Alright,
So I've been juggling around three blogs for the last few months or so and I've decided to switch over to one combined blog. I also decided that wordpress worked more robustly than blogger and so I'm moving my 3 blogs (photos, opinions, life) over to
adithya88.wordpress.com
Friday, August 15, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
MediaMonkey : A Lifesaver
I'm sure a lot of people listen to digital music and there are even a certain few that still love a good old LP record. I'm more of an mp3 type of person and I realized to my dismay that over the years I had accumulated a great number of songs (some 4000 odd) and I really did not have it very organized or accessible. Add to this the fact that my whole collection had copies in my backup hard drive and even more copies in random places and I had a huge mess on my hands.
My preference for the music i listen to keeps changing depending on my mood (and in some cases if a song gets saturated after listening to it too much). So the only organization of music I had was a few folders like English, Hindi, Tamil, Soundtracks and then that last and definitely the least favorite, Others. This Others folder was like a bottomless pit of music that i wasn't currently in the mood to listen to. So I was scouring the web looking for a software that will help me manage my mdeia library with some support for tagging and the works. Windows Media Player and Winamp are ok for various reasons but they're not very condusive to managing large media libraries. So enter Media Monkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/) and my life was saved in the matter of a couple of hours.
I installed the software and set up an auto-organize filter to store all the music in one folder (sorted like Music/artist/album/song). Then I got the player to scour my hard drives and find all the music files that it could and add them to the library all while sorting them out into the folder structure I mentioned before. There is a library tab on the side thru which can reach a section called files to edit and here very neatly is a section for duplicate files. Turns out, I had upto 7 copies of some of my songs so a LOT of hard drive space was being wasted. And the best part was that during the import all the copies were marked with a (1),(2),(3) etc suffix. So it was the simplest thing to find all of these and delete them. So in less than two hours i've got my music organize and the duplicates are all gone. I added an advanced duplicate finder (you can add custom scripts) and I also spent another hour or so tagging files. It can lookup CD information from Amazon and even download Album Art. It even has a Party Mode and an Auto DJ feature which ensures that there is always a song playing.
So all i can say is, if you have a big music collection and you want to organize it with minimum hassle, all while having a very convenient music player, then look no further, MediaMonkey is perfect.
EDIT -- It can automatically sync with Ipods and even my Nokia music phone.
My preference for the music i listen to keeps changing depending on my mood (and in some cases if a song gets saturated after listening to it too much). So the only organization of music I had was a few folders like English, Hindi, Tamil, Soundtracks and then that last and definitely the least favorite, Others. This Others folder was like a bottomless pit of music that i wasn't currently in the mood to listen to. So I was scouring the web looking for a software that will help me manage my mdeia library with some support for tagging and the works. Windows Media Player and Winamp are ok for various reasons but they're not very condusive to managing large media libraries. So enter Media Monkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/) and my life was saved in the matter of a couple of hours.
I installed the software and set up an auto-organize filter to store all the music in one folder (sorted like Music/artist/album/song). Then I got the player to scour my hard drives and find all the music files that it could and add them to the library all while sorting them out into the folder structure I mentioned before. There is a library tab on the side thru which can reach a section called files to edit and here very neatly is a section for duplicate files. Turns out, I had upto 7 copies of some of my songs so a LOT of hard drive space was being wasted. And the best part was that during the import all the copies were marked with a (1),(2),(3) etc suffix. So it was the simplest thing to find all of these and delete them. So in less than two hours i've got my music organize and the duplicates are all gone. I added an advanced duplicate finder (you can add custom scripts) and I also spent another hour or so tagging files. It can lookup CD information from Amazon and even download Album Art. It even has a Party Mode and an Auto DJ feature which ensures that there is always a song playing.
So all i can say is, if you have a big music collection and you want to organize it with minimum hassle, all while having a very convenient music player, then look no further, MediaMonkey is perfect.
