Not sure what happens with HTML formatting but its good for posting brief thoughts and managing comments on the go…

That’s if this posts…

The key component of getting your tracks to mp3 is downloading some software called TuneClone which you can get here($35 = £20) bargin imo. Basically how it works is that it will create a virtual cd drive, you then tell Itunes to burn the virtual cd of tracks, it then “burns” them to the virtual drive and converts them to mp3 all sorted.

1. Get yourself a copy of TuneClone download and install
2. Launch TuneClone click settings and adjust the output file names to which ever format your prefer, adjust the bitrate click ok.
   
3. Crack open Itunes create a playlist containing all the tracks you want to convert, make sure all the check boxes are ticked
   
4. Click Burn to Disc button (bottom right – on Itunes 8 )
5. Select the virtual drive from the cd drive dropdown make sure you check audio cd and include CD Text finally click Burn
   
6. Itunes and TuneClone will do their thing and you will have mp3 versions of your tracks to use anywhere
   

Once Itunes stops its burn process TuneClone kicks in and begins the conversion to mp3 once this is done the process is complete. The other thing to note is that if Tuneclone doesn’t pick up the track names and artists you can ‘tag’ the track in the TuneClone library by dragging the file from Itunes to Tuneclone where it says “Track Info”.

The result is a happy me as I tried various places Amazon, Napster, 7digital and Itunes was far far superior music catolgue wise. It had everything I was after and it gets to a point where buying cd’s is silly as you have most of the tracks so all you want is to add the odd track here and there. Now I have mp3 versions it just makes life a hell of alot easier.

If you look at it like this £20 gets you 25 songs which you want to listen to with no fillers like most albums…downloading makes sense?

One thing I do know is that for rolling out a quick site with some sort of content management then Joomla is the right route to take…once you get to grips with its templating engine within a few days you can have fully functioning website with content management that the client can update easily.

Most of the time you will find a client thinks “I need to manage my own content” but in reality only a small percentage of those actually go away and update their site on a regular basis (is this down the sometimes complex administration panel to a less computer literate?). In that sense are you missing a trick by using something so bloated as Joomla when all they want to do is add a news items every couple of weeks?

Do we really need to go to the trouble of setting up the system which out of the box does alot of things that the user is never going to use… its a bit like buying a car with all the added extras but you never use them!

Then comes the sceniaro where by a client wants something bespoke like a gallery/calendar etc … Joomla has plenty of components which easily install granted, but half the time they do a basic job and you end up having to hack the f*ck out of them to get them to work in the manner that the client expects.

So would it be quicker to build the bespoke CMS on a client by client basis in reality probably not… Most clients don’t have the budgets for some development team to sit for a few weeks developing something bespoke. I guess it comes down to a toss up of quickness of deployment and money, if those two things are a priority its hard to look past Joomla as a solution (maybe time to research some other options drupal etc?). Maybe more details from the client are required as to what they want to update before you jump onto the CMS out of the box.

Not quite sure where I am going with this post I love Joomla to bits for what it can do. It’s just recently I have felt that it has been holding me back from delivering some nice solutions to clients problems that could be solved with something built bespokly instead of being limited to the walls of Joomla!

Bell needs to speak up more!

Using Joomla for personal sites defiantly a thumbs up for using it there. For business use I am yet to decide?

The other thing to note if your JS doesn’t work in IE and you have any ‘console.log’ lines within your code then removing these will stop IE throwing a wobbly as it doesn’t have any support for this nor does Safari or Firefox unless you enable firebug or having some form of debugger enabled.

Earlier today I wanted to split my latest/first recorded mix into separate mp3 files from the hour long mix I created and audacity did the trick. By placing labels in the relevant positions throughout the file you can then do export multiple and it does the rest also allowing for you to add the id tag info for each track on export – brilliant!!

You can also do a whole heap of other stuff with it fade/remove noise/adjust volumes/effects etc etc all this for free. Audacity rocks!

Download it here

Now I’m not Mac fanatic in fact I hate the things unless you are making music/editing video in which case I can accept that you do indeed need to use a Mac – but for general task why fork out £1000+ for a system when a P.C will do the job – anyway that debate will go on forever.

Back on to subject this scanner has been sat in the corner of our office in a while not doing a lot but today it came alive. Dating back to prehistoric times … I’m kidding this is some mid 90’s graphical history! It’s amazing how far technology has progressed in ten years (you can now get a car similar in size to this scanner). Also I’m not sure this thing would of hooked up to a PC in its day…

Here’s some pictures.

Now I did not take this seriously when I first downloaded it I made the mistake of looking for up front music and it let me down. So I closed it down thinking that’s a bit rubbish. Few weeks later I thought I’ll give it a second chance this time it did not disappoint at all.

Put simply its a streaming version of I-tunes so no downloads just bandwidth usage to worry about. It’s all free except the occasional advert will be interesting to see how much more regular they become as the service grows – you can of course pay £9.99 for the premium version but their frequency at the moment really doesn’t bother me one bit. I used to pay 9.99 for Napster and use it in a similar fashion just stream tracks but with Spotify I get all this for free! Amazing!

