Author: Steve Novoselac

Director of Digital Technology @TrekBikes, Father, Musician, Cyclist, Homebrewer

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Music API

I wish there was some kind of Music API out there that you could pass in Artist name and Album Name and get the album art. There doesn’t really seem to be a good solution to this. CDDB SDK is a joke, MusicBrainz isn’t much better. Some people say use Amazon.com API, but that is also sketchy – It wasn’t built for looking up music, just products.

With all the music services out there, you would think there would be an easier way to get this meta info on artists/albums/tracks.

I was thinking – I could just screen scrape MSN Music – oh but wait, they don’t have all artists, just ones they sell (Try searching for “The Beatles” – it comes up with cover songs because they don’t sell any Beatles tracks).

Maybe I just don’t know if what I am looking for is out there, but it would sure make it easier to develop applications around your music library if there was.

Update: I decided to use the Amazon Web Service…It seems to work in the trials I am doing, we will see when I run over a music library.

Categories
Life

Halloween

Well, I am handing out candy to the little trick or treaters here. Question is ,why is every girl a princess? Can’t they be more creative? And what is with Power Rangers (or by their complete name Mighty Morphing Power Rangers) – didn’t that fad go out like 10 years ago?

Anyways, I am sure there will be leftover candy for like a month to eat since there really isn’t that much traffic stopping by.

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Orb

So in my last post, I mentioned that I was working on my music library. Well, I have it pretty much clean (as clean as you can get a 10 year old mp3 library). I decided to check out Orb (http://www.orb.com/) which lets me steam out my library so I can listen anywhere with a web connection. What is really cool as I can listen to my library as a 3GP stream on my phone. Right now I am streaming 311 from my computer to my phone and listening to it with headphones, how cool is that! The quality isn’t cd quality or anything, more like internet radio.

I tested just from a pc and it streams at 128kbs which isn’t bad at all. For sure you want shuffle on as it is just live stream. There can be a little skippage as well, like a song will just skip 50% in and goto the next, I don’t know why…maybe I will look at the support forum.

Anyway, something cool to play with at least 😉

Update: I tried this out at work and it worked very well, no skipping at all. I am liking it

Categories
Random

Sublime – What I Got (acappella cover)

Whew!!

I just went through my music library and tried to clean up some of the random songs. One song that was the hardest to find the answer to

What I Got (Sublime Cover)

That is all I had to go on. Listening to it, it was sung “A cappella” (acappella) . Searching the net, a lot of people said it was 311, which (lol) it is not, I am a huge 311 fan and trust me, it wasn’t 311.

In the Sublime version, they sing “I got a dalmation, I can still get high.
I can play the guitar like a mother fu*$in’ riot” but in the version I had to look up, they sing “I can play the guitar like a rubber duckin’ riot” so I searched on that, and still people thought it was 311!!

Finally found a message board where someone said it was the “The Stanford Harmonics” – good enough for me! If it isn’t them and someone knows what I am talking about please let me know!

They do start doing a medley at the end of the song, with like “No Diggity” by Blackstreet and “All Mixed Up” by 311, so that is maybe where people are getting confused.

The Stanford Harmonics

Update:
It’s on our myspace site now!

www.myspace.com/academicalvillagepeople

Categories
Random

ActiveX vs. Java

Firefox isn’t a panacea. I got spyware installed on a box surfing with firefox. A java applet installed spyware that affects internet explorer. I think it is more a vuln. in java and windows, not really firefox or ie. It really shows you that ActiveX isn’t the only thing that has issues as far as installing things on your box when surfing.

I think that you need to worry about security no matter if you use IE or FF or anything else. 🙂

Categories
Random

Nintendo Choir

This is cool

Nintendo Choir

Categories
Random

Firefox 100 Million Downloads+

Pretty much every tech blog has this as an entry lately. My only question is: Do they count every upgrade as a new download? And when did they start counting?

1.0
1.0.1
1.0.2
1.0.3
1.0.4
1.0.5
1.0.6
1.0.7

Every update I have done, have they counted it? And every install on every pc I have, and everytime I reload my machine? do they count those? I probably have 200 under by belt by now.

Makes you wonder how they count the “real”, “unique” installs

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Media Center Edition

I am liking Windows Media Center Edition 2005. I watched a divx TV show and I read some RSS feeds through Newsgator MCE plugin. I need to get a tuner card and a longer s-video cable to get the setup correct with my TV, but so far it is pretty sweet. I hear there is a hotmail add-in coming this week or next so I will have to try that out too. I think I want an Xbox 360 as it is a MCE Extender. 🙂

Categories
Life

Dood! I'm getting a Dell

Hopefully it will be here this week. Here are the general specs:

* Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) w/Dual Core Technology
* 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
* 19 in (19 in viewable) E193FP Flat Panel Display
* 256MB ATI Hyper Memory PCI-Express X16 (DVI/VGA/TV out) Radeon X600 SE
* 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
* Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, English
* Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet
* 16X DVD-ROM and 16X DVD+/-RW
* Remote Control for Media Center

Categories
Life

KARE 11 Makes Me Download TV Shows

Yeah, you heard it right. KARE 11 – the NBC affilate, makes me download TV shows. Why? Becuase shows I try to dvr error out when they break in with news and the show gets cut off. I got E-Ring and Law and Order from last week, dl’d last night. Torrents are great.

I pay for cable, I should be able to at least watch the shows on there. DVR doesn’t seem to cut it with KARE-11, who seem to think I want to know about Twin Cities weather and other junk when I live in Waite Park.