Rhythm of the falling rain or 雨的旋律?

As I stepped into my house today, this song was in my head. But mummy was watching the 9 pm show, 'School daze' or something like that. So I waited til the advertisements and started playing this on the piano:

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that if you go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand-new start
But little does she know that when she left that day
Along with her she took my heart

Rain please tell me now does that seem fair
For her to steal my heart away when she don't care
I can't love another when my heart's somewhere far away

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand-new start
But little does she know that when she left that day
Along with her she took my heart

Rain won't you tell her that I love her so
Please as the sun has set her heart aglow
Rain in her heart and let the love we knew start to grow

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that if you go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

Mummy and daddy were quite amused. Mummy was like, wah why are you playing an oldie? And she started singing. Just a bit. Turned out their version wasn't quite the same.

那夜雨仿佛也在笑我太痴呆

笑我窗儿一扇也不开

那夜雨哪里知道我的爱不在

它一阵一阵洒下来

那夜雨仿佛也在笑我太痴呆

笑我泪珠滚滚头不抬

那夜雨哪里知道我的心悲哀

它一声一声费疑猜

雨呀请你为我音讯带

问一声他为什么不把我理睬

却偷走了那我的痴心该不该

该不该

我心里只有一个他是我的爱

他的言笑留在我脑海

我心里只有一个他是我的爱

请你去给他说明白

那夜雨仿佛也在笑我太痴呆

笑我窗儿一扇也不开

那夜雨哪里知道我的爱不在

它一阵一阵洒下来

那夜雨仿佛也在笑我太痴呆

笑我泪珠滚滚头不抬

那夜雨哪里知道我的心悲哀

它一声一声费疑猜

雨呀请你为我音讯带

问一声他为什么不把我理睬

却偷走了那我的痴心该不该

该不该

我心里只有一个他是我的爱

他的温暖留存我胸怀

我心里只有一个他是我的爱

请你去给他说明白

=D I realize that this song was in my head, probably cos I was watching 蔡琴's concert (parents were watching on tv lah) and she sang this beautifully. Too bad I can't find the clip on youtube.

It's Nice to Go Trav'ling - Frank Sinatra

It's very nice to go trav'ling
To Paris London and Rome
It's oh so nice to go trav'ling
But it's so much nicer, yes it's so much nicer, to come home

It's very nice to just wander
The camel route to Iraq
It's oh so nice to just wander
But it's so much nicer, yes it's oh so nice, to wander back

The mam'selles and frauleins, and the senoritas are sweet
But they can't compete 'cause they just don't have
What the models have, on Madison Ave.

It's very nice to be footloose
With just a toothbrush and comb
It's oh so nice to be footloose
But your heart starts singin' when your homeward wingin' across the foam

And you know your fate is
Where the Empire State is
All you contemplate is
The view from Miss Liberty's dome

It's very nice to go trav'ling
But it's oh so nice to come home

You will find the maiden and the gay muchachas are rare
But they can't compare with that sexy line
That parades each day at Sunset and Vine

It's quite the life to play gypsy
And roam as Gipsies will roam
It's quite the life to play gypsy
But your heart starts singin' when your homeward wingin' across the foam

And the Hudson River
Makes you start to quiver
Like the latest flivver
That's simply dripin' with crome

It's very nice to go trav'ling
But it's oh so nice to come home

my music

Been spending a couple of days organizing my music. I realize it has been 2 yrs since I blogged about how fantastic the ipod is and how much I lurve itunes. So after 2 yrs.. I'm glad to say that I've improved on my skills in using itunes. See how user friendly it is!

I used to dread it when people ask me what kind of music I listen to. Well, I still do.. Cos I'm not the hiphop/alternative/indie or whatever cool music kind of person so it's kinda embarrassing. But at least now I know what I like a bit better. After listening to the 100 Best Loved Classicals, I can safely say that I love classical music! It gives me a high whenever I listen to it.

I also listen to very mainstream pop. Haha. So not cool.

So, why do I have to spend so much time organizing my music once in a while? I'm the kind of anal person who needs to have all my music named prettily. Some of my rules for the moment include:

1. id3 tags and file name itself have to be named properly
2. Better still if there's album information, year information and album art. Pretty!
3. All File Names Have To Start With A Capital Letter
4. If there is more than one artist, the convention is either 'Field Mob Ft. Ciara' or 'Puff Daddy & Faith Evans', cannot have 'Feat.' or 'Featuring' or 'and'
   
5. Chinese songs must also be in chinese (unicode of course)
6. Chinese artists, if they have an english name, must have it spelled: 'Ocean 欧得洋'
   

I have a total of 2281 songs, 11.48GB which iTunes tells me can last me for 6.4 days. It's not gonna be very fun to rename them one by one.. Especially since I'm kinda fickle minded and like to change my naming conventions now and then. So now and then I try to look for programs to simplify my task. Ok, Here is the list of (free!) tools I use to update my itunes.


1. iTunes Library Updater (iTLU)

This is a fantastic program which solves the main, in-your-face problem of iTunes not updating its library with your actual Windows Folder's contents. So if you delete or rename a mp3, iTunes does not detect it until it tries to play it. There may be like mp3s here and there which are orphaned and yet you can't sort by the '!' mark so you gotta select them One by One every time they appear.

This lovely program does the following which I love:

• Add new songs in your folder to iTunes library automatically
• Update track info
  
• Clean up orphaned entries
  

Get it here.


2. ID3 renamer

This allows you to choose how you want to rename a folder of mp3s. You can specify a Renaming Formula such as '%Artist - %Title' or '%Track - %Title' using the id3 tag information. It also allows you to capitalize the first letter of each word. However the last time I tried it didn't work for my chinese named files. Other than that it works seamlessly with english tracks.

