music these days when there’s so much on offer which is just streamed directly to your PC?

Grooveshark – http://www.grooveshark.com/

grooveshark

Type in the name of a song there on the homepage and you’re away. Not so sure on the “autoplay” feature which occasionally queues up some really random stuff but aside from that it’s a brilliant site for listening to the odd track here and there or creating playlists and letting them go.

Grooveshark offer great integration to Facebook with their Sharesong app and Wordpress with their plugin. They also offer a URL shortening service specifically for music over at tinysong.com (e.g. tinysong.com/37GX)

Last.fm - http://last.fm/

It’s the closest we can get to Pandora in the UK these days. Streaming custom radio stations tailored to your exact music tastes is something only the web can offer. You ask for an artist and it’ll use it’s vast collection of data to create a custom playlist full of artists similar based on what other users of the site listen to.

Unlike Spotify, Last.fm have opened their API allowing developers to make their own third party apps which can access content, Mobbler being a prime example. Many an evening I’ve plugged my speakers into my phone and let Last.fm be the DJ..

The Hype Machine – http://hypem.com/

Scouring the so-called blogosphere for tracks posted on music blogs, the Hype Machine is a great place to find countless remixes of your favourite artists. You can create watchlists containing recently posted material from only the artists you’re interested in or you can dive straight in and see what’s being talked about the most across the Internet.

The site will continue to play tracks even if you carry on navigating around the site. However it will only play music as it comes in the order of search results, there doesn’t seem to be a proper way of creating custom playlists.

HypeM is integrated nicely with Twitter and Last.fm allowing you to tweet your recently “loved” tracks and scrobble the tracks you’re listening to your Last.fm profile.

Spotify – http://www.spotify.com/

This ad-supported service with it’s own stand alone client is expanding it’s huge music library with thousands of tracks added each week. Some artists have taken to pre-releasing albums to premium subscribers and their mobile client offering the ability to download entire playlists to your device *almost* makes it worth the £10/month fee.. but that’s still a rip off if you ask me.

I went to a party a little while ago, the host had paid for the much more reasonable £0.99 one-off “day pass” 24hour subscription to Spotify and left it open on his laptop the whole night so that anyone could jump on and queue up a tune. It was the world’s best jukebox, no listening to the same crappy party mix CDs on repeat, no dead air when switching CDs..

Spotify also supports scrobbling tracks to Last.fm from a setting in the preferences.

The YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/

I hate to even mention this one but there’s definitely a lot of music uploaded there, usually with a static image or slideshow of the artist where the video should be. I just find something really wrong with using a video site to listen to music, the quality is usually terrible but it’s probably by miles the most popular in this list.. Music videos on YouTube recently took a massive hit when the record companies objected to their material being uploaded resulting in over 100,000 videos being removed from the site.

Moof – http://moof.com/

Music, online, on-demand, for free… is a spin off of YouTube giving the user an iTunes-like web interface to search and playlist videos from YouTube. It’s not a bad idea but I’ve already mentioned my reservations about getting music from the YouTube.

In conclusion, perhaps there is still a place for listening to an albums worth of mp3s but I don’t find myself doing it that much any more.. And remember these are a just a choice few, new sites are innovating all the time – keep your eyes open for the next big thing.

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A Favicon

Published on July 27, 2009 in Blog and Internet. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Just to prove I’m still alive mainly, I made a little favicon for my site because I was sick of seeing it in my bookmarks toolbar with the boring default Firefox icon!

And here it is:

A ctrl+f5 clear cache refresh should get it for you if you can’t see it already..

Blurb

Published on May 18, 2009 in Life and Photos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

(Note: I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. Now, finally getting around to posting…!)

There is a huge difference between sticking photos into a photo album and the amazing service offered by Blurb.com

I originally found the site through Flickr.com – they have links to various printing companies and Blurb was one so I decided to check it out.

The process involved couldn’t have been simpler – the final product, couldn’t be better.

To start, download the “BookSmart” software, which is currently only available for Windows XP/Vista & Mac OS. I will forgive them for not offering a Linux version of the software.. But ideally this should be sorted sooner rather than later.

The BookSmart software is used to build a photobook from scratch, allowing you arrange photos and text in a number of pre-defined templates. It’s very customisable but I kept it simple for my first book.

booksmart_frontpage

I chose the best photos from my trip to Toronto and New York and compiled them into a 40 page book. The result is like I said before amazing, it’s a professional quality book. I got 4 printed and gave them to the guys we went on the trip with for their birthdays, the ultimate in personalised and unique gifts I’d say.

There are five different sizes of book you can create and an option is given for soft back or hard back and the inclusion of a dust jacket etc. Pricing of the books is done on how many pages the book will contain, starting from as little as £10.

