tunes

I’m very slowly creating an album entitled “Station in the Mentos,” and track #4 was just created tonight. Go check it out:Station in the Mentos

As one of the fifty kajillion projects I’m constantly working on, I’ve been slowly correcting the titles of my iTunes library. Sure, when I ripped my CDs, iTunes looks them up in the CDDB/Gracenote database, but they’re not often formatted the way I like them (and neither are the ones I’ve downloaded through various other means, even ones that come straight from the artists, or surprisingly, the iTMS).

So, to promote the general well-being of my track listings, I’ve modified an existing AppleScript that will put the song, artist, composer and/or album titles of each track in proper English title case, so it will now also correct improper usage of graves ` and replace them with apostrophes ‘, as well as correct odd spacing issues around brackets and commas.

I tried to contact the original script writer to see if he’d like to add my updates to his script, but he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. So, I’ve decided to host the updated script here for all to enjoy:

Station in the Metro: Scripts and Apps

Please check it out, if you’re in need of some iTunes title clean-up, and let me know what you think!

Silly me— all this time, I thought the Casio PT-7 only came in a cream color, but this fellow has on on eBay, and it’s black. Very cool.

Optical Alchemy has a wicked keen iTunes visualizer— Jewelcase, which displays a 3D rendered spinning jewelbox of whatever album your currently playing song is from, complete with tracks listing and cover art. Of course, it uses your cover art in iTunes, so it works best if you’ve loaded in all your cover art (or got it with your AAC files from the iTMS).

I added a “Music Habits” link to the navigation links in the bar to your right. This link goes to my page on Audioscrobbler. Audioscrobbler, for those who don’t know, is a wicked keen site that has plugins you can download for your music player of choice (Mac, PC, Linux, whatever) and it tracks what you listen to, giving you a list of what your favorite songs, favorite artists, things like that are.

Sure, your music app probably already does that (I know iTunes does, if you use Smart Playlists), but the keen thing is, it’s a community, and once you’ve listened to at least 100 songs with the plugin enabled, it starts matching you up with other people in the community who share your musical tastes. Not that you have to talk to them or anything if you don’t want to, but it starts giving you suggestions based on their likes as well, which is a really great way to find new music that you just might love.

On top of all that, they offer a customized streaming internet radio service called Last.FM, which you can base on just your collection, or on the collections of your musical neighbors as well. Highly recommended.

I’ve just discovered this NPR show which plays Celtic music, and hails from Perthshire, Scotland. It’s been airing for twenty years— I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

NPR: The Thistle & Shamrock