Fun thing to do

Fun thing to do: listen to Lycos Radio and when you hear a song you like, search for it using Limewire. I’m having extremely good luck finding most songs I submit. The transfer speeds could be better but I just start the download and come back to it later. This is a great way to build your music library. Be careful of Limewire when you install it. There are several options during the installation you have to read carefully and uncheck (or check) to avoid having spyware loaded on your computer.

But if you DO get infested with spyware, use Ad-aware to remove it. I regularly run Ad-aware and it usually finds something. Am I paranoid? Are people watching me? Is the fluoride in the water a communist plot? You bet.

Another way to grab music is to listen to Windows Media Player radio. The songs are cached to your hard drive for playing and you simply save the file. Then from WMP you can create a playlist and burn a CD or transfer it to your MP3 player - all in one application. It’s very handy and cool. Complain about Microsoft if you want but they DO come up with some good stuff.

I upgraded to the new RealOne player yesterday. It stores and organizes all your music, burns CD’s and play Real video. I like the look of the interface but those damn ads wanting you to upgrade are extremely annoying. The basic player is OK but you have to upgrade to the pay service to have it equal Windows Media Player. Of course it doesn’t support WMA format. I prefer this format because it compresses songs (with no loss of quality) even more than MP3. This is good when I want to cram as many songs as possible to my Rio 800 player. RealOne is number two.

I finally got around to installing my WinTV card into my new computer. Windows XP has a functionality that allows for a better picture from the card. Next I may get into Snapstream like my fiend Dave.