You can view my final product or at least the first few pages of it at http://www.blurb.com/books/366876

The only real let down for me was the ink used is pretty dark, when I do my next book I’ll try to adjust the photos and make them a little bit lighter to compensate. Obviously the higher quality photos you use the better quality the final prints are and as such it takes absolutely ages to get the thing uploaded to their servers once you’ve finished the layout. Having said that, I used some photos taken on my old Nokia 6680 which is only 1.3MP and they came out alright – the images taking up the entire page though were 7.1MP from Kat’s Pentax Optio M30

It does say to get 1 book printed first on it’s own if you’re going to do a bulk order – so you can check how it looks. I opted not to and just went for it… then found when I received them through the post that I’d used one photo twice. Oops.. But luckily hardly anyone notices! It’d suck if you got 20 printed and they all had a typo on though. So make sure you double triple check it before you upload…

Happy book making!

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Do you know a “Google Surfer”?

Published on May 12, 2009 in Internet, Life and Rants. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .
Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Have you ever seen someone who, instead of putting a web address into their browser address bar as you’d expect, chooses to put the address into Google and do a search on it, then click the first link?? People who do this bizarre series of actions to view a website I now call “Google Surfers”.

A chap phoned me at work the other day to ask where all his websites had gone… I didn’t really get what he meant so I got his screen up and asked him to show me and he proceeded to type “www.” into the Google search box which, with Google Suggest being turned on immediately starting suggesting results such as www.facebook.com www.bbc.co.uk etc. and the chap said he’d never even been on Facebook before! It turned out what he was after was his auto-complete history because that’s how he browses the net.

And it’s wrong in so many ways. Why not press the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button which would accomplish the same as clicking Search then clicking the first result? Why not actually type a web address into the address bar in the first place!? Why not bookmark frequently visited pages so you don’t even have to type anything in at all?!? What if the first result on the URL searched for isn’t the site they’re after by some random occurrence on Google which could happen? The mind boggles.

What’s gone wrong in the way people are taught to use the Internet which makes them think that’s the way everyone does it?

Mobbler

Published on May 10, 2009 in Music and Nokia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Mobbler is god’s gift to users of Last.fm and Symbian S60 devices.

Only a short while ago it was just an app which sat in the background and collected tracks played on the built-in Music Player of Symbian phones like my Nokia N95 8gb. It would queue up and scrobble the tracks to your Last.fm profile when you told it to. Even then, it was much better than other Last.fm scrobbling apps for Symbian becaMobbler V.3use they all worked off their own players but personally, I don’t find anything wrong with the default Nokia player. So I was chuffed to find an app which would scrobble tracks I listened to on my phone. Useful, pretty cool but not worth writing home about… Till now.

After being offline for a while last month I was pleased to see news there’d be a few updates to Mobbler, currently at version 0.4.5 – always preferring to be up to date (even when it lands me in the shit, but that’s another story!) I installed the new version to find it now does so much more.

You can see data from your account on the phone such as your shoutbox, friends, playlists etc, you can listen to any Last.fm radio station you want (but I wouldn’t listen unless it’s on a wifi connection..) and it’s got a sleep timer which switches itself to offline mode after a set amount of time. For example, I usually put the “sleep” tag radio station on for half an hour when I go to bed.

So if you’ve got a Symbian S60 device and a Last.fm account – definitely check this out, have a play with it and see what you think. Top marks from me though.

Criminal Damage

Published on April 26, 2009 in Car and Life. 6 Comments

Criminal Damage

Gutted. It was the *first* night I’d parked my car outside my new house and woke up to find this…

I hadn’t taken out windscreen cover on my insurance policy, I even recently asked the company if I could add it on now and pay the extra but they were having none of it. Too bad! So, some w&*^#r had cost me roughly £90 worth of damage and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I strolled down the cop shop anyway and had a word, got a lift back to the scene of the crime in a police car with a friendly bobby who told me he reckoned someone had a go at it with a handful of gravel, hence the small white marks visible in the photo above, but they must have been disturbed and ran off. Bloody b*$£!%d! Not the cop, the guy who done it! There’s not even anything worth nicking in my car!

Splintered into 10,000 pieces

Anyway, as “luck” would have it, the locksmiths who were in changing the locks on my house used to work for a windscreen company and gave them a quick call and got me a quote, they said they could fix it in a couple of hours. A nice chap came along a little later from Windscreens Direct and had some fun smashing the rest of the glass out before fixing the new one in. All done and dusted on the same day.

Before the new one went in

I don’t park directly outside any more, much as I’d like to.

The night my key broke off…

Published on March 16, 2009 in Life. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .
My car is cursed?

^ Click for a bigger version.

It’s time for another car related story…

This happened a few weeks ago, about a week after I’d passed my test.

I’d gone to Kathryn’s for dinner and she wanted me to pick up some wine and other bits from Tesco, so I drove down there – got the wine, got the other bits and went to pay. I got ID’d for the booze… Apparently they got caught selling alcohol to a minor recently and the bloke got fired and the shop had a massive fine etc.. That was when I realised I’d left my passport at Kat’s house and hadn’t yet got my new driving license back from the DSA so had no ID on me. Ugh! Typical.

