Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I am so angry at Optus - you’d think they’d be able to change my phone plan for me when I ask. I have already rang them three times in the past month and each time they’ve told me I’m on my old plan. It’s ridiculous!

Then they start reading the notes on my file: “customer is unhappy that we have not changed her plan ask requested, wants to be on the $79 cap plan…”. I stop them and say “that was last year” and they say “oh, yes, right.” This is the THIRD time that I’ve had to ring them 3+ times because they are incompetent.

I get my bill and it says I’ve been charged for all these calls/SMS/voicemail that I shouldn’t be charged for on that given plan. So I ask them to fix it and they say it won’t be backdated. “It’ll begin in 48 hours from today.” That is not good enough!!!

Not only that but they tell me I should just stay on my plan because it has better benefits. Or that it’s exactly the same as the new one. THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT. At all. Free 5 minute calls to certain numbers is NOT THE SAME as free unlimited calls to many more numbers. Why on earth would they think I’d prefer the former?

I’m not on a contract, deliberately so I can change plans to suit me. It means I don’t get a phone bundled in for free, but I get what I want. You’d think that they’d try to keep my custom.

software

Lately I’ve downloaded a few programs/extensions that I highly recommend. So I’ll share my finds with you.

1. MediaMonkey

Although I love the idea of SongBird it was still a bit too buggy to use as one’s default music player, so at the moment I’m using MediaMonkey, the free version of which is about the equivalent to iTunes but the “Gold” version ($19.95) is an iTunes killer. I love it because it has all the functionality I wanted (and some things I didn’t know I’d want):

• File monitor: it automatically adds songs to the library when you add them on your computer. iTunes’ lack of this function what what made me kick the boot in and give up on it. Everytime I added songs to iTunes it would make another copy of the songs I already had there (I had the copy option on). I ended up having 10 duplicates of some songs and none of others. HOWEVER, MediaMonkey fixed with its…
• Duplicate song finder: you can browse either songs that have the same artist and title tags OR songs that have the same bit pattern (ignoring the tags)! A life-saver.
• Smarter AutoPlaylists: I ended up writing a script in iTunes to create a playlist that would have all albums with more than 8 songs on it. I’d have to rerun the script anytime I wanted to update the playlist. MediaMonkey the ability to do create such a playlist as well as your usual “Top Rated” etc.
• Support for non-iPod devices: I know that most people have iPods these days, but I have a creative and it’s great except for the fact that the software that comes with it is pretty poor. MediaMonkey allows me to use my device like iTunes does with iPods, create and edit playlists, auto sync etc.
• “Sleep” function: I didn’t know I’d want this, but I LOVE it. Every night I put the sleep timer on for aboout 20 minutes and set the volume to fade out over the last few minutes. It then hibernates my computer. I used to get out of bed to shut everything down - now I don’t have to!*
• Party mode: this allows you to stop people at your party from accessing other programs on the computer but allow them to select the music. Lots of different levels of security.

Of course it also has all those functions you’d expect: the little browser window thing that iTunes has, the ability to burn and rip cds, podcasts, auto-copying to folder, auto-renaming etc.

Also, I keep my music on an external hard drive and when I unplug it MediaMonkey doesn’t decided to move where the library is kept, which iTunes kept on doing. That was the final straw.

*and no, they’re not giving me anything to write this review. my overwhelming positivity is simply as product of being so pissed off with iTunes/Windows Media Player.

2. Thunderbird 2.0* + GMail IMAP + MinimizeToTray extension

I’ve always been waiting for Thunderbird to be obviously better than Outlook, in the same way that Firefox undeniably better than IE (oh, shush, if you knew better you wouldn’t want to argue with me *wink*). I’m not sure why but it’s not quite there yet - it’s equally good as Outlook for what I use it for, and the extensions make it better… maybe I’m just asking too much.

OH, but I’ve been using it predominantly as RSS feeder for years and years now. Mainly because I didn’t have a need for the email functionality - UNTIL NOW!

