Ripper

After Shakeel re-ripped his music library I’ve started to do the same, brought about by a lack of quality TV at the moment and anticipating some games playing over the next few days. On Windows good quality ripping tools are abundant with EAC almost universally recommended. On the Mac though there seems to be a bit of a dearth when it comes to ripping. Max is often mentioned but I found it a bit buggy so I’ve ended up using iTunes-LAME from Blacktree.

The latest version makes use of Lame 3.97 although the latest latest version available on the Blacktree site was a bit flaky with tags. I have used iTunes-LAME-2.0.9-34.zip without issue so far and I’ve ripped around 30 cd’s today. As for quality settings I’ve went for something a bit beefier than 192kpbs which was my old default. For iTunes-Lame I’m using the following setting:

-V 0 –vbr-new

Visit the Lame Wiki for more info on the numerous command line settings for Lame. What’s nice is that once the ripping is done the tracks are automatically added to iTunes. What’s not so nice is that I’m re-ripping some cd’s so I will lose ratings, play counts, last played details etc…or so I thought. A quick trip to Doug’s AppleScripts and I found a script that would copy my precious meta data to the new rips. Bliss.

Pity I can’t find a script that will rip the other 150 cd’s.

LocateTV

LocateTVStumbled on this site this morning and thought it was worth mentioning. LocateTV lets you search for TV shows and movies and easily see when they are to be broadcast or whether they are available on DVD. That’s it really. What really nice is that it’s fast and covers UK, USA & Republic of Ireland. So many of these sites work in the USA only so it’s nice to get some UK coverage. You can also set-up a favourites list so you can see when your programs are to be shown over the next few days. This is limited though as it works via cookies. If this worked over many machines via a login then it would be a really nice service. Well worth a visit and is currently free.

myDigiGuide does something similar but looks more feature rich but at a yearly cost (and the software is for Windows only).

Where’s the Truffles?

Every Christmas I usually pick up a couple of tins of Celebrations. One for work, one for home. At work the Galaxy Truffles always disappear first with a pack of hungry wolves searching through the tin devouring all in their path. So it got me wondering – are there less Truffles in a standard tin? So I took my 2 * 1KG tins and counted out the split. The results are of no surprise but still disappointing.

Celebrations

So that’s why the Truffles and Galaxy’s always go first. At least the Topic’s are no longer part of the tin but it’s poor that the sweet’s aren’t split evenly. If only they would sell a packet of Truffles on their own. Mmmmmm – lovely. Still – none for me as I’m still trying to keep the weight loss going at least until Christmas arrives.

Schmap’d

Back in April I had a stroll around Glasgow with Shakeel and took some photo’s. It was a pretty good way to spend a day and I plan to do some more winter shot’s around Glasgow during the Christmas break…weather and time permitting.

Anyway, to the point of this ramble. Someone at Schmap liked one of my photo’s and from today the Glasgow guide is featuring one of my snaps. Nice one. Even nicer is that I’ll be able to see if anyone clicks on the photo and visits my Flickr photo’s via their new stats service.

Stats and other Mince

Okay. My love of statistics knows no end. Three stat related topics, one of them seasonal, all of them useful..ish.

  • Google Zeitgeist 2007 has now been published. There is nothing too surprising this year although it’s great to see the Wii top the poll as Christmas comes around. Great stock management Nintendo. Definitely keeps people thinking you are the must buy games console.
    Where's Wii?
    Also worth noting that HD-DVD is more searched than Blu-Ray despite Blu-Ray disks outselling HD-DVD and that more people want to know what love is rather than who God is.
  • Flickr StatsMore stats can now be found on Flickr. If your a pro user, activate your stats and in roughly 24 hours you too can see who is viewing your photo’s. As expected nobody is finding any of my photo’s interesting but it did remind me to get my tagging and geo-tagging sorted.
    The stats are really well presented. Clear with lot’s of white space. You can also dig down into screens that show more details i.e. all photo’s. You can then sort by comments, date’s, your photo’s that have been added as a favourite by other members. Very informative and a great place to waste a few minutes. I even found some photo’s that I had put up that I had totally forgotten about.
  • Now onto a festive stat. Well, when I say stat I really mean reviews. My friend Roy has been road testing Mince Pies (not to be confused with mince rounds). So far the mince pie to beat is from Starbucks. I’m in shock. Having just sampled a Marks classic mince pie I really must seek out a Starbucks version over the holiday period. Anyway, if you have any more recommendations for Roy and his co-workers to test then add a comment below and I’m sure they will oblige.

I hope to have my own further stat/review post up this weekend. Stand by for startling revelations!

Fifa or PES?

