Get Started with Internet Radio

I am always on the hunt for new music and I have found Internet radio to be a very valuable source to discover new material.

To get started with Internet radio, do the following:
1. Start Winamp (Windows Media Player may also work, I believe ... but WMP can suck my balls).
2. Go via your browser to here Shoutcast's Home Page
3. Browse genres by selecting one from the Comprehensive Genre List drop-down box at the top right hand side of the webpage (try Americana Blues).
4. Select a station ... look for BellyUp4Blues (#4) ... it is an excellent 128 blues feed.
5. Click the "Tune In" button and you are away.

128 stations suck a bit of bandwidth but there are many other feeds that play OK on 56 and even 32 bitrates ... these even work OK at dial-up speeds.

To Bookmark your favourite stations:
1. Right click on its Playlist Editor entry
2. Click Bookmark Item(s)
3. Then open Winamp's Media Library and select the Bookmark menu
4. You can then edit the entry to reflect the station's name, rather than the curently-playing artist, by right clicking on the entry you just created and selecting Edit Selected Bookmarks.

Only edit the Title field as the File Entry field is the URL for the station and you do not want to mess with that.

Enjoy

Winamp Plug-ins for Album Art and MP3 Player Support

I use Winamp to play my MP3s and have found some great free Winamp plug-ins that I find particularly useful.

gUSB allows Winamp's media library to see Windows shell devices (anything which appears in "My Computer") such as removable USB devices, MP3 players as well as fixed and network drives. I understand that this plug-in does not support iPods or Creative Nomads that use proprietary protocols.

Cover & TAG uses the Winamp video window to display album cover art and tag information. No frills, functional and a clean interface.

Cover Art allows you to display, in its own window, the cover art of songs that are playing. Its nicely integrated with Winamp and supports the most popular image formats.

Now Playing uses Winamp's Media Library minibrowser to display information such as artist, album, title, etc. and also the album-cover and lyrics, if they are stored in a tag (cover/lyrics) or in the directory (cover). In addition to MP3 support, the plug-in tries to support MP4/M4A/OGG/FLAC/MPC/AAC.

Note that to display the true colors to your Album Art, instead of the blue-tinged default look, you can edit (using Windows Notepad) the "Default (Single Track).html" template (located in the "C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\ml_nowplaying" directory) and remove the "<$coverlight='<$clselectedbg$>'$> >" tag ( thanks to Parfait for this tip).

The plug-in can also fetch album art and other information from: Amazon.com, allmusic.com, ebay, CDDB, Covers-Project, Google (general & Lyrics) and Last.FM.

News, Blogs and all Manner of Web Content Seamlessly Delivered to You ... Gratis

Recently, I have been getting into syndicated Web content and Web feeds from blogs.

What is Syndicated Web Content?
Web syndication refers to making content (news, sports information, Web pages, weather information, newsgroups, blogs etc.) available so that subscribers can display an automatically updating list of content. By subscribers, I mean people who elect to receive content from a particular feed. This does not mean that you have to register to recieve elected content.

What are Web Feeds?
A Web feed is a document which contains content items, often summaries of articles or blog posts, with links to full versions. The two main Web feed formats are RSS and Atom. Web feeds provide a means to efficiently and seamlessly deliver tailored content to you.

What are Feed Readers?
Much like Microsoft's Outlook, feed readers (also known as RSS readers, feed aggregators or news readers) are software that fetch syndicated Web content at either pre-determined intervals or via a feed update that the user can initiate. There are many different feed readers available and while many are licenced software, there are also freeware/shareware versions.

Why Bother?
If you are like me, these things are essential as you can keep informed with the minimum amount of effort ;) and time :))

Licenced Versions
Here some links to a few licenced versions of RSS readers:
FeedDemon
Newzcrawler
RSS-Magnet-Reader
All of the above come pre-configured with numerous news feeds, blog feeds and feeds from websites. I have tried them all and while they are all pretty good and feature rich, my preference is FeedDemon.

Freeware Versions
You dont have to shell out your hard-earned $s as there are freeware versions, for example:
Feedreader
Lektora
WinRSS
I have only tried Feedreader and while it does the job, it is fairly basic.

Web-based Versions
In addition, there are web-based versions that do not require installation and have the advantage of being accessable from any computer that is connected to the Internet. On the downside, they tend to be slower, have less features and basic interfaces. Here some links to a few web-based aggregators:
Bloglines
NewsIsFree
Rocket Searchbar
RSS-Feed

What do I do with the feed links?
If you have a licenced version:
1. Move your cursor over the required or link
2. Right click
3. Select "Copy Shortcut"
4. Open your feed reader
5. Ctrl+N and then keep clicking Next until you are finished

You will then receive the latest feeds from your new channel.

Resources
RSS Readers - RSS Tools' page at Blogspot
LiveJournal - A list of syndicated feeds
Feed Directory - Categorised, syndicated feeds

To MP3, or not to MP3, that is the Question

Music is a very personal thing and so is an individual's preference as to what level of audio "purity" satisfies them. What sounds OK to me, with respect to a digitally encoded audio file (e.g. CDs, WAVs, Flacs, Oggs, MP3s, WMAs, etc, etc), may sound terrible to someone else. There is a trade-off between file size and audio quality and, arguably, all compressed formats will suffer from some loss of fidelity.

