Motivated by cool Winamp plugins like SpyAmp (which actually runs a webserver out of Winamp and lets people see your current song and even download it… too bad it gave me a blue screen o’ death when I tried it) and MusicTicker I decided to have a go at writing a plugin to make your currently playing winamp song show up in your AIM profile. It seemed straight forward enough, but I hadn’t been able to track down anything like it and I wondered why anyone hadn’t made one before. I found out soon enough though. Writing a plugin to get Winamp to spit out a song title in an html file would be simple, and since the AIM profile is stored as an html file locally it seemed that overwriting that with the file from Winamp would do the trick. Unfortunately, it looks like AIM caches your profile and only refreshes it if you change it through the client program. It does no good to edit the html file behind its back. I suppose that doesn’t make it impossible, but I can’t seem to think of a way around it right now.

Comments

Comment by Chris on 2005-03-30 19:55:48 +0000

BuddyAMP has been around for a while now, and does exactly what you’ve been trying to do.

Today I went in and picked up my diploma, thus officially ending my college career. Wow. That is one expensive piece of paper, let me tell you. For how much its cost me, you’d think it’d be able to do something neat like shoot laser beams and travel through time, or at least just sing and dance. Nope, it just sits there looking smug, reminding me how much college cost and how unemployed I’m about to become. Curse you diploma! No I’m sorry I didn’t mean that. I… probably should get some sleep.

Comments

Comment by Will on 2005-01-25 23:26:15 +0000

testing close comments

So if you were to ask me what I did last night, I would have to say that I certainly wasn’t playing a copy of a highly anticipated game that’s supposed to be in closed beta testing only called, I don’t know, lets call it the arcraftway eethray etabay. And it certainly wasn’t absolutely amazing. Wink wink, nudge nudge. I can’t wait until June.

[Insert clever segue here] Kimmee‘s got a blog now! Whoo!

[Insert another witty, well thought out segue, perfectly easing the transition between two seemingly unrelated thoughts and reminding you once again how masterfully I employ the English language, bending and shaping it effortlessly at my whim.] This is my new favorite search request from my referrer log. Partly because its from the Japanese Google page, and partly because I have no idea how I got rated second highest for that.

[Insert yet another… ah, screw it. Here’s some “What X are you”? tests]

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

<table border="0">
  <tr>
    <td width="197">
      <a href="http://jamie.almostbroken.net/tests/test.html"><br /> <img src="http://jamie.almostbroken.net/tests/ahref.gif" border="0" /></a> 

      <p class="c2">
        <font style="font-size:10px"><br /> You&#8217;re the HREF tag- you need someone to lean on and take care of you. You can be shy but you shine in difficult situations.</font></td> </tr> </table> 

        <p>
          </center> 

          <p class="c2">

Time to update my list of links with some newish additions to my internet routine. Let’s see, we’ve got: Beans, Neal, McSweeney’s, Ftrain, and DeviantArt.

I hate to say it, but the Dismemberment Plan show last Thursday was kind of underwhelming. With the exception of one song, they played the exact same set that they did when I saw them almost a year ago at Bernie’s. They pretty much flew through the first half of the set, not stopping to partake in their usual banter and exchanges with the crowd until about halfway in. Also, being stuck off to the side in the rear of the club left me kind of distanced from the action, unlike the Bernie’s show where I was pressed in about 2 feet from the “stage” (Of course, so was everybody else in the room since thats about how big Bernie’s is). I was also excited about seeing Cex open the show, but I was kind of let down by that too. His live shows had been hyped to me as being memorable and crazy, but also with the disclaimer that they bore no resemblance to his albums. Going in prepared for that, what I got was Cex freestyling over some just ok beats to suggestions tossed out by the audience. I could tell that it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously, but it just didn’t really do much for me. I guess I’m too old, humorless, and cranky. On the other hand, I picked up his album “Role Model” while we were there, and I’m finding that to be pretty amazing. Ben and I cut out of there to head back to Columbus a few songs into the Death Cab for Cutie set, since Ben had to work the next morning. Death Cab is ok with me, but not something I couldn’t miss so I wasn’t too disappointed about that.

Time for a little mix cd action all over the place. The Burn Baby, Burn! weblog cd swap seems like a really cool idea, and I’m on the verge of entering just as soon as I decide whether I can come up with a decent “summer themed” mix to fit the requirements. Receiving random music from total strangers should be an interesting experience. Meanwhile, a more generalized Metafilter version seems to be slowly taking shape, which could also be worth checking out. And finally, there’s the shadowy, yet-to-be-launched, SecretDJ. That one looks to be more of an ongoing mix cd swap project rather than a one time deal, but they don’t have much info on it yet. I’d better start brushing up on the art of the mix. Good thing I’ve finally finished ripping all my cds, that should really simplify the selection process (As a side note, its great to be able to just open 200+ cds in a winamp playlist and stick it on random. I’m listening to stuff now that I hadn’t played in ages and falling in love all over again.)

That’s it. I’m done with school. I just got back from my last final ever, which was actually fairly anti-climactic but I’m not going to complain. Nothing to do now but pick up my diploma in a little over a week or so. I’ve decided to skip the commencement ceremony though, and instead attend the Death and Dismemberment tour show in Cleveland, which I think is a much better way to honor my graduation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I finally heard back from Evans & Sutherland and they decided not to hire me, so there goes my best job prospect thus far. I was wondering when I would start to panic about not having a job yet, and it turns out that its right now.

Today’s Diesel Sweeties is so true it hurts.

Prepare for an Interactive Hypertext Experience&#153! Thanks to Brett’s generosity, coaxial flutter is now equipped with the latest in commenting technology. I’m leeching off of the PHP support at the site for his wicked cool band Hot Property who have a new album coming out soon that you all should go buy right away because its bound to be the best Rockin’ Ambient-Jazz/Movie Soundtrack album to come out this year, or ever.

Comedy gold, friends, pure comedy gold. Yet another Talking Monkeys show tonight, this time with some new skits and some stuff using video, which I believe was a first for them. Comedy was in no short supply, since the show ran close to two and a half hours, which even counting a 15 minute intermission is a long long show. I missed the first 30 minutes or so because I couldn’t get off of work early and apparently I missed a really good video bit. There were some really great skits this time around, especially a GI Joe sketch which completely and hilariously tarnished the memory of many of my animated childhood heros. For being primarily an improv troupe they sure come up with some good skits. And hey, Brett made it into town for this one, so that was pretty cool too.