I was so excited about ability to access Gmail on IMAP for free. I followed the instructions and it all worked. Though a few things to note: you may need to open the Google’s IMAP and SMTP ports on your firewall. And if you’ve selected to use British English then the instructions all say to use “your_username@googlemail.com” rather than “your_username@gmail.com” - but just substitute your actual address.
And then it’ll all work like clockwork. Because it’s IMAP and not POP when you read an email on Thunderbird it reflects that on Gmail online and vice-versa. UPDATE: This Google help file is very useful and is only shown when you go looking for IMAP help.
I’d also install the MinimizeToTray extension and then you can leave it running all the time without taking up toolbar space.

*Note: The MinimizeToTray extension doesn’t work with 3.0pre - that’s why I recommend 2.0.

3. DownThemAll extention for Firefox/Thunderbird

DownThemAll is kind of like an internal firefox/thunderbird wget - it allows you to download all the images/webpages/zipped files etc that are on or linked on a given page. It allows for regex commands - so I use it to automatically download the .doc/.pdf./ppt/.rtf files on the lecture notes pages of my uni subjects: /(\.(rtf|doc|pdf|ppt))$/

It also has an accelerator, which does seem to make large files download quite a bit faster* and the ability to pause and resume downloads. I highly recommend it!

*though it may be just the placebo affect - i’ve never really tested to see if it is quicker

Edit:

What I’m in need of - RSS for non-RSS pages

I’ve been looking for a tool that coverts webpages without rss feeds to an rss feed so I can just add the pages to Thunderbird and have it automatically check for updates.

• At the moment I’m trialing http://page2rss.com - Edit 2: Problems: (1)  It doesn’t display the website itself, but it’s own page which you can sort of see the updates (2) Seems to have a delay of a number of hours before it picks up the changes…
• I’m now trying http://www.baekdal.com/web2rss/ - this solves Problem (1) above, and creates Problem (3) it doesn’t work with sites that incorrectly use their timestamp headers… or something :(
• I might give the Firefox Update Scanner extension a try, but I’d really prefer to have all my webpage updates in Thunderbird*

I’ve come across things like Dapper and YahooPipes but they seem far too complicated for what I want. I don’t want to have to sign in to be able to set things up and I’m happy to have the whole page just as an RSS feed. If you have any suggestions it’d be greatly appreciated :)

*also I’m using Firefox 3.0beta 4 and Update Scanner is also still only in Beta support for Firefox 3 - I haven’t updated because of Mr Karan’s advice “Firefox 3.0b5 is less stable than 3.0b4 - stay away!”)

the best idea… or maybe not

I had this great idea: i was going to listen to my music ordered by track length, starting with shortest tracks first and decide which is my favourite song for each 15 second-length bracket.

Now one could argue that means this grossly favours songs that are shorter or longer than the standard 3-4 minute song…

For example, Vault Character by Calvin Harris wins 0-0:15, easily beating the only other possible contender ‘(Turning the Single Over)’ by Figurine, which lost because it’s not really a song as such. [And I must say I love how imeem or whatever-that-site-is says “log in to hear the rest of the song” when the song is 22 seconds shorter than the 30 second limit :P]

…I, on the other hand, think that’s the brilliance of my idea :D The radio discriminates against those which do not fit the standard song length, so this is simply positive discrimination.

It’s clear that I’ve come up with this as a form of procrastination, sadly it’s failed, as i’m already bored and i’m only at the 1:10 minute mark :P

quick thought

It just occurred to me that Camille’s Janine II and Kate Nash’s Dickhead are not dissimilar.*

Does anyone else in the wild world of internet agree?

[Edit] *sadly the song clips do not give full justice to the similarities… *The new song samples show the similarities better :)

Oh the outrage

There’s already been a report in the newspapers about this supposedly offensive t-shirt, which means aca/today tonight must be hot on the trails.

Oddly, I really don’t find it very offensive.
http://www.goatboy.com.au/products.php?product=She%27s-Dead

Although i do think charging $49.95 for an American Apparel t-shirt with with a picture printed on it is ridiculous. *Plugs Threadless again* (via)

curvy women

Figures reveal that given the choice, most men will plump for a curvy girl. Apparently men like curvy women. Who knew?

