Two weeks ago, I pulled together a Media PC. This has been a long-term ambition. I’ve always wanted to have a PC as the centre of all my media. To use it as a radio, TV, stereo system, CD player, DVD player, etc. I finally did it, for just under 1000 pounds. At the centre of the setup is my 42" Plasma TV (LG 42PC1D). I was debating between a plasma and LCD TV. The differences, as I understand them, are: ...
I have a large MP3 collection (Tamil and Hindi films). I don’t like selecting songs to listen to. Too much effort. I rated all songs I had listened to (650 songs x 5-10 seconds = 1-2 hrs) and created 7 SmartViews. I just go to one of these and play them in order. Here are my views, in descending order of their use. Most played. Sorted by Play Count. Songs I play the most. Plays stuff I listen to usually. Not heard recently. Played Last before 3 months ago AND Rating >= 3. Plays good songs I haven’t heard recently. Not played much or recently. Played Last before 1 month ago AND Play Count <= 2 AND Rating >= 3. Plays good songs I haven’t heard often enough. Recent hits. Last updated after 3 months ago AND Play count >= 3. Plays songs recently added and liked. Recently played. Sorted by Last Updated. Often, I like to listen to songs I listened to yesterday. Top rated. Sorted by Rating. My best songs. (Suprisingly, I don’t use this view much.) Recently added. Sorted by Played Last. Plays songs I just downloaded. But WinAmp’s not good enough. For example, I can’t find out what songs I played at least thrice last month. How do I see what I’ve been listening to a lot recently? Fortunately, there are a few WinAmp history plugins. I installed Pepper, which produces a log file that can be analysed. I did this two weeks ago, and don’t have enough data. When I do, I’ll modify two views ...
I end up changing my office laptops every year or so, and hence reinstall lots of software. Here’s my inventory. I most certainly will install the following. ActivePerl. I still program. I know Perl. I love Perl. Acrobat Reader BitLord DivX player Dave’s quicksearch deskbar Microsoft Office 2003. Has some really good improvements over Office 2000. NoteTab Light. Multiple tabs notepad. But is there anything better? Nero Express Picasa 2 WinAmp (with Media Library import/export) WinRar WinZip I most likely will install the following, but not necessarily. Adobe Photoshop. Almost vital, but I can live with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Goldwave. I often record interviews, or give commentary for home-made movies. Google Earth (with Fraps). To browse the world and make movies out of them. Google Toolbar Mozilla Firefox. For multi-tabbed browsing, mainly. Otherwise, IE is fine. MSN Messenger. Just for the interface. Somehow, it feels “smoother” than Yahoo. RealPlayer. Don’t listen to RealAudio that much. Still… UnixUtils. I use “grep” and “less” more often than “dir” VirtualDub. For the occasional movie editing that Microsoft Movie Maker can’t handle. WinHtTrack. To browse offline. Google Desktop Search. Helps remember my browsing history. ...