As this post deals purely with the MP3 format I will not go into some long-winded discussion about what is the "best" compressed format (e.g. MP3, WMA, Flac, Ogg etc.) as this issue is covered extensively elsewhere.

Typically, the smaller the file size of a MP3, the worse the fidelity. For example, a typical 4 minute CD track consumes about 42Mb of storage space (in an uncompressed WAV form). When converted to a MP3, the same track uses much less space. The space used by an MP3 is directly related to the amount of compression used. For example, using our 42Mb, 4 minute WAV as a reference point, the following table gives you an idea of space used at different compression rates (the track I have used is Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, off Physical Graffiti.



I have used AudioGrabber to rip the track off the CD and LAME (v3.96.1) as the MP3 encoder. I note that there is much controversy surrounding which encoder gives the best results and what is the "best" CD ripping program. I am not buying into that one at all.

What's all this mean then?
1. If you want convenience and reasonable fidelity, use MP3s.
2. Some music, such as that with a lot of loud percussion, does not compress well using the MP3 format and ends up sounds squelchy and totally shithouse.
3. In most circumstances, I compress at 160Kb, if that rate sounds crap, I try lower compression rates (192, 256, 320) and see how that sounds.
4. Everyone has a different propensity to detect differences (loss of fidelity) arising from compression. Try 128Kb compression (or 112, 96, etc) and if does not sound right to you then try a lower compression rate (160, 192, 256, 320).
5. If you want to fit more MP3s onto your iPod or MP3 player, use higher compression rates but be aware that fidelity is lost the more you compress.
6. If you can not tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD, you are one of the lucky ones as you will end up using much less storage space than some one who can.
7. Download/buy a decent CD ripper and MP3 management application and ditch Windoz management of your music.

Some links of interest:
Winamp - MP3 ripping and management
ImTOO DVD Audio Ripper
Flac - Lossless audio compression
dBpowerAMP - handles just about any audio format

The Lithium-ion Battery as used in Digital Cameras, the iPod and Notebook

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are now used in many consumer goods such as the iPod, MP3 player, laptop (notebook), digital camera and cordless workshop tool.

I was contemplating buying some spare Li-ion batteries for my digital camera and had located some on eBay. The price was right, however, I got to thinking about whether Li-Ion batteries have a shelf-life. I checked out Wikipedia's entry for the Lithium-ion Battery and was very surprised.

Here is an extract from the Wikipedia entry:

At a 100% charge level, a typical Li-ion laptop battery that's full most of the time at 25 degrees Celsius, will irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year. This capacity loss begins from the time it was manufactured, and occurs even when the battery is unused. Different storage temperatures produce different loss results:



Every deep discharge cycle decreases its capacity, and the degradation is sloped such that 100 cycles leave the battery with about 75% to 85% of the original. When used in laptop computers or cellular phones, this rate of deterioration means that after three to five years the battery will have capacities that are too low to be usable.

A word of caution:

Lithium-ion batteries can easily rupture, ignite, or explode when exposed to high temperatures or direct sunlight. Never store them inside of a car during hot weather. Short-circuiting a Li-ion battery can also cause it to ignite or explode. Never open a Li-ion battery's casing. Li-ion batteries contain safety devices that, if damaged, can cause the battery to ignite or explode.

Looks like I need a re-think my purchase and storage strategies.
What I get out of all this is:
1. Check the date of manufacture before purchase.
2. Store batteries in the fridge when not in use.
3. Before refrigeration, use until charge falls below 40%.
4. Allow them to reach room temperature before recharging.
5. NEVER leave batteries, cameras or an iPod in a hot car.
6. DO NOT experiment with blowing-up a Li-Ion battery.

All this might seem like common sense, however, one's common sense is another's ignorance.

Further Reading

Battery University’s How To Prolong Lithium-Based Batteries

Apple’s Lithium-ion Batteries

MP3 Tagging and MP3 Volume Equalisation

Missing/incorrect MP3 tags and MP3s that play either too loud or too soft are a problem. As luck would have it, there are some excellent, free software that can sort out your MP3 tags and problems due to MP3 tracks having different volume levels.

MP3 Tagging
My criteria are for a MP3 tagger that is simple to use, has a clean interface, is powerful, will fetch missing tag details off the Web and is free. In my quest for the "perfect" tagger, I have tried many. Some were too basic and limited in function while others offered way too much functionality, for me at least. Finally, I found the pot of gold, named appropriately - MP3Tag

MP3Tag is The universal tag editor and more. It is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs.

MP3Tag's Home Page


Evening out MP3 Volume Levels
As I often listen to MP3 playlists, I have the need for an application that ensures that the volume level of tracks from different albums is constant. MP3Gain solves that problem.

MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts MP3 files so that they have the same volume. MP3Gain does not just do peak normalisation, as many normalisers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the MP3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.

MP3Gain's Home Page

Lost Windows Product ID Key

The other day, my brother's friend had lost her windows product ID key and I thought that here must be a way to extract the Product ID Key off her computer.

A quick Google revealed that this little tool Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder can retrive your Product ID Key. Unfortunately, he had already formated the hard drive so this was not an option.

I had a bit of a poke around on the Internet and apparently Micro$oft may also give you your Product ID Key if you can tell them your CD serial number, written on the inside clear ring of the Windows CD. He rang Micro$oft and was provided with the key.