Where am I? - Latest Comments

Re: Testing AWS EC2 Instances for Co-Residence — Where am I? — Michael Blakeley

reza — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 06:46:24 -0000

thanks for useful document, please go more into details?

is there anyway to detect VM's are resideing in the same physical machine? and/or same rack?

Re: MrCombo v1.1 — Where am I? — Michael Blakeley

mblakele — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:09:19 -0000

Glad you like it. If you have a normal list with one item per line, it may be easiest to simply copy and paste it. The Import from Clipboard option is meant to handle text from the Notes application or other text lists. The JSON option is great for backup and restore, or sharing finished lists with others.

But if you want to generate the JSON yourself, that's a bit more technical. Probably you would want to use a general-purpose programming languages such as Perl, Python, or Ruby - just to name a few of them. Almost every modern programming language seems to support JSON these days. You'd probably want to start by exporting one of the sample combos from the app, so you can see what the JSON looks like. The structure is fairly simple and easy to understand, I think.

Re: MrCombo v1.1 — Where am I? — Michael Blakeley

Jsboxon — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:13:04 -0000

Great App - I have some large lists in existence on my mac that I would like to import. I assume that .json format is the right way to go. Any advice for converting a normal list to .json format so I can import?

Re: XQuery Code Review

Ryan Dew — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:00:42 -0000

I know this is an older post, but it has great ideas. I would like suggest perhaps replacing $list[$start to $start +$size] with subsequence($list,$start,$size) since $start to $end is an expression that would have to run against each item in $list and you don't have to calculate $end with subsequence. subsequence($list,$start,$size) is basically the same as $list[position() ge $start][position() le $size]

Re: Directory Assistance — Where am I? — Michael Blakeley

Evan Lenz — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:20:23 -0000

Excellent article! I hadn't realized the distinction and had assumed that xdmp:directory() (and xdmp:directory-delete(), etc.) required an associated directory properties fragment. It makes perfect sense that it shouldn't and I'm happy it doesn't!

Re: DSH - distributed shell for cluster administration

Michael Blakeley — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:46:26 -0000

This turns out to be less than useful for many tasks. The way DSH calls ssh means that ssh can't allocate a tty, so commands like sudo and vi won't work normally. It's probably possible to hack around this, but I see it as a serious defect in DSH.

Re: XQuery Code Review

Michael Blakeley — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:24:46 -0000

Good comments, thanks. Replacing count() with xdmp:estimate() requires some care, since it won't always return the same results, but it's an opportunity to watch for. The 'as xs:boolean' strong typing can help with situations where $foo or $bar is the empty sequence (with or without function mapping). That's a dark corner of XQuery, and a good place for bugs to lurk.

Re: XQuery Code Review

willmeyes — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 07:51:58 -0000

Another idea is to use xdmp:estimate instead of fn:count where possible?

Re: XQuery Code Review

willmeyes — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 07:50:18 -0000

All very good points.

I note that you suggest:
let $baz := ($foo eq $bar)

I agree with this, however, would using strong typing
(e.g.
let $baz as xs:boolean := ($foo eq $bar)
or:
let $baz as xs:boolean? := ($foo eq $bar)
)
be better?

Re: MacBook Air 2010 (13.3/1.8/4/256)

jose.espinoza — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:49:24 -0000

I agree - Apple keyboards are a real disappointment. Also - their windowing system is inflexible especially when it comes to sizing.

Re: Nels Cline Singers on NPR

Justin Makeig — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:58:39 -0000

Wow. Good call. I hadn’t heard of his work beyond Wilco.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:44:12 -0000

@iamspencer sorry to hear that you ran into this problem. You probably noticed some similar comments above. So far I am unable to reproduce it, but I will email you and try to gather more information.

There is an update in the works, but unless I can reproduce this problem I can't say that it will be fixed.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

speener — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:54:43 -0000

The shuffle by playlist feature doesn't seem to work. It seems to shuffle songs within an album as opposed to selecting albums randomly within a playlist, and then playing the songs in order.

Is there an update coming?

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:24:33 -0000

Gaelle, thanks for that extra information. That gives me a new test to try. Meanwhile, I'm glad to hear that you have a workaround.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

gaelle — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 03:40:56 -0000

Dear Michael - Ok just ignore my last comment, it seems I found the solution. The playlists I used was some I created directly with the itouch. So instead I created smart playlists with criteria on AlbumArtist on Itunes and sync them and now it works perfectly when I play them with AlbumMixer :).
Sorry for all the trouble, and thanks for this great app!

