In this post, I’ll share with you guys my routine of uncovering new songs that are dominating our speakers nowadays. Also, I’ll show you how I maintain my music collection.

Step 1: Discovering new songs

1. Billboard Top 100

2. The Top Charts from iTunes Store

Unfortunately, the music that gets blasted on speakers nowadays are seldom to my liking. So I often have to find other means of discovering music.

3. Last.fm

Last.fm is a paid service that costs $3.00 USD (aprrox $3.80 SGD) a month. In return, you get rewarded with gobs of new music. In short, Last.fm offers an excellent database of music and the ability to network with other users. What it essentially does is that it recommends you songs based on the kind of music you like to listen to with its customized radio. The customized radio makes smart choices based on other users’ input. For example, searching for Piano Rock music yields me many songs that are tagged Piano Rock by the community. Pretty cool, huh? And if you’re using a mobile that utilizes Android or iOS, you can download the Last.fm app for your mobile devices. That way, you can use Last.fm’s services anywhere you are ;)

4. Shazam

Finally, an app that can regonize the song that is playing in the background! I’ve been waiting for such an app since I was a teenager! Shazam can identify the name, album, and artist of a song just by hearing it over your iPhone’s microphone. You’ll have to hold the iPhone mic close to the speaker for a few seconds as a song plays – on the radio, in a coffeeshop, or at a party. More often than not, Shazam will accurately report back with the song’s name, and (if available) and other useful details. In case you’re wondering, it does work for songs other than English and soundtracks as well… although sometimes it can fail terribly.

Step 2: Downloading the songs

There are almost countless different ways you can go about stealing songs. But I’ll still show you my method of downloading music anyway. In all humbleness, I believe that my method is the most efficient and the most reliable way of downloading particular tracks. Therefore, after reading through this, you should just forget your old method and follow my method XD

Floating in the vast waters is a talented software named after its creator. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you SciLor’s Grooveshark Downloader.

Don’t be deceived by its simple design. This nifty software can fetch you nearly all mainstream music you ever come across, all nicely tagged and transcoded into high quality MP3s. Unfortunately, this is unique only to Windows. Sorry Mac users :(

Now the reason why I said this method of downloading particular tracks is the best is because of its source of music, Grooveshark. In case you’re wondering, Grooveshark is a popular online music search engine and music streaming service. Think of it as Youtube, without the videos and high quality music. Coincidentally, the music player featured on He’s Blog is fueled by Grooveshark too. But wait, I haven’t said why it’s the best yet. You see, because Grooveshark has a strict uploading policy like ensuring that the songs uploaded by users have to be of at least 128kbit/s and properly tagged. So you can be rest assured that the songs you download from Grooveshark are the real deal, unlike some trash you get from using your own method. C’mon, you jolly well know what I’m talking about. Afterall, Grooveshark’s primary goal is to provide you with free, high quality music streaming. Without a doubt, Grooveshark has fulfilled their goal. So now do you concur that my method is the best? ;)

Step 3: Managing your library

Warning: This step can be a serious pain in the ass.

Here’s how my iTunes look like:

Click to enlarge picture.

Personally, I sort my music according to their Date Added. All my music are properly tagged, of high quality and contain their album art and lyrics. Not sure about you guys but I find this step extremely important, especially when you own an iPod because without proper tagging, your iPod will look really messed up. When that happens, my OCD acts up and it makes me wanna pull all my hair out and /wrist. But obviously, it’s a huge pain in the ass to do this manually. Trust me, I tried doing manually tagging for about 1 year before finally giving up. It consumes way too much time. That’s when I told myself that there’s got to be a software that does this kind of tedious task. And I was right. After much googling, I stumbled upon Pollux - software that automatically tags the song name, artist, album, album art, genre, year, and lyrics for you.

Regrettably, it’s not free. It costs $10 USD per year, but it will be worth the buck especially when you have a huge library of music to be tagged.

However, I do have to comment that it’s not foulproof. Here are some of its flaws:

1. Wrong tagging. Sometimes, it tags some songs as being live or part of a “Greatest Hits” album. (about 10% of the time)
2. Lyrics are left out at times (about 40% of the time)
3. No album art at times (about 20% of the time)
4. Does not tag at all (about 10% of the time

In summary, there are still certain tracks that you have to tag yourself. But considering that I had 1k plus songs to tag, it’s pretty worth the money. But I won’t be continuing my subscription after this year since I find manually tagging more reliable in tagging the newest additions as compared to using a simi-buggy program.

So there you have it! Now go pimp your music collection. ;)

Signs off,
He

Sure, if you’re feeling generous, you can click on the “Buy Gold Member” button to purchase a gold membership (about 4 USD for 1 month) that rewards you the privileges to enter full overpopulated rooms, gold plated alias, double EXP, etc… Well, I’m not here to advertise that plan so if you’re really interested in that price plan, then don’t bother to look any further.

So, you’ve decided not to spend money on Garena huh? But you’re pulling your hair out when you and your friends try to enter popular rooms, especially the Ladder rooms. Spamming your way is one way to enter but that takes time for you and your friends to enter. So even when you managed to squeeze into the room, yoour poor friends are still trying to enter the rooms. Some of them might give up and go do something else. And you’re tired of right clicking on their names and then inviting them again and again.

That’s okay because I’ll teach you a way for you and your friends to enter full rooms. This trick involves at least 2 people and here’s how it can be done:

1. One of you have to enter a full room first. So you got to do this the tedious way. Spamming your way in.

2. For the first person who manages to enter. Look over to your Contacts List, double click on your buddy who hasn’t entered the room to bring up the chat window. Wtf? Yeah be patience, you’ll know why.

