« | September 2006

With the release of iTunes 7 Apple has introduced a feature that allows the downloading of decent quality artwork for any of your self-imported music (music you didn't buy from the iTunes Store). But I've seen a number of people complaining lately that when you download covers they are only cached and stored in a proprietary format. This means that if you copy/move some music the artwork will not be attached to the song. In other words it's not part of the ID3 tags of the MP3 file. This doesn't affect loading music onto an iPod however.

Here's an easy way to get the artwork into your song files (it's so simple I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention this yet). This assumes you don't already have the option for automatic artwork downloading selected (if you do, you can skip the second step):

1. Select one track that belongs to the album whose cover you want to get
2. From the Advanced menu, pick Download Album Artwork
3. Make sure you're displaying art (bottom left) for the selected item (cmd-G)
4. Right-Click (or ctrl-click) on the artwork on the left
5. Pick the Copy item from the menu that pops up
6. Select all the tracks you want to put this album cover into
7. Press cmd-i to display Multiple Item Information
8. Click inside the Artwork Box on the right to highlight it
9. Press cmd-v to paste the image
10. Click the OK button

That's it. Basically you are copying the downloaded image to the clipboard and then pasting it into the track information which then gets saved with each selected track. The artwork quality is generally higher than that from Amazon but won't necessarily be high quality than stuff you're carefully scanning yourself.

Believe it or not, I just started using iTunes to manage music this week. Yes, after getting my girlfriend Erin an iPod for her birthday. I'm not new to digital audio by any means, I just haven't found the time/need/desire to really do anything with iTunes before. My normal CD ripping routine was to use Audiograbber on a Windows machine with a high-quality SCSI Plextor CD-ROM and everything was kept on a large hard drive and on my RioCar (empeg). The empeg is the only source of audio in the car and still used on a regular basis. But the whole manual management thing and careful tag management is way too cumbersome to be handled that way. I have CD's stockpiled now that I have yet to rip and encode simply because it was far too much bother to boot up the PC and jump through all the hoops.

So now everything is mostly established on the Mac. Music is kept on an external drive that can be accessed by multiple Macs (set prefs in iTunes plus make an alias to move the library file) and ripping and encoding is being done with Max (w/ LAME encoder). I found this a lot nicer than using iTunes-Lame because Max allows for a number of options to make sure the ripping is done properly (iTunes is pretty far from secure or jitter-free ripping). Max will save tracks into your iTunes library directly and can also grab artwork from Amazon if you'd like. This can then be replaced as I mentioned above, but it's good to have it up front just in case iTunes doesn't have artwork for your CD.

My next adventure will be to set up some type of streaming to replace my currrent in-home DAP routine (which is also to use the empeg connected to my home stereo system). Something to make it easier for others to select music, especially during parties.

---

It took almost a month, but Google is once again showing results pointing directly back to our site, just in time for our content refresh and new releases. I still don't know how/why our results were dropped, but because of the message within the Google Webmaster Central/Tools interface, I have to think someone sent them an ill-informed (or ill-intentioned) complaint about the content on the pages.

When some info finally became available (a week after the site index vanished), Google claimed our pages were in violation of their Quality Guidelines. Looking through their documents I could only come up with one very loose connection, “Avoid hidden text.” I concur with their guidelines wholeheartedly and understand what they're trying to do/protect against. I also understand the spirit of their guidelines and our pages most definitely did not violate them.

Twisted Melon values the choices and requirements of every visitor to this site, so we have tried our hardest to make sure everyone receives the best experience possible. That includes testing in countless browser versions on different platforms as well as the ability to browse without images or in strictly plain text. This last one is notable for those accessing not only from a mobile platform, but more importantly, for visitors with accessibility requirements.