I drove back to her place to pick up my passport and went all the way back to the shop, it’s not that far but it was a wasted journey – went back to the till, showed my passport which proves I am infact 21 years old and thus got the wine. Fantastic. Bit frustrating having to to and fro though. Got back in my car, turned the key in a bit of a hurry and…. *snap*. Argh. The key had broken off in the ignition.

I panicked about for a bit and wondered what the hell I was going to do. After sitting around for a while I calmed down and actually tried to turn the key – the broken bit still connected to the bit lodged inside and it still started the car. Luckily. I was able to drive back to Kat’s place with the rest of the key on the passenger seat.

In the end I had to drive all the way back to my house, get my spare key so I could lock the car door for the night. Went over to Kat’s parents place the following morning and her Dad being the genius he is managed to get the bit of the key out of the ignition slot with some tiny screwdrivers… And the above photo was taken after he’d managed to shift it out slightly. Got a new key cut for £7 and it’s been fine so far!

What Makes My Day

Published on March 15, 2009 in Life. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

On Monday 9th March 2009, Tom Reynolds of Random Reality wrote:

Monday’s question – In your own work, or day to day life, what events give you joy? [...] I’d think that even if I worked in an office there would still be something that would make my day, so, what is yours?

And by way of a reply…

One of the things I will probably miss most about working at Specsavers when I start my new job next month is also the thing which makes me smile.

The place I normally stand at work is quite central to the store. I am close to 3 or 4 dispensing desks where patients are measured up for their glasses or fitted when collecting.

When you see a young child, especially with a really high prescription, putting on their sponge bob square pants glasses for the first time – their face is an absolute picture. They just kind of stare, dumb-struck and blinking at everything… Usually whomever is fitting their glasses being the first thing they look at. It’s hard to imagine but from having been unable to see much at all and not knowing any better; they’ve suddenly and unexpectedly been given the gift of crystal clear sight… So Tom, that is what makes my day.

A Brush with the Strong Arm of the Law

Published on March 3, 2009 in Life. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

This is the story as told by me to countless people.. Sorry if you’ve already heard it, but it’s now immortalised forever on the web.

It was Thursday 12th February 2009, the day after I passed my driving test. I was driving home from the pub after closing time and surprise surprise there were no parking spaces down my road. There never are any in the evenings. I turned at the end and went down the next road, no spaces there either… So I went down the other road near my place and a car pulled in behind me. There was a space there but I figured I’d loop back round and let this other car go past. I turned left at the bottom and took off towards the city centre, went onto the main road and the other car followed me and kept following me for the next 5 minutes or so. I thought I’d just go for a random drive around, why not – I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But the car was still behind me all the way to the ring road and back round.

Now I was getting worried. I didn’t know what to do in this situation when you’re being followed by a car; was it friends from the pub playing a joke? Was it a car full of chavs waiting to jump me when I parked up and steal my car? The true reality didn’t cross my mind for even a second…

Just as I was getting back to my road I saw flashing blue lights in my rear view mirror and the car behind me pulled over. So did I to let them past, except they didn’t go past. One police car pulled in front of me, one behind. About half a dozen police officers got out. I was extremely freaked out at this point.

I got out of my car, left the engine running… It turns out the car following me was an unmarked police car who weren’t allowed to pull me over so had to call the cavalry. They asked if I’d been drinking, of course I hadn’t – I’d only had two diet cokes at the pub. I took a road-side breath test which confirmed this and they also said I’d been driving erratically which personally I didn’t think I was but that was what lead them to follow me. I explained how I’d just passed my test the previous day, which was also the reason why I didn’t have my license on me at the time. They then explained that because I was driving slowly around the roads at this time of night they thought I was looking for a “lady of the night” and once I’d explained that I was just looking for a parking space they realised their error and let me go.

The moral of the story? Don’t drive too slowly when looking for a parking in my area of Norwich…? Well it makes for a good anecdote anyway.

Photos from Weybourne

Published on February 24, 2009 in Life and Photos. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .
IMGP0587 Looking East, Weybourne IMGP0588 IMGP0580 IMGP0597 IMGP0589 IMGP0594 Sea Fishing, Weybourne Horizon, Weybourne IMGP0595 IMGP0581 Windmill in the distance, Weybourne, Norfolk IMGP0586 IMGP0583 IMGP0590 Litter on the Cliffs at Weybourne IMGP0579 IMGP0578 Anna-Gale, Weybourne Beach, Norfolk IMGP0593 Weybourne Parish Church of All Saints Cliffs at Weybourne Houses not worth very much... IMGP0570 Weybourne Mill, Weybourne, Norfolk IMGP0592 'Mouse' 1997, Love Always... Charles

Just plugging some seaside snaps I took on a lovely valentine’s trip to Weybourne with Kathryn. We stayed at a great B&B in the small Norfolk village. They had a hot tub and a notice in the room saying “Swimsuits optional!” – when we got back from dinner they said Charlie the owner was in there, so we thought we’d give it a miss for that night anyway. Maybe next time!