My new shop!

I got bored today and decided to create a Cafe Press shop. It will have a geeky theme, and feature clothing that has designs of internet memes and online piracy. It's crap I want to buy, and I just might too. I have no idea if other people are interested in this stuff, but since it's free and has absolutely no obligation or risk for me, it's definitely worth it. They basically print things on demand, so they don't have to produce anything until it gets paid for. Apparently you can also make CDs and books on Cafe Press too, so maybe I will somehow do that. The only problem is with a free account, you can only do one of every type of product once. So I can only do one design on a plain tshirt, and one design on a plain hoodie. People don't really buy much else, so we will see. If no one will buy anything, it's not worth it to buy a premium account anyway. It's fun though, if anything. Besides, my idea isn't original or anything, I am pretty sure I saw lots of stores featuring memes and geekery.

Anyway, the moment you've been waiting for, here it is; MY SHOP

Blackberry....?

I keep having these recurring dreams where I have a Blackberry, and it's really annoying because I wish to have one. I am a technophile, so I cannot help it. Of course there's the fact that I keep seeing people with them, and I get jealous. I would have gotten one when I got my current cell phone if Virgin offered Blackberry plans when I signed up. But it was literally a week after I got my phone that they started offering Blackberries, I was so pissed. My phone is okay, but it doesn't have email, a browser, instant messaging, or any other fun crap. Not to mention Blackberries are good for organization, which would be an asset for school. Yes, I am trying to justify getting one, but I do believe it's a genuine reason. I called Virgin to see if I could add a Blackberry on to my plan, and they said in August maybe, which is the anniversary of my plan. They said I might be able to renew my plan and add a Blackberry, plus a data plan, on to my existing plan, so I can keep my current number and everything. We will see what develops before then though. Hopefully this terribly wanting a Blackberry thing passes.

DVD burning and wave to MP3

I have a new hobby. My new hobby is downloading and burning movies. Up until I got my new computer, I wasn't able to do this. Now that I can do it, I am super happy and have burnt like 50 movies so far, and it is growing. It took me a while to figure out how to do this because I hadn't done it before. I was quickly overwhelmed by all the crap online about it. But a program called DVD Flick came to my rescue. DVD Flick is so easy to use that even my kittens could use it. Despite being easy, it still does everything that needs to be done, like automatically converting the AVI files I download to a file format suited for burning directly onto a DVD. I even figured out to add basic menus to the DVD so I can put multiple movies on one disc (roughly 2 movies per disc, depending on their size). It works wonderfully, and the only problems I have ever had with any of my burnt movies are extremely minor glitching, and a little loss of quality (but who knows if that's just the original video file, I didn't look before burning). The loss of quality is extremely minor and doesn't prevent recognition of what's on the screen.

Randomly today I decided to listen to some 3 Inches of Blood, which are super fucking awesome by the way. I noticed that the copy of the album I had was in wave format. I couldn't edit the tags and make it say the song information properly in the meta tags. This is a severe annoyance for me, and I hate improper tagging, mainly because I use Last.fm, but I like neatness on my computer anyway. I decided that using online conversion tools was taking too fucking long. So I looked around and found a wonderful thing called ABC Amber Audio (can be found here). So, if anyone is looking to convert wave to MP3, or MP3 to wave, use this tool. It's really fast too. Now, to go tag my album properly.

Scrobbling iPod touch way more complicated than it needs to be

So, ever since I learned about the possibility of scrobbling my iPod, I have wanted to do it. Even when I had a nano. And ever since then there have been obstacles in the way of me scrobbling my iPod. Most of the ones I've come across in the past have been overcome, but it's taken a lot more effort than it should have. How hard is it to write a program that sends two lines of text to Last.fm from the iPod (the song name and title)? Apparently it's very difficult, if my past experience is any judge. I won't get into all of the problems I've had because that would take far too long.

For the iPod touch, when I first got it, it had firmware version 1.1.1 on it, which allowed me to jailbreak it and install MobileScrobbler which is a wonderful application that allowed me to scrobble my iPod with out any problem whatsoever. In fact, it even submitted tracks through wifi, so I didn't have to do anything! But somewhere between now and then, someone, either Last.fm or Apple, decided that allowing this to happen was unacceptable (for some fucking stupid reason) and decided to remove support for this. It was probably Apple since they're the ones who have pissed me off since the iPod was brought out, and they're the ones who keep updating the firmware (and trying to charge $10 for it). Instead of purchasing this firmware upgrade (to 2.1.1 or whatever it is now) I got a free version online (more proof those at Apple are a bunch of tards). I was under the impression that when I "purchased" this firmware upgrade that the world of simplicity would open up for me. I was certainly wrong. I was aware that there was a Last.fm app and I was under the impression, logically, that this application would scrobble the tracks you listen to on your iPod, just like MobileScrobbler, maybe even better. Once again, I was wrong. Apparently it only scrobbles internet radio. Why?? Why the hell can't it scrobble the songs I listen to on my iPod? What the fuck is the point in that?

