iVolume January 14, 2010
Posted by weare1 in OS X, geek, music, software.add a comment
I heartily recommend this fantastic piece of software which will effectively equalize your entire music collection to a consistent volume level. I know, iTunes does this but they use a proprietary format that other software cannot read, and their algorithm is very simple and not very effective. iVolume fixes the “Sound Check” levels for iTunes, but also tags the files with their “Replay Gain” adjustment, which is an open standard supported by other software, XBMC (Xbox Media Center) for example. There are a lot of great preferences, such as the ability to adjust tracks volume on a track by track basis or an album basis to let the songs relative volume across an album remain consistent. There is free software to do this for MP3 files, but my collection is now in Apple lossless format (alac) and this is the only software I was able to find to replay gain alac files. It worked fantastic and was well worth the $30.
The meaning of open December 23, 2009
Posted by weare1 in Internet, economics, geek, society, software.Tags: google
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You Do Not Have Health Insurance « The Baseline Scenario August 6, 2009
Posted by weare1 in commentary, economics, politics, rant, society.add a comment
United Breaks Guitars July 7, 2009
Posted by weare1 in comedy, commentary, economics, frugality, links, music, rant, travel.Tags: airlines, music, united
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Best Home Theater Accessory Ever June 27, 2009
Posted by weare1 in gadgets, geek.Tags: home theater, remote
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You must get this exact version of Harmony’s fantastic universal remote control, not the fancier ones, and not the cheaper ones although you’ll be tempted. This ain’t cheap, but it has a feature called the RF extender, and what this little black box does receive the command from your remote via radio frequencies instead of infra-red (light) and then send that command to your components via infra-red which is what most components use. RF is way better then infra-red because it has longer range and does not require a line of sight, so you don’t have to “aim” your remote. Also, because the RF extender comes with IR emitters, you can put all of your components in a cabinet out of sight yet still have full remote control. Fantastic. Better still is the easy to use software (mac and PC) to set up the remote with all of your devices and even fine-tune it. The remote itself has a rechargeable battery, so there’s no concerns about running out of juice. The remote even plays a cute little slide show on its little LCD when it goes back in it’s cradle. The remote itself has an small screen on it, is fully customizable and works by activities rather then devices, what this means is that it offers things like “watch TV” or “listen to CDs”, not “CD->play”, it’s a subtle but significant difference. When in an activity the screen offers relevant choices. It took a few tries to get everything working perfectly, but each tweek made it a little bit better. I’m overjoyed with this device, it’s made my life better.
The Uninsured Subsidize The Insured May 24, 2009
Posted by weare1 in rant.Tags: care, doctor, health, hospital, insurance
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In America we have two health care systems, one for the insured and one for the uninsured. They are exactly the same in every way except one, price. If an insured person goes to an emergency room and requires a bandage their insurance company is charged the insured rate, say $20. Now if an uninsured person goes to the same emergency room and got the same bandage they would be billed about 20 times more then the other’s insurance company, $400 in this case. Both people need the bandage, why should the uninsured person pay more in effect subsidizeing the insured person? Is this fair? Clearly not. Yet, this is what is happening day in and day out in hospitals throughout this country. We need change, and we need it yesterday. If you’re not outraged then you’re not paying attention.
Netflix Hits It Out Of The Park With Xbox360 HD Streaming October 29, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, software.Tags: 360, hd, media, microsoft, movies, netflix, streaming, xbox, xbox 360, xbox360
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Netflix HD on Xbox360
Netflix has apparently hit a home run with it’s new (yet to be released-Nov. 19th) High-Definition movie streaming application for Xbox360’s. HD streaming is clearly the future of media and Netflix is the first one to deliver this long awaited feature. I’ve been using the regular Netflix service for years now and have nothing but great things to say about it, but this is a game changer. Kudus to Microsoft for realizing that this will drive Xbox360 sales perhaps at some cost to their own over-priced movie downloads. Once this hits the Xbox360 will be on a lot of christmas lists, and not just kids either. Netflix has priced this right (free!) with your existing traditonal Netflix movie account and your Xbox360 gold membership. To be fair there is only a limited selection of HD movies (and TV shows) available, but expect this to increase as studios begin to realize revenues from streaming. Netflix pays the studios a very small amount every time you stream their movies, and while Netflix is currently absorbing those costs to drive membership this cannot last. Expect that there will be fees in the future, but for now this is the media delivery system that consumers want.
Yahoo craps on itself! July 14, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, commentary, rant, software.Tags: crap, my yahoo, myyahoo, yahoo
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This company is incompetent. They literally owned the Internet, they had huge market share, and through complete lack of innovation, they gave it to Google. Today Yahoo! took the one last good thing they had (My Yahoo) and FORCED users to switch to some new 2.0 version, which to put it mildly, sucks ass. Why wouldn’t they give users a choice? Can’t afford the disk space? Really? They had a product I was mostly happy with and ruined it. Nice going dipshits. Do these guys own google stock or what? How is it it possible that one of the biggest companies in the valley hasn’t made any significant changes to their core site in years (other then ruin the few things that worked well? They have hundreds of employees and millions of dollars of market cap, what do these people do all day? I know it’s not customer service, you would know that too if you ever tried to get any out of them. They hide their phone numbers, and don’t even have email support. They make you fill in forms which are auto-handled (incorrectly) and ignored. Yahoo had to go out and buy innovation (Flickr), and even then they didn’t always do a good job. So by switching me to your lame my yahoo 2.0 you are dead to me now Yahoo. I thought it was My Yahoo, apparently not.
Another Massive Microsoft Fail February 6, 2010
Posted by weare1 in OS X, commentary, economics, gadgets, geek, rant, software, video games, xbox 360, xbox live.add a comment
The fact that Microsoft didn’t turn the Xbox into a media center which we proved it could be great at, was one of the largest mistakes in the history of technology which amazingly they are repeating with their 360 product. They are more concerned about making sure their box doesn’t get hacked then making sure their customers get the most out of their box. Once one of these dumb (I’m looking at you Sony who lost the complete control of the console market, but also made the same media center mistake) companies figures out that the homebrew community can improve their product, and has better software engineers then they do, and is willing to open their product will have massive success, because the people have spoken. We know what we want, the companies know what we want but for some reason are unwilling to provide it. The fact that Microsoft was greedy about their box will doom them to failure. Because our XBMC community was unable to use the 360 we switched to the Mac and Linux platforms, which we are going to use as our media centers thus depriving Microsoft of their beloved “Microsoft Tax.” They could have owned this market segment which will grow and grow, but because they chose to milk their consoles for profitability over usability they lose. Management in America is very short sighted.