Winamp, how I missed you…

Looong time since I’ve posted.  I’ll get back to that.

Nearly a year ago, I had an issue with my favorite media player, Winamp.  For some reason it no longer made any sound on my system.  I checked volume sliders, windows volume mixers, reinstalling the application, and many things that would be considered altogether unreasonable.  Nothing worked, and I was forced to leave the comfort of llama-land for things less familiar.

In this journey, I am pleased to have found Songbird, a wonderful media player developed in the spirit of Firefox.  I only mention it here for those seeking an alternative to Winamp.  The true nature of this post is to reveal the coveted fix to my Winamp troubles.

This morning I found myself reinstalling Winamp, as it is truly my first-love of media players.  Disappointed that it still would not produce sound, I spent a while digging for a solution with my Google-shovel.  I would link to and credit the original post, but I can’t seem to find it again, but tucked away on my clipboard is the solution, which I will share here in the hopes that it might help another.

Go to this regkey

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\LowRegistry\Audio\PolicyConfig\PropertyStore\

Search for ‘winamp’ and delete all items that contain ‘winamp’
Restart winamp and you’re done.

I gave it a try, and it certainly worked for me.  Good luck.

Boxee for Windows

I had been involved in the private alpha of the windows distribution of Boxee for several months, and was so happy using it that I didn’t realize that a new version had been released (weeks ago), and it is now available for anyone.

If you don’t know what Boxee is, be sure to check out their site right away.  In a nutshell, it is internet media on your computer, consolidated in one neat place, and ready for use with remotes, televisions, and various other instruments of couch potatory.

NEVER FEAR!  Boxee is Open Source, and as could be expected it is cross-platform (Linux, MAC, and Windows), and costs nothing.  The folks that are developing this project are amazing, and I’m pleased to see all the improvements in the newest release.

If you think the world of internet media comes only in the flavors of Hulu and YouTube, then I suggest you prepare yourself to an entirely new universe of streaming content.  Sure, you don’t need Boxee to see it all, but its a hell of alot easier.

Prescription Drug Commercials

I don’t like doctors, and actually very rarely go to see one.  While I know people that will go for every headache and cold, I restrict my visits to anything that will absolutely NOT go away or get better on its own.  All that aside, I have, for most of my life, held a certain respect for the doctor’s expertise in matters of health.  The process, so far as I understood it, went something like this:

1. Person feels “bad”, and decides that he/she should visit the doctor.
2. Doctor evaluates symptoms, runs any necessary tests to confirm diagnosis.
3. Doctor issues treatment, including any drugs that might be needed, or changes in activity.

For a very long time, this system held up pretty well in my own mind.  UNTIL I started seeing prescription drug commercials.  What the fuck is up with that?  Are prescription drugs a consumer market now?  Why do WE need to know about all these drugs?

Isn’t that exactly what we pay the doctor for?  His expertise and knowledge about our symptoms and treatment is the ONLY reason to see him.  By commercializing the prescription drug market, the doctor’s role has been belittled to little more than signing “scripts”.

I can’t think of a single situation in which a patient should be responsible for picking out their own medications by name.  Well, two situations.  The first is a doctor who doesn’t feel like putting up with a patient’s crap, and gives in to their demands, and the second is a doctor who didn’t care enough to look into medications himself.  HINT : Both situations include HORRIBLE doctors that should NEVER be visited by patients, let alone paid.

Why I don’t care about Google Chrome

For quite some time, I’ve been a Google fan. Years ago I tossed aside other search engines in favor of Google for it’s clean look and respectable competence for web searches. I was not disappointed. It wasn’t long before I, like many others, began to favor Gmail over the popular email providers of the time. Again, great product, and no disappointments. Even more recently, I find that Google Docs and Google Earth are also great products from what I would generally consider a fine company. Let’s face it, Google has made serious efforts to offer services that people want, and to present them in a way that is fresh in new.

But here is Chrome, Google’s newest product, a shiny new browser. With their previous offerings, Google has always been the Knight in shining armor, saving the general public from the hells we were normally forced into accepting. Google.com made web browsing efficient and gave it a clean face by way of superior search algorithms and refusal to use banner ads on result pages. Gmail smashed Yahoo mail and Hotmail with it’s usability, clean look, and immense storage space. Google Docs has even made a positive mark, and giving hope to collaborators across the web. In each of these cases, Google took an old idea and innovated. They made something that, once used, we could look at and forget how we ever managed to get by without it. But where is the innovation here? A web browser?

