illicit diversions » tips and tricks

you know that thing you wanted? google is here to help you find it

shallowwater — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 02:06:24 +0000

I was bitching with a friend today about how I wished that there was a program that would pull your ‘scrobbles’ (aka playcounts) stored on Last.fm and re-import them back into your iTunes library. I wanted this because I went through a few hard drive issues a few months ago and managed to lose my iTunes database (thankfully, all my music was stored on an external hard drive at the time, so I didn’t lose any of that), and with it, about 4 years of playcounts and other assorted metadata.

Thankfully, I was googling as I bitched, and came across this thread on the Last.fm discussion boards. Not one, but two! people had come up with solutions to this problem. As I don’t have Perl installed on my computer, I went with the second option. It worked exactly as advertised, and pulled the ‘last played’ and playcounts stored on Last.fm, and added them to the iTunes database.

I’m not going to lie, I sort of wish it pulled in some sort of ‘date added’ data too, and the scrobbler was acting a bit wonky after that when I tried to scrobble the most recent plays from my ipod, but all in all, I can’t really complain. If I knew how to code, I could probably add the first one (published source code, fuck yeah!), and the scrobbler is always a bit wonky, so the second problem is really To Be Expected.

Go forth, friends, and rescue your playcounts! Alternately, sign up for a Last.fm account, and back that shit up. Or just back up your iTunes database. Whichever. :p

Disposable Email

shallowwater — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:14:22 +0000

I recently found myself in want of a disposable email address that could accept attachments. My usual goto for this sort of thing is mailinator.com, but they do not allow attachments. TRAGEDIES.

However, a few minutes of googling got me to MyTrashMail, which will allow small attachments at a disposable email address with a short (and still anon) registration. It appears that you get this email address and download attachments for 30 days for free. However, it looks like they want you to give them money at some point.

And, for further geekery, the thing I needed to download was an attachment from ReCellular, a company that buys and sells old cell phones. They also provide instructions for wiping your old cell phone before you get rid of it.

finding the things i want for a price i like!

shallowwater — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:15:39 +0000

Mitchco taught me an amazing secret recently! Using Google Alerts to tell me when craigslist (or other sites) list the toys I want!

Specifically, I’ve been looking for a Roomba of my very own to help keep my apartment clean given my extreme unwillingness to clean on a regular basis.

At google.com/alerts. I entered the search term roomba site:CITY.craigslist.org and it gives me alerts any time someone posts a listing for a roomba in my city! I also did it for DealNews.com.

And lo, Dealnews.com told me about a roomba was being sold by Woot.com, and it was much cheaper than anywhere else, and I bought it! And I didn’t have to spent time checking all over the internet every day to find it!