3. With the chat window open, close the main window of Garena. You MUST do this in order for the trick to work.

4. Now with only the chat window open. Click on the “Invite to Game” button.

5. A dialogue box will appear telling you that you have invited your friend. Hit Enter on your keyboard and click on the “Invite to Game” button again.

6. Rinse and repeat. Isn’t this so much easier than the right clicking on their protraits and then inviting technique? And now all your friend has to do is the keep his cursor at the same position and click accept.

Spread it around. Cheers ;)

Sign off,
He

Looks gorgeous doesn’t it? Here’s a little info about the mouse:

The Razer Naga is supposed to be the next level in gaming mice aim at MMO players, more specifically people who play World or Warcraft . It is then no wonder that the mouse will be designed to give MMO gamers a competitive edge. The biggest feature of this mouse? You guessed it. It is the whopping dozen of buttons on the left-hand side of the mouse.

Features of the mouse:

5600dpi Razor Precision 3.5G Laser Sensor

1000Hz Ultrapolling™ / 1ms response time

200 inches per second max tracking speed

Zero-acoustic Ultraslick™ Teflon feet

17 MMO-optimized buttons (including 12 button thumb grid)

Optional MMO-specific software AddOns

Unlimited character profiles with AddOns

Approximate size:  116L x 69W x 41.6H (in mm)

The damage: 159 SG Dollars.

Good news for my fellow Mac users, there is no need to settle for a third party driver anymore because the Razer Naga works with both Windows (tested on Windows Vista) and Mac OS X (tested on Leopard). This is in compliance with the pledge Razer made to support the Mac gamers.

Anyway here’s my thoughts on Razer Naga after using it for about a week. While there is no doubt that the dozen of buttons at the side are an amazaing asset to possess, you’ll really have to get dedicate yourself enough time to the mouse before you can fully exploit the mouse’s main gimmick. Right now, I find myself only using 6 buttons out of the 12 (Buttons 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 & 8). Well maybe that’s because the game, DotA, that I bought this mouse for does not require that many buttons. But still, I find that the 4th row of buttons a little tedious to reach. It is still reachable but your thumb movements will not be as smooth as compared to the first three buttons.

Razer Copperhead and Razer Naga

Also, maybe I was too used to my previous mouse, Razer Copperhead, Razer Naga feels a little small in my hand. Not that it’s too big of an issue because its shape allows my right hand to rest on it comfortably. Other than that, this is a great mouse and was my dream mouse when I was still indulging in the World of Warcraft. Even though I no longer play the World of Warcraft, here is a video that demonstrates how the mouse can be effectively used in other games like DotA. Observe how fast the items were used. Such feat can never be possible without the Razer Naga!

Conclusion: So is it really worth to change your current mouse for this sexy Razer Naga? Well, if you’re a MMO player, then go all out for it. I used to play a level 80 Blood Elf Rogue and PvP was my forte. When I was using the Razer Copperhead, I binded Sprint and Vanish to the side buttons. These are my so-called panic skills and I have always wanted to bind more panic skills to the mouse but I was limited with the amount of side buttons Razer Copperhead have. With Razer Naga, I could freely bind more skills like Blind, Arcane Torrent, and Evasion to side buttons and do without the awkward modifer keys like Ctrl+Shift+1 (That’s just dumb).

But my word of advice is that, you’ll really have to spend time getting used to the mouse before you can fully utilize all the side buttons. Razer Naga is undeniably a great mouse in its own right, but how it serves you is totally dependent on your willingness to learn how to effectively use it.

Signed,
He

 Top ten common laptop positions  

Personally, my favorite position is notably the one with the Male sign and indeed, I felt discomfort in areas near my elbows and upper back after lying in that position for some time. Ouch!  Looks like it’s time to change.

Anyway interestingly, the most comfortable and the safest position, according to the study, is position #2 above: lying down with the device slightly elevated on the user’s thigh with bent knees. Does anyone of you happen to use that position?

Sign off,
He

Well, that is because the trackers listed in the torrents are offline or dead, which means there is nothing in that torrent file that tells your client which peers to connect to. As a result, your download/upload tasks come to a dreadful halt. One major reason for the disappearance of these trackers is the downfall of the self-proclaimed “World largest Bittorrent Tracker”, The Pirate Bay. To many, The Priate Bay is just a torrent indexing site where people can search for torrents and download them. But the truth is, it is actually way more than that. In fact, The Priate Bay is actually responsible for more than half of all Bittorrent traffic (hence the title “World largest Bittorrent Tracker”) even for torrents that you download from other torrent indexing sites like Mininova or isoHunt.

As a result, most of our torrent files, especially the old ones, are left to rot without a new tracker. I have spent a couple of days researching on this and I came up with a wonderful solution that works with torrents with the now-defunct The Pirate Bay tracker. So fret not! Today, I’ll teach you how to remedy this and get your torrent files alive and kicking again!

1. Go to Torrent Editor

2. Under the Torrent heading, you can choose to upload the torrent file either by inputing the torrent link or uploading the torrent file. Either way it works.

Click on the Edit It button when you’re done.

3. You’ll be presented this page.

See all the dead trackers with the red background? Go ahead and delete them away until you have none left. Then go ahead and paste this tracker URL in the text box and please don’t forget to press the green plus sign to add it.

http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

4. Next, click on download to download the new version of the torrent file. Or if you want, you can also choose to click on update to see whether the new tracker is working or not but it’ll take sometime before the stats to show up.

5. So there you have it, double click on your torrent file and start downloading like before!

If you have any questions or information to share, feel free to drop a comment!

Happy sharing!

Sign off,
He