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

gaelle — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 03:18:36 -0000

Dear Michael. Yes I though about that :) The album artists are all set and I tried the "Album Artist” field on or off (in the settings). I also checked that the track numbers and the number of tracks by album are defined as well (just in case it's relevant), but it still shuffles between songs... :( Any idea, because I was quite excited by this app and now I feel like I gave you money for nothing....

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:25:05 -0000

@gaelle - sorry to hear about that. It sounds to me like the AlbumArtist problem. Take a look at http://blakeley.com/wordpre... (and the comments above) for some background on this issue.

For playlist filters, AlbumMixer groups tracks by Album Artist and Album Title. With no filter or with genre filters, AlbumMixer relies on iTunes to group the albums correctly (I believe that iTunes relies on Album Title alone).

Blank values for “Album Artist” seem to be the most common problem. With AlbumMixer 1.6 and later, I have added a setting that allows AlbumMixer to ignore the “Album Artist” field if desired. However, that means albums with the same title will be shuffled together. For compilations I think it’s generally better to set an Album Artist for the whole compilation. I usually set this to something like “various”.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

gaelle — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:29:58 -0000

Dear Michael
It seems I have the same problem as gsteinb. I just purchased you app and while it seems to work fine with no filter, when I use a playlist filter, it shuffles between all song, as the regular ipod player. I have the latest itouch and my usual playlists are between 5 to 10 albums but I have this problem even with playlist consisting of 2 albums.
would really appreciate if you have time to look into it!

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:37:39 -0000

@gsteinb, I'm sorry to hear about that problem. I haven't seen that myself, so I will contact you directly and see if we can resolve it.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

gsteinb — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 06:07:43 -0000

just purchased this app and it doesn't work at all. it shuffles the albums. then says 'starting ipod player' and the little wheel simply spins. Nothing ever happens. Seems like a complete waste of money.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

ryan.b.opel@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:43:50 -0000

Problem solved! Turns out that I simply had a sorting problem in iTunes. For whatever reason, my smart playlists in iTunes were not sorted by album (some were sorted by composer, for example). Once I went into iTunes and sorted all of my playlists by album, everything worked perfectly. Thanks again for creating this tremendous app.

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

ryan.b.opel@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:03:34 -0000

Thanks, Michael. Interestingly, your "various" Album Artist fix works beautifully for normal playlists, but not for smart playlists. I built two playlists in iTunes with the same 3 compilation albums. I set one up as a normal playlist, manually adding the 3 albums into the playlist. I set the other up as a smart playlist using a rule to add all playlists where the album artist is "various." When I go into AlbumMixer and filter by the normal playlist, it runs perfectly. But when I filter by the smart playlist, it behaves as described in my initial comment above (randomly picking tracks from the 3 albums). Any thoughts/fixes?

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:51:51 -0000

Ryan, thanks for the fulsome praise. The problem with compilation albums sounds like the AlbumArtist issue. Take a look at http://blakeley.com/wordpre... for some background on this issue.

Blank values for “Album Artist” seem to be the most common problem. With 1.6 and later, I have added a setting that allows AlbumMixer to ignore the “Album Artist” field if desired. However, that means albums with the same title will be shuffled together. For compilations I think it's generally better to set an Album Artist for the whole compilation. I usually set this to something like "various".

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

ryan.b.opel@gmail.com — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:56:52 -0000

Mike - what a tremendous app. I can't believe that Apple has omitted the album shuffle feature from iPod touches and iPhones. I was about to return my iPod touch because I could not shuffle by album. But you saved me! Thanks so much for doing this.

One quick troubleshooting comment. It seems that I am having problems with filters and compilation albums with various artists. I want compilation albums to play sequentially from the first track to the last, just like albums with a single artist. This works perfectly when I do not apply any filters. However, whenever I filter by a playlist or genre, the app seems to be starting with a random track in the album (usually not the first track) and then only plays a track or two (never the entire album and never in sequence) before moving to the next random album (which the app plays properly from start to finish - unless it too is a compilation).

Have you encountered this before? Do you have a recommended fix or work-around?

Thanks again for creating this wonderful app. I am in your debt!

Re: AlbumMixer 1.6

Michael Blakeley — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:05:05 -0000

Thanks, Ray. I should be able to get the log from Apple. If not, I will email you.