For the football loving gamer this is usually an annual question with an easy answer. If you prefer real stadiums, teams, leagues and players as well as some great graphics you pick Fifa. If you prefer subtle controls, a more realistic game and some flowing animations you pick PES. For me PES has always been an easy choice. Fifa suffered from repetitive gameplay, easy goal scoring and a real lack of challenge. PES was tough and I felt a better sim of football.

However the last release of PES on the 360 was disappointing. Stuttery graphics and more importantly gameplay that was far less fluid than the PS2 version had left a bad taste in the mouth. Online wasn’t bad but it wasn’t exactly glowing either. A subsequent patch had left it almost unplayable as it would drop half way through a match.

The demo’s for this years versions pointed to a far closer battle. PES was smoother in game than before but still stuttered badly in replays. Fifa felt very slow but had a lot more depth than previous versions. Both had camera issues but that was down to poor options in the demo.

Why I Bought PES
So I stumped up for PES yet again. The game was a lot better than last year with all in game stutter a memory that only returned during replays – they were awful! The gameplay was also smoother with a lot more depth and a nice feel to the game. Strict referee’s were back but once again i was happy with PES. Online though was a kick in the teeth. The first online PES 2 years ago was a mixed bag. Cheats could quit without penalty and the net code wasn’t the best. But it did allow 2 vs 2. Last years was less laggy but cheats could still prosper. Also the hosting was shared between the two gamers…meaning you could have a great first half if your hosting followed by a horrible, laggy, torrent spoiled second half. 2 vs 2 was also dropped.

This year still sees only 1 vs 1 and the couple of games I played were mixed. Seemed to go OK but after a period the lag was horrendous making the game unplayable. It was PES but only just. This was disappointing especially with Fifa promising online leagues, a way of playing for your team online and also a 5 vs 5 mode. To be honest I laughed when I read that – they’ve no chance of getting that to work well.

Why I bought Fifa
A couple of trusted friends eventually bought Fifa….and loved it. It didn’t have the depth or the fluidity of PES but online it rocked and the 5 vs 5 mode…..worked a treat. I’ve had the game over two weeks now and it is superb online. 1 vs 1 and up to 5 vs 5 is a very special game mode. Lag free and just a joy to play. It can be spoiled by greedy and mouthy players but played with a few friends is a great experience.

Graphically the game is good although sometimes the animations are a bit clunky. Sometimes the game can frustrate as it just isn’t as good as PES. However the online mode is so good you can overlook those issues.

You also have the ability to create your own public and private leagues, upload video’s and pictures to the net and take part in matches representing your team. Offline has much the same modes as PES but not to the same depth as PES master league.

So what should you buy?
If you only play offline, PES. If you are going to play online at all or never have done but like multiplayer gaming them Fifa is for you. It’s been a long time coming but Fifa has finally bettered PES this year for me. If only Konami could get near Fifa’s performance online – what a game that would be.

Orange Stats

Looking forward to playing Orange Box (especially Portal) at Christmas. Glad I kept that game back during the games deluge over the last month or so. Something Valve is known for is publishing game stats and with Team Fortress 2 they haven’t let anyone down. Great to see how popular certain classes, weapons and map’s are. Achievements also broken down – looks like it wasn’t played that much on-line with big parties. Either that or people have no friends.

Updates

A few program updates…

  • There’s a new 360 dash out. It works a bit quicker than the old one and has been slightly reorganised, for the better in my view. It’s caused a bit of a problem for EA games though which i don’t think are fully resolved yet. DivX & XVid playback now fully supported which is nice as well as a slew of small changes throughout the system. Video Marketplace launches Dec 11th in UK – will be interested in comparing HD quality with Sky & BluRay. With these updates the 360 is finally rivalling XBMC for functionality, while blowing it out of the water for HD. Shame about the noise. And the DVD upscaling – so poor!
  • For Mac users wanting to stream the new video formats to the 360 Nullsoft have updated Connect 360. fast work from the devs to get this out the day after the dash update.
  • Yojimbo has finally been updated with a few new features while hopefully addressing a couple of Leopard bugs. Even though Together has been upgraded I still prefer the features in Yojimbo – and .Mac syncing seems to be working again. Woo!

Flickr Picnik

Photo editing has arrived at Flickr. It makes use of Picnik and having a play around this morning it looks very easy to use and pretty feature rich. You can easily edit any photo, add effects, play with contrast and colours, resize and crop and also apply an ‘auto fix’.

Picnik Crop

It’s nice to have these tools online as opposed to on your computer. Not all photo’s need Aperture or Lightroom and it’s great you can do this editing from anywhere while easily saving results within Flickr. I wonder if it works on the iPhone?