…getting Rainmeter to display the currently playing track from Songbird was a trip!

I just installed Rainmeter, which is great! It doesn’t support Songbird though… So I tried to get it to, but getting Rainmeter to display the currently playing track from Songbird was a trip! You see, Rainmeter only supports Winamp natively. So, I had to do some detective work and some modifying to get it to work. Here is how I did it…

First, I assume most of you have tried to figure this out yourself, or not! Anyway, you should have Rainmeter, Songbird, and the Songbird add-on LiveTweeter installed already. If not, do so. The Songbird add-on LiveTweeter can output a text file with the current track’s info, among other things. Exactly what we need!

Now, you have everything you need. Maybe, you jumped ahead or have already tried to write a Rainmeter .ini to display the text that LiveTweeter puts out. If you have or have not, here is what happens. Rainmeter will read the data from the text file just fine as long as something is playing in Songbird. Rainmeter crashes, though, whenever playback is paused or stopped in Songbird. This is because the LiveTweeter add-on empties the text file whenever playback is paused or stopped. Thus, Rainmeter tries to read an empty text file, which crashes it! So, I figured out how to prevent the file from being empty when playback is paused or stopped. I simply modified LiveTweeter’s output… its easy when you know how to do it! Let me show you how!

What you have to do is:

1. Close Songbird and Rainmeter
2. Open LiveTweeter.js in notepad (Its easiest to just search for the file because of the many different places it could be on different Operating Systems)
3. Search in the text for “var data = “”;” and change to “var data = ” “;” (Notice, I added a space.)
4. Save LiveTweeter.js
5. Write your own .ini or use my Rainmeter .ini file below.
6. Start up Rainmeter and Songbird
7. Try it out! No more crashes when a Songbird stops playing! (It’s that simple people!)

Explanation: By adding the space to the text file , it will always have data inside it. So, Rainmeter wont be reading an empty file and will no longer crash!

Enjoy!

Extras:
• Here is my Rainmeter .ini file for you. Use it and extend upon it.
• To install:
  1. Extract the .zip to your Rainmeter Skins folder
  2. Modify the text file path of SongbirdCurrentTrackInfo.ini to match your LiveTweeter output file
  3. remember to restart Rainmeter.

P.S. - This is a current issue with LiveTweeter, and will hopefully be changed in a future release. After all, it is just a simple change.

ATM Card Skimming and PIN capturing Awareness Guide

View the whole PDF about ATM skimming and Pin capturing, with lots of exmples, here.

Compromising Electromagnetic Emanation of Wired and Wireless Keyboards

For more information, videos, and to read their paper visit The Security and Cryptography Laboratory’s page here.

Password Recovery Speeds: How long will your password stand up?

How strong are your passwords? Lets see… I will guess its no longer than 8 characters in length, right?

Time to Crack / Recover using brute force attack
• numbers ~ 2 mins max
• letters ~ 62 days max
• numbers + letters ~ 253 days max
• numbers + letters + symbols ~ 23 years max

Examples:
• darren ~ 30 seconds
• Land3rz ~ 4 days
• B33r&Mug ~ 23 years

For more information visit the lockdown.co.uk page here.

Remember though, if you a common word(s) you are instantly cracked!

Wondering Triumph: Part One

Wondering Triumph: Part Two

Stand-up: Part One

Stand-up: Part Two

C-SPAN – 2009 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner Speech: “Obama Is The First Nerd President.”

…still want more Hodgman?

TED Talks – John Hodgman’s brief digression

• Intel i7 Core 920 Procesor
• ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution Motherboard
• G.Skill 6GB DDR3 1600 MHZ RAM
• PNY Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB Graphics Card
• Corsair TX650 watt PSU
• Coolermaster V8 Heatsink
• Western Digital Caviar 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Cache Hard Drive
• Antec P182 Advanced Mid-Tower Case
• Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Yea, its pretty awesome. With that said, I don’t plan on upgrading for oh… 10 years.

I have to say, the show was certainly better and a lot longer than October’s pitiful performance…

Here was their last set list:

• Set One:
  1. Intro/Theme from Shaft
  2. Magick
  3. Let it Ride
  4. Two
  5. Everybody Knows
  6. Beautiful Sorta
  7. Mockingbird
  8. Dear Chicago
  9. Blue Hotel
  10. Cold Roses
  11. Natural Ghost
  12. Easy Plateau
  13. Bartering Lines
  14. Band Intros
  15. Fix It
  16. Magnolia Mountain
  17. Please Do Not Let Me Go
  18. Peaceful Valley
  19. Freeway to the Canyon

• Set 2:
  1. Intro/tuning
  2. When the Stars Go Blue
  3. Sink Ships
  4. Oh My Sweet Carolina
  5. Grand Island
  6. Evening Joke with Jon Graboff
  7. I See Monsters
  8. Come Pick Me Up
  9. Rescue Blues
  10. Wonderwall
  11. Goodnight Rose

For those of you interested in what the Cardinals last show sounded like, download the entire concert recorded from onstage microphones here in FLAC or MP3 formats. I am listening to the FLAC recordings as I type, and it is certianly worth the download.

This certianly won’t be the last we will here from Ryan Adams or the Cardinals, I assure you. In fact, Ryan Adams is getting ready to release his second book, Hello Sunshine. If the music doesn’t return though, that’s alright. Enjoy some much deserved time with your new wife Ryan.