Just finished updating intellitunes and uploaded the new version to the old location.
What changed ?

- Support for processing all songs of your itunes lib in one run
- Changed the searching on amazon for artwork to comply to the new regulations
- Changed the way to search for lyrics from lyricwiki.org (api was revoked) to lyrdb.com

Should all be up and running now, well on my machine it is anyway.

Drop me an email if you find any problems. stefan dot venken at gmail dot com should do the trick

Download it here or visit the product page here

Kind regards, stefan

Download the latest version here or visit the intelliTunes page here.

Since this is I-needed-it-so-I-build-it-ware you can always email me if you have a question / suggestion or found a bug ! The application is basically a port of the functionality I miss when I am on my windows machine and that the GimmeSomeTune application gave me on OSX.

With its unique set of features, intelliTunes for windows is the perfect companion for your music collection in iTunes, on your iPod and your iPhone.

Fetch artwork.
No other software we know of lets you fetch artwork for your songs in iTunes for Windows so easily and quickly as intelliTunes.

Just start playing a song - intelliTunes will do the rest. After all, that’s what you have a pc for.

Fetch lyrics.
In the same, easy way intelliTunes fetches artwork, it also fetches lyrics for your songs.
More accurately than any other software we know about.

How does it work ?

Download the zip file containing the setup.exe here, and install the application.
I would advise to add the application to your windows startup folder. The application will not auto start together with iTunes, so I should be started manually (or through your startup folder).

Doubleclicking the tray icon will start iTunes if it wasn’t running, or play/pause if it was already present. Rightclicking the tray icon will give you the option to change the settings, review trackInfo or view lyrics.

Drop me a line if you have any remarks / comments.

One option (and the easiest one) is just using the RichTextControl, setting its RTF property and getting its text property.

If however your not in a UI project it just smells to add a controls reference to do just a simple parsing, or to be more precise a simple stripping.

Since one of my collegues needed such functionality we ended up converting an old c function to the following.


public static String Strip(String rtf)
{
String strCopy = "";
bool slash = false; //indicates if backslash followed by the space
bool figure_opened = false; //indicates if opening figure brace followed by the space
bool figure_closed = false; //indicates if closing brace followed by the space
bool first_space = false; //the else spaces are in plain text and must be included to the result
int length = rtf.Length;
if (length < 4) return "";
int start = 0;
int k = 0;

return strCopy;
}


Hope it can save somebody half an hour

Cheers Stefan

First go to your announcement list and choose ‘List Settings’

Click on the ‘Body’ link to alter the field:

Then choose ‘Enhanced Rich Text’ to enable the wanted buttons:

Et voila

Even in OSX it is possible to double click by double tapping the trackpad, although it isn’t as ‘it just works’ simple as you would expect.

So how do we do the magic … Just open system preferences - Keyboard and mouse

Then ‘Trackpad’ and change the ‘Clicking’ checkbox to checked state and all of a sudden the checkbox below that one will change from content, just hit apply and voila !

Before:

After:

Solution for assigning a strong name to a third party DLL using your visual studio command prompt.

E.g. Lets say the name of the third party DLL is myTest.dll.
Step 1: Dis-assemble the assembly
ildasm myTest.dll /out:myTest.il

Step 2: Re-Assemble using your strong-name key
ilasm myTest.il /res:myTest.res /dll /key:myTest.snk /out:myTestSN.dll

for verification you can use following command,
sn -vf myTestSN.dll

So what happened in the meanwhile ?

Things got pretty hectic at work, got hooked on Guild Wars (dropped WoW for it) and after a few weeks decided that I had to stop playing it. Reaching the addict level is never a good thing :).
So I quit gaming all together. Sold my Wii … and replaced it for a PS3 as new gaming station.

Since I had no ‘time consuming hobby’ left I decided to pick up an old dream: learn to play guitar. So I am quite busy with that nowadays.

Did a evening seminar at SAI on Scrum together with Peter Bauwens and had the opportunity to go to Tech-Ed Barcelona in november, and for the rest got some interesting projects going at work…

In India it is quite normal to have +500 people on your wedding reception,… and you all get to eat too!

The bride was dressed up really beautiful and the groom was really charming and friendly although I never met him before.

I’ve added some pictures of the reception and dinner afterwards.