EDIT -- It can automatically sync with Ipods and even my Nokia music phone.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Friday, The Day of torture
Friday is here and I can only say one thing. It is TORTURE.
Let me explain why. It can be done in just a phrase, it is the day before the weekend. The joys of relaxation and 12 hours (or more) of sleep are so near and yet so far today, especially for those at work. I've been at work all of 45 minutes and I already want to just go home and start the weekend.
Come on TIME, you'd better speed up a little at least, come on, pretty please.
Let me explain why. It can be done in just a phrase, it is the day before the weekend. The joys of relaxation and 12 hours (or more) of sleep are so near and yet so far today, especially for those at work. I've been at work all of 45 minutes and I already want to just go home and start the weekend.
Come on TIME, you'd better speed up a little at least, come on, pretty please.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Incredible
For a lot of people, this is old news, but while I knew what this was about, today was the first time I watched the below videos. So to the uninformed, an introduction.
Randolph Frederick Pausch(October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a best-selling author who achieved worldwide fame for his "The Last Lecture" speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch)
So I just got his book titled The Last Lecture but I thought I'd first watch the videos. All I can say is, don't miss it. I could rave as much about this as I did for Dark Knight but I would be doing it no justice. Truly and awesomely inspiring and its a whole lot of fun as well. The stuff that he says makes so much sense and I could really relate the things he said (especially towards the end) and I feel that everyone could do with incorporating a little of what he said in their lives. Towards the end, the things he says are simple but at the same time I feel they're so important that I absolutely have to mention them.
-- loyalty is a two way street
-- help others
-- NEVER GIVE UP
-- decide if you want to be an "Eeyore" or a "Tigger" (Read as depressed or Fun loving)
-- believe in Karma
-- Brickwalls let us show our dedication
The first video below is the actual Last Lecture. The 2nd One is a second "last" lecture done after this at University of Virginia. A little long (a bit over an hour each) but trust me when I say it is worth every second of your time. If you can't see the videos below then you can also see them and other videos here http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ .
Randolph Frederick Pausch(October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a best-selling author who achieved worldwide fame for his "The Last Lecture" speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch)
So I just got his book titled The Last Lecture but I thought I'd first watch the videos. All I can say is, don't miss it. I could rave as much about this as I did for Dark Knight but I would be doing it no justice. Truly and awesomely inspiring and its a whole lot of fun as well. The stuff that he says makes so much sense and I could really relate the things he said (especially towards the end) and I feel that everyone could do with incorporating a little of what he said in their lives. Towards the end, the things he says are simple but at the same time I feel they're so important that I absolutely have to mention them.
-- loyalty is a two way street
-- help others
-- NEVER GIVE UP
-- decide if you want to be an "Eeyore" or a "Tigger" (Read as depressed or Fun loving)
-- believe in Karma
-- Brickwalls let us show our dedication
The first video below is the actual Last Lecture. The 2nd One is a second "last" lecture done after this at University of Virginia. A little long (a bit over an hour each) but trust me when I say it is worth every second of your time. If you can't see the videos below then you can also see them and other videos here http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ .
Monday, August 4, 2008
A Question for Trivia Buffs
As the picture says. Connect the images you see. You might want to click on the picture to see everything more clearly. Answers will be out tomorrow.
Random Post -- Monday Again
Another week and another Monday. I'm starting to realize why Garfield always goes "I HATE MONDAYs". You are still stuck in weekend mode and nothing happens the way it should. Here I am, still revelling in the awesomeness that was the Dark Knight that I watched again yesterday. Sitting in the third row in the IMAX was incredible and I appreciated the visuals even MORE than I did the first time. Add to that the fact that I got up a little before noon and you have a normal college student's weekend day. Unfortunately, the weekend ended as of yesterday and the growing threat of the upcoming Monday was felt when I had to iron formals to wear for today (all while grumbling about how I hated formals).
