Using MediaMonkey with last.fm data

Have you ever wanted to have something like your listening history of all your music in one place?

Well if you have iTunes then you have nothing to worry about, but if like me you don't like funding the new Scientology cult then there's quite a few options out there to use.

I'm not going to turn this into a iTunes is evil jibe because its OK, really. And I'm not going to go through the available players out there either as there are only a few which I have used personally.

If like me you do most of your music listening on android handset then there's nothing on the market to record your music listening history which will ultimately enable you to better manage your music and save precious disc space.

There is last.fm however which sctobbles your music listening history to last.fm so your listening history is in the cloud, which means you have a listening history but it may not be a as instantly accessible as on iTunes.

So I heard about MedaiMonkey from a colleague at work and thought I would give it a whirl must say I'm impressed, you can check out the features on the website or just try it for yourself if you haven't tried it already.

And at the risk of boring you by waffling on any more here's the goods:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37341
http://psykar.com/scripts/

App GScript

If you find yourself repeating operations on your phone then this app is for you, I can't recall exactly where I found out about this but I do know there is a good thread for this on xda.

This isn't new to the market, it is an app I have been using for about eighteen months or so now and I find it invaluable.

Back in the days of my HTC Magic I used to like moving between the two main recovery images ClockworkMod and Amon_Ra and rather than flashing the images from fastboot there is a binary you can use from the terminal called flash_image so there are input parameters needed for this like the location of the new image and what partition you are writing to, it wasn't much writing really but if you miss spelled anything you had to start over typing it all out again.


Queue GScript: What the market says > Running/loading shell scripts from within Android using a single touch.

Which is basically it, you need (I think) to be rooted so you can run commands as su you can probably use it unrooted too but I have never tried it that way


What that means is that you can run scripts from the app rather than going into terminal emulator and typing out all the same stuff again and again.


Go into the UI select add script and start scripting away :)

Once you have made your scripts you can then add them to your home screen as shortcuts


Here are a few of the scripts I sue regularly:


Clear Dalvik:

cd /data/dalvik-cache/
rm *
reboot


Delete Boot Animation:

cd /system/media
rm bootanimation.zip



Add New Boot Animation:


cp /sdcard/bootanimation/bootanimation.zip /system/media/
reboot



Delete Stock CM Apps:

mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mmcblk0p25 /system 
cd /system/app
rm CarHomeGoogle.apk
rm FileManager.apk


Mute Camera:

mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mmcblk0p25 /system
rm /system/media/audio/ui/camera_click.ogg




Wipe Battery Stats:

cd data/system/
rm batterystats.bin



G1 xda thread
GScript Android Market link


Have fun, 

Android Tablets - Is now the time to buy?

Theres been so much hype in recent months about the next revision of the android operating system (Honeycomb 3.0) and its specific use for tablet devices, I myself have been caught up in the excitement of the Motorola Xoom being rooted and overclocked, but does that mean I should go and get one right away?

I don't think so, but then again most of the people I know on twitter will know why and call me a hypocrite for saying so. Currently there is a dell streak and an iPad in the household the dell streak is mine and the iPad was won by my wife in a competition just before Christmas, the Pad is a really nice piece of kit its just the whole apple thing attached to it [put excellently by Charlie Brooker here: That sinking feeling]

Since the iPad's 'magical' arrival it has been touted a a life changing experience Jason Bradbury from The Gadget Show commented saying that it has revolutionised the way we do things, as opposed to how we did things before??

The real stir has been caused by the Motarola Xoom which is the only real contender up against the iPad but he cost of it is more expensive than the priciest iPad model

I have several twitter friends that are weighing up their options with regard to getting a new piece of [tablet shaped] kit, one of which being the Advent Vega a £250 which comes with quite basic options but is quite nice once rooted with the android market on it.

In my mind this technology is still in its infancy and we will start seeing the really good stuff over the coming months, I will just have to keep myself entertained with my dell streak for the next 12 months or so.

FU Spambots!

Spambots, spambots, spambots

They will track you down and find you, well its not really that bad but recently it has seemed like I am being constantly reminded about the negative aspects of having a life online.

I'm talking about spambots, if you are new to the phrase its basically an automated twitter account that will spew links saying things like 'OMG I have just won an iPad click this link to win your own' which will then probably take you to some pyramid scheme or maybe something more malicious. As a general rule of thumb do not click on links from sources you don't trust and you will be fine, common knowledge for most people that are online a lot, but its not that which annoys me its the fact that every facet of your on line life is bombarded by this stuff continually.

With twitter I have stopped complaining to my followers and just started reporting the accounts for spam, its good because the account is also blocked as well. But services like formspring which i thought was quite a nice little service where you can encourage people to ask you questions, within a week of opening the account I was getting questions like 'I had a crush on you for the longest time; please log onto this service and search for me' blatantly trying to get me to subscribe to some dating service (probably)!!

Most are easy to spot on twitter you will be followed by a user either expecting you to follow back so the can DM you dodgy links or you will get mentions from accounts that do not follow anyone or have any followers but have made thousands of tweets with exactly the same content in them but the only thing changing would be the @ twitter name

Please share you spambot stories with me and any further advice.

Think I have sussed it....

For those of you that follow me on twitter [@spences10] you will know that I have been obsessing [quite possibly needlessly] over the battery life of my HTC Desire Z, when I first got the phone I was quite impressed with the battery life of it but soon after I noticed that I couldn't get through a day without a juice up several times through the day.

I have tried all the usual things recommended like getting juice defender from the market and other things like apn droid again from the market but none of the seemed to make any difference at all I gave juice defender several weeks to give it a good run to no avail.

So I had been using my phone either by disabling the 3g whilst not using the phone but its a bit of a pain having to keep toggling the 3g all the time, I even got tasker but that thing just blows my mind with all the options there are on it so have left that one on the back burner for now.

It wasn't until I cam across this post in the cyanognemod forums which I gave a try this morning and it looks pretty impressive so far.

Take a look at the screenshots for yourself:
Before

After unchecking the first two options here:

Now its just a case of getting faniliar with tasker so that I can disable/enable GPRS/Wireless Networks when app that need to use them are opened. I will post back any details of how to create the tasker profiles when I get it sussed out.

Java and me

Wow, the last few days have been pretty intense learning about java

Well when I say intense the only thing intense is the rate at which we are expected to take in all the information we have just been given and translate that into code.

There were prerequisites for doing the course all of which I had grasp of, I have been a VBA, Excell & Access developer for the past five years or so now so I have an understanding or Object Oriented Programming.

I think my main gripe is that the literature provided doesn't give examples of what needs doing so the time spent in the labs was trying to figure out what you are trying to do without any guidance or solutions so I'm constantly on the back foot trying to catch up.

Apart from that it's been a really interesting few days.

More to that, today I learned all about apache and tomcat - this is some pretty powerful stuff.