This wedding was really something special because it is a love-marriage opposed to the arranged weddings (which still take place), it took them more then 10 years to arrange (and get permission for) the wedding. He is a christian and she is a hindu which made it not easy but they managed to make it through…

Thanks Deepak and Sunitha ! I wish you all the best.

On sunday when we watched the news it all made sense….

Nameless, ruthless and pointless

IT IS a strange terrorist who prefers to remain anonymous. Yet this seems to be the signature of the bombers who, every few months for the past few years, have exploded crude bombs in India’s cities. The latest blasts were in pleasant southern Hyderabad on August 25th. In quick succession, explosions in a park during a laser show and at a crowded food-stall killed 43 people and injured scores. Another 19 bombs were discovered planted around Hyderabad, and made safe. The government of Andhra Pradesh, of which Hyderabad is the capital, leapt to blame the customary suspects: “terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan”.

Read more here and here.

After this news and especially the info they gave on the Indian channels we decided to stay in the hotel on sunday instead of going to spencer plaza and t.nagar…

RESIDENTS OF three thickly populated zones of Chennai have had to put up with piles of stinking garbage for the past few days after a new contractor appointed by the Chennai Corporation failed to get its act together even three days after his tenure began.
The previous contractor, CES Onyx of Singapore, which had been doing a commendable job for the last seven years, was replaced by the JBM-Fanalca joint venture after a fresh bid to clear 1,200 tonnes of garbage daily - one-third of the city’s total waste. But on August 25, JBM’s local company Neel Metals failed to show up with its garbage bins and compactors, leaving the residents with no option but to leave their waste by the roadside.
Neel Metals was nowhere to be seen even on Wednesday, four days after it took over. The 150 mini trucks it had deployed were simply not enough to handle the city’s waste in the absence of the 600-kg capacity bins and compactor trucks needed to transport the waste to the dump yard. While embarrassed Corporation officials initially tried to make light of the situation by calling it a transition hiccup, it was later forced to use its own trucks and men to clear the accumulated garbage. It even got Onyx to redeploy its bins and compactors to handle the emergency. With the non-performance of its new contractor evident, the Corporation has decided not to give it an additional zone that was originally allotted to it.
“It is a fact that Neel Metals failed to get its act together, though they were given the contract a month ago. We have given them notice and if they fail to improve within a month, we may review the contract,” Chennai Corporation Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni told HT. Local Administration Minister M.K. Stalin blamed the delay on the non-arrival of garbage bins from Sintex, due to a fire in the company’s factory, and promised things would look up in 10 days. Neel Metals CEO P.S. Batra also promised “things would improve in the next few days”.

Source: yahoo India News

People here think it will take another 4 weeks for all garbage will be cleaned up. Do keep in mind that even at night its 30 degrees here and that a lot of people sleep on the streets…

Instead of writing up a big story I’ll just let the photos talk.

Indian style warning signs

No kidding…

Death wish

Guess what

Please don’t jump…

How many crocodiles can you fit in one pit ? 391 for sure


Me holding a baby python

Davy and me holding a baby crocodile

Racism in India ?

Simple rules for the Mamallapuram park

Lawn mowing in progress

Pictures at the beach…

The complete set of pictures can be found here

Thinking about you baby!

As always you can find the pictures on my picasaweb account.

San Thome Basilica is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Santhome, in the city of Chennai, India. It was built in the 16th century by Portuguese explorers, and rebuilt again with the status of a cathedral by the British in 1893.
It is supposedly built atop the tomb of one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, St. Thomas. The apostle is believed to have preached in Chennai (formerly Madras) between 52 A.D. and 72 A.D., when he is said to have been killed on St. Thomas Mount.

As Borat would say it: It’s nice

Marina beach on the other hand is the second largest beach in the world. Or that is what they will tell you anyway.

Although many locals claim the Marina to be the world’s longest (or second longest) beach, there exist in fact several longer beaches, including Praia do Cassino in Brazil (which is actually the longest beach in the world stretching upto 240 kms), Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, Padre Island on the US Gulf Coast, Ninety Mile Beach in Australia and Ninety Mile Beach, New Zealand. However, unlike the other beaches, it is an urban beach similar to the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Source: wikipedia

Around 7 when it becomes dark in Chennai it seems that all the couples come to Marina beach to talk and make out. This really is a strange sight compared to the bikini walruses sometimes found on our beaches when the temperature hits 30 degrees.