It started off when my alarm went off at the unearthly hour of 6am. I wanted to put it on snooze a million times because as anyone would tell you, you just want to keep sleeping like you did over the weekend. Then I forced myself to wake up because I realized that I just had 10 minutes left to leave for work and so, as anyone does when they're supremely and positively late, u end up rushing through all your daily morning rituals and even before you are fully awake you are in your car heading off to work.
I don't drive so I'm carpooling with someone who works at the same place as I do and quite frankly, especially on a Monday morning, I'd prefer to be driving. There I am, sitting in the passenger seat, with nothing to do but listen to the radio and slowly, I feel my eyes go out of focus. I'll be looking into the distance when things start to blur and then i start going cross eyed as i start seeing double just before I end up unintentionally and blissfully asleep again. Only to wake up in 5 minutes because the part of my mind that is awake (I never thought any part of me would be awake) makes me feel guilty that I'm getting this guy to drive and I'm sitting next to him and sleeping (almost like he's a chauffeur). So I shake my head and wake up, try to strike up conversation. But, when the conversation slows down again, my eyes start going out of focus again and before I know it, I've repeated this whole process over and over for the entire hour or so that it takes me to get to work. And as an after thought, thank god I'm not driving because in a state like this I'd probably be a threat to everyone on the road.
So after an hour and ten minutes of sleep laced with guilt, I reached work and once I got to my desk I sat there almost in a daze. My boss just came in and asked me how I was doing and I swear to you I replied with "Wha....um...er .....doing......oh....nothing.....oh wait.....how i'm doing.....i'm ok". And I'm pretty sure he realized the kind of state I was in because he just gave me some light stuff to do before lunch that should let me get out of this extended period of feeling groggy.
So it continues, Monday morning blues. Thankfully I'm not dozing off anymore, just hungry because I didn't have breakfast (where was the time considering I had just 10 minutes to get ready and get out of home). So now you realize why I was writing this entry, basically I was looking to do something that would keep me awake....haha.... Enjoy the rest of your week.
It started off when my alarm went off at the unearthly hour of 6am. I wanted to put it on snooze a million times because as anyone would tell you, you just want to keep sleeping like you did over the weekend. Then I forced myself to wake up because I realized that I just had 10 minutes left to leave for work and so, as anyone does when they're supremely and positively late, u end up rushing through all your daily morning rituals and even before you are fully awake you are in your car heading off to work.
I don't drive so I'm carpooling with someone who works at the same place as I do and quite frankly, especially on a Monday morning, I'd prefer to be driving. There I am, sitting in the passenger seat, with nothing to do but listen to the radio and slowly, I feel my eyes go out of focus. I'll be looking into the distance when things start to blur and then i start going cross eyed as i start seeing double just before I end up unintentionally and blissfully asleep again. Only to wake up in 5 minutes because the part of my mind that is awake (I never thought any part of me would be awake) makes me feel guilty that I'm getting this guy to drive and I'm sitting next to him and sleeping (almost like he's a chauffeur). So I shake my head and wake up, try to strike up conversation. But, when the conversation slows down again, my eyes start going out of focus again and before I know it, I've repeated this whole process over and over for the entire hour or so that it takes me to get to work. And as an after thought, thank god I'm not driving because in a state like this I'd probably be a threat to everyone on the road.
So after an hour and ten minutes of sleep laced with guilt, I reached work and once I got to my desk I sat there almost in a daze. My boss just came in and asked me how I was doing and I swear to you I replied with "Wha....um...er .....doing......oh....nothing.....oh wait.....how i'm doing.....i'm ok". And I'm pretty sure he realized the kind of state I was in because he just gave me some light stuff to do before lunch that should let me get out of this extended period of feeling groggy.
So it continues, Monday morning blues. Thankfully I'm not dozing off anymore, just hungry because I didn't have breakfast (where was the time considering I had just 10 minutes to get ready and get out of home). So now you realize why I was writing this entry, basically I was looking to do something that would keep me awake....haha.... Enjoy the rest of your week.
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