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30 Most Recent RSS FeedFastScripts
I recently got an email nudge from developer Daniel Jalkut. He's the developer of the application FastScripts, among other things. He noticed that I provide instructions for setting keyboard shortcuts for iTunes scripts and thought I'd be interested in FastScripts. I admit that I have known about FastScripts for awhile but never got around to trying it out. Well, I finally did. FastScripts goes the Apple Scripts Menu one or three better. It supports keyboard shortcuts for AppleScripts in its menu (both application-specific and global) and has the nice effect of taking place as soon as you set a shortcut value (without having to re-start an application like you would have to do if you set shortcuts in Apple's Keyboard Preferences), and will also allow you to set shortcuts globally. FastScripts is shareware, but FastScripts Lite is free and will let you work with ten scripts. I highly recommend it.
iTunes Give and Take
Chris Breen discovers a Gotchya in iTunes 7.2: "If you burn a playlist of iTunes protected music to a CD in iTunes 7.2 and then rip that CD in the MP3 format (a trick people often use to remove the tracks? copy protection), those MP3 tracks won?t copy to an iPod. Try, and you?ll be told that the tracks are incompatible with the iPod." Those cheeky Apple devils!
Your ID Is Showing
My Good Friend Kirk McElhearn points out that your iTunes Account ID is accessible to any smarty who can open your iTunes Plus files. Derek DeLong extrapolates this phenomenon to suggest that if you P2P your iTunes Plus files Apple may be able to track you. Seems to me another sort of smarty could wipe any account info from the file anyway (along with any other purchase info) if one really wanted to nefariously P2P.
Locate .itc Artwork files
On the iTunes 7.2 info page, I've added a ham-handed script that will get the path to a selected track's .itc artwork file. It uses the persistent id properties of the current library and selected track to create the filename of the .itc file (eg: 855D16966D2635AE-E345A3A7AC7E50AF.itc), and UNIX find command to locate that file within the ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork folder. It then reveals the file in the Finder. Of course, more could be done with it, like converting to PNG or some such, more error checking, and so on. I've just been too busy to do much more with it ;)
iTunes 7.2 AppleScript Changes
I'll be posting any AppleScript changes I find in iTunes 7.2 on this page.
New reveal Command
iTunes 7.2 introduces the reveal AppleScript command. Given a track or playlist reference, it will select that track or playlist. Helpful!
iTunes 7.2 Released
Apple has released iTunes 7.2 which will accomodate DRM-free purchases from the iTunes Store. You may recall that you will be able to purchase tracks with DRM for the same price, or iTunes Plus tracks without DRM and at higher quality for a slightly increased price. Anyway, I'll report on any AppleScript changes as soon as I can.
UPDATED: Block Party! v1.5
I've updated Block Party! to v1.5. This script creates a "Block Party" playlist of random Artists and a specific number of their randomly selected songs arranged in a row ("two-fers", "three-fers", etc). Now works faster by virtue of being a compiled script, plus a few routines have been speeded up. Other changes include the ability to filter out movie and PDF tracks, filter out tracks smaller than a particular time limit, and filter out tracks of specific genres, the latter two of which are hackable in the body of the script.
NEW: Artist - Album - Disc from Selected Track
Artist - Album - Disc from Selected Track creates a new playlist--with the intention of burning its tracks to a CD--based on a single selected track's artist, album, and disc number. The tracks are ordered by album track number. There are other things to consider as well, so be sure to read the docs.
Sides
So I purchased "More Songs About Buildings And Food" by Talking Heads from the iTS today. This is an album we listened to in the dorm as An Actual vinyl LP back in 1978. I was reminded that "Found A Job" (track 6 of 11) has a long fade. This is because it was the last track on Side 1 of the original LP. Back in the day, the least-high person would run to the phonograph and flip the LP over. Then we'd all get ready for the anxious opening of "Artists Only"--and arguably the darker Side of the LP. Oh well. No one would never know now. Why not? How can we figure this out? How can we denote the Sides of an original LP which--no doubt--were mastered based on start/end of LP sides?