So basically, my only option was to use the Last.fm plugin on my computer to scrobble the tracks on my iPod. Even that is harder than it should be. I would have thought that the plugin could simply parse the iTunesDB file on the iPod (or whatever the iPod touch equivalent is). That is what it does, but not without it's own difficulties. First of all, I absolutely HAVE to open iTunes first, and then the Last.fm plugin. Secondly, the library HAS to be available on the hard drive in order for the songs to scrobble (which is a fucking bitch since my music collection is on an external hard drive which isn't always on). Third of all, when I add new songs to the iPod, I have do disconnect it and then reconnect it for the songs I added to scrobble the next time I listen to them. And even then that method doesn't work. I added a couple songs last time I connected my iPod to the computer, disconnected, and reconnected, and this time the songs still didn't scrobble. It wasn't a huge deal since it was only two songs I added, but if I add a few albums worth of music, that can be a huge problem.

I guess my main point of contention would be with the iPod. The fact that the iPod is tethered to the shitty piece of software called iTunes. I fucking hate iTunes with a passion. The only use I have for it is internet radio and it organizing my music collection. And there are other pieces of software for that. Why does the fucking iPod have to be connected to iTunes? Why can't it just allow for drag and drop compatibility? It would make my life a whole lot simpler. I lost a lot of respect for Apple when they designed this piece of shit iTunes. Not to mention the difficulty I had making an iTunes Store account without a credit card. That pissed me off to no end. Fucking money whores. All they need is a little fucking application that scrobbles my iPod tracks like MobileScrobbler... is it so much to ask?

Deliberate difficulty?

I am trying to uninstall this Microsoft Office shit from my computer (which isn't even the full version, it's only a 60 day trial). I downloaded OpenOffice instead for obvious reasons (one of them being it's like $300 cheaper). Apparently uninstalling Office is going to take an hour, plus it's going to freeze my computer every once in a while and make it stutter. Microsoft products are the only ones that do that (since I am cleaning some crap off the computer). My CPU load isn't even, on average, past 75% on either core. Is this a deliberate ploy to magnify the frustration and irritation that Microsoft products cause users? Is it a lame attempt at preventing people from uninstalling their cheap, rip off of a program? Some might call me paranoid, but I don't think it's that entirely outlandish.

New laptop!

So I finally got a new laptop. It is not the one I was originally supposed to get though. I finally gave up on Dell's stupidity and decided I would just buy one here. And yes it has Windows. Although I discovered, while looking around, that getting hardware with Ubuntu on it does not guarantee I will not have the same hardware problems I have with my desktop. So, I opted for Windows. It is also due to the fact that it will be a lot easier collaborating next year with people in school if we're all on the same system. Plus now I can watch Flash videos and such without worrying about which programs I have open. Hopefully someday the Ubuntu developers will fix that fucking Flash problem. Not to mention Bluetooth and of course the wireless problems I had.

The laptop I got is a 16" HP. It's got a 250GB hard drive, Intel Pentium Dual Core processor, 3GB of RAM, plus Bluetooth and I believe wireless N. It comes with Windows Vista Basic. So far it has been completely smooth, and I took a couple hours in the past few days and downloaded/installed most of what I need (such as a Torrent downloader, mIRC, BOINC, etc). I shall keep updating.

Dell...

It's been almost two months now, and the laptop my dad ordered for me for Christmas is still not here. I am quite livid towards Dell now, considering I know a couple of people who have ordered laptops about two weeks ago, and one has gotten theirs, and the other will be getting theirs tomorrow or Tuesday. Since the order is in my dad's name, he told me he will handle it, although I wish I could be the one to bitch them out. My dad will probably be a little more diplomatic than I will though. It is at the point where I would expect some form of compensation because of their slacking off. The worst part is that they don't even update the order tracking site, which makes it even more fucking annoying. It would also be nice if the website had a little more detail, instead of just "in production". Maybe they could give me an idea of what is taking them so goddamn long. But even after my dad emailed them the first time, they still didn't update the order tracking site with the date they said in the email (which was a complete lie anyway, but still). The only thing different between my laptop and the laptops that other people I know is the operating system. I got mine loaded with Ubuntu, and they got Windows Vista. You would think, if anything, mine would take less time since the operating system is free and doesn't require any form of licensing and whatnot. The paranoid side of me wants to say that it's a ploy from Microsoft, and that they pay Dell to get their products out before anything else. But that's craziness, right?