I did it. I put Windows 7's RC on my main computer (my Dell Vostro laptop). I'm not sure why I did. I had to reformat anyway, to get a lot of the extra crap I'd had to install for the last 2 semesters of school, but I took a gamble.
And I'm loving it.
Sure, W7 isn't complete yet, and I'm sure I'll encounter bugs, but I haven't yet. For those that don't know, the RC (Release Candidate) is a version of a program that is nearly ready for release but may still have a few bugs; essentially the status between beta version and release version.
I blogged about the beta, and was happy with it, but it wasn't my main machine. This is. And now I'm using it every day, I'm finding some things that are frustrating, but nothing huge. And there are some really useful features, such as built-in ISO burning. Yeah I know, who burns an ISO nowadays? I've had to a few times, and it's nice. I just wish it had built-in ISO mounting as well (which it doesn't) and that Daemon would release a W7-supported version. But I digress.
For those that are on the fence, I say try it. I've enjoyed it.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Cool Free Software Part 3
Ever wanted to be in control of what album art is applied to your music? Don't trust what iTunes decides to place as the art? Don't use iTunes?
Wait no more!
I use Winamp at work for my media, mostly because I don't want to install iTunes, and since my work machine is ALWAYS on, I can install Winamp Remote and stream that music from anywhere, anytime. Problem with that is that I'm missing a lot of album art and Winamp just doesn't have the ability to find album art (that I could find...).
Enter Media Art Aggregator. It's a cool little program. From the description on the site: "A digital media art aggregator. Finds cover art for music, tv shows, movies or any other type of media. Searches different sources including Google Images, Yahoo Images, Live Images, Deviant Art, Amazon.com and Walmart. Additional sources can be customized by defining the url to get the source from and a regular expression to determine the image url or by defining new classes that inherit from a base class."
So, it finds album art for you. Cool thing is that you get to choose your album art. So, it brings up choices.
You can see for this Our Lady Peace album, I have 2 choices, which look pretty similar but have different sizes (one is 500x500 and the other is only 446x500). Of course, I pick the 500x500 one. You can also see the options for image database to search.
Here you can see more options. The current album art was only 200x200, whereas MAA allowed me to see a bunch of better looking covers.
Pros: It's easy. You can set it to search on double click, where it will just simply copy the highlighted text on the left and search by it. That works for people like me, who try to label their folders as Artist - Album Name, but wouldn't work as well for people who don't label their folders that way.
It works for various media types, not just CD's. That's nice.
It's free. You can't beat that.
Cons: It has a hard time finding some lesser-known bands. It also is subject (in some cases) to user-inputted pictures, which really sucks. For instance, the album art for my Classic Queen album looks like junk, and I couldn't find a better one (you can see the black on the bottom and right).
There are also some covers that show people actually holding the album and taking a picture. Of course, since you have so many search engines the chances of that are less, but still...
It also hasn't been updated in some time (since 2008), and that may not change, but that isn't going to be an issue unless the sites change their formatting and it breaks the search.
Overall it's a nice, lightweight alternative to iTunes, and one that gives you a large amount of control.
Wait no more!
I use Winamp at work for my media, mostly because I don't want to install iTunes, and since my work machine is ALWAYS on, I can install Winamp Remote and stream that music from anywhere, anytime. Problem with that is that I'm missing a lot of album art and Winamp just doesn't have the ability to find album art (that I could find...).
Enter Media Art Aggregator. It's a cool little program. From the description on the site: "A digital media art aggregator. Finds cover art for music, tv shows, movies or any other type of media. Searches different sources including Google Images, Yahoo Images, Live Images, Deviant Art, Amazon.com and Walmart. Additional sources can be customized by defining the url to get the source from and a regular expression to determine the image url or by defining new classes that inherit from a base class."
So, it finds album art for you. Cool thing is that you get to choose your album art. So, it brings up choices.
You can see for this Our Lady Peace album, I have 2 choices, which look pretty similar but have different sizes (one is 500x500 and the other is only 446x500). Of course, I pick the 500x500 one. You can also see the options for image database to search.
Here you can see more options. The current album art was only 200x200, whereas MAA allowed me to see a bunch of better looking covers.
Pros: It's easy. You can set it to search on double click, where it will just simply copy the highlighted text on the left and search by it. That works for people like me, who try to label their folders as Artist - Album Name, but wouldn't work as well for people who don't label their folders that way.
It works for various media types, not just CD's. That's nice.
It's free. You can't beat that.
Cons: It has a hard time finding some lesser-known bands. It also is subject (in some cases) to user-inputted pictures, which really sucks. For instance, the album art for my Classic Queen album looks like junk, and I couldn't find a better one (you can see the black on the bottom and right).
There are also some covers that show people actually holding the album and taking a picture. Of course, since you have so many search engines the chances of that are less, but still...It also hasn't been updated in some time (since 2008), and that may not change, but that isn't going to be an issue unless the sites change their formatting and it breaks the search.
Overall it's a nice, lightweight alternative to iTunes, and one that gives you a large amount of control.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The Office Quote of the Day
This is actually the quote from the weekend, but I've been busy at work.
"There are thirteen people working in this office. So thirteen times a year, Michael gets a cake, and balloons, and some sort of joke gift, and makes a toast. And there are two types of toasts: one is a joke about how old you are... and the other is something inappropriate, or horrible. Or both."
-Jim
"There are thirteen people working in this office. So thirteen times a year, Michael gets a cake, and balloons, and some sort of joke gift, and makes a toast. And there are two types of toasts: one is a joke about how old you are... and the other is something inappropriate, or horrible. Or both."
-Jim
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)