Clete’s Blog

Andrew, who is a friend of mine, found out that the iPod Touch / iPhone can display lyrics as you are playing songs. I had no clue that this was possible. Andrew spent hours upon hours looking for songs on Google and copying and pasting lyrics into iTunes. He didn’t even manage to get through a quarter of the songs on his library.

So I began to look and ask around on the internet and on the Mac Rumors forums (link to specific thread). I found a few applications, such as Evil Lyrics (Windows), GimmieSomeTune (Mac), and PearLyrics (Google for download; was removed from author’s page due to legal concerns) (Mac). However, none of these met my needs. There was still the issue of manually copying / pasting. With over a thousand songs (and I have a “small” amount, at 1,144 songs), the task of importing lyrics is still incredibly long and tedious.

Then I found iTunes Lyrics. It can automatically (or manually) import lyrics for songs that are selected in iTunes. It is fast and it is generally accurate. It pulls lyrics off of LyricWiki. It’s a simple application written in C# (hence it’s Windows only). The great part about it is that it’s on Google Code and it’s released under GPL Version 2. This means that anyone can go on Google Code, use subversion (a CVS-like repository), and receive all of the code for it. Code can be re-released by anyone, with a few stipulations (rights clearly noted, etc.).

I found a problem with iTunes Lyrics. When it couldn’t find a song, it would set the lyrics in the song to “Not found.” When it was an instrumental song, the lyrics would read “Insturmental only; no voice” or something of that nature. I don’t want anything to pop up on my iPhone when songs are played that don’t have lyrics. So I decided to use Subversion through Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to grab the C# source for iTunes Lyrics.

I then read the code through and decided that I would add a simple clause to remedy this problem:

if (result.lyrics.Length <= 60)
{
result.lyrics = “”;
}

Basically, for those who have no experience in computers, this line says “If the length of the lyrics that were received from LyricWiki is less than 60 characters long, then it must be either “Not found” or some other message stating that there are no lyrics. So we will set the lyrics to be blank.” Setting the lyrics to be blank will stop the iPod Touch / iPhone from displaying lyrics for songs that do not have lyrics.

I then compiled and packaged it. Here is the link to the files. Just run “iTuneslyrics.exe.” I give full credit in the README.txt file to the author. I provide no warranty. If anyone tries it, please post a comment here telling me if it works or not. It might need the installer so that it can install the plugin into iTunes.

All I did after I modified the program was press Ctrl+A in my iTunes library to select all of my songs, then I checked the two boxes in iTunes Lyrics and I clicked the button. Now I have lyrics for all of my songs in a matter of minutes.

Currently, I am preparing to take my last midterm tomorrow morning. I will be staying at school over Fall Break, which lasts until Tuesday night.

This semester has been going well for me. I started out with 18 credits but I dropped a class because the professor was incompetent and also because I was too busy getting started. Since then, things have been moving steadilu

Being an RA is generally a lot of fun. I enjoy the interaction that I get with other people and I enjoy being in a leadership position. The guys on my floor are awesome and things are going well with them.

Fall is definitely in full swing here and it’s starting to get pretty cold. The temperature is still fluctuating a bit, but it’s progressively moving closer to winter. The colors on the trees are nearing or at their peak.

By the way, I posted this using my iPhone. Wordpress has an iPhone application. I will close with a picture out of my window and a picture of a tree on campus. These photographs were taken by and uploaded by my iPhone.

Until next time,
Clete R. Blackwell II

Wireshark is a free open source packet sniffing utility. In extremely simple terms, packet sniffing is the act of looking at network packets that your computer can see. If you are using WiFi to connect to the internet, this can easily include packets that weren’t meant to be yours (e.g. you see other users’ data). Usually, the way that your ethernet connection is wired prevents you from seeing other users’ packets.

I started sniffing around for fun today and I made some disturbing discoveries that shouldn’t have surprised me.  First, I noticed that my POP3 (Post Office Protocol; POP3 is the predominant email protocol) accounts are not authenticating securely. I was able to easily pull my username and password out of the network packets, as well as any email information that was sent or received. A few quick settings changes and I’m now sending and receiving email securely.

I also found out that the AIM protocol is not encrypted either. You can clearly see the message below that I sent to my friend. (Click to see the whole window)

If I get on a WiFi network, I should be able to see other people’s messages. I’m interested to see how many people out there are using no encryption or weak encryption (base64).

