So far the news regarding the MixMeister BPM Analyzer is all good. iTunes allows me to create an MP3 version of anything in my library, and I can choose a whole bunch of tunes and do them all at once. The bad thing is that it keeps both versions, but until I run low on disk space that’s not really that bad.
Since I had populated the BPM field on a goodly portion of tunes, I just sorted my library by BPM and selected the ones that were blank. The process takes about as long as it does to import something from a CD, so you start it up and walk away.
Side note – I could not have done this before I found a workaround for the overheating problem (see previous topic Hot Computer); things would just get slower and slower until I would give up and stop the process.
The other piece of good news is that the BPM Analyzer does not recalculate if the field is already populated. So, after creating MP3 versions for all the tunes of interest, I ran the Analyzer and just pointed it at the iTunes Music folder. It lists all the tunes it finds, along with the beats per minute if it exists, then plows through all the others to generate the BPM field. This is another time to start the app and walk away, but it worked like a champ.
When that’s done, you go back to iTunes and do a Get Info for all the tunes with blank BPM (again, you can select the block and do them all at once; very quick). Then it’s a simple matter of sorting and selecting to a playlist.
For me, with a library of about 400 tunes (pause for snickering to subside), I selected a walking/jogging playlist of 160+ about one fifth are jogging tempo and the rest walking. In practice, since I do a .75 mile loop, I get about 1 jogging tune per lap on the average, which is just about right. I’ve done 4 laps, 3 miles, each of the past 2 days with a sustained heart rate over 100 and peaks in the 140s while jogging.
So far, so good. Stay tuned.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Hot Computer
For some time now I’ve been having trouble with my laptop. “Some time” probably means months rather than weeks, but it might even be a year. The primary symptom is that it gets really slooooow. There are so many links in the chain that it’s hard to say if the computer is slow or the internet is slow, but it has gotten to be a real hassle.
I tried running the Malwarebytes virus scan, and I tried doing the defrag analysis, and neither of those came up with anything. Now, I know I have a very messy system. I have no less than 3 pieces of anti-virus software in various stages of operability, and 2 different VPN products, neither of which actually work, as well as the usual complement of apps for printers, cameras, iPods, and the like (some of which I no longer actually have, but the supporting software is still there), so a reasonable person could be led to believe that I needed to just start over. This idea was strengthened by the fact that the computer seems to run fine when you first turn it on, but gets worse as you use it.
Now, you have probably figured it out by now, but for me it took the Red Alert before the light bulb came on over my head. That is, the computer would occasionally just shut down. No warning, no chance to “save your work,” nothing, just typing along or playing Text Twist 2 or whatever, and bang, computer turns off.
So, the other day, I finally put some of these pieces together, and suggested to Patti that I thought the computer was simply overheating. We normally have it just sitting on a wooden desk, and we know from the times we use it as a true “lap top” that it puts out a lot of heat.
Patti’s suggestion was immediate and brilliant (I’m so glad she married me); she handed me a wooden rack from the bottom of a breadbox. It’s made of wooden pieces about one half inch square, so it holds the computer about an inch off the desk surface, providing air flow underneath, and probably better airflow around the back.
The result: so far, so good. It’s only been a couple days, but no spontaneous shutdowns and no noticeable degradation in performance with continued use. Time will tell, but for now I’m taking myself back out of the new computer market.
Stay cool!
I tried running the Malwarebytes virus scan, and I tried doing the defrag analysis, and neither of those came up with anything. Now, I know I have a very messy system. I have no less than 3 pieces of anti-virus software in various stages of operability, and 2 different VPN products, neither of which actually work, as well as the usual complement of apps for printers, cameras, iPods, and the like (some of which I no longer actually have, but the supporting software is still there), so a reasonable person could be led to believe that I needed to just start over. This idea was strengthened by the fact that the computer seems to run fine when you first turn it on, but gets worse as you use it.
Now, you have probably figured it out by now, but for me it took the Red Alert before the light bulb came on over my head. That is, the computer would occasionally just shut down. No warning, no chance to “save your work,” nothing, just typing along or playing Text Twist 2 or whatever, and bang, computer turns off.
So, the other day, I finally put some of these pieces together, and suggested to Patti that I thought the computer was simply overheating. We normally have it just sitting on a wooden desk, and we know from the times we use it as a true “lap top” that it puts out a lot of heat.