Well, quite obviously, this is a ground-breaking mother-fucker. Google made it. Naturally, I grunted with excitement the moment I heard about it. There was no fucking way I was going to let the greatest browser ever pass me by. No fucking way.

But then it hit me. I already have the greatest browser ever. I absolutely had to see the features. Chrome was going to be so fly.

I have to admit, there are some sweet features. Incognito mode, dragging tabs to a new window, the new tab page. All nice stuff. But then there are the filler features which are already available to Firefox, or as addons, such as Simpler downloads, Imported settings, and Safe browsing. But where is the real innovation? Where is this freshness that I have come to expect from Google? It simply wasn’t there.

I had to ask myself why I thought Firefox was so good. And really, why do I like it so much? Well, that was easy. It isn’t that Firefox itself is so revolutionary, because it isn’t. Sure, they popularized tabbed browsing, and Firefox 3 has added many new features that I consider must-haves, but the real beauty of the program are the addons. Even now, i’m using ScribFire to write to my blog. Slowly, I realized that the little things that made Chrome “neat” were easily extended into Firefox as addons, and I’m certain we’ll be seing those new addons within days.

So, I closed the Chrome browser, and uninstalled it. It was going to take more than a few well-thought gimmicks to make me piss on the people that saved me from IE. Where was Chrome then? I’ll stick to Old Faithful for now. Besides, Chrome doesn’t have Adblock Plus.

“Black Hole” is a racist term

Seriously, do we really need to play a race card on the term “black hole”? Mission accomplished, he got his 5 minutes.

Online TV is getting better…

For some time now my television consumption has been minimal. I just didn’t feel that the time I spent watching television was well spent on the trash that passes for entertainment. So, like many others, my general entertainment has come from the internet.

But then there was Lost. A show I actually liked! So, for a few weeks, I watched it the good old fashioned way, the boob tube. And then I discovered that Lost was available for viewing online via ABC.com (and starting now with Season 4, in HD!!!). Much fewer commercials than you would catch in a standard broadcast, and the best part is the convenient viewing. Many of ABC’s more popular shows are available for viewing online, but not all. Sadly, most networks didn’t offer ANY full episodes online.

Today, I stumbled upon Hulu.com. It seems that these guys were savvy enough to start working with the show providers to do much of what ABC has done, but without the limitations of a network. While all shows are not available on this site, many are. So far, the site isn’t whored out with advertisement. While I can agree that advertisement will be necessary to generate revenue, we all know it will at some point become obsessive. For now, its the good stuff, and I’m living it up.

TV executives, take note: Today’s viewer wants content NOW. Full episodes online is the only way to go, so start making it happen.

Mary Evelyn McMillan Award for Undergraduate Writing

I submitted my essay “Gooney Birds” to the McMillan competition, and somehow managed to win.  I spent February 8th and 9th in Auburn, Alabama attending the ACETA conference.  It was good fun, and I look forward to attending again some day.

Gooney Birds

The most influential person in my life is my grandfather.   When I was a child, he tried to teach me many things without actually coming out and saying what I should be learning.  Perhaps he wanted me to find the truth for myself in most things and to avoid the tendency to make broad assumptions; I believe my early education about “gooney birds” is evidence of this.

Hellgate: London – Patch!

One of my biggest complaints of HG:L was the nightmare difficulty. It was just too hard. It seemed like nothing you could do would get you over the immense hurdle of trying to tackle these mobs without getting completely owned.

Well, thankfully, the latest patch solves that. Among numerous other improvements, the difficulty of nightmare skill has been rebalanced. I gave it a try yesterday, and I have to say I’m impressed.

So, if you tossed HG:L to the side of the road recently, pick it back up for a few minutes. Its definitely playable now.

Hellgate: London – Actually coming along nicely now

Sure, I made a post before about the launch being a total ripoff (and I stand by that), but after a few patches, the instability and performance issues seem to be cleared up. Overall, I have to say its a good game.