When I realized that Apple software doesn’t work very well on a windows OS, and all microsoft programs are ridiculously slow, I began googling for alternatives to iTunes. Originally I discovered Foobar2000, and decided that I didn’t like it. Today I discovered something incredible.

SONGBIRD 0.6

This is being created in cahoots with Mozilla, pretty much the greatest software developers/perfectors of all time. Songbird is still in development (hence 0.6), but it’s making good progress. At the moment it’s a open-source music managing and playing program that supports themes, add-ons, and even web-browsing (think Winamp web browser), music downloading, FLAC support, and iPod/MP3 player support.

I’m not making it my replacement-iTunes just yet, because it’s missing some very key features that aren’t done being made yet (again hence 0.6). They still need CD ripping, CD burning, podcast support, and watch folders (something that iTunes has yet to pick up on). Then I’ll say bye bye to iTunes for good.

Until then, I’m very mad that I found out about this software while it’s still in development. The waiting is going to kill me. This is going to rock so much.

Somehow today I pressed the wrong combination of buttons, and this happened to me. I was just typing on a message board and I noticed that what I was typing wasn’t…what I was typing.

Luckily I figured out how to fix it. I googled it (with the onscreen keyboard, thank god for that) and found out that if you press ALT+NUM LOCK at the same time, it makes your i, o, p, k, l, m, and the number 0 type 56*230 and /, respectively. But until I figured this out, I was definitely freaking out.

In an attempt to keep my computer organized and simple and fast, I have been looking for stuff to aid me in my quest. Today I struck a gold mine. I got to get rid of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, AIM, and I was able to clean up my desktop, so now I only have 8 icons on it. So here’s my 3 not-so-life-changing discoveries.

ROCKETDOCK

Gives your windows XP/Vista desktop a mac-esque dock bar. It’s awesome and everyone should get one. End of story.

THUNDERBIRD

Not as awesome as Rocketdock, but it’s way way better than Windows Live Mail and it’s pretty awesome. I also paired this up with a new e-mail account, this time at GMail. Also much better than Windows Live Hotmail.

PIDGEN

Pidgin is an IM client that lets you use ALL your IM clients at once. It also runs much faster than any of my IM clients, so this is a big plus. I need to get a skin for it though, it’s a little boring looking.

Check this stuff out if you haven’t already.

My good buddy Zaq with a Q got on MSN about an hour ago and asked me to send him a song that he sent me a long time ago, but lost the file. I was on my laptop, and all of my music is on my desktop computer, because I don’t have room for 12+GBs of music on my 60GB laptop that’s almost full. So I say, “Sure Zaq, let me switch computers real fast.”

I jump on the big compy. My dad has his “profile” running, and I decide that now would be a good time to take advantage of him leaving his profile on. There are a lot of unnecessary icons on my desktop because I can’t get rid of them, seeing as I don’t have admin privileges. The one that’s particularly bugging me is the “HP Camera Share-To-Web Upload Folder” icon for that HP camera that we don’t have anymore. So I right click it to send it to the recycle bin, and the desktop freezes, right there.

But I find out that the “start” button still works. So I’m able to log out of his profile without anything freezing for good. I leave his profile and click the little button with a guitar on it that says “Andrew,” to go to my desktop. However, when I open my profile, all I see is my background. Windows says that I’m logged in. And I am. But all of my desktop icons are missing, and the taskbar (the thing where all your windows are and the start button is) is gone.

So all I see is my background image, which is solid green. I’m trying to open MSN and iTunes so I can copy and paste that song and send it to Zaq. But with no buttons to click, how do I open the programs? Well, I found out that control+alt+delete works. But the “processes” tab shows that everything is working the way it should. The taskbar program is even running. It’s just not there.

One thing that control+alt+delete does is has a button that says “New Task.” If I know exactly the location of “iTunes.exe,” or “MSN.exe,” I can open it. Unfortunately, I don’t. Fortunately, theres a “Browse” button, so that I can find it myself. UNfortunately, when I click this, everything freezes and I can’t click on anything at all.

So I unplug my comptuer and restart it manually, and see if it will work a second time. maybe I just messed up something because my dad’s screen froze. But, no. The same exact thing happens. And restarting again makes the same thing happen.

I’ve also tried running the computer in safe mode. If I do THAT, scrolly text goes down the screen then freezes infinitely, and I never get to where I’m going.

HELP ME

I’ve been having Torrent trouble lately.

