Archive for April, 2007

New trailer for Harry Potter 5

Published
by
Austen
on April 23, 2007
in Books, Movies and Videos
. 0 Comments

The new international trailer for the 5th Harry Potter movie, The Order of the Phoenix was released yesterday…

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

My favorite part:

Hermione: It’s really exciting, isn’t it? Breaking the laws.
Ron: Who are you and what have you done with Hermione Granger?

The trailer is AWESOME, and I’m looking forward to the movie, but not nearly as much as the 7th book. This is probably the only series where I would prefer the book to the movie. Not that the movies aren’t great, though. I really think that they handled the movies very well. They could have easily just been crap. They’re not as good as the books, but they do a good job of interpeting them.

World’s Largest iTunes Library

Published
by
Austen
on April 22, 2007
in Music
. 0 Comments

Glenn Wolsey has an interview with Will Friedwald, owner of the world’s largest iTunes collection:

849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days
2,935 artists | 11,561 albums
iTunes library database file - 282 MB
iTunes library XML file - 259 MB

And about how fast iTunes runs with his massive library…

Essentially the problem is that iTunes was designed for people to buy music from the store, to put CDs on their iPods, and then, perhaps lastly, to store some of a personal CD collection in the library. It was NOT designed for what I am doing with it, which is to store, manage and access a major music collection of nearly 200,000 tracks. As a result, when I am working with the full 800 GB library, it is painfully slow, getting around the library, doing searches, and editing info on individual tracks or whole albums just takes forever!

As an example: when I want to edit the information on an individual song – the “metadata” as technically-minded people call it – I highlight the track, then I press Apple-I. With a small library (under 50-100 GB), the edit info window comes up instantly. But with my 800 GB Matrix, I have to wait three or four minutes before the window comes up. That’s time enough to go to the bathroom, make a cup of coffee, or entertain myself with 99% of the clips on youtube!

It’s a very interesting article, and after reading it, it’s apparent that Will is just a normal guy… with a huge collection of music.

The Office: Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

Published
by
Austen
on April 22, 2007
in Humor and Television
. 1 Comment

It wasn’t a new Office this past Thursday. That was disappointing. But this promo for next week made up for it. Thank you NBC!!! Jim imitating Dwight is one of the best Office scenes ever!

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Harry Potter 7!!!

Published
by
Austen
on April 21, 2007
in Books
. 1 Comment

The book cover for the 7th and final Harry Potter book was released today, and it’s awesome and all and now there’s only 90 days left till Harry Potter 7! And 82 till the 5th Harry Potter movie! I can’t wait!

Of course, this is just the American book cover and artwork. You can find the UK ones here. The book will apparently be 784 pages long (longer than Goblet of Fire, but not the Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince.)

Harry Potter 7 Wiki | Harry Potter 7 on Amazon

Tux Racer - Have you ever seen a penguin sledding?

Published
by
Austen
on April 21, 2007
in Technology
. 0 Comments

Tux Racer is a long-dead game featuring the Linux mascot and penguin Tux. Why Tux? Because Linux is the ultimate representation of open source, and this is an open source game! The game isn’t very complicated, in fact it’s not really a “race” because he’s not racing against anyone.

But basically, you’re controlling Tux who’s in a way sledding down a series of various snowy and icy hills, and trying to collect fish. That’s about it. The game stopped being developed in 2001, but it’s still a great little game.

There have been a few spin-offs of it, attempts to revive the game, but I believe that none of them are currently in development.

Tux Racer Page | Tux Racer Wiki | Tux Wiki

iTunes slower on Windows

Published
by
Austen
on April 20, 2007
in Music and Technology
. 2 Comments

I love iTunes. It’s a great program to manage my music with. It has a great interface, and a beautiful layout. But I have noticed a HUGE difference between its performance on Windows and Mac. Is some of it due to that fact that my computer is 3 almost 4 years old, and that the Mac in question is not even a year old? Maybe.

But I seriously believe that iTunes performs better and faster on a Mac. Is that unfair yes? Is it wrong? Not really. Of course iTunes is faster on a Mac, it’s by Apple and it’s hard to just “convert” a program to another platform. But still, sometimes I wonder what it would be like if iTunes just worked faster, My main problem is scrolling, it’s anything but smooth. And then, when I have a bunch of other programs open, it’s basic functions like playing a stoping songs turn super-slow.

Has anyone else noticed a difference in speed between the Mac and Windows version of iTunes?

Scribd: Digg for documents

Published
by
Austen
on April 19, 2007
in Netsua.com and Technology
. 1 Comment

Scribd (yes, I spelled it right) is a new web service very similar to Digg. But while Digg is a social network focused on rating websites and blog posts, Scribd is a social network focused on rating documents and writing.

It’s just starting out, and doesn’t seem to be that popular yet, but it really has a lot of potential. It overall runs much faster than Digg and even lets you upload documents without logging in!

Uploading a document to Scribd (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, .xls, etc.) is easy and fast. Then, it has a page where you can either view as simple HTML text or in a pdf-style flash window that’s available to be embeded into websites. And it’s not like the Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer, it’s just simple. It doesn’t take forever to load, and it’s only got the controls you need.

You can rate documents (which range from essays to online magazines to a collection of pictures) just like Digg, and even download it, no matter how you uploaded it, as a .doc, .pdf, .txt, and even an MP3 (using a computer voice, it reads out your document.) So in a way, you can use Scribd as a conversion service for files also!

Some of my favorite documents: They Didn’t Study, 10 Random Questions You’ve Never Thought of Asking, How to Succeed in Business.

I’ve been uploading some of my writing to Sribd and posting it on the writing page - so now you don’t have to download the word document, but just view it in-browser in the Scribd pdf-style document reader.

“Portal” website because I was bored

Published
by
Austen
on April 18, 2007
in Life
. 0 Comments

I had a little project over spring break - pointless, as most of my “projects” are. But it was just a simple portal to the rest of the website using some nice HTML that I’ve learned recently. Yes, I did that whole page in Notepad with basic HTML. Basically, it’s just a way to show off rollover images.

Anyway, the link is Netsua.com/portal.html