I got the free music this time!

Pick of the Week from Starbucks, Song is Dull to Pause by the Junior Boys.

FYA4LKL9736N

99FENWT39PHH

MJH444MMM9P7

3MKWYLFKN4FX

E9NTHPWNEH79

Also, if anyone uses these, let us know so we can cross them off. Only usable in Canada as far as I know.

Update

So, I know last blog I said I’d sort out everything I didn’t want. I didn’t.

I also went out and bought a 1.5 terabyte hard drive for backup and all my stuff.

And then I dropped $500 on a new video card. Impulse buys are going to kill me.

Coming Clean

I don’t write new posts often enough, I guess I’m not the blog kind of person. I like writing them every once in a while, when I’m alone thinking deep thoughts when I’m really tired, but that doesn’t happen often. So, today I’m going to write a little blog, just talking about me.

Well, not so much about me, but about my computer, and how my personality is filling up my hard drive. I’ve always been the kind of person who keeps absolutely everything, for nostalgia’s sake. I don’t like throwing things out, because then they’re gone forever. My desk is full of clutter, and it annoys me, but I deal with it, because everything means something to me. Every little note has some important information I can’t get rid of today, but maybe tomorrow, or the next day.

The same idea crosses over when it comes to computers. When I want to watch a movie, I don’t like streaming it, because it’s low quality, and I usually have to wait 10 minutes for it to buffer. So instead, I get them a day ahead or so, and then watch them later, but recently I’ve started downloading without watching. So my movie collection is growing pretty massive, and because I don’t like to delete anything, I leave it all on my computer. I also do the same for TV shows, pictures, any anything else I download. I even have a huge collection of exe’s that I might want to reuse someday like trials for programs and such.

So, tonight I’m going through all of these, and getting rid of anything I don’t want anymore. Either that or I’ll go out soon and buy another hard drive.

I got shown up

So, if you want free music, go to this site, because they have a way better list then mine.

40 ways to download free music legally.

I still like mine though.

Love, Adam

How to get free music

I know what you’re thinking, here comes some guy telling me how to download music off limewire or whatever. Well no, you’re wrong, and that’s what I don’t like about you, always making assumptions like that, jumping to conclusions. Jeez, give a guy a break.

Now, I’m a little bit of an audiophile, I like to have all my music of high quality, and well organized. A guy like me likes to have lots of diversity in his music collection, and something for every mood, of every genre, of every taste. So, I end up looking for a lot of music, but the problem with music is that you have to pay for lots of it, so I come up with ways of getting music off the Internet legally and free. Here are a few places that I like to look at for my music.

• iTunes Music Store: Every week the iTunes music store has one free song, I haven’t figured out what day they change what song it is, but as long as you check back regularily, you’ll get yourself a nice little collection of music. They don’t usually give away very popular stuff, just some lesser known bands, just to give you a taste of their music, and that taste is usually enough for me. The great thing about iTunes is that they just went DRM-free, meaning that lots of their music you can burn, play, and do whatever with, as many times as you want.
• Starbucks: Now here’s one you might not have thought of, and one I didn’t know about until recently (I don’t drink much Starbucks coffee). Here in Canada, they give away little cards in starbucks with a code on the back that you punch into iTunes, and it gives you a free song. It’s the same idea as the iTunes music store dealie, they give away lesser known music to try to get you into it, and it’s usually really good stuff.
• The internet: Again, not what you’re thinking. On the internet (myspace, facebook, etc), lots of small and coming bands will give away their albums for free, to try to get you to listen to their music. But it’s not always the little bands. It’s a recent craze, bands will give away a selection of songs, or whole albums on the Internet, to get you listening to them, and to get more of their music. It’s great! I love it, I get to find new and old artists that I haven’t heard before, and I also get to expand my music collection. All you have to do is know where to look. I can’t give away my secrets, but there are lots of sites out there where bands post their music for free, and you can go pick it up whenever you like. Just keep an eye on those sites, and you’ll have tons of great free music in no time.

