Blog entries

Music organization theories and workflow

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Noel Madali

I have to make this post to make me sane.  And I have to mention that I am eating Korean food (yummy!).  Okay, so I am sure everybody has their IPods, Zunes, etc etc.  I have a phone, and that is all I need to carry around for music.  Oh, and my flash drive for my car’s USB.  Of course you would say, “My music player can hold more than your phone!” but really, would you listen to all that music on that trip to the grocery store?

My solution? I have it so that my playlist syncs to my phone, in which the playlist caters to my own personal music tastes for that day or days.  I recently just finished reorganizing my music, and it was not easy.

Some things to consider when organzing music:

  • Have each folder be by Album Artist - Album Title
    • If you happen to have Original Soundtracks, I usually do it like so:
      Eg. Various Artists - Movie Title Soundtrack or OST
    • For other things like Singles, EP, and other stuff you may come along, (like Anime Soundtracks), I do it according to Wikipedia’s information on Soundtracks for that Artist
      Eg1. Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! OST
      Eg2. Macross Frontier OP2 ED2 Single - Lion (OP = Opening, ED = Ending)
    • If you have more than one CD per album, merge them all under that album and rename the Album as that Album title
      Eg. Foo Fighters - In Your Honor has two CDs
      All your tracks in that album will have the Album title = In Your Honor, as opposed to In Your Honor CD1, CD2
  • When doing Meta data (ID3 Tags), Always make sure you edit Album Artist, Artist(s), Title, and Album
    Album Artist is important because if you have more than one artist in an album, sometimes in Winamp or other media players, you would see more than one instance of that album in the “Album View” (which to me is very annoying).
    Eg. The Matrix Reloaded has more than one artist, and is a soundtrack.
    Folder: Various Artists - The Matrix Reloaded
    Album: The Matrix Reloaded
    Album Artist: Various Artists
    Artist: (insert artist for each individual track)
    Title: (insert title for each individual track)
  • Use MediaMonkey to edit your collection! I use this program all the time when I organize my music.  I use a few simple keystrokes to get what I need:
    • Open up a folder of music
    • Ctrl + A (Select All)
    • Ctrl + L (Find Music Info on Web)
    • Find respective Album with good Album Art and information
    • Click Auto Tag
    • Ctrl + A again
    • Ctrl + R (Reorganze File Names based on Meta Data)
    • Done!
  • For any other needs, I manually do it by hand.  For example, my Anime Soundtracks, I create Album Art for them on Photoshop on a 500×500 canvas size.

Need anymore tips? Feel free to ask in the comments.


I need a new mouse

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Noel Madali

I have a long night ahead of me, and I would like to procrastinate by saying I need a new damn mouse.  My mouse’s clicking functionality is lacking it its clicking.  It takes me doubly longer to click than it normally would, therefore I have deduced that I need a new damn mouse.

Any who, I have to read 3 chapters from “System’s Analysis and Design with UML Version 2.0,” read about 50 or so pages of Not For Sale by David Batstone, and read chapter 5 for Sociology.  Long night? Yes.  On top of all that, I have a test in IS2060 (System’s Analysis), which I am not quite ready for.  Plus work!

My newest project to tackle is a redesign of clubs.kennesaw.edu, and to give it a more user friendly feel.  I’ll update with a screenshot on what I have going on for it.  Since it’s a second tier .edu website, I don’t have much wiggle room in terms of its design.  But perhaps it might work out well enough.

Oh yeah, I’ll have to post about my Google Calendar solution for WordPress.  But that would be after I get things done.

Until then.. Study!


This makes me cringe..

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Noel Madali

I like hard drives. They can store lots of information such as movies, music, games, files, etc etc. What I don’t like is when they get trashed when they can be reused again!

I do understand the security issues of reusing drives, and yeah, data should correctly be erased. If not people can always give unused hard drives to me :)