╙ The Internet Mojo Database ╖

I need a good media player for Linux. But there's so many, and so many of them are so poor...

If I use a media player, it's important that it complies with the following:

• Last.fm support, at minimum it must be able to scrobble tracks I play so they come up on my profile.
• Fast, informative library. I really like the library in Windows Media Player, and I want something at least similar to that.
• No limits to the files it can play - I want a media player that will play music in whatever format (within reason) I've got. So Gstreamer preferably.
• Decent looking; if it looks like MS Calculator I don't want to use it. So skin support, with good skins available would be good.
• It should have some sort of minimal version like WMP has when you put it in the taskbar.
• Must be ok to use maximized. I dunno about you, but I don't like windows when they aren't fullscreen. It just annoys me.
• Must be quick, I don't like freezes. Nobody does.
• Plugins! I want to be able to add extra features to it.
• Album art, preferably IN the library, like in WMP.
• Visualisations, possibly from libvisual. I just like them.
• Integrated web browsers are dumb, I'd rather it stuck to its intended task.
• Searching the library should be instant and effective.
• Fading between tracks is nice, I want that.
• Must be GTK2.

The list goes on but they're the ones I can think of now.

Contenders are:

• Songbird; Mozilla based, promising. But, seems to think that I want firefox in my media player. Why would I? Unfortunately, the web browser side is dragging it down. The program feels cluttered, clumsy and slow, like a close relation of Netbeans.
• Windows Media Player; oh, not available for Linux!
• Totem/VLC; where's the bloody library?
• Amarok; GTK version? Please?
• Rhythmbox; ugly, ugly, ugly. And the interface is confusing. I don't want three panes.
• Beep Media Player; shiny, I like, BUT. It's unreliable, and comes with support for stuff I don't want. Jamendo and all that should be plugins.

Suggestions, please.

As I often say, the majority of the people on this earth are utterly, and undeniably, dumb.

I'm sick of seeing news reports detailing the results of yet another survey, that reveals to the shocked masses that they are indeed retarded.

I know they are. Why are you telling me?

Grammatical errors are something that makes me quite angry. Now, I know that my grammar is hardly perfect. I make constant mistakes, I know that - my spelling is poor too, but at least I'm not too far off the mark. In terms of the world at large however, well, if perfection was the centre of a dartboard, there wouldn't be much left of the wall around it.

Apostrophes are seen as treats, you know, like ice cream or rented movies. People put one in now and then to add a bit of variety to their lives. It doesn't matter where, seemingly, as long as there is an 'S' somewhere nearby. The following may serve as examples of the correct usage.

The man's lack of intelligence was profound.

I looked at the roadsign passively, but could not help but notice its horrifyingly poor version of the English language.

Jesus' hands were kind hands.

 Something that amazed me just now was on Call of Duty 4. Autobalance dumped me on the other team.

When I chose my team, I had my reasons. None of them were that this team was any better or worse than the other. I just happen to like the team I chose. I always choose the same one, I'm used to being on that team. But autobalance moved me. And from then on I was useless, because I kept geting confused as to which bloody side I was on. My reflexes were no good, being trained based on the other team.

Which got me thinking. What is the bloody point in autobalance? For God's sake, one team is ALWAYS going to be better than the other. Swapping a few people around won't help. It just pisses people off. Most of the time you'll have odd numbers on the teams but nobody whose opinion counts should care. When it's a 64 slot server, you can afford uneven teams. Nobody really gives a damn which team wins. You don't get anything out of it, it's not like an RPG where you get something of use to you in the future. OK, so on ranked servers you can level up and unlock better weapons and stuff, but I don't play on a ranked server. All you get on this one is a level that applies only to this specific server, and rewards you with precisely fuck all. So if there's no benefit to being on the winning team, does it fucking matter if one team always wins?

Let's be realistic. The winning team is not comprised soley of a well organised unit of gung-ho action figure types. They just happen to have got a higher score. The other team, contrary to what must be a popular and well established belief system by now, does in fact, not suck.

They get kills. Perhaps not as many, but as I said, who cares?

Team deathmatches are similar to a free-for-all, where everybody is on their own team, racking up kills in competition with everybody else in the game. The difference is that in a Team Deathmatch, you don't die every few seconds, which is what sucks about free-for-alls. Team Deathmatches are necessary for big, 64 player games. I'd say you could only really have 20 people in a free-for-all before it became crap.

So what does this all mean? Answer: In a Team Deathmatch, everybody plays for themselves, their allegiance to their team is purely superficial, and they consider themselves as much in competition with members of their own team as the enemy team. Therefore Autobalance has no value!

Another thing that pisses me off is Spawn Protection. Not a feature of the original game, spawn protection is added with a mod running on the server. It causes players to be invincible for a short time after spawning, to prevent them from falling foul of spawn killing - where a player dies instantly after spawning, without being given a chance to avoid their untimely (but probably deserved) demise.