Usually, I don’t download albums. I buy albums because I want to support musicians, and because I like to have a hard copy of the album in case my computer ever goes berserk or my files get lost. But, when there’s an album that I don’t really care about, but would like to listen to to see what it’s like (Bjork’s “Post” comes to mind), I’ll torrent it. Or, if I want to download a particular SNL skit and put it on my iPod. I’ll torrent it.

And usually, I use uTorrent. But all of a sudden, it just stopped downloading. I dunno if my computer blocked it or something, but it just became useless overnight. Downloads nothing. So I uninstalled it, and got BitComet. That worked ONCE. But then it quit on me. After that I tried Azerus. I just hated the interface and the way everything was laid out. So I uninstalled that. And now I have the original, BitTorrent. It’s working. But everything is

super

slow.

I’ve been downloading an album, and I’m 27% done, and the estimated time says I have 4 and a half hours to go.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME.

Today was a fun day, because today is the day that me and my friend Travis made our own recording studio in a very small bathroom and actually wrote and recorded some decent songs.

The first song was all me, and it was called “Witch Doctor.” Technically, this song wasn’t recorded in Washroom Studios because I wasn’t exactly in the bathroom when I recorded it, but it was before we had the idea. But still, I wrote and recorded the song all sitting in one place, holding a guitar, having a keyboard in front of me, and a laptop to the side. (And relatively close to the bathroom) The song has a exotic sounding piano part going on in the background that’s all focused around one chord with some variations here and there, then some conga-esque drums kick in to give the song some rhythm. The solos that are over this background part are flute, keyboard-clav, and wah-wah guitar. (Everything but the guitar was made from the keyboard) It was only like a minute and a half, maybe two minutes, but it was fun to make and fun to play. Though I probably couldn’t play it again if I tried. These are always spur of the moment type of things.

Then, Travis came up with the “let’s make a recording studio in the bathroom” idea, so we got excited. The next song was supposed to be an all-Travis song, but we ended up collabo-ing because he needed some help and I wanted in on it. We decided to call the song “Faucetto” because of the environment we we’re in and because of some of the instruments we used. First, we made a drum loop and played that for about a minute and recorded it. This probably wasn’t a good idea because it was hard to work with anything else after recording the drums first. (In my opinion, you should record drums WHILE recording the main instrument, like I did with “Witch Doctor.” I recorded the piano and the drums at the same time.) Travis wanted to put some weird vocals like I did with my ambient Ben-collabo song (you’ll hear about this later), “Distended Tendencies.” So we were trying to make the wierdest vocal effects ever and found some amazing effects on his pedal board that made his beat-boxing sound like a nuclear bomb. It was awesome, so we ran with it. We ended up using tongue clicks over the drums and it sounded like a mad dripping faucet or something. We used the same effects on a running faucet in Travis’ bathtub to increase the effect; it sounded amazing. The coolest thing we recorded, though, was when Travis put effects on the microphone and rubbed the mic against his jeans and it sounded like a turntable scratch. Awesome. The, one thing remained: actual music. The first half of the song was all piano over all those effects that I told you about. Then, after all the effects ended, there was a keyboard rhythm part that went on for a bit by itself, and then guitar and drums kicked in and made a great coda to end the song with. Pretty sweet.

You can listen to “Witch Doctor” and “Faucetto” at my myspace music page, along with some old songs I made called “Real Grace,” “Retrogressive,” and a remake of a The Mars Volta song, which was once called “Cicatriz E.S.P.,” that I renamed as my own to “Cicatrix. Check them all out here:

http://www.myspace.com/andrewinlatin

Good night.

P.S.: I just watched Cloverfield again, and I stand by my score of 3.8 out of 4. Awesome movie.

I hate different file types, and especially Apple for making the .MOV video file popular. No one has a mac. Okay, digital camera companies? Nobody. So don’t make your digital cameras take videos in freaking .MOV format, which is near impossible to get to edit on a Windows computer. Here is a chronicling of my epic journey to get videos on my blog every time I want to do it from now on.

1: I take the video, and the video is in .MOV format, unable to be changed on the camera itself.
2: I import the video into the My Videos folder, still as a .MOV
3: The first time I had to do this, I had to search for a good portion of my life to find a free, working converter that would change my .MOV movies to .ANYTHING_ELSE movies.
4: I then can use my .ANYTHING_ELSE movie file in Windows Movie Maker to add titles and edit the video.
5: Then I have to save it as a .WMMP or something project file.
6: Then I have to save that project file as a .WMV file, which FINALLY makes my video youTube friendly, but this video takes forever to save.
7: I upoload to youTube, normally an overnight process.
8: THEN my blog gets the video.

SCREW YOU, .MOV FILES! SCREW YOU!

I’ll be posting my Go With The Flow video tomorrow.