Hehe…

I promisedDavy Brion proof that there are pretty girls in India just like in any country so here it goes.

Shriya is the name of an Indian actress born in 1982.

And a picture to go with that:

Ofcourse this is a big movie star (in Chennai), but none the less it counts.

After a few days of diarrhea the ‘Do It Yourself Diarrhea Repair Sheet’ tells you to take Perflore together with the loperamide.

This works like a charm for the diarrhea but whatever you do, do not drink (KingFisher) on top of that medicines-cocktail. I had 2 beers during diner and went to sleep feeling perfect.

I got up the day after and felt as if I drank a bucket of tequila spiced up with rat poison…
It took more than 4 hours before I could drink a cola without feeling noxious.

So don’t drink alcohol while taking these pills, period.

Although I had specific ideas in mind I still could grab snippets from other projects where as my fellow team member had the idea / implementation idea in mind, and in normal circumstances should know all things by hart, albeit with some gaps (And I can’t blame him). I really think this team would have a huge benefit from an internet connection for every team member. When we code review the Indian code in Belgium we sometimes respond why they didn’t look at this msdn article, this google query result and so on, but thinking about the fact that these people only have real project experience and no internet what so ever (not even at home, given the prices here) makes my respect for them even greater. Ashik I’m talking about you mate !!!

At noon my Indian colleague Rajesh took me to an Indian Medical Vegatarian Restaurant called Sanjeevanam. (He did this after I told him I had diarrhea for 3 days straight

This restaurant is known for their medical skills (have more than a restaurant, do yoga and so on 2) and the food is really good !

Pic of the food on one leaf (from their site)

When you enter you receive a banana leaf on which they put 5 drinks, they’ll explain for what they serve (all medical but natural) and in which order you need to drink them.

After that you receive 5 cold vegetables in a sauce

After that 5 half cooked vegetables with veggy sauce

After that some cooked vegetables with white and brown rice and some curries (really good ones 2)

After you had your really good (big) meal they will give you a dessert which is really sweet with a lot of onion and sugar.

The big surprise was the rosegarden honey they poured in your (right) hand and which you had to lick up…

This great meal was served for 110 rps / person, which sounds like a bargain to me.
Ofcourse since you’re eating of a leaf so you can’t use fork and knife. You should eat with your right hand only. Which was troublesome at the beginning but I got the hang of it at the end Hope nobody took a pic of me at the end :p

This weekend we had a calm weekend because the 3 of us had some jet lag results (and diarrhea problems) that we had hidden this week. Dries had to leave India after 4 weeks so we decided to have some Chinese at the hotel and go to sleep early. Hope you’re doing OK Dries, really hope your ‘newly-found-rear-end-popcorn-fetisch’ gets resolved

On Saturday Rajesh and his friends took Gery and me to a ‘club’ named Escape, which is located in the basement of an hotel like most clubs in Chennai. The general idea is that hotel guests are free to enter, couples have a cheap entry, and foreigners and singles have to pay a lot, so sorry Raj for the extra entree fee :s

In India people drink one beer / cocktail and start dancing, no fights, no discussing, no harassing girls, no drunk people just one alcoholic drink / 2 max and after that coca cola and water and a lot of dancing / laughing and fun. It opens at 7, we entered at 10 and it stops without discussion at 1.30. We really had a good time dancing, laughing and meeting people. India is really incredible on this matter !

Another strange thing is that Indian people eat after clubbing. So at 2 o’clock on saturday night every restaurant (called hotel here) is full ! And I mean full, full. And they’re hungry after dancing too

After getting up really late (9 o’clock we met Davy for the first time (Belgian colleague arrived at Chennai last night) and decided to go to the most crowded place at Chennai : T. Nagar around noon.

Crowdy is an understatement, if I look at the pictures I really feel like I didn’t quite capture the overall chaos there. We went to a local shop there called Pothys in which I bought a Chennai specific gift for my wife, hope you like it baby We met a really friendly Indian women there, who helped me to find the perfect **** for my wife. (It’s still a surprise babe) She took me from one floor to the next (the shop has 6 over crowded floors), helped me bargain the price, helped me choose the perfect **** (sorry Liefie, don’t want to spoil the surprise) and even helped me find how the payment and stuff went.

