Spotify global hotkeys - AutoHotkey script

My script is based on one I found here.

Hotkeys:

Previous track	Win+1
Play/pause	Win+2
Next track	Win+3
Volume down	Win+Q
Volume up	Win+W

Script:

#1::
; Previous track
ControlSend, ahk_parent, ^{Left}, ahk_class SpotifyMainWindow
return

#2::
; Play/pause
ControlSend, ahk_parent, {Space}, ahk_class SpotifyMainWindow
return

#3::
; Next track
ControlSend, ahk_parent, ^{Right}, ahk_class SpotifyMainWindow
return

#q::
; Volume down
ControlSend, ahk_parent, ^{Down}, ahk_class SpotifyMainWindow
return

#w::
; Volume up
ControlSend, ahk_parent, ^{Up}, ahk_class SpotifyMainWindow
return

How does it work:

It's very simple - I just mapped my favourite audio player hotkeys to default Spotify keyboard shortcuts, e.g. #1 means Win+1 in AutoHotkey syntax and pressing this hotkey sends ^{Left} (i.e. Crtl+Left) to main window of Spotify application.

Last.fm event shoutbox feed - my first Greasemonkey script

I've just uploaded my first Greasemonkey script to userscripts.org. It is called Last.fm event shoutbox feed and can be downloaded from here.

It allows to follow the conversations in Last.fm event shoutboxes easily by subscribing to feeds created for them ('out of the box' Last.fm does not provide feeds for shoutboxes, my script uses hAtom to Atom/RSS transcoder).

Below you can see how it works.



UPDATE:

The script does not work with the new Last.fm, because the microformats were dropped during the re-design.

Eddie Vedder speaks Polish during a concert in Poland

I just found a video and a scan of the piece of paper with Eddie's speech.





But even with such help it still isn't easy to fully understand what he says. :)

And to have it all in one place, here's the setlist of the show they gave on 2007.06.13 in Chorzów, Poland.

Album Cover Art Downloader does not start

Today I've run into my first problem caused by upgrading Ubuntu to version 7.04 - Album Cover Art Downloader (version 1.6.0) stopped working.

If you try to run Album Cover Art Downloader (by typing albumart-qt in the console) and get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/albumart-qt", line 145, in 
sys.exit(runGui())
File "/usr/bin/albumart-qt", line 77, in runGui
import albumart_dialog
File "/usr/lib/albumart/albumart_dialog.py", line 32, in 
from pixmap import getPixmapForPath
File "/usr/lib/albumart/pixmap.py", line 4, in 
import albumart_images
File "/usr/lib/albumart/albumart_images.py", line 6
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xa0' in file 
/usr/lib/albumart/albumart_images.py on line 6, but no encoding declared; 
see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

open the /usr/lib/albumart/albumart_images.py and in the first or second line in the file add:

# coding: latin-1

Installing Ubuntu on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook (part 2 - headphones)

If you hear no sound after connecting headphones or external speakers to the headphones jack, try installing alsa-driver-1.0.14rc1, alsa-lib-1.0.14rc1 and alsa-utils-1.0.14rc1 packages and remove the options snd-hda-intel model=uniwill-m31 line from the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file (if you added it before).

Thanks for the advice, mario_7!

Installing Ubuntu on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook

There were three problems that me and my girlfriend encountered while installing Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook.

1. Starting the installation
   There was no problem to boot the laptop from the Ubuntu CD, it showed the available option, but after choosing any of them it... froze after a few seconds.
   We tried 3 or 4 different version of Ubuntu and Mandriva. Every time it hung as soon as Using hpet for high-res timesource message showed. (It is worth noticing that Ubuntu 6.10 does not show such information to the user by default, while its older version do.)
   We found the solution here - adding hpet=disable to the kernel parameters worked like a charm.
2. Connecting to the wireless network
   Ubuntu correctly detected the wireless card. We entered all necessary configuration parameters (SSID, key, etc.), activated the card and... it couldn't connect to the network no matter how many time we re-checked its configuration and restarted it.
   Finally, we found this post. It's really great! We followed the instructions and the WiFi network was up and running in no time.
3. Enabling sound
   That was the hardest part. Everything looked fine - Ubuntu detected the sound card, Amarok looked like it was playing a song, but... there was no sound. We tried to play files in different formats, we checked the headphones, we found countless posts telling to uncheck some External Amplifier option in KMix, but we found no such option.
   Late at night after a lot of googling I (my girlfriend went to sleep earlier) found this post. Another great post! I recompiled alsa-driver, alsa-lib and alsa-utils packages and the sound problem was gone.
4. Headphones
5. WPA

eMusic & Linux (continued)

This is a follow-up to my previous post about eMusic.

If you don't like console applications (gasp!), you can consider using eMusic/J.

eMusic & Linux

If you use Linux and you want to download music from eMusic, visit http://frumppyoldwoman.com/emusicdlm/ and get decrypt-emp.pl script - you will be able to download entire albums with a single click (using EMP files), but without eMusic Download Manager (there is a Linux version of this application, but its development has been discontinued).

This is my .decryptemprc file, if you're not sure how to create one:

FileMask=%artist/%album/%tracknum %track.mp3
MP3Dir=/home/user_name/emusic/
CleanNames

Normalizing tracks when burning Audio CD's with K3b

K3b currently does not support normalizing when writing on the fly, so, if you installed normalize-audio application, and 'Normalize volume levels' option is still inactive, make sure that 'On the fly' option is unchecked.

How to install lame on Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

If you want to install lame encoder using Synaptic or apt-get, you should add the following two lines to /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse

A basic museekd init.d script for Ubuntu

You should change the values of MUSEEKD_USER and MUSEEKD_CONFIG variables so they fit your system.

#! /bin/sh

# Written by chopeen
#
# Based on SeeSchloss' museek & mulog init.d scripts for Gentoo 
# <http://seeschloss.org/museek/>

MUSEEKD_USER=foobar
MUSEEKD_CONFIG=/home/foobar/.museekd/config.xml
MUSEEKD_PATH=/usr/local/bin

case "$1" in
start)
echo "Starting museekd as user $MUSEEKD_USER"
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec $MUSEEKD_PATH/museekd \
  --chuid $MUSEEKD_USER --background --pidfile /var/run/museekd.pid \
  --make-pidfile -- -c $MUSEEKD_CONFIG
;;
stop)
echo "Stopping museekd"
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/museekd.pid
;;
esac

exit 0

I made amaroK show ID3v2 tags! Finally

I have been using amaroK during the last few months and I think it is an excellent MP3 player (on the other hand, I like foobar2000, too). However, throughout all this time I have struggled with one problem - amaroK kept trimming long song titles, band names, etc (for example, instead of Anyone Can Play Radiohead: A Tribute To Radiohead it showed only Anyone Can Play Radiohead: A T).

Today I have found this and the problem is gone. I've pasted an appropriate piece of amaroK's FAQ below:

amaroK is not using the tags I know are in my files!

If Konqueror or other apps are displaying different Title, Artist, Album or Genre information than amaroK is picking up when it creates your collection, it may be reading the older ID3v1 format tags rather than the newer ID3v2 tags. This can be due to your Encodings setting:

• Go to Settings, Configure amaroK, and then find the Encodings section of the Settings panel. Unclick all checkboxes to "Do not decode the following as latin1".
• Rescan your collection to pick up the ID3v2 tags.