I'm a NIN Fan...

But I haven't yet put a NIN Music video in here.. now I am though. Warning: Lyrics\Content are kind of not work safe... discretion advised:

BTW, this isn't even my favorite song on Year Zero but it seems to be the only music video from it so far. I would like a music video for, "My Violent Heart", "Vessel" or "Me, I'm not"... personally.

I'm a NIN Fan...

But I haven't yet put a NIN Music video in here.. now I am though. Warning: Lyrics\Content are kind of not work safe... discretion advised:

BTW, this isn't even my favorite song on Year Zero but it seems to be the only music video from it so far. I would like a music video for, "My Violent Heart", "Vessel" or "Me, I'm not"... personally.

MP3 Bit Rate...

Well.. this is another thing that is being debated and that is whether or not there is a difference when using higher bit rates for MP3... or what the difference is between an MP3 or an Uncompressed wav version of a song. Recently I have found a uncompressed version of NIN - Capitol G which has 1411kbps bit rate. I took this file and ran it through the iTunes converter converting it to a 192kbps Variable MP3 file and compared the two and the uncompressed version simply had more resolution and more highs than the compressed version which sounded kind of muffled when comparing the two.

The amount of muffling of the frequencies gets worse the lower the bit rate you put the file through and especially if you convert the song several times. There are more intelligent encoders like LAME that do a better job converting songs to variable bit rate. I use the LAME plugin for iTunes to rip cds and I have it set to 192kbps Variable with the variable setting set to highest quality so the bit rate usually hovers in the 200 and it does a better job at conveying more of the frequencies than just using lower bit rates but I do realize it's not exactly like the CD. It's a trade off on size\quality that I choose... and considering that today we aren't as strapped for hard drive space as when MP3 first came out it's wiser to use a higher bit rate nowadays.

Although you have to realize that whenever you compress a picture\song\video there has to be something lost in order to get that compression. There is of course formats like FLAC that alleviate this but unfortunatly devices like my MP3 player don't support those kind of files and I don't want to have to transcode them every time I want to transfer so I go with a high bitrate variable MP3 for my music.

Also the type of quality that is acceptable to a person is subjective and it also depends on a lot of factors including quality of speakers\headphones, your listening environment, etc. Some people don't like any kind of digital music at all and that includes CDs.

MP3 Bit Rate...

Well.. this is another thing that is being debated and that is whether or not there is a difference when using higher bit rates for MP3... or what the difference is between an MP3 or an Uncompressed wav version of a song. Recently I have found a uncompressed version of NIN - Capitol G which has 1411kbps bit rate. I took this file and ran it through the iTunes converter converting it to a 192kbps Variable MP3 file and compared the two and the uncompressed version simply had more resolution and more highs than the compressed version which sounded kind of muffled when comparing the two.

The amount of muffling of the frequencies gets worse the lower the bit rate you put the file through and especially if you convert the song several times. There are more intelligent encoders like LAME that do a better job converting songs to variable bit rate. I use the LAME plugin for iTunes to rip cds and I have it set to 192kbps Variable with the variable setting set to highest quality so the bit rate usually hovers in the 200 and it does a better job at conveying more of the frequencies than just using lower bit rates but I do realize it's not exactly like the CD. It's a trade off on size\quality that I choose... and considering that today we aren't as strapped for hard drive space as when MP3 first came out it's wiser to use a higher bit rate nowadays.

Although you have to realize that whenever you compress a picture\song\video there has to be something lost in order to get that compression. There is of course formats like FLAC that alleviate this but unfortunatly devices like my MP3 player don't support those kind of files and I don't want to have to transcode them every time I want to transfer so I go with a high bitrate variable MP3 for my music.

Also the type of quality that is acceptable to a person is subjective and it also depends on a lot of factors including quality of speakers\headphones, your listening environment, etc. Some people don't like any kind of digital music at all and that includes CDs.

Apple.. "Active Desktop" (no not the Windows kind)...

They have an article about some kind of dynamic Animated desktop they say they are working on for Leopard. Some people say "Active desktop seems nice, if for no other reason than it might do away between the abrupt differences between login screen, screensaver and such versus the desktop." But is this really as big a problem as they make it out to be? They make it sound like you are abruptly thrown out into the cold traumatically. Personally I don't think the login screens on Any OS are that animated\dynamic. Sure you might get icons changing size and sliding around but the desktops themselves are already getting similar animations when you do certain things. Screensavers I might give you but the rest... nah.