In this shop you have to choose your goods at a local table (they have a lot of tables), get a ticket, go to a counter where you pay, go to yet another counter where you receive the goods, go back to the original table for some customisation, wait 30 minutes, go back to the orginal table to receive a ticket, go to the paying counter where you receive a coupon, get back to the original table and get your goods…. No way you’ll figure it out in 2 sec, period. Thanks a lot lady, what ever your name may be. (She was working for the Indian government but I couldn’t quite get her name :s )

Some quick tips for new visitors (Chennai for beginners lesson 3):

- Quick tip for the new comers after me. The food at Copper Chimney (next to Zara’s tapaz bar) is really good, but whatever you do, don’t ask for tea… It makes you really sick for like an hour or two… (and I mean really sick, both Gery and I didn’t feel ok) It consists of normal tea but with chocolade goat milk or something, really got sick after drinking the cup…

_ Tip 2 : When you go to Citi Center (big shopping center with a lot of big brand clothes, quite expensive) and you ask a Riskhaw driver to take you somewhere nice to do some shopping; he’ll stop at a handicraft shop where he has commission. We where dropped of at the Artillery, we did bargain the price for two wooden Ganeshas and had a great cup of Saffran tea, but be prepared when entering: 5 guys will say hello, shake you’re hand and give you a cup of tea, and you’ll surely find something you’ll like When we left the store the rikshaw driver was waiting for us, although we didn’t ask that… Turned out (after we said what he had bought) that he received 10 rps for every piece sold by customers he brought. So keep in mind that when you go to a handicraft shop with the rikshaw that your driver already receives his commission.

When we asked to go to T.Nagar today the riskshaw driver dropped us off at yet another handicraft shop, but we declined to step out (we already mentioned twice we wouldn’t) which pissed him off, but don’t get offended: they have their commission there and just wanted the quick 20rps, which is understandable !

At T.Nagar there are alot of people begging for money, some handicapped some really small children who will call you daddy/mommy… Although this will break your hart, everybody will tell you not to give them money because this is a practice that should be stopped (police will act if they see it also) for the childs sake. I didn’t take a lot of pictures at T.Nagar because it is heavily crowded and you are so overwhelmed with the overall colours, smells (a lot of fruit is sold there) and general atmosphere that you’ll simply forget to grab your camera…

You can find the (few) pictures here.

Quick answers to some questions I received more than once

Q: How is the diarrhea there ?
A: It’s constant :s. You don’t have a lot of stumache ache but it will come out juicy & spicy Or as Dries puts it : Spicy in is Spicy out

Q: Are all Indian girls ugly ?
A: Nope. They have pretty ones just like in any country.

Q: How is the bargaining with the rikshaw drivers ?
A: It is starting to become the sport it should be. Rikshaw drivers actually expect you to bargain and it is just their way of doing business. As long as you stay friendly and laugh from time to time you’ll get a good price. And just remember, 10 rps more than the day before doesn’t mean the rikshaw driver is getting rich on your behalf.

Q: Does Chennai smell that bad ?
A: What smell ? (more than a week here

Q: Is it really hot there ?
A: Yep, at day times it ranges from 32 till 40 (without a lot of sun) and at night it remains 30 degrees, but every hotel / restaurant has A/C at 20°.

Q: Is India cheap ?
A: It depends, real estate is expensive, high tech is expensive (although +/- everyone has a +200 euro phone here), petrol is expensive, food, clothes and handicraft work is relatively cheap.

Q: Are people friendly there ?
A: You should keep in mind that staring is a normal way of showing interest in people here, so yes people are really friendly here (minus a few exceptions ofcourse). Quick example: a Riskhaw driver that asks 200rps and settles for 50 after a few minutes of bargaining will still shake your hand and call you his friend and say ‘have a good evening’ when you pay. When something happens in the street, unlinke in Belgium for example, everyone who is around will come and help you out. Theft / Accident / Misunderstanding / … people will run up and see if you are ok.

