Today I realized I had mentioned my favorite MP3-playing software Foobar 2000 a few times but never really said much about it. Foobar is a highly underappreciated MP3 player, IMHO. It’s not fancy like WinAmp, iTunes, and QCD – it doesn’t have a bunch of cool visualizations and skins and stuff. It plays music – MP3s, ogg, and all the others without the bloat.

Some key features (for me):

1. It has configurable global keyboard shortcuts. While I am coding, if someone comes up to talk to me, I hit Ctrl+NumPad5 while still in my editor to pause it. I press the same key combo to start it back. If a song comes on I don’t want to hear, I can hit Ctrl+NumPad6 to go to the next song or Ctrl+NumPad3 to go to a random song. If a song comes on and I want to see the artist and trackname, I hit Ctrl-NumPad0 and a text bubble pops up near the Foobar system tray icon showing me the info. I don’t have to double-click the tray icon then find the button on the GUI to do any of this. Once you get used to the global keyboard controls, you’ll never go back. (Again, the exact keys are configurable).
2. It has a very low memory footprint compared to other MP3-playing software. I can have hundreds of songs in the queue and when minimized it takes up about 2MB of memory. This is important to me because there are times when I am running two instances of WebLogic and one instance of JBoss all on a machine with 512 MB of RAM. I need that RAM for real work, so a 2MB MP3 player fits right in.
3. It has an AudioScrobbler/Last.fm plugin so it can keep track of everything I listen to. Now that I have tried Audioscrobbler, I’m hooked…but that is fodder for another post.

Yes, Foobar looks rather plain and bland when compared to even a basic WinAmp install, but it really kicks the…uh…Alpaca’s ass. If you want a player that plays music and has no bloat, try Foobar 2000. If you want visualizations, tons of plugins, and lots of skins, try one of the other players mentioned above. I’m sticking with Foobar though.

Speaking of small MP3 players, I tried one I stumbled on today called Billy…. it claims it is fast and lightweight. The download was quite small (456kb) but it took up about 2.5MB of RAM when running (about the same as Foobar)….and no Audioscrobbler plugin and no global keyboard shortcuts. I uninstalled it shortly after installing it.

Foobar 2000
Billy

geek, windows, mp3, foobar, itunes, foobar2000

If you have an application that you are offering for download on the net, do not name it setup.exe. Do you know how many things I have in my downloads folder? I don’t always get to them right when I download them. Do me a favor and name it something like yourappname-setup.exe. Please.

geek, annoyances, windows

Speaking of sci-fi, I have been listening to the Escape Pod podcast “The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine” lately – there are 15 episodes out so far and I have listened to the first six. It’s a great idea – every episode is a new sci-fi short story. Some are really good, some are just ok, and they are perfect to listen to on the way to/from work each day. The times range from 20 minutes to an hour though all the ones I have listened to are about 30 minutes long. If you like sci-fi, check it out!

Escape Pod Podcast

geek, scifi, podcast

So, I have heard all the buzz over Firefly and finally decided to watch it. I have watched the first three episodes and I am just not overly impressed. It’s not bad, it’s just not great like I thought it would be. I guess I’m spoiled by Battlestar Glactica – I heard the buzz about that too and watched the first season way after it had been aired. Balttlestar is fan-freakin-tastic and I’m all caught up now. With the lack of good SciFi shows on TV, I’ll definitely finish watching the first season and I’ll be interested to see how the new Serenity movie turns out.

Speaking of Firefly, here is a lego-ized Serenity. [via]

geek, scifi, firefly, battlestar

I used to do the Mostly Trivial podcast (hosted by JohnneeBee now), and because of that, I am listed on AudioScrobbler/Last.FM. Take a look at who I am similar to. Quite an assortment there – Adam Curry, Jimmy Jett, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, and even Bill Cosby and Chef (from Southpark I assume). I don’t know that I actually have any similarities to those people, but at least I’m in good company.

If anyone wants to download those old Mostly Trivial episodes I did (31 of them), let me know. I can repost them here if there is any interest.

geek, podcast, audioscrobbler, cosby