When visiting with a text-based browser or an assistive device (that may read text from the screen aloud), content in the form of graphics would be completely ignored. Text representations for graphics can be included in an alt tag but this only works for graphics that are placed in-line with the html using an img tag. This site uses a lot of Cascading Style Sheet-based (CSS) graphics to preserve a distinction between content and style making this impossible in most cases. To preserve accessibility we have therefore placed plain text in the same places we're using navigational and informational graphics. Within each navigation tab above for example, is its text equivalent. The same applies to the header as a whole, which features the company name and tag line in plain text.

But like most visitors you won't see this text. The reason is it's rendered off the screen. That's done purposefully otherwise the text would float on top of the graphics and make everything just look like a mess. The finesse in this solution comes from the fact that the text is moved off screen by the same CSS that places the graphics. So if you lose the graphics by ignoring the CSS, then you get the plain text in their place. And everyone is happy.

At least we thought. As mentioned, this practice is my best guess as to why we were removed from Google's searchable index for almost a month. Similar techniques have been used by spammers/scammers trying to game search engine results by including terms that were not otherwise prominent on (or even related to) their sites. This text is read as part of the body text by search spiders and these people would stack words to try and increase their search engine rankings. This is NOT what we have been doing. Anyone can take a look at the source to the pages and clearly see the otherwise hidden text for themselves.

TwistedMelon.com is XHTML 1.0 strict compliant, CSS 2.0 compliant and created in such a way as to be accessible by everyone. Yes, there are a couple of IE 6.0 styling issues recently created that need to be fixed. :)

---

So what's in a name? Maybe this should be a FAQ item somewhere — at least some additional information for the company profile I suppose.

Let's attack these in reverse chronological order. I can't take complete credit for the name, which in and of itself is good, because it allows for a little flashback...

2006 January: Twisted Melon was incorporated in Ontario, Canada. Everyone knows only corporations can take over the world. I had to come up with a name for my new software company and I wanted not only something a little funky and offbeat, but also a nice clean .com domain name without dashes. It so happened I was already the owner of TwistedMelon.com... The original.

2000 April: TwistedMelon.com is registered — the plan for world domination is in effect. Originally intended as a fun domain for some freelance design and consulting work, I had been registering a number of domains in the past couple of years and this was one of my favorites. Used as a personal site and as a pointer to the mypocket forums. At this time there was also no one else using the name elsewhere on the web that I knew of (certainly no other domains or companies anywhere in the world).

1999 Fall: “Twisted Melon” conceived as a fun name for freelance work and one initial sketch is made as a possible icon/logo concept.

1990-1999: School, work and a LOT of music listened to and purchased. The phrase “You're twistin' my melon man. You know you talk so hip man, you're twistin' my melon man” permanently etched in my brain.

1990: The Happy Mondays (Manchester, UK 1982-1992) release their third album, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches featuring the song Step On. The song leads in with the line “You're twistin' my melon man. You know you talk so hip man, you're twistin' my melon man.”

And the reference was likely from...

1965: Steve McQueen (1930-1980) “Are you twisting my melon, man?” (Attributed to McQueen by Norman Jewison on the commentary track of The Cincinnati Kid. Jewison goes on to say “I never knew what he was talking about, he was so hip.”)

In the above context, “twisting my melon” means making my head spin, confusing me, making me crazy, pretty much “are you f***ing with me?” However, the official Twisted Melon take is part of our company info and mentioned in the last blog entry.

Between the time twistedmelon.com was registered and the software company started, a number of other Twisted Melons have cropped up on the net:

Twisted Melon are DJ's from the UK

Twisted Melon is an improv group/production company from Australia

Twisted Melons are an indie band from Scotland (playing since 1995!)

Twisted Melon Records is a record label from the UK

And they all have a couple of things in common. They're all late to the party, need some seriously subjective web make-overs and of course they're all infringing our trademark. Any lawyers in the house? (Suit Alert: that's a joke )

---

Because I have nothing better to do (right!), I like to cruise around the interweb looking for people using our software in interesting ways and also to see what people are saying in general. For the past few weeks the site has been making the rounds on a number of web galleries. Seems like every week a new site picks us up, which at the very least, makes me smile. You know, the whole concept of a web site was just an afterthought. I had originally planned to do the software thing door-to-door.

