I got the free music this time!

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

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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.

Free iTunes Music #2

M.WARD
For Beginners

Enjoy!

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Save the Llamas!

How to Not Get Distracted by the Vast Internet-land.

Here are some neat applications or add-ons I’ve discovered which are and awesome way to not get distracted by all the other fun things on your computer.

1. SelfControl
SelfControl is an OS X application which blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time. For example, you could block access to your email, facebook, and twitter for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. Once started, it can not be undone by the application or by restarting the computer – you must wait for the timer to run out.

2. Egg Timer
Use it like an egg timer or a count down timer. If you find yourself saying “I’m just going to take a 10 minute break to check Facebook or Twitter, or play a few games, and then the next thing you know its 3 hours later, this neat little site will beep at you when its time to get back to work.

3. Write Room
If you find yourself a bit A.D.D. and you can’t help get distracted by everything else on your screen, this application lets you do all your writing without viewing any other windows in the background.

4. Rescue Time
This application is a bit of a guilt tactic in terms of getting you to work. It keeps track of exactly how much time you spend doing what. What’s neat about it is that if you are like me and have 8 applications open at once all the time, it doesn’t record what apps or sites you have open, but rather what app or site you are paying attention to. So there is really no excuse.

5. TimeTracker
This is a similar idea to Rescue Time, except that this Firefox add-on keeps track of time spent on websites instead of applications. You can also make a list of ‘work’ sites that should not count towards your slacking time. This add on shows time spent dilly-dallying since installation, last reset, and the beginning of the day.

6.LeechBlock
This is another Firefox add-on. LeechBlock will block sites for you that you know cause you problems- the same sites you always find yourself distracted by. You can block your problem sites for specific time periods (say during work, or studying time), for a given amount of time (I want to allow myself 10 minutes on Facebook per hour), or a combination of the two (I want to check Facebook 10 minutes per hour while I’m studying, but be able to see it anytime outside of that).

Got any other ideas? You tell us! How do you stay focused on your computer?

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

Free Starbucks Music

If you read Adam’s earlier post on getting free music you will remember that he listed Starbucks amongst the places to get free tunes. I have a few extra Pick of the Week cards from Starbucks. Help yourself to these codes:

6PH3FNNRLPKR
EP4F43N4EF9N
AJ3XM4F9EA9M
TEJ4PEPHJJHR
KTENFTJ74PXN

The song is called Demon Host and its by Timber Timbre. If you use a code, leave a comment. Each code can only be used once. Enjoy!

Logitech Mouse

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.