Now, I was talking earlier about high quality music, and unfortunately, not enough people understand that their music can be of much higher quality. One of the main points in quality of audio is the bit rate. The bit rate is how much data can be output in one second (I try to keep my music collection in the bit rate of 256-320 kbps, kilobits per second). The higher the bit rate, the more audio you can hear in one second. Lower bit rates, anything lower then 128 kbps, mean that less data is output by the speakers, and sounds can be distorted or muffled. Lower bit rates contain less data, and are therefore of smaller file size, but hard drives are cheap, and if you want to listen to your music without distortions, you may as well drop and extra few bucks on a bigger hard drive. A 128 kbps song will be half the size of a 256 kbps song, because it has half the bit rate, but the quality is much lower too.

I probably rambled a bit in there, but I think you get the idea.

Yours truly,

Adam

PS, I’d like to clarify a bit, my music is mp3 audio, which needs a higher bitrate then WMA audio, because WMA is less compressed. Less compressed means you can have higher quality at a lower bitrate, although the compression is less, so the file size will still be larger. Mp3 audio is what I stick with because it’s a nice middle ground between good compression and high quality audio. If you want uncompressed sound, no loss in quality, find FLAC quality downloads. They are huge files and many programs like iTunes can’t read them, but they’re the best you can get.

How To: Sync iTunes between two computers via external hard drive

Update: So, I’ve checked out my post views, and this one has significantly more then the rest of our blog posts, and if you’re looking for a simple way to transfer music between computers, this might not be it. If you find a better method, let me know, but this is what I came up with.

Being a student living on campus residence, I don’t get all the nice features of having my own home network, such as setting up a FTP server to transfer files between my desktop computer and my laptop. Here’s a little instruction guide on how to sync two computers iTunes libraries via an external hard drive.

The problem:

I didn’t really think my plan though very thoroughly when I decided I wanted to have sync the libraries on my two computers together. I originally started off transfering my library over via my external hard drive, and throwing everything directly into iTunes. That worked fine at first, but I collect quite a bit of music, and after about a day, I had about 100 new songs I had to move over. I realized how difficult it was going to be to keep my computers syncronized manually, so I came up with a method of combining the libraries. As I said before I couldn’t wirelessly transfer the files over the school network, because all the effecient file transfering systems have been shutdown in residence.

I started poking around on the internet a bit looking for a tool to sync two iTunes libraries together, without a internet connection between them, but found nothing, probably because it’s not a problem a lot of people encounter. I downloaded a couple tools, fiddled around for a bit, and here’s the solution I came up with.

The Method:

Because there was no individual tool to transfer my music, I came up with the system of syncing two folders together, one on the external hard drive and one on my laptop. Then I’d need to sync it between my desktop and my external hard drive. That way, I’d update one library, sync the hard drive, plug it into my other computer, and then resync again. The requirements of this tool are:

• It has to be portable, or be able to run from a hard drive, that way I don’t have to install the tool on both computers.
• It has to have a more-or-less advanced syncing system, that updates both ways, and is smart enough to determine which copies I’ve added and deleted, and which to keep.
• It has to be easy to use, because if not, then I may as well use do it manually.

You may now be thinking “Now I’ve synced the files, but I still need to put them into iTunes”. iTunes is pretty annoying in the sense that it does not watch your music folder for new or deleted songs, so I have to find a tool that watches the iTunes folder and updates it.

The Solution:

I found a couple of nifty little programs to help me out, first for syncing the computers to the hard drive is called Allway Sync, when you download it, go for the portable version called Allway Sync ‘n’ Go. This way we can put it on the external hard drive without having to install it on both computers. Go ahead and download it. There is a little installer to run, but just aim it towards your external hard drive or portable device, and it’ll set up the autorun for you.

Next, go download iTunes Library Updater and install that on both computers. This is the tool to watch the folders and then automatically update them. If you open it up in the GUI version, you can do it manually each time you want to update, or you can do it like I do, and automate this baby using the console version of iTunes Library Updater. I have mine set up to check the folder each time iTunes opens, and add or remove files accordingly.

First, copy this into the text editor of your choice:

“C:\Program Files\iTunes Library Updater\ITLUconsole.exe” /a /l /r “C:\PathToYourMusic\My Music”

Replace “C:\PathToYourMusic\My Music” with the location of your music library on the current computer.

And save it as iTunes.bat, this will make a file that will execute when we open iTunes. If you run it by itself (by double clicking on it after you save it), you’ll see it opens iTunes when it runs. Second, we’ll want to replace the iTunes shortcut with this one, so go into the start menu or desktop (or whatever shortcut you prefer to use), and delete the iTunes shortcut, and drag this into it’s place. You can change the icon if you wish to make it look pretty, but I didn’t bother.

