Computer Knowledge. Gadget. Anime. Design. Dance. Hong Kong Life. Stuff like that.

11.29.2007

Font size problem fixed?

I gave up on finding automatic solutin to convert NJStar entries into Unicode, and instead use another faithful tool to do the job: my hand. So I got them all corrected under MP3Tag. And since I am at home and my primary itune is at home, so I add all my corrected files into my office iTune app, and do a manual sync to my iPod. Interesting enough, after I did that manual sync, I found that the Chinese font size problem was resolved.

So ... strange.

11.28.2007

Stupid WiFi setting on my Lenovo X60T

Another annoying problem regarding to WiFi with the Lenovo X60T: sometime I will lose the WiFi signal icon (that 4 green bar thing) after I lost WiFi signal. And without that icon, even if my manually turn on the physical WiFi button button at the front bottom of the laptop, I still won't get WiFi access. I need to go into a WiFi signal page and explicitly turn on WiFi. That's .... inconvenient to say to least.

Crazy ID3 Tag battle continue ....

I finally found out what encoding was used by those anicent MP3 files I found some my old old download. They are in NJStar character format! I couldn't see the content from anywhere UNTIL I installed NJStar Communicator trial version and the load up the mp3 files in ID3 Tag's Converter (an app within convertz 8.02).

The problem is that there's still not straight forward way to convert NJStar encoded Chinese into regular Unicode Chinese. More research I need to do I guess.

WiFi hell on my Lenovo X60

It started when I was trying out the new TrendNet USB WiFi network adapter and WiFi Router in the office.

I used my Lenovo X60T as the client work station. I plugged in the USB adapter, got the driver from Windows Update, setup WPA setting (PSK, TKIP with complex passphrase). And it all worked out fine.

Hell happened after I unplugged the USB network and try to use the onboard WiFi card. I use the ThinkAdvange Access Connection icon at system tray to try to establish the connection with my TrendNet router, and it keeps failing. In fact I tried do away WPA and use WEP, and still failed. It only after I dropped all security that the connection was estalished. And yet then connection is estalished AFTER I close the ThinkAdvantaqge Access frontend.

I also realized that the WEP and WPA key that I entered was NEVER saved. So I started to wonder if there's something wrong.

Then I found that the ThinkAdvantage Access screen has an option to set the WiFi connection to use "Windows WiFi Settting". I picked that.

And then I stmbled across the Vista instrisic network access icon on system tray. So I opened it. And that's when I realize that Vista has it's own way of managing WiFi. In fact, I use that to setup the network connection, including all the WPA key and setting, and they WERE SAVED. And after then I got my WiFi running OK.

So ***k the ThinkAdvantage. Be sure to use the Vista way of managing WiFi by:

  • Right click on the network icon on the system tray.
  • Select "Network and Sharing Center"
  • At the Tasks panel on the right side, select "Manage Wireless networks"
  • Here you can create, modify and do whatever you want on your various WiFi connection setting.

11.26.2007

WinData Dual Layer DVD disc sucks

The small barrel of 20 discs WinData DVD+R DL I brought from Microsoft US$14 last Friday didn't work out. I burned the disc and I got error on the original created machine. And both my laptop drive and my office machine cannot read it. I am kind of piss now. Is my US$14 going down to toilet? So much for dual layer....

Pissed

I was pretty pissed to find out that the TrendNet TEW-424UB USB based WiFi adapter is not Windows Server 2003 friendly. I cannot find a driver that works with Windows Server 2003 on the driver page. Sigh. I guess there's always a reason why something is cheap.

Great tool to help tagging MP3

I spent tons of time this Thanksgiving weekend to mess with my iPod Classics 80Gb and iTune. For instance, yesterday I spent countless hour to clean up ID3 Tag using a great free tool called Mp3tag . It's amazing as it allows me to do a lot of text replacement.

