Previous month: May 29, 2005 - June 4, 2005
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Clutter and CoverBuddy

I've discovered two nice utilities to enhance one's music experience.

Clutter by Sprote Research is a small OS X application that shows the album cover of the currently playing track. While iTunes does that too, sure, but with Clutter, you can drag'n'drop the cover on your desktop. That way you can emulate piles of cds cluttering your real desktop.

I'm not sure if that's of real use, but something else in Clutter is: there's also a browser mode, where you can browse your album collection. If a cover is missing from the music file, Clutter will find it from Amazon. Then you can just press shift-command-K to attach the cover to the music file so you see it in iTunes, as well. That's pretty useful.

CoverBuddy is more interesting way to utilize covers. It shows your music collection as albums with their cover art, so you can browse through them like they were real cds. That's pretty neat.

However, CoverBuddy is shareware and makes it annoyingly obvious if you haven't registered it, covering every cover with an ugly "please register" message. I'm not sure if I wish to pay that, so probably I'll end up tossing CoverBuddy away. Clutter, however, is free.

23.06.2005 klo 08:32 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Team America and Dead Birds

Yesterday we saw Team America: World Police, a movie by the authors of South Park. A spoof of Thunderbids, the movie made fun of ... what? American world police action, perhaps, but I think Hollywood was the main target.

We didn't quite enjoy it. The authors could've done a much better work (South Park movie was much better), somehow it all was just too stupid and too low-brow. The best thing the movie had to offer were the songs - they were just brilliant and certainly the best part of the movie.

Our second movie was much better. Expectations were nonexistant, but Dead Birds surpassed anything we could've expected. Set in the Civil War era America, it's about a group of bank robbers who hide in a deserted plantations for a night before heading to Mexico. As you might guess, none of them are alive in the morning to continue the voyage.

The mood of the movie is very scary. The stylish French-style country house makes a really impressive setting full of atmosphere. The movie is slow, subtle and creepy until it starts unraveling and revealing its secrets. The chaos and turmoil of the Civil War makes for a really good setting, I'm amazed how most horror film authors focus on modern day while there are plenty of other interesting settings.

What's best, the story made sense. The director Alex Turner links at his web site to Dead Birds Movie Field Guide, which gives the official explanations. They matched our understanding, which was nice. Of course: do not read the guide before watching the movie.

19.06.2005 klo 14:11 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)