rickshangle.com

I look at various web stats regarding my blog much less than I used to in the past, which I feel is an indication of nothing other than being a slightly lesser douch**ag than before.

I did take a look just now, and while I’m very disappointed that “devil” accounts for only 0.8% search traffic now[1], a melange of rockstar-related bits litter the top ten.

Come on, lurkers - step up! Right here, right now!

[1] I’d like to get that up there around, you know, 85-90%

Spoiler: And it sucks, at least for me, at least for now.

Shakedown of Amazon’s new movie download system, Unbox.

1. Zero surprise: no OS X support. Running in XP-on-Parallels.
1. Amazon UnBox player (which handles the download, DRM and player) won’t use a Parallels shared folder, which sucks. So I’m forced to download into a Parallels NTFS virtual drive, which angers me.

For the first shakedown, it needs to be short in order to maximize the rush, so there can be only one:

So I said, “look mf, I’m rick james…”

Video file size: 419MB

Frame rate: Probably doesn’t do 30 frames a sec on Parallels, but seems to be doing at leat 25 (eyeballing it).

Price: $2, to own. Unbox features content for rent and own.

Resolution: Unclear, and not clear from the Unboxed web page. Appears comparable to itunes. Which is infuriating.

Audio: Stereo.

Full screen (within a Parallels window) worked ok, at the same frame rate. However, when I took Parallels itself into full-screen (so XP completely took over my MacBook Pro’s screen), the video was restricted to approximately 50% of the screen, as opposed to expanding all the way. Infuriating. Ultimately I fixed this problem by quitting Unbox Player, putting Parallels in full-screen mode, re-booting Unbox Player, and then taking a video to full-screen. Frame rate stayed about the same (sub 30 frames/sec).

Complaints:
No media controls in full screen (although spacebar appears to pause/play).
FF and REW buttons do, uh, nothing.

Next: A movie. A big one.

Update 8.8.06 23:00

Ok, well renting (24 hours, $3) a movie didn’t turn out so well, to the degree that I’ve actually emailed Amazon customer support (which I’ve always had great (no sarcasm (really, no sarcasm (none))) experiences with in the past). Best In Show Plays for 8 minutes, then always stops playing/restarts at the same point.

Did I mention you can’t seem to FF/REW the Unbox player?

So, that didn’t turn out so well. Now it’s time to buy a movie, like a big boy. No more “renting”. No more “partial commitment”. We’re in, all the way. Buy, buy, buy.

When I acquired my video projector for hot projection-on-wall action three years back, there was only one movie that was up to the challenge to break things in. So I guess it’s somewhat of a ritual, and I really should have started with it:

Heheheh. Heheheh. Hehehheehehhehehe. Eeeeee-oooorrr.

Stay tuned.

Update 9.9.06 13:45

Jackass behaves the same Best In Show: plays for seven minutes, then stops, returns to zero. This is annoying. Another ticket opened with Amazon. I wonder how they’re going to do as a software support organization. Guess we’ll find out.

Tally, so far:

1. 22min Chapelle Show episode: worked well enough to be a potentially viable alternative to iTMS, as long as I can get over the annoyance of having to watch my media from within XP-on-Parallels.
1. Rented Best In Show: plays for seven minutes, poops.
1. Purchased Jackass: the Movie: plays for seven minutes, poops.

Update 9.11.06 13:45

Finally received an email back from Amazon customer support. Advice: delete and re-download the media file (which Apple doesn’t let you do.) I do it anyway.

Same issue.

Finally, load the most recent Windows Media Player Security Update, which solves the problem across the board.

Update 9.11.06 14:45

Ok, I spoke too soon. This time, video stopped playing about 45 minutes into Jackass.

Update 9.17.06 14:45

I have received no satisfaction from Amazon customer service re: why my movies won’t play, and honestly have been distracted[1] by Apple’s announcements re: iTMS movies last week (another article). So, so far:

Chapelle Show: worked fine, 22 min.

Best in Show (rental): won’t play past 7 minutes.

Jackasss (bought): downloaded four times (in accordance with the only advice Amazon customer support can seem to give (cut and paste from unbox faq) on the topic), and still won’t play past 40 minute mark, period.

Anger. Given the breadth of content on Amazon Unbox, it would be a really tempting offering, even when playing inside Parallels. If it fucking worked.

I’m not an idiot, and I have no problem believing that I’m running into something that is XP-on-Parallels-related. That’s great and I could even accept that and move on (especially given Apple’s announcement last week) if Amazon tech support would even bother troubleshooting the issue to the point of _asking_ me anything about my environment, as opposed to just cutting-and-pasting snippets of their Unbox FAQ into their responses. That just bugs the s**t out of me.

[1] slash, amazed and really comfortable with how well it (iTMS movies) works.

[1] Where “it” at the moment means “eat bagged spinach in about 20 states“.

This a public service announcement for the chosen ones that use rds.com as their only news source.

Magni was the first to fall[1], then that Irish… uh, Australian. Evs/ohho oh ohoho. That left Dilana and Lukas standing tall in what Dave Navarro called a scene from a “goth wedding”. So on point, Dave. It was hard to tell you were higher than he*l, but not that hard, since you stood up during the entire show.

Could Supernova wind up being the fake-rock equivalent of garbage and select a chick singer? And the answer is… no, of course not; girl, we’ve told you since day one: you have too much sh*t in your face.

Lukas Rossi won Rockstar supernova last night. It’s easy to be a monday-morning quarterback, but Lukas has been the easy and default pick since night 1, when Tommy Lee’s only response to Lukas’ performance of Billy Idol’s “white wedding” was:

“rockstar…” -throws mic down-

In the business world, when you’re presenting to win, you always go first, or last. Lukas went last that night. It all fits now.

More details to follow, and a final send-off tribute to all the losers contestants that had a bad day this season.

Image source

[1] Big money lost by me. big money.

This certainly is a long-awaited feature that will undoubtedly get me one step closer to _total_ audio data control without 3rd party tools or endless amazon-scraping…

If only it worked worth a GD… after trying it on about twenty tracks, with a success rate of 0/20, I’ve determined that right click -> “download album artwork” won’t even attempt to run for tracks that already have some crap (i.e. already downloaded by Synergy) embedded.

This article from the Mac Observer shows how to remove album artwork for a bunch of tracks so you can let iTunes 7 re-load them… clean!

the extensive library on my mac book pro… looking to keep things clean for as long as possible…