My favorite music player for Windows, Winamp, sucks now. AOL has completely ruined it.
What Happened?
Ever since AOL bought Winamp, they've been slowly ruining it. They redesigned the layout to be totally cluttered - they decided where everything should go, and it's all welded in place in 1 big window. I don't want that. I want separate windowlets that I can resize and drag around in the position I want, let them snap in place. The way Winamp used to be.
Winamp is totally bloated now. On my low-memory workstation that I use for day-to-day things like music, news and twitter, Winamp now takes more than 30 seconds to launch. Oh, the window draws in about 5 seconds; but it's completely locked up for god-knows-why, for the remaining 25 or more seconds! It's ridiculous.
I double-clicked the title bar while playing a video, and BAM! It made the window so huge, it was literally 6 inches below the bottom and right sides of the screen! Nobody caught this bug? Double-clicking again did not reverse it: it minimized the screen to just a title-bar at the top of the screen, same width as before (6 inches off right side of screen). This is stupid. It took me 10 minutes to figure out there's no menu choice to fix the damage, I had to re-size from the upper-right corner of the window (after dragging it to the left a long way), to a smaller size, then drag the window back up and onto the screen again.
The behavior of the new features of Winamp don't feel like the old features - which leads me to believe the programming team has been replaced, and new people are working on it now. Code strangers. These newbies probably don't fully understand the code base or the reasons why things were done the way they were done in the past. They don't see the vision; they don't feel the same needs; they aren't working towards the same goals. This is purely conjecture on my part, of course, but having been a software developer since age 13, I know how to read between the lines. I think I'm right about this.
It's Time For Something New
So now I am going to switch music players. I've heard GOM player is a good one, I just installed it a couple days ago. Though it's focus is video, it can play MP3's just fine. I dragged and dropped an "m3u" file into GOM and it loaded all the songs perfectly - that's good. I don't think it can do ripping, though, so I'll have to find another good quick-loading ripper. GOM player is fairly new, it hasn't had time to get bloated and over-feature-laden. Everything it has works right, and it has new features that other players like VLC player don't have (like predictive file loading).
Music is really important to me. Music I like really energizes and uplifts me, I can work harder and longer and have way more fun doing so. Music I don't like really hurts me.
Music As Medicine
Music is a medicine for me - if I'm stressing out about certain things, I have specific music that heals my emotions related to that pain. Difficulty with my aging dad, feeling insecure and small after visiting him? Linkin Park heals that quite well!
When I was single, problems with dating and women would be fixed somewhat by strong, sexy female vocalists - Garbage (Shirley Manson) is my all-time favorite; good trip-hop like Sneakerpimps (the early years with Kelly Ali); Morcheeba; No Doubt; Pink; Madonna.
Good Programming Music?
Programming and music is an interesting topic. There's 2 completely different things that programmers do - designing and coding. For designing, your brain is fervently trying to create a new design: how data shuld be stored, how it should interact, how a screen should look, how to simplify what you already have. This is difficult work. For design work like this, I work best in absolute silence. Leave me alone; no phones, no music, no people; I don't exist, only the problems to be solved exist, and I'm completely focused on that and lose track of time.
Coding is completely different. Coding is the equivalent of "automatic pilot" for me. I know the plan in front of me of what needs to be done, since it's already designed. I just need to implement the design. Make it happen in program code, the way I want it to. It's easy, in a sense, after 20+ years I have it down to a science. I'm only limited by how fast I can type, and I can type extremely fast. For coding, I totally thrive with music. But it has to be energy music - Greenday, Alien Ant Farm, techno (Crystal Method, U2's Pop album, Run Lola Run soundtrack), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sum 41, Assemblage 23, Psykosonik, Hednoize.
Music Has a Powerful Effect
Music has a powerful effect on my emotions, as well as my mind.
Programming does not involve the emotions at all - too much programming is very unbalanced, I've figured that out, because my poor emotions needs a life too. Family, wife/girlfriend, cats, dogs ... these all help a person's emotional self. Going out in nature and seeing beauty helps. Going to a play or opera, one that you connect with and uplifts you, can really help. Getting out and talking to a close friend can really help.
I know that as a human being I have 3 parts: my physical body (it needs exercise and good food and water); my emotions (needs love, connection with other people); and my mind (needs to solve problems and figure things out, think positive thoughts). And that's not including my spirit or soul, which also needs to be fed (helping others, planning my future success in life, love of God or nature, praying or meditating, making a connection with something higher inside of me).
Conclusion
I love how PCs can hold pretty much every song on every album in my music collection. That means my laptop can carry all my "medicine" wherever I go.
I guess everything in life has its beginnings and endings.
