EasyTAG setting Album Artist

Quick post here in case you were looking for the same thing I was. EasyTAG does not let you edit the AlbumArtist of a MP3 file but iTunes and iOS devices use this field when listing out your albums in the Music player. The Ubuntu Forums thread I found on it suggests installing puddletag and I agree:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/puddletag
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install puddletag

Once in puddletag select the tracks and go to Edit > Extended Tags where you'll find albumartist. My recommendation is to simply delete that field (set it to blank) so that Apple shit falls back on the normal artist field and you can see everything you need to in EasyTag.

On a side note, GnomePlayer seems to get confused by the album art configuration saved by EasyTag but my iPod (and iTunes) has no problem with it.

LXDE vs Gnome

It's incredible how much noticeable difference there is between using LXDE (Lubuntu) and Gnome (Ubuntu) on my Asus EEEPC 901. JDownloader uses Java and takes forever to load, but significantly less time now in Lubuntu than previously in Ubuntu. Perhaps there is more at work here than Window Managers, but I have been impressed at the speed everything is running at on this "low power" machine. It's faster than my Windows workstation which has 4 cores, 3.something ghz, 12gb of RAM, 2tb, etc. Here I'm plunking along on a dual-core Intel Atom running at a measly 1.6ghz (maybe even 800mhz if the System Profiler is to be believed), 1gb of RAM, and a 16gb Mini-PCIE SSD; yet the boot-up time is always under 30 seconds and Chrome loads near instantaneously.

Google Calendar Spam

Spammers are either getting more desperate or more ingenuitive, possibly both.



Invitation spam, for all services, is starting to become more of a problem. It tends to escape filters since invitations are used as a precursor to trusted communication and yet many services allow almost utterly arbitrary HTML/BBCode/URL's to be entered as part of the message.

Ubuntu Unity: First Impressions

Sorry, I don't like it, despite really wanting to.

The theory I gather behind Unity, debuting in Ubuntu 10.10 which I finally just installed (and regret), is to have one consistent interface to Ubuntu for portable devices. Netbook Remix on the other hand was targeted specifically to netbooks and that's probably why I liked it on my netbook. See, I don't have Unity running on a touch-enabled tablet and that's who I feel this thing is really tailored for.

Tilting tiles on a slide-bar "dash" occupy a good deal of horizontal real estate. While they may need to be there for a greasy finger to find, they're completely unnecessary and horribly distracting when on a tiny screen that you want to fill with whatever you are doing. Now on my EEE 901, which sports a practical 1024x600, displays a horizontal scrollbar on many webpages. Ugh, who wants that?

And where the icons in Netbook Remix were tray-sized and fit snuggly with everything else in a small space, the dash is large and in charge. It vies for attention, colorful bricks do a dance for you when apparently the application in question is trying to signal. Ugh, leave me alone you little bastards!

Then there's the instability and kookiness. Every time Firefox closes, it brings down Unity with it which causes whatever other app you were running to fill the entire screen and then get smashed down again when Unity rises once again to put baby in the corner. Ugh, stop moving around!

So that brings me to something I really dislike with a lot of modern UI's: swishing and swooshing and things moving around willy nilly. I would really like to use my computer and not try to dance with the interface. Things ought, in my opinion, stay put so I can reliably find them without thinking about it and get my stuff done without clicking somewhere that suddenly becomes a button to close everything down. Does anyone try to work while sitting on top of a running washing machine? No, only lunatics. Why are computers assuming we'd like to play them like video games?

Finally, and this really chapped my pale hide: the old-style "main menu" can be configured but it's all for not. The dash completely ignores it, so I can't figure out how to make an icon for DOSbox running a particular program rather than just launching the generic DOSbox every time. And as for nit-picking: now the close icon (being on the left) is right bloody next to the dash where I'm clicking so I can conveniently accidentally hit it. There were good reasons to have the close on the right, trying to shift everyone's minds the other direction makes me wonder if they're trying to be Apple's next copycat.

I really miss the direction that Netbook Remix was taking. Ubuntu 10.10 and Unity feel shiny, glossy, and bloated. Here comes the saucy-voiced telephone operator who in actuality weighs more than your car and craps bricks.

Oh, and another thing, since I'm ranting. One of the first things I noticed was that GIMP was touted as the graphic editor. Fine, cool, I'm getting used to arcane tools. Then I go to click Install on it, because it isn't by default, and it tells me that it can't because it's using restricted packages. Thankfully they happen to shoot a msgbox at someone who understands it. My dad really digs Ubuntu, but if it popped that to him, what do you think he would do? "Ubuntu can't install the thing it says I should install, I'm confused!"

Seriously guys, leave the jelly beans to Apple zealots and let's get back to the arduous journey of making computers useful not just pretty fashion accessories. 10.04 was close to being recommendable, but I'm not so sure about 10.10 and I fear for the future. Remember what users are trying to do and make all that shit work out of the box. I might re-install at some point just to list out all the wacky things I did to get stuff in working order.

Logitech diNovo Edge on Ubuntu 10.10

My Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard working wirelessly with BlueTooth in a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on an Asus EEE 901. Having the same issue? Let's try to resolve it ...

Errors: Never Better

Error messages never get better, in fact they generally seem to get verbose. At some point the theory moved from the well-known axiom that people don't read them to giant exception blobs that are somehow okay to give back to the user. Case in point, I'm trying to open an Excel document from an intranet location and I've added the SharePoint URL it's coming from (though not the UNC path) to my trusted locations; and yet:

The spew there is rather long and I can't divulge many of its more salient parts, suffice to say it's entirely unhelpful from beginning to end. I may as well have received "Access denied to untrusted document". One more nitpick to note is that this window is floating on its own, not linked to the Excel main window, so it's easy to lose without knowing the ALT+TAB trick. And and it's keeping Internet Explorer locked up waiting for something to be done.

Verizon RAZR V3m versus TracFone LG 420G

I recently transferred my main mobile number from Verizon Wireless to Google Voice and purchased a TracFone to have everything forwarded to. The total cost of this was $20 for the port, $20 for the phone w/ lifetime double minutes, $40 for 400 minutes (e.g. doubled), and finally $61 for the last month of Verizon service which does not get discounted and officially disconnects when you pay your last bill. I'd like to talk about the pleasing and disappointing aspects of the phone, but let me begin by explaining the services themselves.