Beautiful.

Get it here.


3. Mix Meister BPM analyzer

With my latest attempts to hit the gym, it's way easier, and more fun with some suitable music to keep your momentum. Found some workout music in iTunes shop from Nike+, as well as a Podrunner podcast (Free!) by DJ Steve Boyett which is organized by Beats Per Minute (BPM) so you can choose how fast you wanna go. These are electronic music with little/no lyrics, they work fine for the gym but personally I prefer songs with lyrics. So it would be fantastic if I could organize my songs by BPM!

Luckily I found this program which is FREE! Super cool and it is really fast. Just specify a folder, and it will go through all the mp3s to analyze the BPM and store it in the id3 tags. Next I just have to run my iTLU and the BPM information will appear in all my tracks in iTunes.

Here's the part where I really appreciate iTunes. Smart Playlists! Create a new Smart Playlist, choose a range of BPMs, and there you go. A playlist with your own songs (chinese/english/classical/whatever!) ready to go into your ipod! Hmm maybe now I need an ipod shuffle for my run.

Get it here.

4. Video to Ipod Converter

The company DVDVideoSoft creates a whole list of very useful conversion software to convert things like .flv, .avi into ipod/psp formats. They cater for all sorts of video ipods such as my 5th Generation ipod as well as the Touch or iPhone.

Basically you just select the .avi file and it will convert it into .mp4 format in the right screen resolution for your iPod/PSP.

There is a whole list of software, get the 'Youtube to iPod' converter to convert .flv files into .mp4.

My only grouse is that it can't do a batch conversion so you gotta select your files one by one, wait for one file to finish conversion (typically 15 min for an episode?) before selecting the next. But well, good enough for me.

Get it here.


5. Downloading from tudou

Armed with the video converter, where do you get your .flv files from? Either youtube, or a very convenient way is to click to display the video you want in www.tudou.com, then replace the 'tudou' with 'kisstudou' in the URL. A link will then pop up allowing you to download the .flv file for that video.

For example, if the video you want is at link 'http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/abcde/', in the URL textbox, type 'http://www.kisstudou.com/programs/view/abcde/' and press enter. A new page will appear with a '下载地址' link to the .flv file, just right click and download it. Of course the quality will suck but my 5th gen ipod screen is so small so it doesn't matter that much anyways and it's much faster.

6. Conversion to mp3

Just some notes on how to convert some formats to mp3, something I encountered the past 2 days.

For .flac to mp3

This can be done via winamp and iTunes!

In winamp:

1. Select Options | Preferences
2. Choose Plug-ins | Output in the treeview on the left
3. Select 'Nullsoft Disk Writer' and click 'Configure' button
4. Select the directory to save your .wav file to and click OK
   
5. Close the 'Winamp Preferences' dialog
6. Select File | Add Media to Library... and add whatever .flac files you want to convert
7. With the .flac files in your winamp library, press play
8. All the 'played' .flac files will be converted to .wav files stored in the directory specified
9. Now remember to switch your Output back to 'Nullsoft Direct Sound Output' so that you can actually play songs in the future.
   

Now open iTunes:

1. Import the newly created .wav files
2. iTunes will convert them to .mp3s!
   

For .m4u to .mp3

Don't know how I ripped these CDs but I somehow saved the files as .m4u instead of .mp3. This is fine, and of course it is not recommended to go further convert a lossy format into another lossy format. But I'm no audiophile so I can't tell the difference anyway, and the BPM analyzer can't analyze my .m4u files so I decided to standardize everything into mp3s.

Just open them in iTunes, right click and select 'Convert Selection to MP3'. Duh. Why am I even writing this.

Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's

Hey there Delilah
What's it like in New York City?
I'm a thousand miles away
But girl, tonight you look so pretty
Yes you do
Times Square can't shine as bright as you
I swear it's true

Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me

Hey there Delilah
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me, girl
Someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar
We'll have it good
We'll have the life we knew we would
My word is good

Hey there Delilah
I've got so much left to say
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away
I'd write it all
Even more in love with me you'd fall
We'd have it all

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me

A thousand miles seems pretty far
But they've got planes and trains and cars
I'd walk to you if I had no other way
Our friends would all make fun of us
and we'll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way
Delilah I can promise you
That by the time we get through
The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame

Hey there Delilah
You be good and don't you miss me
Two more years and you'll be done with school
And I'll be making history like I do
You'll know it's all because of you
We can do whatever we want to
Hey there Delilah here's to you
This one's for you

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me.

the almighty ipod

After 2 mths of (not) using my ipod, I decided to come up with a list of issues I've encountered.

1. no fm tuner [must buy 'Radio Remote', us$49]

2. no voice recorder [must buy mic]

3. photo support damn irritating, need to keep a copy of photos on laptop and 'sync'. Can't upload photos from different laptops or you will lose the previous uploaded photos!

4. super slow updating on iTunes

5. i dunno how to use iTunes [even after reading the manual]

6. hafn't even ventured into downloading videos

7. doesn't display chinese characters for chinese songs

Haiyah. I don't know it seems like everyone is so happy with their ipod. Don't see anyone complaining about these very simple yet obvious problems. The most irritating thing is that my cheapo no brand mp3 player also has fm tuner, has voice recorder, can easily play music from windows folders without having the need to use a program like itunes, and can even display chinese words.

Despite all that nonsense, i still love my ipod. hehe. just because of the simplicity and beauty of it. just because it's sooo sleek. just because that there are a thousand and one accessories to buy [maybe thats why they dun have fm tuner, voice recorder etc so that us idiots will buy more and they can earn more]. I've already fallen prey to the camera connector which is oh-so-cute. but the fm tuner.. cannot lah. buy the fm tuner can buy the above mentioned no brand mp3 player already!