So this year I've got a group project (basically a year long, computing related, group project) and the dissertation. My dissertation is slowly starting to come together, and I'll explain it here so I can just link people in the future.

Basically, right now, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Amarok et al all harvest your MP3 files and store their metadata in a database. This is then used to display artist name, song title, album name etc in your media library. This is lovely and all, but whoever said it should be stored in a database? 

Playlists tend to be stored in XML format. XSPF is an XML format that provides a well-thought-out way of creating playlists. My contention is that you could quite probably use this format to store the data in instead of a database; that way your data is in a format free of being proprietory, easy to read and easy to share.

Over the coming months I'll be running tests of this format against a conventional database (built around Amarok's current schema) and a similar relational XML file which I've yet to concoct. I'll probably blog about it here and there.

On to my group project; we've elected to build a web-based placements database which will also be capable of advertising jobs and graduates who are looking for jobs within a University. It's looking like an interesting project and progressing well; I'm happy with my group and around 8 weeks in we've already got a lot done. I'm looking forward to seeing the end product in April. It'll be on show at the local University and we'll be delivering presentations on it.

Should be a good year, fingers crossed. 

I've also more recently bought some tea from the awesome Mr. Scruff, discovered some Clipper decaf tea which is rather nice and bought Mr. Scruff's new album (though not at all in that order). Life is good!

Those of you coming in from Google, here's the score; there is no PDF reader made by Adobe for Firefox on the Mac. There are, however, a plethora of Extensions that provide this capability (personally, I use Quartz PDF Viewer which uses PDFKit). So why be bothered you may ask?

I use Zotero for my academic references. Zotero allows me to highlight parts of a PDF that are interesting; this is useful. The fact this only works with the Adobe Reader plugin; not so useful. So, I guess it's no highlighting in PDF's for me.

Reading Fiction: Stopped

Blogging: Stopped

Twittering: Stopped

It's like a shutdown list on a Linux Terminal. Basically I've returned to University and my 'net life has come to a halt. I'm currently:

• Team leader on a year long group project
• Studying XML for my dissertation
• Learning Haskell
• Learning Groovy
• Getting pissed off with the University's lack of organisation

That pretty much sums it up. Sorry for the lack of updatings; it's tough having a life. 

iWoz is a book written by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and general brilliant engineer. It's his account of his life so far, focussing in on his part in the history of Apple and events around that time.

My one problem (and it was a BIG problem) with this book is the writing style. It's written in the style I'd assume Steve actually talks; this doesn't translate very well onto paper. It's also (through no intention of the author, I'm guessing) rather boastful in the way facts are presented. It's disappointing; the content here is brilliant. It's a shame that his write/publisher didn't clean up the prose.

Click here to see my review of this book on GoodReads.com.

I chose to download some music advertised free over at 7digital. It's free, so I should expect not to get a great download rate (paying customers get preference and all that) but this is ridiculous. Those of you reading this on the front page or through the RSS feed will have to click the heading to see the picture on this post.

I did learn that to take a JPEG screenshot in Mac OS the keyboard shortcut is Cmd-Shift-4 though, so not a total loss. Dan Rodney's keyboard shortcut crazy...