I say If this is anything like Quartz Composer files as desktops which you can already do on OS X if anything it'll take more resources than a static picture. And we wont be able to point to this as an advantage over windows because they are already doing the same thing. This even includes the dynamic stuff... (like stuff that happens at certain times in the day). Sure if it's true what stardock says about video cards handing the whole thing it might work ok but... it probably won't save RAM (video card or otherwise) unless it's simple solid colors. You still have to store what you generate somewhere. This is not magic.

Even if we had this and it worked great it better be optional. I still will probably want to use static pictures sometimes. Unless this can automatically procedurally generate any photo or character without loss of quality, or whatever I want then there still are plenty of static pictures that I would want to use. Sometimes you might just want a static picture or even a solid color so it wont be distracting.

I wouldn't mind if you could make a desktop wallpaper that is in different layers though so it can adjust itself to your screen size. The enlightenment people have been doing this for a while now. At any rate I don't think it's something that Apple should get a patent for.

Having a desktop wallpaper optionally change when you enter\exit certain programs might be a good idea. You could have whatever wall you want for regular times and then perhaps a solid neutral color for when you are working in photoshop\illustrator might be a good idea as well. I'm not sure if anyone else has thought of that yet. Having photoshop in a MDI window like in Windows might give a similar effect but I don't like that myself and would not like to see Apple go in that direction.

Apple.. "Active Desktop" (no not the Windows kind)...

They have an article about some kind of dynamic Animated desktop they say they are working on for Leopard. Some people say "Active desktop seems nice, if for no other reason than it might do away between the abrupt differences between login screen, screensaver and such versus the desktop." But is this really as big a problem as they make it out to be? They make it sound like you are abruptly thrown out into the cold traumatically. Personally I don't think the login screens on Any OS are that animated\dynamic. Sure you might get icons changing size and sliding around but the desktops themselves are already getting similar animations when you do certain things. Screensavers I might give you but the rest... nah.

I say If this is anything like Quartz Composer files as desktops which you can already do on OS X if anything it'll take more resources than a static picture. And we wont be able to point to this as an advantage over windows because they are already doing the same thing. This even includes the dynamic stuff... (like stuff that happens at certain times in the day). Sure if it's true what stardock says about video cards handing the whole thing it might work ok but... it probably won't save RAM (video card or otherwise) unless it's simple solid colors. You still have to store what you generate somewhere. This is not magic.

Even if we had this and it worked great it better be optional. I still will probably want to use static pictures sometimes. Unless this can automatically procedurally generate any photo or character without loss of quality, or whatever I want then there still are plenty of static pictures that I would want to use. Sometimes you might just want a static picture or even a solid color so it wont be distracting.

I wouldn't mind if you could make a desktop wallpaper that is in different layers though so it can adjust itself to your screen size. The enlightenment people have been doing this for a while now. At any rate I don't think it's something that Apple should get a patent for.

Having a desktop wallpaper optionally change when you enter\exit certain programs might be a good idea. You could have whatever wall you want for regular times and then perhaps a solid neutral color for when you are working in photoshop\illustrator might be a good idea as well. I'm not sure if anyone else has thought of that yet. Having photoshop in a MDI window like in Windows might give a similar effect but I don't like that myself and would not like to see Apple go in that direction.

OLPC Update...

I have been following the one laptop per child project since it first started. Today I saw a picture of children in Nigeria brandishing OLPCs.. looks like they are ending up in the intended hands after all. The jokes in this page are pretty tasteless and the real news to me is that they had recieved the machines and they look happy to me. They wont be getting spyware on those computers since even if they are allowed on the general internet those machines are running Linux and they are not running IE.

Meanwhile.. this image was dugg recently.. can you spot the error? ;)

OLPC Update...

I have been following the one laptop per child project since it first started. Today I saw a picture of children in Nigeria brandishing OLPCs.. looks like they are ending up in the intended hands after all. The jokes in this page are pretty tasteless and the real news to me is that they had recieved the machines and they look happy to me. They wont be getting spyware on those computers since even if they are allowed on the general internet those machines are running Linux and they are not running IE.

Meanwhile.. this image was dugg recently.. can you spot the error? ;)