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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

 My grandfather’s house was situated on the side of a mountain in a most remote section of Scott County, Tennessee.  At one time the county was a hotspot for a few companies that were strip-mining for coal, but by now the coal was all gone, and so were the companies.  Good riddance really. The strip-mining had damaged much of the land there. 

My grandparents lived a simple life without electricity or running water, free from the shackles of modern convenience.  They cooked their food by the fires of a wood-burning stove, read books by the light of a kerosene lamp, and during my stays any wisdom I gained was by the proven experience of my grandfather.  There were but three devices I can recall as being any sort of modern.  The first was a radio, powered by D-cell batteries, which in midday and evenings would report the news and politics of the outside world.  The second was a gas refrigerator, used mostly to keep milk and other perishables cold.  And lastly, there was an old Ford Mustang for the rare trips into civilization. 

As a young boy, I enjoyed a rich life, playing in the woods, investigating Indian caves, reading books, and, during the summer months, swimming in the creek.  In this way, I feel that I had a privileged experience that most will never have the opportunity to know.  Some might think it a boring life without much to offer, but I would argue that the lack of television, movie theatres, and popular culture is what made that experience worth having.  Is there anything more peaceful than being in a place where you can think nothing at all?  When you do choose to have thoughts, you can hear them as they are and without someone else’s overbearing opinion to weigh them down.  Solitude gives way to the individual, and the ideas of others are of little importance.  I don’t believe anything short of living that life will give an adequate frame of reference for what I am describing.  

Occasionally, a stranger would wander onto my grandfather’s property.  Though it was sometimes a lost traveler seeking directions, it was more often a hunter seeking a good spot of land to hunt on.  In all cases, these visitors were greeted by my grandfather and his shotgun, with clear directions on how to leave.  “It isn’t this way,” and “Turn around and go back the way you came” were the two most common responses, for each case respectively.  I had always thought my grandfather should give them more explanation than that, but I suppose the shotgun did most of the talking.  These memories reinforce the idea that my grandfather was a private person, with little concern for the day-to-day worries of others.

Despite the solitary nature of the place, sounds occasionally echoed through the valley, sounds that very much resembled people yelling.  I knew from my own exploration there was no one else living in the valley for quite some distance in any direction, and the sounds I heard certainly came from something much closer.  When I would ask my grandfather what was making the noises, he would tell me it was the “gooney birds.”  Often, I was puzzled, and would suggest that perhaps the sounds were made by people, but he would reassure me that they were certainly the voices of the ever-so-crafty gooney birds, who apparently achieved some monumental pleasure in fooling little boys with their mimicry of human sounds.  I remained surprised that such a creature existed but skeptically accepted it as an elder’s knowledge.

The gooney birds didn’t make their “calls” very often, and for weeks at a time I wouldn’t hear them.  On the periodic odd day, however, I would be audience to their clever game.  I would pay special attention to them, sometimes believing I could almost make out words.  On several occasions, I would walk through the woods, following the sounds, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these mysterious birds.  Unfortunately, I was never successful.  The gooney birds would always seem to stop their calls whenever I came even remotely close to their apparent location.  Despite the disappointment of consistent failure, I must admit to some enjoyment in hunting the birds.

My grandfather’s mailbox was about a mile from his house, at the end of his driveway.  One day, my little sister and I were walking with him to check the mail.  As we approached the mailbox, we saw a group of teenagers around an old Dodge pickup.  It was uncommon to see anyone at the mailbox, so I asked my grandfather who they were.  He told me they were gooney birds.  After studying them a moment longer, I told him they looked just like people to me.  “Just because they look like people, that doesn’t mean they are,” he replied.  The gooney birds, having seen my grandfather approaching, quickly piled into the truck and left.  I remember wondering if they had left because their disguises hadn’t fooled my grandfather.

Since I’ve become a bit older, I’ve looked for information about gooney birds.  Sadly, the only thing I’ve found is that “gooney bird” is a popular nickname for the Laysan albatross, a bird that lives on open ocean waters and is common in the southern hemisphere.  I have found nothing of the Laysan albatross’s ability to make humanlike sounds, so I must assume these are not the birds I was looking for.  I’m not surprised really, as there aren’t any oceans in the mountains of Tennessee.

If one were to ask me if I truly believed birds made those sounds, I would have to say, even now, that I’m not sure.  I’ve personally heard the calls of owls and bobcats in the night, both sounding somewhat “human.”  It might be safe to say that it was people making those sounds, and the stories of the gooney birds were born of my grandfather’s sense of humor, though that is not an assumption I am willing to make.  To me, those woods and mountains are a magical place, full of mysteries that perhaps only a young boy would perceive.  So why shouldn’t there be gooney birds in the hills, calling through the valley, giggling at a young boy’s puzzlement?

Who knows if there really are gooney birds?  My grandfather seemed to know, and for now, I am willing to accept his knowledge.  Despite my doubts, I would be disappointed to discover that there are no gooney birds.

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.