I also found that it much better to clean up ID3 Tag BEFORE adding files into iTune, because ID3 Tag change that made by OTHER application on the MP3 files in the iTune folder can be picked up by iTune only after I play the song song once in iTune. There may be a better way to resolve the problem. But for now I'll just do it by doing the cleaning before moving to iTune.

However, I still encounter a major problem that I need to resolve before moving on: I need to find a way to convert Simplified Chinese chracter in ID3 Tag to Traditional Chinese, or it may mess up all other songs in my iPod. In fact, I still don't know if there's a good automatic way besides manually cleaning them one by one. This is the main research task for me these days.

iTune and iPod struggling : messed up font size

Yesterday while I was trying to sync a bunch of songs to my iPod, I found out that the font size of some artist name was messed up. Most of them became the smaller size just like the size of the Chinese font in lyrics page. And then I synced again and this time it's slightly fixed, but I still got some of the problem like this:



As you can see, the artist name which supposed to be smaller now becomes the same size as the song title.



For instance, when you see the English band name "Beyond", the size is smaller than the song time "Please take off your hands", which is correct. HOwever you can see that at the top, the song name is the same size as the song artist. The middle two was even worse as some characters are big while some are small.

There were at least one person have the same problem as I do. Unfortunately, there's no solution posted online yet.

11.25.2007

Continue Messing iTune

Some of my finding about iTune:

  • After you change the iTune music folder (under Advance preference setting), new files will be copied into the new folder (assume that you turn on the preference setting to copy all your imported music to the iTune music folder). However, all your previous media files are still in your old iTune music folder. In order to copy all the old files into new place, you need to select the "Consolidate music" option from the menu.
  • iTune can fix the messed up Unicode character by selecting Reverse Unicode settting from the menu. However, don't blindly select the option for all the files, because this option will also mess up the the items that was "fixed" before. Remember this feature is like toggle: apply it twice and it will go back to the original state. Also, this feature doesn't touch the lyrics in the song at all.
  • The two lyrics related plugin, iLyrics and Lyricsnapper, maynot work all the time, depends on the server condition. But when they work, they work pretty well.
  • iTune for Windows desktop sees MPEG file, but it won't sync to iPod. So make sure that you convert the mpg file into mp4 file before dropping the video into iTune.

11.24.2007

True Identity of my USB WiFi adapter

When I plugged in my newly broyght TrendNet TEW-424UB USB wireless adapter, the Vista hardware profile shows "Realtek RTL8187B Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps USB 2.0 Network Adapter". Oh well, must be an OEM product. In fact, Vista automatically found the driver for me.

Stress testing memory result ... PASS!


I brought 2Gb of cheap memory today (after rebate that is). And so I ran the memory test using MemTest, the result is... ALL Pass for 5 times! Awesome.

11.23.2007

More complain on iPod Classic 80Gb and iTune 7.5

Stuff that I don't like:

  • The text reader feature on iPod Classics 80Gb SUCKS! It can only handle tiny text file (like 32K)! That and the stupid tiny font size makes it useless as a ebook reader.
  • There's no way to zoom a photo when viewing it. Pathetic.
  • I experienced some minor problem here and there regarding to Chinese character support. I found workaround at the end, but still annoying.
  • How come there's not a feature to remember the last 10 media content (including audio and video) that I just listened to? I want that feature!!

11.22.2007

Sightly better way to manage video with iTune (and iPod)

Even thought I still couldn't find a simply way to keep the video type(Music Video, TV Show, or Movie) info stays in the MP4 file, at least I find a way to add TV Show video to my iPod while I was not with my main computer (which my iPod was synced with). This actually is much bigger a problem since by default all video are treated as movie, and I have to manually add the "Show" name and set the video type to "TV Show". And even after all that I have to drag and drop the file from the local iTune Library to my iPod since I was doing manual sync at work.

The good thing is that the video type and the meta data was preserved when I drag and drop files from iTune Library to my iPod. The files showed up in TV Show section instead of the generic movie section. But then when I get back home my home iTune will yep and trying to erase what I manual synced in the office.

