Looking for high resolution album art from the iTunes Music Store? Handy if you’re anally retentive like me, now if only someone would write a program that would read your library and add the album art automatically…
Author: Greg
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Our Lady Peace
I met up with Barry last night and we headed on down to The Roxy to see Our Lady Peace, and then I found out how old I really am…
First of all, the show was pretty good, the two (yes two) support acts were ok, the second was actually pretty dire and sounded like a cheap ass knock off of the Counting Crows, I have no idea who they were as the lead singer took no time to even say hello to the audience, sucky… OLP were great, plenty of audience participation and good songs to sing along to, but man, they started late at like 10pm and didnt finish till close to 11:45, and I’m paying for it this morning. Alas it was a small venue so no camera, I try not to risk it nowadays…
Now I’ve been to my fair share of concerts over the years, and untl the Ben Folds/Weezer and Coldplay concerts recently, they have all been general admission (ie standing room only) affairs, which I managed rather well, like the 8 hours straight at Music Midtown, but something last night went horribly wrong. About three songs into the Our Lady Peace set my right knee started to, for lack of a better word, buckle so I shifted my weight over which proved to be a bigger mistake, the knee was still giving me immense pain and now my left hip is aching like a motherfucker. To compound matters, there was a 15 minute walk to the MARTA station afterwards and another long walk to home, all done at a snails pace…
Ahhh, all part of the live music experience though, now excuse me while I hobble off to Charlotte for the weekend…
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The Unofficial iTunes Video Test
I thought it would be a good idea to see how this new fangled iTunes video works, and how it compares in different sizes on screen.
As you may be aware, the video in the iTunes Video Store (iTVS?) is in 320×240 resolution, but it’s also encoded in high-quality, H.264 QuickTime format with mpeg-4 sound, so it should scale rather well… In theory… Let’s see.
I chose to download the 3rd episode of Lost and the part where Sawyer gets jumped on the beach (for it’s fast moving action) for this experiment, the file was 197.8mb and took about 3 minutes (sweet bandwidth), when it’s done you can go to the Video section in iTunes where it’s available to watch.
A nice little graphical interface, you can change it to be like the usual iTunes list but I like this, if only they displayed albums like this too… Anyways, onto the watching, the default view is in the Album Art section.
As you can see, this is pretty small, so if you double click the Album Art, a window will pop up.
In this original state it’s still very much watchable, but some compression is begining to show, you can enlarge this to any size you want, the default (at least on my PC) enlarged size is like this.
Slowly getting worse as it gets bigger, which is understandable… How does full screen look?
I’d go as far as saying it’s watchable, but dont be expecting to see little things that the producers of Lost hide in each episode, also I couldn’t pause on full screen so this was as close as I could get… Plus pausing it makes it look a lot worse than when it’s in motion.
Overall it’s a pretty nifty addition to the digital world, though I’m not so sure about paying $1.99 for something you can see for free already, maybe if the store expands to, say, Battlestar Galactica and things that I tend to miss on a regular basis then it would be worth while, I do like the fact they have season one of Lost for $35 as opposed to the $50 or so it would be if you bought each episode…
The next test is to see how it looks on the iPod screen… I’ll have to wait a while to see that though…
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How Did She Know?
In response to my last post, barely 30 minutes had passed when my phone rang…
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!
Robyn: NO!
Me: (makes whining noise) Awwwwwww!And so on… Though I might be able to get one after the wedding.
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Video iPod!!!!
Talk about luck, I sell my old 3G 20GB iPod on Monday, and this gets announced on the Wednesday…
Witness the evolution of the revolution. First it played songs. Then photos. Then podcasts. Now iPod plays video, changing the way you experience your music and more. Again. In lighter, thinner 30GB and 60GB models starting at $299, the new iPod is music to your eyes.
Time for the world’s best music player to take the stage for another encore. In 30GB and 60GB models that hold up to 15,000 songs, full-color album art and up to 25,000 photos, the new iPod makes the most of your music and more. Yeah, you’ve heard that tune before. Only now, you can watch it, too. With support for up to 150 hours of video and a 2.5-inch color display, the new iPod lets you take music videos and TV shows on the road.
The new iPod boasts up to 20 hours of battery life, five hours more than before. Plus, you get a bigger display and one more iPod color – sleek black. But here’s the kicker: At under half an inch thin, the new 30GB iPod takes up about 45 percent less room than the original iPod. Even the new 60GB model is 10 percent thinner than the fourth-generation 20GB iPod. More features in less space? Sounds like iPod. Now you can put all your music in your pocket and still have room for, well, practically everything else. Catch up on your reading with audiobooks. Browse your memories with photo slideshows, complete with music. Watch video podcasts, music videos and your favorite TV shows. Consult your calendar or look up an email address. Even check the time in another city or time your fastest lap. The new iPod keeps it all close at hand.
Sweet, download TV shows and Music Videos… I’ll never miss an episode of Lost again!
