tallphil

iTunes kindly asked me if I wanted to upgrade iTunes to the latest version, version 8 today. I did, and largely, the newer version is very similar – a new ‘grid’ view which is quite nice, and the ability to view the album artwork next to the list view. Thumbs up.

Thumbs down, however, for the removal of two very useful options in the preferences. Firstly, the ability to remove ‘Genre’ in the list view browser (not next to track names etc, but in the top bit, next to Artist and Album). Secondly, there seems to be no way to remove the annoying little arrow next to tracks, trying to get you to buy stuff from the iTunes store.

A bit of googling and fiddling and I found a solution however. To save you the hassle, I thought I’d write a quick how-to for people on windows…

1) Find the iTunes preferences file, for people using Windows XP it’ll be C:Documents and SettingsUSERNAMEApplication DataApple ComputeriTunesiTunesPrefs.xml
If you’re on Vista, it’ll be C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingApple ComputeriTunesiTunesPrefs.xml
2) MAKE A BACKUP, just in case something goes wrong and you need to go back to your old prefs file
3) Open the file in something like Notepad or Wordpad, go to the bottom and add the following text, just before the end (text to add is in bold, text to add it above added for illustration):

    <key>show-genre-when-browsing</key>
    <data>False</data>
    <key>show-store-arrow-links</key>
    <data>False</data>
  </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

4) Save, and open iTunes!

Hope that helps… Drop a comment below if you have problems!

Was chatting to clarky the other evening, and might do a website for his band The Hollow Earth Theory (see their myspace page here). Anyway, I’ve mocked up a flash intro for the site, and would like feedback!
It’s a pretty massive file at the moment, so don’t bother looking unless you’re on broadband… You can see it here.

Some time ago I entered into the national Student and Engineering Student of the Year Awards with my lab project into the Best Biology & Biotechnology Student category (I was invited by the uni to enter, that’s how i got a hint that I might get a first).

Anyway, it being a national competition and everything, I’d pretty much forgotten about it (I put my chances down as slim to nothingt), but the 2008 shortlist came out today, and I’ve been selected as one of three students to attend interview for the final judging!

I have to get myself down to London for Sept. 26th where I attend an interview, then get dressed up (if I’m not already!) to go to a presentation evening to see how I’ve done – I’m terrified already!

I’m back! I’ve been away in the alps for a month, hence the long period of silence. The good news is that I’ve got loads of lovely photos to put up for everyone’s enjoyment. The bad news is that there are so many photos (~2000) that they may take me some time to sort out… :)

Like everyone else using AVG, I’ve been getting little pop-ups for ages now saying that I’m going to have to start paying. I had thought that I’d have to move onto another anti-virus program, but AVG are in fact still providing a free version!
The free AVG 8.0 can be found here, it was quite well hidden – enjoy!

4 years of degree work culminated in a single mark today, and I got a First Class Honours!

Off to Cambridge I go…!

Update: I later found out that I got the top mark in my year of 69 – I won the William Edward Garner Prize of £150 for it!

I’m getting stuck into my new flash photo browser at the moment, and so far I’ve only used a single frame with around 1000 lines of actionscript. In fact, it seems that the more flash projects I do, the further I push the balance from manual animation to pure code.

It’s partly due to an amazingly useful flash extension called Movie Clip Tweening prototypes, which allows the smooth animation of items on the stage. Suddenly, 60 frames of animation with complex manual easing turns into mc.SlideTo(5,10,1);

This move to code is making me think though – it’s probably time that I make the move to actionscript 3. And Flex.

I was reminded of an awesome website today called TokyoPlastic – they’re a production company that do 3D animation and stuff for TV adverts with ridiculous 3DSMax skills.
The website is a few years old but is a brilliant example of flash animation with good sound integration. The movement of the characters is so fluid, I love it! Check out the drum machine and their archive of animations…

Having sat down yesterday and today to write a much needed search function for nano2hybrids, I thought I’d port the code across and adapt it to have a search on this site.

Search boxes are something that any content-based site should have, and they’ve always scared me for some reason. I don’t know why, after sitting down and thinking about it, reading a couple of bits and bobs off google it really wasn’t all that tough. All you need to be able to use is the SQL command LIKE and then some PHP regex work to make it look pretty. Oh, and the SQL LOWER command for case insensitivity, that took me a while.

I added in a bit extra for the tallphil search – it also searches my flickr account. For now clicking a photo will open a window with the flickr page for that photo, but when the photo browser is done, it’ll link to the tallphil.co.uk photo page.

As mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I’ve decided to host all of my photos on Flickr due to storage constraints on my server..

As re-writing my flash photo viewer to work off Flickr is a fairly major task, I’ve put a temporary flickr photo viewer up so you can see my photos without leaving the site. It’s called flAPI and you can see the photos here. Enjoy!