Now, when you want to open iTunes, just use this icon instead. It will open a console window, and then open iTunes shortly, while updating it’s library. Nifty eh? Now move to your other computer and repeat the steps from making the .bat file, and replace the iTunes icon there.

And we’re almost done! Just open up Allway Sync, and point it to your two folders you’d like to syncronize. This should be what you put for “C:\PathToYourMusic\My Music” in the .bat file. It’s a pretty simple program to use, and it has on-screen instructions on what to do. Syncronize your first computer and your hard drive, then unplug, and move it to the new computer, plug it in and run Allway Sync again, go to the Job menu, and click Add New Job (or hit Ctrl + N). Now syncronize the iTunes folder on your new computer to your external hard drive where you put your music. Rename your jobs (I made mine Music: Laptop to HDD and Music: Desktop to HDD), and your pretty much done.

When you first try to transfer files over to your new computer, it will probably come up with a warning about a conflict of some kind. This is the iTunes.xml file, make sure you DO NOT syncronize this file, because it will just make updaing your library more inconvenient.

Now whenever you want to syncronize your music just plug in your hard drive, hit the analyze then syncronize buttons, move it over, hit analyze and syncronize again, restart iTunes, and your music should be perfectly transfered.

Note: If you listen to podcasts it’s much easier to let them finish downloading before you sync your hard drive to your computer, this way you aren’t moving around temporary and partial files.

Dang, that was longer then I expected. I doubt many people will use this little tutorial, but it’s a nice little reference to those who are in the same situation as I.

Adam

One of My Turns

So, it is my turn yet again to write a new blag entry. I’m not in a very creative mood today because it’s nearing midnight, and I have nothing on my mind today. So, I will write about… hmm.

Ever meet one of those crazy girls who are still into Disney movies even though they’re 16 or so? I definitely know a few of those, and they are a little bit nutty in my opinion. Not that I have something against Disney movies, I actually like them, but to be so obsessed that you change your Facebook picture to Snow White and quote Sleeping Beauty at every turn is a little weird. Those movies are made for kids, and when I was a kid I actually watched Fantasia until the VHS broke, and that’s how they should be watched, but when girls go all Disney on me, I get a little creeped out. I get a funny feeling in my gut, it’s not a bad feeling, it’s an awkward feeling. It’s the feeling that you get when you don’t know what to say, or what to do, and so you just kind of sit there and smile, maybe throw in an awkward laugh if that’s your style.

It’s kind of like how old people refuse to learn how computers work. There so essential for most of society, but they refuse to learn how to use them. Stop clinging onto the past, there’s nothing you can do about it, robot computers are eventually going to take over the world, so get over it. But that’s a tangent I’ll follow some other time.

I hope none of my Disney obsessed friends find out about this blog.

Yours truely,

Adam

PS. On a sidenote, I think it’s a little ironic how the wordpress spellchecker doesn’t recognize the word blog.

PSS. I got a reply to this post informing me that Disney movies are an artform to be appreciated by all, not just children. To better clarify myself, this is not what I was trying to say. I still enjoy the occassional Disney movie, but I do not obsess over them as many people do. There is a difference between enjoying something and becoming obsessed with it, and this post was more about obsession then Disney films as a whole.

First Post and Funny Names

So, here is my first post on this blog, and Haley wanted me to to do it ASAP for some reason, so here it goes.

I’m Adam, I like long walks on the beaches, and cuddling. Things that I like include: friends, music, video games, reading, computer science (some of the time) and getting into shenanigans.

And because this seems like a pretty bland first post, here’s something else that was on my mind recently. In Calgary there are two gangs, one named Fresh off the Boat, and the other is called Fresh of the Boat Killers. Now I know talking bad about a gang is probably a stupid thing to do, but seriously, what is with those names. Sure, Fresh off the Boat, that makes sense, that’s a fine name, but you can’t just throw Killers on the end there and expect to be a full fledged gang. We all know who really came first, and even if throwing Killers on the end does make it more badass, it seems like they just ripped off the other gangs name.

Of couse, I respect both of these gangs, and I’d prefer not to be gunned down in a drive by.

So yeah, that’s me.

Love from,

Adam

PS, I don’t think I’m meant to sign blog posts, but this kind of feels like writing an email, so I think I will anyways.