Patti’s suggestion was immediate and brilliant (I’m so glad she married me); she handed me a wooden rack from the bottom of a breadbox. It’s made of wooden pieces about one half inch square, so it holds the computer about an inch off the desk surface, providing air flow underneath, and probably better airflow around the back.
The result: so far, so good. It’s only been a couple days, but no spontaneous shutdowns and no noticeable degradation in performance with continued use. Time will tell, but for now I’m taking myself back out of the new computer market.
Stay cool!
Friday, July 23, 2010
Beats Per Minute
One of my newer electronic gadgets is an iPod Shuffle, and my primary (almost sole) use for it is to set my walking/jogging pace on those occasions I choose to walk or jog. Tunes with a tempo of 120 to 135 or so beats per minute are good walking tunes, while jogging requires something in the 150 to 160 range. I have a play list of about 100 tunes which I have gleaned from my small music library mostly by trial and error, and by using the play count feature in iTunes. But I thought it would be really cool if I could just sort my library by tempo and cut out the trial and error.
In fact, iTunes has a BPM field, but I noticed my only album which had it populated was The Beatles 1. You can add this information to any entry in the library, but I was not anxious to sit and count beats while looking at the second hand on my watch for however long it takes to go through all the tunes of interest.
A search for “itunes bpm” yielded a pointer to an article which in turn led to a free download called MixMeister BPM Analyzer, so I installed it (by the way, Chuck was appalled that I just casually downloaded a program without checking the site that supposedly knows which other sites are safe, and I’m not disagreeing with him, but I did it anyway). This app is pretty cool, in my opinion. You just point it to a folder containing your music files, including subfolders, and it analyzes each tune and reports the tempo in bpm. It will even update the iTunes bpm field for you.
The problem I had was that when I pointed it to my iTunes music (once I figured out where it was) it couldn’t find anything. It turns out that the app recognizes certain file types, including MP3 and WAV, but not whatever the iTunes preferred format is, so I was pretty bummed out at this point.
Chuck to the rescue! He told me I could set a preference in iTunes so it would maintain my library as MP3’s. After changing that setting, I imported several more CD’s, ran the BPM Analyzer, and created a playlist for everything from 120 to 160. Final verdict isn’t in yet, but preliminary indications point to a success!
I still have the issue of what to do about all the stuff I already have in iTunes. I haven’t really looked to see if I can convert them to MP3’s, thought that is an obvious thing to check. Deleting and reimporting them is another option, but I probably won’t do that, just because. I also don’t know if there is a storage size penalty by using MP3 instead of the other format. Watch this space; I may actually attempt to answer some of these questions.
In fact, iTunes has a BPM field, but I noticed my only album which had it populated was The Beatles 1. You can add this information to any entry in the library, but I was not anxious to sit and count beats while looking at the second hand on my watch for however long it takes to go through all the tunes of interest.
A search for “itunes bpm” yielded a pointer to an article which in turn led to a free download called MixMeister BPM Analyzer, so I installed it (by the way, Chuck was appalled that I just casually downloaded a program without checking the site that supposedly knows which other sites are safe, and I’m not disagreeing with him, but I did it anyway). This app is pretty cool, in my opinion. You just point it to a folder containing your music files, including subfolders, and it analyzes each tune and reports the tempo in bpm. It will even update the iTunes bpm field for you.
The problem I had was that when I pointed it to my iTunes music (once I figured out where it was) it couldn’t find anything. It turns out that the app recognizes certain file types, including MP3 and WAV, but not whatever the iTunes preferred format is, so I was pretty bummed out at this point.
Chuck to the rescue! He told me I could set a preference in iTunes so it would maintain my library as MP3’s. After changing that setting, I imported several more CD’s, ran the BPM Analyzer, and created a playlist for everything from 120 to 160. Final verdict isn’t in yet, but preliminary indications point to a success!
I still have the issue of what to do about all the stuff I already have in iTunes. I haven’t really looked to see if I can convert them to MP3’s, thought that is an obvious thing to check. Deleting and reimporting them is another option, but I probably won’t do that, just because. I also don’t know if there is a storage size penalty by using MP3 instead of the other format. Watch this space; I may actually attempt to answer some of these questions.
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