It’s certainly not a scientific study, but never-the-less slightly illuminating.

Oh, and I’d choose the size 12 followed by the size 14.

music plagiarism

I’ve often pondered whether the huge catalogue of music available on the internet would mean it would be easy for music to be plagiarised and released by other “musicians” without it being obvious.
Here’s one example of that very thing happening. An electronic artist called Laromlab has clearly misappropriated the songs of others, as this statement on his record company’s website shows:

“Here are the original track names and artists that make up the Laromlab album:

Laromlab / Original Title / Artist
1 Rock!! Hard!! / Nightvision / CrazyQ
2 Mission for Glory / Haschkaka / Dubmood
3 C: Dancer / Cybernetic Dancer / DMA-SC
4 Phat and Phunky Pt. 1 / Phat and Phunky Pt. 1 / CrazyQ
5 Zipp Zapp / Zip Zap Space Attack / CrazyQ
6 They’re back!!! / Return of the Fighters / DMA-SC
7 Sid Attax / Atari Attacks / CrazyQ
8 Return of Da Stomp / Local Hero / CrazyQ
9 Punk Funk / Pink Phunk Monster / CrazyQ
10 Nightdrive / Stars of the Night / DMA-SC
11 T-girl Dancing / T-Girl / Lotek Style
12 (Hidden) / Hiapoe / DMA-SC”

After searching through my collection I found that I did have one track related to Laromlab, “his” remix of Daft Punk’s Around the World. I wonder who actually did it.

t-shirts, get your cheap t-shirts

howdy all,

the lovely threadless are having a sale on all their t-shirts. i’ve bought two t-shirts from threadless in the past and even with choosing the “expensive but fast” postage option the t-shirts are cheaper than buying them in shops. especially with this sale - many of the t-shirts are US$9! (and to think i paid US$15 just weeks ago). so say AUS$15-20 including postage. and the material is better quality than what you’d get at Jay-Jays or whatever.

They have all types of t-shirts, i especially like the ones with slogans or satire, eg:

But they also have some that are just interestingly designed (and often have a hidden message in the design), eg:

I was really happy with the t-shirts i bought. The other reason I’m doing free advertising for them here is that anyone can submit a design to threadless, and anyone can vote for which designs they think should be printed.

Anyways, check out the t-shirts, the sale is on until [Edit] Sunday 23rd March. Wednesday 26th March.

This video is not available in *YOUR* country

I liked the internet better when it was full of copyright infringement and not discriminatory*.

*strictly speaking it was just that all americans assumed i was in america

Run, Fat Boy, Run is not from the team that brought you Hot Fuzz

Today 3 different email newsletters gave me the chance to win tickets to “the new movie from the team that brought you Hot Fuzz.” I felt a public service announcement was needed to counteract all the misinformation.

Pretty much the only similarity between Hot Fuzz/Shaun of the Dead and Run, Fat Boy, Run is that they all star Simon Pegg in the lead role. (And a cameo from Dylan Moran)

Hot Fuzz/Shaun were written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Edgar Wright. Although set in London, RunFBR was written by US comedian Michael Ian Black and directed by David Schwimmer (you know, from Friends).

The poster for RunFBR states it was written by Simon Pegg, but he only adapted the US script to make it more palatable to a UK audience. (”Pegg was employed as a co-writer to “polish” the US script and make it work in a London setting … Pegg agrees that the movie is “absolutely” pitched at the American market” “http://www.theage.com.au/news/film/running-gag/2008/02/28/1203788546008.html)

To be honest, i’m not all that interested in seeing a romantic comedy that shows a “fairy-book” view of what life is like in London and that is heavily sponsored by Nike (”The film’s marathon is called the Nike River Run, Dennis is given a box-fresh set of Nikes by his landlord and, at times, it appears that the capital itself is sponsored by the sports giant.” see link above). Maybe when it’s on DVD…