tunequest

I spent a portion of this Saturday going through my extended archive of music, the stuff that's not in my central, everyday iTunes library. Most of those files are a bit old and for either quality or tagging reason, they've been left unincorporated. Some of these songs have been sitting untouched and unlistened to on cds and hard drives for years. So I've decided to start sorting ...

Read the rest of this post.

OK... CD and vinyl album covers generally come in the shape of a square. The iPod's screen is a 4:3 rectangle. It makes sense that when displaying album art at full screen, the display would be limited to the short edge of the display, thus the white borders on the left and right sides. So my question is, why, when I have album art that is not square, ...

Read the rest of this post.

What can I say? This is brilliant. It's a bit long (11 minutes), so block out some time to watch the whole thing. It also helps to be familiar with Trapped in the Closet, R. Kelly's hip-hop opera in multiple parts which tells a complex story (with several interwoven plots) of increasingly bizarre cases of infidelity and sexual hang-ups. Here's a Google Video if you need to ...

Read the rest of this post.

This instructional is nearly two months late. Sorry folks. I know you've been dying to find out the quick and dirty way to add acceleration to your podcast listening. Onward, then. A note before we begin, these instructions are for Mac users only, as they require the use of an AppleScript to modify audio files from within iTunes. Windows folks, however, can try a variation on this ...

Read the rest of this post.

Poor Kermit. Times have been rough for the ol' muppet in recent years. Things just haven't been the same since Jim died. The last major film was considered a dud and the Muppets have largely stayed out of the public eye of late. To add insult to injury, the franchise is controlled by Disney, Disney! of all companies. Oh, for the heady days of the late 1970s, ...

Read the rest of this post.

Yeah, What They Said, links to interesting stories that I don't have time to write about. Some people call it "link sharing." In television and movies, "sourced" music is music that is heard by the characters in the scene. That's opposed to the underscore, which is heard only by the audience. StarTrek.com has a series of articles on the source music used in: The Original Series The Next Generation Deep ...

Read the rest of this post.

Anyone who's been around tunequest for a while surely knows of my fondness for The Polish Ambassador, the Earth's greatest half man, half cyborg, all electro-groovin' diplomat. Anyone who is new around here should get up to speed by reading my write-up of his debut album, Diplomatic Immunity. After posting that review, I sent a list of questions to the Ambassador, inquiring about his species, his adventures, ...

Read the rest of this post.

The ringing in my ears serves as a reminder that I have permanently lost a portion of my hearing, but I'm telling you it is worth it. I just got home from Ratatat's show in midtown Atlanta and I have something to admit to you: Seeing Ratatat perform live is one of my favorite things in the world. This show marks the third time I've managed to ...

Read the rest of this post.

I visited Legoland California in Carlsbad a couple weeks ago. It's an intriguing place, where everyone's favorite miniature building blocks are put to some amazing uses. One feature of the park is fairy-tale boat ride, where some notable folk tales are brought to life by Lego blocks. The Sleeping Beauty display warrants particular attention, because Prince Charming here bears a striking resemblance to Nine Inch Nails frontman ...

Read the rest of this post.