Plus after less than a month of iTunes 5, iTunes 6 is announced and a new iMac G5, with remote control and built-in iSight… Not a bad day at all…
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Dear God, It’s That Time of Year
I was rudely reminded by the Atlanta Metroblog that this weekend is the weekend of my much hated Stone Mountain Highland Games…
Now I was dragged there last year by Robyn and I’ll just say I was completely disgusted by it (which is putting it nicely), despite her insistance that I’d love it cause I’m Scottish. Thank god she can’t drag me to this years one as we are going to Charlotte this weekend to see her sister, seriously, I’m so thankful I dodged that silver bullet.
To put things in perspective here, here is me at last years shindig…
This cries out for a caption contest…
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HP’s Technical Support Thinks I’m Gay
I’m in the middle of calling Hewlett-Packard’s technical support (aka Indian Call Centre) as my fiance’s laptop is on the fritz, so her name is Robyn and they keep calling her a him even though I tell them she is most definately a she.
Indian Guy: Who are you calling for?
Me: My fiance
Indian Guy: Well tell him to package up the laptop in industry standard 3 inch bubble wrap
Me: Errrr, it’s a she
Indian Guy: Oh, I’m sorry, tell him to package up the laptop in industry standard 3 inch bubble wrap
Me: Again, it’s not a he, it’s a she…
Indian Guy: Oh, I’m sorry… tell him to [yadda yadda yadda]Some people just wont listen when reading a script…
EDIT: Now, I may have made a joke of the HP Technical Support, but I’ll give them props for being speedy… The laptop was sent via FedEx at 5pm on Wednesday and returned to us in full working order by Friday lunchtime. Kudos to HP for that quick turnaround.
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Terrorist “Bombs” Found at Georgia Tech
Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a “terrorist act,” an Atlanta police official said. One of the devices exploded, injuring the custodian who found them inside a plastic bag. Two others were detonated by a bomb squad. [via]
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18 Nailbiting Innings
The Atlanta Braves season ended in heartbreak after an “epic” 18 inning game, that set a few records for all the wrong reasons, ended 7-6 in the Astros favour…
In a game that lasted 5:50 (a major league postseason record), had 2 Grand Slams, had Roger Clemens coming on as a reliever for only the 2nd time in his career and had everyone in both teams roster except Johnny Estrada take part AND also involved more than 3 hours of me watching it through the gaps in my fingers, all came down to a solo walk off home run by Chris Burke after each and every player left everything on the field.
I’ll remember it for another awful performance by the Braves bullpen as they blew a 6-1 lead in the 8th…
Oh well, always next year.
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Imminent Implosion?
Is anyone else getting déja vu? This week has been the equivalent of hoarding bread and milk in the face of a potential disaster and it makes me wonder if anyone learned anything five years ago…
It started with Yahoo! buying upcoming.org, well really it can be traced to AskJeeves buying Bloglines and Yahoo! buying Flickr earlier this year, but I’m just focusing on this week alone… Now in the last few days AOL bought Weblogs, Inc and today it was announced that Verisign bought Weblogs.Com. Now it seems that blogs are big business, crazy money big business…
And as Paul Scrivens says:
I seem to recall this type of craziness happening before and a lot of people promising themselves that they wouldn’t allow it to happen again. Well I fear the bubble will be much stronger this time around and its burst will be even more damaging because many of us really did believe we learned from our mistakes the previous time.
Seriously, what happenes when this all comes crashing down once again? Will we learn anything this time around or are we doomed to repeat this cycle every 5 years? Should I just slap a big “For Sale” sign here and hope for a nice payout? Should I start up a crapload of other blogs and jam them full of Google Ads?
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Sweep Home, Chicago
The Boston Red Sox reign as World Champions is over after being swept by the Chicago White Sox 3-0 in the ALDS. They were simply blow away by the superior White Sox, will it be their turn to break a long drought like Boston did last year?
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Entertainment News
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are expecting a baby. Remember folks, Batman Begins is out on DVD on October 18th and War of the Worlds is out November 22nd, just incase you forgot…
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Trojan Turns PSP Into an Expensive Brick
PlayStation Portable users are being urged to beware of a Trojan which, once executed, turns their games gizmo into little more than an expensive paperweight. The PSP Brick Trojan poses as a utility that allows gamers to run homebrew apps or pirated games, in reality the code will remove important system files from the flash which makes the system unbootable.
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President Bush Claimed God Told Him to Invade Iraq and Afghanistan
President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.
Let me repeat that…
President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.
Once more…. With feeling
President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.
Good god, that only confirms what many of us already suspected, that crackpot fundies are running the White House.
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Florida Ties Up Future Super Bowls
Miami’s Dolphin Stadium beat out Atlanta’s Georgia Dome and Houston’s Reliant Stadium to host the 2010 Super Bowl. Miami is also hosting the 2007 Super Bowl and Tampa is hosting the 2009 Super Bowl, so much for rotating these games around…