Unfortunately, that invincibility lasts a little too long - and when you add in the fact that on the kind of crap, five minute maps that have flooded the scene of late, players of both teams spawn randomly across the map, you have a problem. That is, players finding themselves confronted by the enemy, who has just popped into existance in front of them. And when they shoot, nothing happens, the enemy just keeps on living. Oh, and shooting back fearlessly.

Yes, congratulations modders, you have just given every player in the game god mode! And what do you have to do to achieve immortality? Die of course! It all adds up. What you get on the right hand side of the equals sign however is a big steaming, stinking pile of n00b.

Idiots.

Another thing people can't do is tell the difference between a turtle and a tortoise. They may look similar to you idiots, but for God's sake, one has flippers the other has feet. I wonder, where do SEA TURTLES come from? Mebe... mebe from the sea?

And tortoises, they are not turtles. And only one of the two live in the sea. So by some raw and undoubtable logic, I can only assume that tortoises are the kind that live on the land. I don't need to think about it though, I just KNOW they are different, and which is which. It's not a hard thing to remember.

So when I see a nursery for children, that claims to be "Turtles Children's Nursery" I think I have a right to see it backed up by a picture of a fucking turtle. But you know what? I only saw the roadsign for it today, I didn't see its billboard style sign out front with shitty childrens style writing which is, by law, using Comic Sans which looks fuck all like children's writing. I know it will use Comic Sans. And I KNOW they don't have a picture of a turtle, because I just KNOW it's a picture of a fucking tortoise. It has to be. Anybody as fucking stupid as that, would have a tortoise. Straight from microsoft's basic clip art. Because original logos are so fucking hard to make. And there will be just fucking one. On his fucking own. And yet, it's "Turtles" nursery. That's plural, there should be more than one turtle. Or the nursery should be for turtles, or mebe they just mean the nursery is owned by a turtle, and haven't bothered to put the apostrophe in place?

See that? That's me being angry for something I have imagined they have done. But I know I'm right.

Just to make sure, I checked, the only clip art images of turtles are especially shit. The tortoise ones aren't much better but they don't suck quite as much.

I could keep going, I really could.

Christmas is of course approaching. It marches onward like a big... red... commericial juggonaut...

No wait, that whole similie is too appropriate. It ruined itself. Why? Because christmas IS a big, red, commercial juggonaut. It's right there in the Always Coca Cola advert, you know the one, with the lorries and all. And coca cola invented father christmas and he's what caused the end of going to church and the beginning of Jewish people participating whilst avoiding confused looks from Christians. And until I see that commercial on TV, it's not christmas, in my opinion.

Whatever, all this proves is that Coca Cola's advertising strategy has aroused some sort of deep assosciation in my subconcious.

What I was actually going to blog about is how for the first time in years I'm actually looking forward to christmas this time. Obviously it's the first time in years. I couldn't say "the first time in days" now could I. But anyway, I actually want it to be christmas now - whereas in 2004, 2005 and 2006 I was quite put out that it had to happen. All the gift giving was the first problem.

Personally I don't like mandatory gifts. I think gifts should be made on a random impulse of generosity, but I guess the number of people that applies to is severely limited. Add to that the fact that 90% of the population are mentally incapable of a random impulse of anything more sophisticated than "get food" and "go to sleep now". So we have to have calendar days that are specifically FOR giving gifts. We have conventions to determine what to buy each other, and how to dispose of said gifts.

No, if everybody was like me, we wouldn't give gifts at christmas. We'd just randomly give eachother stuff whenever it felt right to do so, with no regard to the relative value. Then it really would be the thought that counts, because if there was no thought, there'd be no gift. At the moment it's the date that counts.

Which brings me to the problem I had in recent years: no actual desire to buy anything for certain people I was expected to buy for.

That problem needs no further explanation. As I'm sure you'll agree.

Another problem is the being with family bit.

At christmas, people who are related are expected to spend time together. And that's fine but it doesn't need to be all day surely? And then there's the inevitable boredom. I mean, some people have hilarious uncles or grandparents with mansions full of giant TVs and stuff. But not everybody, for them it's tedious. Then someone has the wise idea to break out a board game.

Board games are stupid relics of a simpler (darker) time.

In computer and video games, there's winners and losers still. But crucially, there's often "winners" - plural. Only some of the players are losers. And even then, in computer games, it's the taking part that counts! Which is ironic in that that's a phrase usually assosciated with traditonal games, but it's completely innapropriate for them. In computer games, playing the game is where you get the fun. In board games, you have to roll dice and exchange fake money, which let's face it, isn't as fun as it looks in TV commercials. The fun part is when you win and are able to gloat to the losers. But only one person wins! And the only fun they get is at the expense of the other players.

Anyway, despite the arguments I make against christmas, I think this year it will be better.

*waves hand dismissively* I hope you weren't expecting something of substance from my meagre blog.

Tata! and Merry Christmas! Last year I said humbug repeatedly! (seriously :|.)