By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
The super talented and friendly independent musician extraordinaire Marian Call is taking signed preorders for her new album Something Fierce. As a bonus to those who order, you can download several bonus tracks as MP3, AAC and even FLAC files!
I was not paid for this post, just a fan trying to spread the love. I've got my copy, and you should too! :)
I finally got around to updating iTunes to 10.4 this evening. Unlike Firefox 5 to Firefox 6, the difference in performance is like night and day!
Before even getting my first iPod, I first started using iTunes on my beautiful blueberry iMac DV with Mac OS 9. While Winamp (and XMMP) allowed you to generate playlists, they were shoehorned into a relatively small window in an application that otherwise still attempted to emulate the appearance of a physical sound deck and amplifier. Speaking of which, remember those SoundBlaster "Deck" applications for Windows 3.1? Those were the days ;).
By comparison to these, iTunes put the playlists front and centre in a large, easy to navigate window with controls optimised for computer screens. It was dead simple to use, and as a bonus it kept all your media organised on your hard drive automatically. No more unwieldly folders of MP3s!
A couple of years later I got my black and white 15GB iPod 3G (which I still use!) and was able to sync my music with my growing collection of (ahem) legally obtained media on iTunes, ironically faster than even my iPhone 4 can today with its inclusion of a FireWire cable. As is generally the case with Apple, it Just Worked™.
Over time, we moved to Mac OS X, and Apple released Windows users from that awful RealPlayer application by releasing a version for their platform. Remember RealPlayer? Sometimes when we talk about how Microsoft and some open source software projects can't design graphically pleasing and easy to use software, it pays to remember software like that!
Ironically, starting with version 5 (from my own memory), iTunes began to be the victim of its own success. With each iPod iteration, the application took on more roles to accommodate them, and the Carbon codebase which had enabled the transition from Mac OS 9 was starting to let it down, big time. As I said in October 2010 when it was really starting to get ridiculous:
Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes?
What was once a nimble and usable application turned into a sluggish mess, so much so that applications were released specifically to allow people to not have to interact with it. And people (like me) paid for them!
Some iTunes KL nostalgia from January 2007 ;)
I belabour all this to put into context just how thrilled and happy (both!) I am with iTunes 10.4. Despite running on a 8 core Mac Pro with 6GiB of RAM, the previous iTunes simply couldn't handle scrolling through 40,000+ tracks. Changing metadata on multiple tracks used to be agonisingly slow, and adding new content even slower.
The new version is fast. Everything is instant. The window resizes without artefacting or jittering. It has visual consistency with other apps again. Hallelujah!
I'm sure I speak for all Mac users when I thank the iTunes team from the bottom of my heart, and ask them what the heck took them so long!
While we're on the subject of music today, I couldn't help but buy Kyary's PonPonPon release on iTunes this evening. Yes I ordered the CD, but I couldn't help myself!
According to Tokyohive, the track made it to #1 in Finland and Belgium of all places. You Make Me Happy!
UPDATE: As of 20:31 AEST, if you Google "Kyary’s PonPonPon iTunes", this post appears as result #8. Take that SEO folk!
You don't need to know who's who, to know what's what... did you see me coming... was I that obvious?!
From their 2009 album Yes. A slight change of pace from Kyary PonPonPon, but I still can't get it out of my head!
With the help of a Twitter colleague who shares a similar obsession with this song, I bought one of the last two remaining advanced orders for the mini album of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, aka Moshimoshi Harajuku, aka the PonPonPon Girl! Oh dear!
From the item's description page on CDJapan.co.jp, a shopping internet website that sells Japaneses compact discs that may or may not contain music specifically:
Mini album release from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu produced by Yasutaka Nakata (capsule). Features six electro pop tracks. Limited edition includes a photo book.
I have to admit, this is only my second time buying a JPop album; JPop of course being a portmondeau of Japan and Pop, which I believe refers to some sort of non-alcholoic beverage. My first JPop album was a character CD from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya that mysteriously dissipated in our move from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, never to be seen again. I suspect one of the packers was an SOS-Brigade fan, or they just thought Haruhi was hot. Maybe, it's naught but speculation at this point.
With regards to this specific album, three quick thoughts.
Well, that was clearly more than three thoughts.
I should be taking delivery of this package at some point in mid August. To say I can't wait is the understatement of the... hey look at all that bread!
Speak of the devil, Wikipedia has a photo of an AdLib sound card from 1990, in all its ISA glory!
Granted it was merely an interface and vessel for a general PC to use the Yamaha YM3812 sound chip, but for the time it must have been pretty exciting to hear that level of detail on a PC. Home computers like the Commodore 64 already had sophisticated MOS synthesiser chips since the early 1980s, but Big Blue made work machines!
This spring's major security breach has blemished the reputation of Sony's fledgling subscription-music service, Qriocity. And Sony already had plenty to worry about even before the intrusion. ~ CNET
Nervousness about security and privacy of Sony data aside, they were most likely worrying about what their marketing department was smoking when they called it Qriocity. Can't be good for the corporate health plan.
I'm unreasonably excited! And the art is beautiful! From the official mailing list:
Hi Everyone,
Michael's new album, "Time Together," was officially released officially yesterday. It is available online from most retailers including Amazon.com as well as in music stores around the country. Digital downloads are available from most services including iTunes.
Michael Franks has been my favourite singer/songwriter since before I could walk; my beautiful late mum passed on her enthusiasm of his offbeat, interesting and just a little cheeky lyrics and unmistakable smooth jazz sounds. This will be the first of his albums we won't be sharing together, though I'd like to think she approves that I'm carrying on the family tradition :").
I just ordered his album on Amazon so I can rip it as FLAC and Apple Lossless. They estimate shipping to take two weeks; I hope I can survive that long without it! I suppose I could buy a few digital download tracks, just to keep me going, right?
If you'd like to buy the album, you can use the link below which will earn me some referral commission, or if you'd prefer you can skip it. Cheers! ^_^
For those of you who want to support the web's nicest, spunkiest, coolest, talented-est (is that a word?!) musician, Marian Call still has some swag to sell to support her production efforts for her latest album which is Something Fierce! See what I did there, I used the title of the album in the sentence! Huh? HUH!? :D
But I digress! Buy some stuff and leave a generous tip on her Fundraiser 2011: Releasing Something Fierce! page. Can't wait for her next album, this is going to be sweet! Not that I'm biased or anything :).
In our continuing series of fascinating lyrical anecdotes derived from Ben Sidran's 1990 album Cool Paradise, today Ben tries his hand at meteorology in the song So Long:
You watch the rain drops run to rivers,
You watch the rivers run to sea.
You know the sea turns into thunder,
Brings those raindrops back to me.
The irony is, it has been raining like crazy here the last few days. Maybe watching me sit in my chair isn't all he's up to.
