Here it is my first foobar2000 theme. It's pretty basic. Nothing fancy. It's aimed at people who like to keep the interface simple and clean and who spend time listening to their music rather than looking at their media player.
Some things you would need to set it up:
1. the latest beta version of foobar2000 (currently v0.9.5 beta 2) available here
2. foo_facets.dll available here
3. my theme file available here
4. (optional) the windows xp theme used in the screenshot is available here
After you have the foobar beta installed, copy the facets dll file into the foobar component directory. Run foobar then in preferences, go to default user preferences and click import theme. You just then need to select my theme file.
It's been a while since my last post about my new Ipod Classic. Honestly I'm just tired of it. Last time I mentioned the little annoyances like slow syncing with Itunes and how it handles albums by various artists in cover flow.
Apparently that's not the worst of it. The damned thing's battery gets drained after around 2-3 hours of listening. Sometimes it get's drained even while it's off and not in use for days. It looks like the culprit is the hard drive failing to stop spinning. Now Apple, I think that is a BIG problem you need to solve quick. And this is happening to a lot of people. Check these links:
Mobile Magazine, Engadget, Ilounge, Apple Support
I've been using Winamp since I first started listening to MP3s. I think that was 2001. I'm not sure though because it has been a long time. I've tried every other media player back there but I keep coming back to good old Winamp. It's light on resources, not bad looking and it just plain works.
With the new Winamp 5.5 and it's great looking Bento skin and album art support, I thought it just became perfect. But I've been getting a lot of crashes with this version and I can't wait for the next one.
Luckily I found the latest beta of foobar2000. I've been using this for months now as a ripper but never as a ripper because it just looks ugly. And I don't have the time and knowhow to configure it to look decent.
That was then. Now with the new version I was able to come up with this layout in minutes. It finally looks decent to me and usable. I'll continue tweaking this and see what I come up with.
Finally an update. But still no fixes to the problems I've been experiencing. Itunes still freezes. Albums with various artists are still displayed multiple times in Cover Flow. Albums with the same title still have their songs grouped together.
And now another bug I've noticed: the Classic sometimes displays the wrong album art. Itunes displays the right album art but the Ipod does not.
Geez.
I wonder what problems I'll find if I used this for stuff other than music.
It's my third week with my Ipod Classic. While I love its looks, capacity and ease of use, I've been noticing more and more bugs as I go along. A lot of users have been experiencing the same things at Ilounge.
Have mentioned previously that Itunes freezes randomly with the Classic connected? I have to mention it again. Whether adding or deleting songs, editing tags or just plain searching through the Ipod's contents or scrolling through the song list, I guarantee you, Itunes will freeze.
Also there are more bugs about Cover Flow than the Various Artists problem. Different albums with the same album title appear together under one album art. To illustrate: I have an Alice in Chains album titled Unplugged and an 10,000 Maniacs album also titled Unplugged. In Cover Flow I select the first album. The Ipod then lists the songs from both albums.
WTF?
There's an easy enough solution though: I rename both albums and include the artist name in the album title.
One more thing. I play a Tori Amos song. The Ipod displays the song info along with the album art but it does not play. I hit pause then play. It still does not play. I check with the original file on my PC and it plays. Argh.
The Cover Flow browsing mode is one of the major selling points of the Ipod Classic over other MP3 players. It is however painfully slow if your music library is composed of hundreds of albums--which is why most people would get an 80gb MP3 player in the first place.
While I don't have any benchmarks to show any speed difference, I do recommend resizing your album art to around 300 to 350 pixels. There's no point to high res album art on that small screen. Naturally it would take longer to the load high res pics.
One more thing to note: albums with various artists will be displayed multiple times in cover flow, once for every artist. It can be very annoying to see a soundtrack cover appear over and over again.
I've heard a lot of complaints about this in the Ilounge forums. Hopefully Apple gets to fix these problems soon.
Here's me wishing I was a piece of wood with graphite insides and rubber ass. I thought I was a crazed fan but reading the last 2 Hikki blog posts make my heart skip. Here's a quote:
"Awww Hikaru-chan You dun lounge around only in your underwear"
'That doesn't matter, I just took a bath you know~. It's the season where you can enjoy fanning yourself while cooling down, only with your shorts on~.'
"Then me worry u can't marry again"