One tool that almost work for me to ease my pain was Change Video Info v.1.0. It works fine when I only mess with meta data. But when I tried to change video type it gave me an error. Ironically, one of the file in the list was actually got processed. So if I keep pressing process, eventually I will get all items in Movie category to get processed. It's just ... strange though.

iPod and video ....

Sigh, video type is not preserved or stored in the MP4 files under the iTune directory. It's probably in some other iTune database I guess. So I guess I may need to live with the reimport problem...

Or maybe there's tool that does the job... will look into it ...

11.21.2007

Lyricsnapper - Still the best way to find lyrics and then embed it in mp3 file

I tried several different software, including Mozilla SongBird, to find the most easiest way to grab lyric and then embed in the mp3 natively. I have to say that iTune with Lyricsnapper is still the easiest way to do so.

And speaking of embedding information in MP3 file, I found out that once files are in iPod, it's very hard to cleanly extract those files out and preserve all the filename and so on and so fore. So the best strategy is never use iPod as the primary source. Treat iPod as a one way repository and do not consider using iPod as backup for files. In fact this fact makes me very reluctant to buy iPod product again, and very lean towards to get other MP3 Players such as Zune in the future.

So my next reserach task is to figure out what is the best way to prepare or preserve media files that hold the most media meta data intrinsically and yet still recognized by iTune. By meta data intrinsically store in the media files I mean ID3 Tag, Album art, lyrics, media file type (like TV Show name, season, ...) and so. For Album art and ID3 Tag I need to prepare at place AWAY from iTune since ITune keeps a lot of these items in it's own database instead of storing these information instrincially in the file itself. Some time, like the lyrics I mentioned before, needs to be prepare in iTune, and then I will backup the files from the iTune repository.

My goal is to make these media files atomic. So that:
  • Other media player can access all the media meta data with little or no effort.
  • I can restore my whole iPod, with all the media content in the right folder and setting, on ANY computer I want, instead of forcing me to stuck with a particular computer to use iTune.
This is the time when I start to miss my iRiver 140 as I can manipulate the directory structure in whatever way I want.

iPod Classic 80G doesn't like huge picture

I put three 2.5 Mb photos in my iPod Classic 80Gb and I found that the system doesn't like it that much. So I have to resize them to around 200K, then iPod starts to load the photos at ease.

iPod Classic 80Gb: so much to love, so much to hate

This is the first day I use my new iPod Classic 80Gb. I have to say that while I don't really regard buying this product, I find that this bad boy has a lot to improve in order to become a product that I will consider perfect. I kept saying this again and again: I don't mind paying good money for a good player, as long as it does what I want. Here's a list of feature that I am still waiting for:

  • A 3.5 inch screen WITH 80Gb or more harddisk space.
  • Ability to adjust font size on the text reading (I mean HOW DIFFICULT CAN THIS BE)
  • Allow me to change video property on iTune so that I can set a bunch of video as music video, or a bunch video as TV shows.
However, as much as I hate a lot of stuff, I still enjoy using the iPod:
  • perfect form factor for a 80Gb device.
  • Very nice screen.
  • Easy to setup.
Now here's a bunch of tricks and tidbit I learned today:
  • iPod Classic text reading support unicode and UTF8 if you are deal with Chinese text. So make sure you save your text file in Unicode.
  • You can turn your movie files into TV Show by changing the File Info on iTune. But MAKE SURE that you at least enter the text box "Show" or the iPod menu will not be able to show the title. Also it's pretty suck that at least for iTune 4.5, you cannot make all these change in a batch. You have to do one file at a time.
  • Since there's no simply way to put video file into category, I simply turn most of the video file into "TV Show" (for Video Kind), and then use the "Show" name as sort of the folder name. It works pretty well to me so far.
  • An awesome feature for iPod is the bookmark feature. It enables iPod to remember the position of the file next time to listen to the file. This is awesome for audio book. The turn on the feature, select the files (yes, you can do multiple select) you want to enable the bookmark feature, right click select "Get Info", then select "yes" for Remember Position.
  • To convert video, I use WinAVI MP4 Converter. actually, it seems like most MP4 convert will work. Once converted your file into mp4, just drag and drop them in iTune and then sync it. If you want a free converter, you can try "Videora iPod Converter".
  • I was almost outrage, when I found that I can only sync with one computer with iTune. But then I found out that you can do manual sync. So it isn't too bad, but still the process seems clumsy, and I have slighly problem getting the video Podcast working the way I expected.
  • By default iPod will play one video and then stop, but then you can use those predefined Playlist to play all the files.