A simple Google search turns up hundreds of iPhone 3G reviews. The reviews will start with unboxing and go into the setup and running of the iPhone and they will exhaustively describe every single feature. I won’t go into the realm of applications, either. There are quite a few out there (as well as a nice list). This review will be different. I will point out the built-in features of iPhone that I believe to be most useful. If you have read detailed iPhone reviews before or if you have or have used an iPhone before, none of this may seem like news to you. Click each photo to see it enlarged.

Let me begin by introducing the home screen. By pressing the button on the front of the iPhone (the Home button), the iPhone will automatically return to the home screen; no matter what you are doing.

There are multiple pages to the home screen. See the white dot near the bottom and the grayed out one? That means that I’m on the first page of two. The four buttons below that are always on the page, no matter which page you are on, but you aren’t limited to keeping Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod on there. If you never use Safari, you can touch and hold on it and then drag another application to the bar (Maps, for example).

Now the Maps application is always on the bottom of the home screen.

Next, I’ll show the features about Safari that make it stand apart from all other mobile phone internet applications. Safari is able to show an entire page at once, whereas many mobile phone internet applications show a 100%-zoomed version of the internet. Other internet applications make you feel like you’re navigating a maze. With Safari, all of this has changed. Safari renders the whole page as you would see it on your PC. Here is my blog:

Now, I can use the multitouch screen to zoom in and see the details of the page. It so happens that my blog is easily displayed in portrait mode, but some other sites are not. Icanhascheezburger.com is one of these. To view the webpage in landscape mode (for those wider webpages), I simply rotate the iPhone and hold it sideways. The page automatically rotates.

This is definitely one of my favorite features of the iPhone. As always, you can zoom in and out as far as you wish. Once again, you can rotate the phone back to the ‘normal’ (portrtait) position to see more of the vertical page.

Safari also suppots tabs. In the picture above, I have 2 tabs open. Safari even supports the latest versions of Microsoft’s PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and Word documents. The same zoom concepts and tilt concepts apply to all of these formats. Here is a landscape Excel spreadsheet (namely, an overview of my schedule):

And here is a zoomed in segment of my schedule:

Also note that the iPhone works with everyone. A right-handed person is likely to tilt the iPhone a different way than a left-handed person does. The iPhone will turn itself around to orient to any way that you hold it (except upside-down, but who holds a phone upside-down anyways?).

Another one of my favorite features of the iPhone is the built-in Mail application. It supports Microsoft Exchange servers, mobileMe mail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL mail, or any IMAP or POP3 account. Personally, I have two accounts that I check routinely. I have my iPhone set up to automatically check for mail every 30 minutes, so that I always have my email with me wherever I go. Eventually, push email will be implemented for certain accounts, so the iPhone receives mail the instant that it arrives. Here is the home screen of one of my email accounts:

Not a whole lot to see here except the folders that I have. When I click on Inbox, I get previews of messages (the preview size is adjustable) and I can easily reply to, forward, or delete messages. The Mail application also works with the landscape mode of the phone, enabling you to view emails in a horizontal mode. If you receive a picture in your E-mail, you can tap and hold on the picture and it will ask you if you wish to save the picture. You can also view certain types of attachments (including the ones listed above). The Mail application is probably my most used application.

Now that I have gone over the larger applications, I would like to finish up this post with two more smaller applications: Weather and Stocks. The weather application is great because it shows a full 7-day forecast on one page. Most phones, if they have a weather application, only show 3 or 5 days at a time. The Weather application can also store and update weather for multiple cities.

The Stocks application shows the various exchanges as well as any companies that you pick. It has a variety of options to customize and it can also show historical graphs.

With all of these features, the iPhone is certainly the best phone on the market. Even with Android-based phones coming out, Apple’s iPhone still outruns them by miles. I am thoroughly enjoying the iPhone and I hope to post in the future about the great applications that you can purchase or download for free through the App store.

Oh, and I lied at the beginning of this post. I must mention that Scrabble is one of the best games for the iPhone.

Oh and I almost forgot: Pressing the Sleep button and the Home button simultaneously makes the screen flash white and a little camera sound emit from the speaker (it takes a screenshot).

I may have almost forgotten the screenshot feature, but I really did forget one of the best iPhone 3G features: GPS. A little dot moves around on the screen as I move. It also has the ability to give directions based on my current location. This saves me from having to look around frantically for a street sign before I pass the turn.

Until next time,

Clete R. Blackwell II

I have upgraded to the latest version of WordPress for added security. The website was hacked (again) and I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong. As a consequence, I have lost all of the pictures that have been uploaded recently, making my website rather bland (who could live in a world without pictures?).

However, I will make up for it by including extra pictures in my next post.