Our driver however knew some great Wildlife park we should visit first. And so we did. The ‘Park’ is called Crocodile Bank and is nothing like the zoo’s you can visit in Europe. If they say they have snakes, they have an owful lot of them; if they say a lot of crocodiles they mean there piled up on top of each other.

In terms of safety they do their best to make sure the crocodiles cant climb over the wall, but you better not lean on them neither

In this park is another section (for which you will have to pay some rps) that contains 4 extreme venomous snakes. But a lot of them, all in jars and they take them out, tell you something about them and then start teasing them with his red hankerchief and long stick. Problem is that when somebody asks about another type of snake he just grabs another one and forgets to put the first one back in …
Crazy if you ask me. Their job is to make a snake quite pissed off, take them (bare hands ofcourse) and make them bite in a small glass and then puts them back in the jar he came from. … To sell to laboratory later …

We also saw some amazing turtles there.

The Mahabalipuram temples are really nice but be prepared for begging and looky-looky sellers. (coming up to you, showing their goods and if your eyes wonder off to whatever he is carying, you’ll never loose him again)

After our visit to the temples we ate at the fishermans cove which was truly an amazing fish restaurant. We had the pleasue to be able to sit at the bay view point, be sure to take a look on their site for an impression. The fish we ate was called red snapper and we decided to go for the less dangerous sauses … which can surprise you none the less.

Since some of us got burned quite well (sun was really hot yesterday, even the Indians said it) we decided to call it a day and go for a shower. Our pants contained more water and salt than one can imagine.

Around 20h we went to Zara’s a Tapaz bar in Chennai which was also pleasant, and cheaper than the lunches in the hotel. Quick tip: If a dish has the name Garlic in it, it isn’t always mild, it can even be spicy as hell!

Some quick things that I’ve learned in the last two days. India for beginners course 2

TIP 1: Tissueless toilet
Not all restaurants have toilet paper, this is because the local people (some of them anyway) have their own way of cleaning up…

A tissueless existence

Once you have mastered the squat toilet, you may want to try to give up that wasteful, environmentally damaging practice of using toilet paper. This is where most Western visitors draw the line, and spend their trip lugging rolls of expensive toilet paper around with them. Perhaps their early potty training was too vigorous.

If you do feel adventurous, here are some basic tips. You’ll need about a litre of water. All Indian bathrooms have a little mug and a tap or a bucket of water. When you have finished, reach behind you and between your legs with your LEFT hand and, holding the full mug of water in your RIGHT hand, pour the water slowly into your left hand. You can pour from the front or the back - which ever feels most comfortable. Use the water in your cupped left hand to wash yourself. Repeat as many times as necessary. Air dry. When you are done, wash your hands well with soap.

Text by indax

This is also why most Indians eat with their left hand under the table and look at you as if you are eating shit when you have your sandwich in your left hand

TIP 2: Improving the rikshaw thingy

Another thing that might help you out is the rikshaw thingy. I decided to beat the system (*cough*) and walk away 100mtr from the hotel before calling in a rikshaw, hopefully to get a better price. The first guy that stopped took my paper, spend a minute staring at it, than said: please step in and give directions, he didn’t want to give a price up front so I was already walking away when the second guy stopped, took the paper from the first guy, said that I should read the paper next time because not all can read. (no offense) He than said he didn’t know the street and would use his meter to tell me the price afterwards. A no brainer ofcourse. The third guy that stopped said: yes sir, no problem, I know where it is and he gave me a very decent price (40rps). To bad he didn’t know where it was, so he stopped at a police officer for directions, stopped again a few roads ahead. The rikshaw ride that normally is about 10 minutes took 25 this morning

So I think I will stick with the guys hanging around the hotel…

TIP 3: Indian beer

In Chennai they have one beer that I’ve seen so far named King Fisher, which is in bottles of 650 ml. Keep this in mind when you order 3 bottles when you are with 3.
At Zaras they also have King Fisher Strong, which looks the same except for the color of the label (red instead of white). The beer is really heavier but you can’t tell how much because the label says: More than 6%, but I truly think all bottles differ here and there is no way of telling before you open up.

When you order a bottle they will put the bottle before you and keep standing there until you pick it up to say that it is cold enough. Then they will open the bottle for you. This is strange the first time !

You can find the complete photo album of yesterdays visits here.