Farewell, my old Winamp, I'm going to miss you.
What Happened?
Ever since AOL bought Winamp, they've been slowly ruining it. They redesigned the layout to be totally cluttered - they decided where everything should go, and it's all welded in place in 1 big window. I don't want that. I want separate windowlets that I can resize and drag around in the position I want, let them snap in place. The way Winamp used to be.
Winamp is totally bloated now. On my low-memory workstation that I use for day-to-day things like music, news and twitter, Winamp now takes more than 30 seconds to launch. Oh, the window draws in about 5 seconds; but it's completely locked up for god-knows-why, for the remaining 25 or more seconds! It's ridiculous.
I double-clicked the title bar while playing a video, and BAM! It made the window so huge, it was literally 6 inches below the bottom and right sides of the screen! Nobody caught this bug? Double-clicking again did not reverse it: it minimized the screen to just a title-bar at the top of the screen, same width as before (6 inches off right side of screen). This is stupid. It took me 10 minutes to figure out there's no menu choice to fix the damage, I had to re-size from the upper-right corner of the window (after dragging it to the left a long way), to a smaller size, then drag the window back up and onto the screen again.
The behavior of the new features of Winamp don't feel like the old features - which leads me to believe the programming team has been replaced, and new people are working on it now. Code strangers. These newbies probably don't fully understand the code base or the reasons why things were done the way they were done in the past. They don't see the vision; they don't feel the same needs; they aren't working towards the same goals. This is purely conjecture on my part, of course, but having been a software developer since age 13, I know how to read between the lines. I think I'm right about this.
It's Time For Something New
So now I am going to switch music players. I've heard GOM player is a good one, I just installed it a couple days ago. Though it's focus is video, it can play MP3's just fine. I dragged and dropped an "m3u" file into GOM and it loaded all the songs perfectly - that's good. I don't think it can do ripping, though, so I'll have to find another good quick-loading ripper. GOM player is fairly new, it hasn't had time to get bloated and over-feature-laden. Everything it has works right, and it has new features that other players like VLC player don't have (like predictive file loading).
Music is really important to me. Music I like really energizes and uplifts me, I can work harder and longer and have way more fun doing so. Music I don't like really hurts me.
Music As Medicine
Music is a medicine for me - if I'm stressing out about certain things, I have specific music that heals my emotions related to that pain. Difficulty with my aging dad, feeling insecure and small after visiting him? Linkin Park heals that quite well!
When I was single, problems with dating and women would be fixed somewhat by strong, sexy female vocalists - Garbage (Shirley Manson) is my all-time favorite; good trip-hop like Sneakerpimps (the early years with Kelly Ali); Morcheeba; No Doubt; Pink; Madonna.
Good Programming Music?
Programming and music is an interesting topic. There's 2 completely different things that programmers do - designing and coding. For designing, your brain is fervently trying to create a new design: how data shuld be stored, how it should interact, how a screen should look, how to simplify what you already have. This is difficult work. For design work like this, I work best in absolute silence. Leave me alone; no phones, no music, no people; I don't exist, only the problems to be solved exist, and I'm completely focused on that and lose track of time.
Coding is completely different. Coding is the equivalent of "automatic pilot" for me. I know the plan in front of me of what needs to be done, since it's already designed. I just need to implement the design. Make it happen in program code, the way I want it to. It's easy, in a sense, after 20+ years I have it down to a science. I'm only limited by how fast I can type, and I can type extremely fast. For coding, I totally thrive with music. But it has to be energy music - Greenday, Alien Ant Farm, techno (Crystal Method, U2's Pop album, Run Lola Run soundtrack), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sum 41, Assemblage 23, Psykosonik, Hednoize.
Music Has a Powerful Effect
Music has a powerful effect on my emotions, as well as my mind.
Programming does not involve the emotions at all - too much programming is very unbalanced, I've figured that out, because my poor emotions needs a life too. Family, wife/girlfriend, cats, dogs ... these all help a person's emotional self. Going out in nature and seeing beauty helps. Going to a play or opera, one that you connect with and uplifts you, can really help. Getting out and talking to a close friend can really help.
I know that as a human being I have 3 parts: my physical body (it needs exercise and good food and water); my emotions (needs love, connection with other people); and my mind (needs to solve problems and figure things out, think positive thoughts). And that's not including my spirit or soul, which also needs to be fed (helping others, planning my future success in life, love of God or nature, praying or meditating, making a connection with something higher inside of me).
Conclusion
I love how PCs can hold pretty much every song on every album in my music collection. That means my laptop can carry all my "medicine" wherever I go.
I guess everything in life has its beginnings and endings.
Farewell, my old Winamp, I'm going to miss you.
No comments:
Post a Comment