Wikkid Haht
Posted on July 22, 2004 at 12:58 pm | No Comments
Or, as the natives also say, it’s a frikkin’ sko-uh-chuh.
A long lunch break walk brought me down to the Fenway, where the Sox just kicked off a day-night double-header with the O’s. We’re already down 3-zip, and I find myself going to the same place I go every year… mentally distancing myself to protect against the inevitable pain my team causes me every single season. They sucked me back in last year, but this time… it’s gonna be tough. The callosity around my sox-lovin’ heart is pretty thick, though. There’s gotta be a shred of hope in there somewhere.
And no, I take no joy in Derek Jeter’s fractured wrist or Giambi’s pesky parasites. I’m not that kinda Sox fan. The Yankees do not, in fact, suck.
So, yeah, I skirted the sweaty crowds surrounding the ballpark, grabbed a kick-ass pollo quesadilla at El Pelon, and picked up a free pass to The Village, the upcoming M. Night Sham-a-Lam film. I am the free flickin’ masta.
Then it was over to Comicopia for some fresh picture books, namely the new issue of Brian Wood’s Demo, along with the second installment of Brian Vaughan’s Ex Machina. I’m not going to take trade paperbacks for granted on that one, as good as the first issue was. We’ll see if it approaches the initial greatness of Vaughan’s Y the Last Man, another one of the few books I still grab every month.
If you are unfamiliar with the phrase “waiting for the trade” (and I’m not still talking baseball), then you probably just scratched your head at that last paragraph. Click some links and do some learnin’.
Whoa, WEEI just played Snow Patrol’s Spitting Games underneath Castiglione & Trupiano as they came back from commercial to the Sox game. Strangeness.
Hey, Bostonians, wanna see Howard Dean and Michael Moore speechify in person next week during the Democratic National Convention? Then go ahead and register for Tuesday’s Take Back America events in Cambridge. I’ll be checkin’ it out.
Hey, look! Morrissey Dance! July spawned a midi-monster. (blame Shannon)
Alright, back to bizniz…
and to listening to the Sox lose again… sigh…
(hold your tongue, Neil… this fan is feelin’ fragile)
SpinAMP Returns!
Posted on July 22, 2004 at 9:10 am | No Comments
Finally, it’s back.
As promised, the programmers at MusicLivesOnline have just delivered the fully-functional (and still completely free) version 3.0 of my favorite WinAMP plug-in, SpinAMP.
Download it, make sure you have WinAMP version 5.0 or higher (earlier versions will work, but with a new .dll that SpinAMP provides), and install away. Instant access to about 200 channels of streaming radio. Choose your favorite stations, and with a couple clicks you can find out what’s playing on each one, with another click you can see what’s coming up, one more and you’re listening to whatever you’re in the mood for. Hear something new you like? One click adds the song info to a notepad file that you can check out later. It just plain rocks.
It basically jacks into Radio@Netscape’s music streams, which were lamely locked down a couple months ago and made available only to AOL subscribers, and with a horrible user interface. Now, I love their content, but not enough to join AOHell and use a crappy, memory-hogging, unintuitive player to hear it.
SpinAMP makes it easy. All you need is the free WinAMP player, the latest version of SpinAMP, and you’re set. Couldn’t be simpler.
As I type this, here’s what’s playing on my faves …
and here’s what’s up next …
That’s just the tip of the aural iceberg. I’ve found so much great new stuff (and old stuff I’d missed), and randomly heard relatively obscure bands I never thought I’d find on there. Hell, I’ve even heard my own bands on there. Almost fell out of my chair. I don’t know who programs R@N’s indie stations, but I owe them a beer.
When SpinAMP programmer HJ was asked about the difference in audio quality of the streams, and about AOL’s knowledge of SpinAMP, here’s what he had to say…
“The audio format is now AAC (they use the LC [low complexity] streams because those can be used without licensing fees), and it is at the same bitrate as the previous Real Audio streams. It sounds about the same to me, but I’m not too picky.
There never has been any agreement with AOL/TW/Spinner/Nullsoft, but they know about SpinAmp… @5 years ago when I sent them a copy of SpinAmp they loved it (put it as the featured plugin on Winamp.com) and were going to buy it (but of course, they never did).”
Well, hopefully they won’t block access from this new version like they did with the last one. Fingers are crossed and headphones are on.
Hey, Ted Leo just came on the Indie Rock Mix channel. Convinced yet? Go get it.