And then here the action item coming forward:

  • Need to find a spare charge/sync cable, cause I know I will break it sooner or later.
  • Buy some extra cotton cover for the head phone. I always lost it. In fact, I just lost one today.

11.13.2007

viewable angle

I just realized today that a 2.5 inch screen with good viewable angle gives me better video watching experience than a 3.5 inch screen but having some issue when you tilt the screen.

I hope I am not trying to justify my purchase of soon-to-come iPod Classic 80Gb.

11.12.2007

Best way to rip music from Music CD

My idea of the best rip of music need to satisfy the following criteria:

- Preserve the most musical quality
- Capture and store track information (usually by retrieving data from Internet) based on the Music CD signature.
- Obtain as much add on information on the track itself, such as Lyrics, album art and so on.

Before I explain my solution, let me tell you some schemes which I used and did NOT work as good as I would like to:

- Using ITune to rip Music CD
At first I thought this was the best and most convenient way, but turns out this is probably the worst because:
- ITune's MP3 encode isn't up to par comparing with other encoding scheme, like LAME.
- ITune's album, which can be automatically retrieve from Apple site, are not stored in the file itself, but instead stores in ITune's own database. This is bad as you won't get to see the album art when playing the song in other player.

So instead, I use the following scheme:
- Use Mediamonkey to rip the musicCD. Before ripping, make sure that the album info has been retrieved. Otherwise the filename and directory will be blank. And remember to use FLAC format instead of MP3.
- After the ripping was completed, click "retrieve IDTag from Amazon" in order to get the album art. The album art will be stored in the same directory as the music file.
- Use MediaCoder to convert FLAC to MP3 if needed. When encoding, use LAME codec if possible.

This scheme still has some weakness:
- The album art provided by Amazon isn't as good as those from iTune (Apple)
- I Haven't found a service that can automatically store Lyrics in the ID3 tag of FLAC file. I was also told that the converting from FLAC to MP3 will loss Lyrics.

My solution is keeping two set of files, one in FLAC format and one set in MP3 format. And then use MP3 as the file for storing lyrics, as I use MP3 file more often.

By the way I tried quite a few of music played software. So far I haven't found one that does everything right.

將PDA橫向使用的好處

我發現將x50v和橫向使用時,手寫輸入的準確度會大幅提高。我相信原因是因為畫面的左下部份已經漸漸壞掉了。

11.04.2007

Grabbing a comics book to read offline

I found an interesting comic called 少年公主與魔法神燈 at this site, so I try to use this page to load all pages and then use Firefox's save web site feature to save all the jpeg on that page. I thought, well, since those JPEG had been cached locally, it should take no time to save them. But turns out FireFox attempted to download all the JPEG files all over again, and since the site has leech protection feature, the file save feature failed.

Sigh, I should have installed the Save Image In Folder Firefox plug in before loading that page.

So I looked around, found the following three links that has the comics book:

I only tried the link 1. (Somehow I am glad that these sites steal stuffs from each other, so that I can use other site as "mirror".) And found that the links are very Teleport friendly. For instance, I can start with the link on the first page, start a Teleport session, limit to that directory, and set the "... Explore no more .." to 200. And it will just grab all pages for me. It need some work, though, for a few time the grabbing stopped at certain page, like p.48. I have to find the link for p.49, go to Teleport to disable the old link, paste the new p.49 link in, and start again. Eventaully I did it 4 time, and now I have all 97 pages. Not too bad. Jsut need some work.