Category: geekery

“What’s Playing” – WinAmp

March 6, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Recent versions of MSN Messenger have the option to display what you’re listening to in Windows Media Player as your personal message. I’ve thought this was sort of cool and wanted to play around with it–unfortunately, I hate the living fuck out of WMP. I refuse to use it for music.

(Why? Way too much crap. If you can believe it, I want my mp3 playing app to do nothing but play mp3s. I don’t want it to burn CDs, play videos, organize my music collection, download song information, or anything else. Just. Play. Music. And make the interface so simple that I can use it even when dead drunk.)

I’m still using my 1999-era fave, WinAmp, which doesn’t support “What’s Playing” out of the box. After some brief googling, I found a plugin that adds that functionality.

So, you know… install that and use it. If you want to. Because it’s sort of neat.

Just don’t forget to disable it before watching porn.

Shutdown Day

March 2, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Another in the line of the Focal Plane Challenge, Shutdown Day. That’s right–a day where you do not use a computer all day long.

Not once.

24 hours, no computer. You can’t check your email. Or your blog stats.

One entire day without a functioning computer. That’s all.

:: shudders ::

I think I can do it. The rules say to shutdown “a” computer, implying a single computer. So I can turn off my laptop, but leave my MythTV box, server, and workstation running, even if don’t use them, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Waiting at the Airport

February 22, 2007 / / 0 Comments

[Yesterday morning –ed.]

4:47am

I’m waiting at the airport–they claim to have wireless internet access here, but it has some severe problems. Like, for instance, the inability to connect to any services. As such, I’m writing this in TextPad.

I have now been awake for about 18 hours. I’m not getting loopy yet, though I suspect that will change during the next couple flights.

The drive here was unpleasant, to put it mildly. Gusting winds randomly buffeted my car for the entirety of the hour and a half drive, frequently pushing me over the lines of my lane into the next. Most of the drive was spent clutching the wheel with both hands, teeth gritted and a steady stream of cursing leaving my lips. The steady stream of truckers tailgating me while I was in the slow lane didn’t help matters.

I’m hoping that will be the least pleasant part of my trip, though I’m all but certain it won’t be. I hate flying. If I had the time, I’d much rather take a train any day.

Ah–I’ve found the problem with the wireless internet… the bastards expect me to give them $10 for the privilege. Not going to happen. Of course, I only found this out by randomly typing addresses into Firefox. Any idiot could create a wireless access point that redirects all requests to a “Pay for this because we’re the only game in range.” I’m a little disturbed that it doesn’t.

Why? Because I’m hoping that the person in charge of the wifi network here isn’t also in charge of things like air traffic control’s computers or surface-to-air communications systems.

The fact that “Radar” is another open access point in range worries me…