The music available seems fairly in depth from what I can see if the albums been out a few months then its likely to have it – I’ve found most things I’ve been after. Some tracks are disabled and I’m not sure how long the full streaming will continue if this takes off like I think it will. Labels currently signed up include Universal, EMI, Sony BMG etc etc.

The other cool feature is the radio which you can customize to your tastes – see below pick genre’s you fancy and then from which decades and it will play you a selection of suitable tunes.

You can also create play lists and share them with other, it hooks up with no additional plug ins to last.fm. It seems to be a really nice little tool allowing you to preview albums before you buy its like having a huge music library at your finger tips.

I thought it was invite only but I don’t think it is now… You can download it here and sign up for your account here.

Having had a Nokia for the past eight or so years I thought it was time for a change also I had found myself wanting to access the web when I couldn’t access a computer and on my old Nokia with a screen the size of a postage stamp it was time for change. The Iphone never really came into the equation due to that fact of my Apple dis-like and everyone has one of those now – they look nice but technically?

I did some research and asked around of peoples opinions of the Blackberry and didn’t hear anything bad so went for the Blackberry 8900 curve. After arriving, it was really easy to set-up out of the box and up and running within minutes. It has a very similar UI to a Nokia so the transition was fairly easy – menu button, roller ball and your away (the roller ball has a nice feel to it the keyboard is nice and firm no annoying softness).

When I was ordering for some reason I thought it had 3G turns out it doesn’t but I find edge quick enough for my needs no problems with getting frustrated with downloads etc. Once get to know your way around installing various app’s is fun being addicted to twitter right now “Twitterberry” is a really nice app that allows you to keep in touch with all things Twitter on the move.

Setting up email addresses was really simple takes a short while for them to start receiving but apart from that no complaints. Google maps app is a must to download the GPS is spot on as long as you are on the move if your in a static location it doesn’t seem to work it gives you an approx position but maybe this is my misunderstanding of GPS maybe you need to be on the move? Just make sure you quit after using else it will drink your battery. Another cool feature is the holder that comes with your phone which put the phone in standby once placed inside saving you battery and protecting from scratches in the process.

It really doesn’t feel like a phone it feels like you are getting a lot more than that with all its little features that you discover as you go along and I personally would rate a Blackberry a lot higher than an Iphone (though I haven’t really used one in any detail) it’s a phone but a lot more. I’m addicted guess the term “crackberry” does apply after all!

The only bad thing is when the charger is plugged in, it gets in the way of my typing but thats all…

Kinda funny…. As I was typing this and setting up as a post we had a powercut… Without internet access it would have been difficult to get a number for central networks who have informed me there is a powercut and it will be a few hours! Sit tight the joys of also having a laptop!

This script has literally saved me days of time in getting my library sorted and nicely formatted. As I recently began to use last.fm it became apparent I needed to sort all my compilations out, it has always bugged me anyway. Last night I started to manually convert song by song I looked and had 3000 to do. This morning I got up and thought this is madness there must be a better way so I set off on a hunt on how to create scripts in Media Monkey and set to work. This is how to get it working….

Step 1 Locate C:\program files\MediaMonkey\Scripts\Scripts.ini and open this with notepad … copy and paste the following and save.

Step 2 Download the script unzip and place Trimtitle.vbs in the scripts folder (C:\program files\MediaMonkey\Scripts).

Load up Media Monkey Select the songs from your library you wish to change the title of. Then select Tools > Scripts > Trim Title at / Change. You will then be asked what is splitting the title e.g. “/” “-” enter the value in the text box. Next a pop up asks if the artist name comes first or second this places the title and artist in the right place. Your title’s should be nicely formatted. Voila!!

Example: “Motorhead / Ace of Spades” will now be Motorhead under artist and Ace of Spades under title.

This script has worked great for me – hope it helps others too. If it does go wrong there is always the function to re-tag files from their filename (Tools>Autotag from file name). Also if you get artist and title mixed up use (Tools>Scripts>Swap artist and title). I also recommend doing it album by album as splitters might be different. Also check the artist doesn’t have the splitter value in their name – very unlikely think I came across it once.

For those interested here is the code for the name splitter – if you know vbScipt which is what this is written in then might even set you on your way to create your own script. I guess the opportunities are endless….

Download the script

I put this to use on my laptop for backing up both my music and picture collection. Specify one location then pick your second folder that you want to Sync files with and SyncToy. will do the rest.

Example…Left Folder = Music folder on my laptop drive then specify Music folder on my external drive = Right Folder. You then pick what type of sync you want x3 options;

synchronize – New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other

echo – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes are repeated on the right.

contribute – New files copied left to right renames on left are repeated on right. No deletions

Set it off to compare and contrast and the two folder will be synchronized – nice way to backup for the person that thinks “hey isn’t it about time I backed up my stuff”…. Also this can be put to use for various other tasks. Very useful tool to have !