Some of the sites support reader comments and that's where I found this beauty, which is kind of part question and part statement with a hint of uncertainty thrown in:

That comment came from a designer. Before I continue let me just take this opportunity to flash some fruit porn for the literally minded.

There, now there's more than a hint of melon — watermemlon, honeydew melon and even a cantaloupe. Like a brick, “in-your-face” style. But wait... Nothing's particularly “twisted” about them. Now I'm stuck.

All of this is firmly tongue-in-cheek. Twisted Melon is the name of the software company, we're not trying to run a fruit market. It has everything to do with creativity and a state of mind. I haven't seen any “adobe” on Adobe's site lately, have you? Directly from our site's “About Us” page:

Even though the name is not born of a literal melon, the site design does include a number of melon-hints just for fun. The whole plant concept for instance is a melon reference, as are the leaves, which are stylized illustrations of a real melon plant leaf. Even the company icon which is part of its logo is a melon with a lightbulb thread. Thread alludes to “twisting” and the whole lightbulb concept to “idea” or “thought.” It's something I came up with (on a napkin of course) about 6-7 years ago. The name itself was thought up over six years ago and the domain registered in the year 2000. Everything's been a long time coming I suppose.

Now I should probably get on with more important work, like finishing some news posts and putting together a whole new section for the site to debut soon. But don't let that stop you from checking out the rest of the site now — you know, don't judge a book by its cover and all that.

You're twistin my melon, man.

---

Everyone, their mother and the Pope are making predictions about this Apple event at Yerba Buena tomorrow. It only seems fit that I throw down my 2 cents.

I'm not predicting the order in which these will be unveiled, but I can say with 99% certainty we'll see most of these.

• Bernie Mac Edition iPod — like the U2 model, only with more Bernie Mac
• Digital Shoehorn — like a regular shoehorn but with USB
• iCoast — Bluetooth-enabled drink coaster
• Disney Movie Store — it will exclusively sell home movies of Walt himself
• iPod w/GPS for cars — large-screen, dash-mountable, maps & media, controlled by the car's steering wheel (you turn the wheel to navigate the menus)
• Some random update to the iPod nano (if I don't buy one this month it'll seem like I didn't really get my girlfriend a birthday gift)

I can only imagine the frenzy of blogging, digging and pundit-pounding we'll be swimming through this week. I'm only surprised no one's mentioned the new version of Aperture and new Macbook Pro models coming at Photokina in a couple of weeks. As a final word, here's a message for Steve himself... Be a chum, whip by the Metreon and pick me up a burrito, will ya?

---

It's 10° Celcius outside (50° Fahrenheit), the sky is nothing but gray clouds as far as the eye can see and the waves are rolling in with 1 meter swells (about 3.3 feet) and a significant amount of chop. It's not pouring rain, but it still seems like the perfect time to get some work done — inside.

Martineau Bay on Lake Temiskaming, Ontario, Canada.

I've been “up at the lake” (way up in fact) since Monday afternoon. Erin, my girlfriend, needed some down-time and even though I knew I had a lot of work to do, I sacrificed and joined her for a little break away from the city. After all, her birthday was just this past weekend, right?

But where there's a phone line, there's a way! Though I promised to “take it easy” I didn't say this would be a week away from work. The scenery here is natural and raw and as long as you stay out of town, it's simply breathtaking. Temiskaming is about 600 Km (373 miles) North of Toronto, the lake is approximately 100 Km (60 miles) long with depths up to 198 meters (650 feet). The cliff at Devil Rock measures approximately 91 meters (300 feet) above the water line and another 91 below. Where better to do some extreme software testing than in this extreme locale?

Le Grande Chute on the Kipawa River, Laniel, Québec, Canada.

Don't get me wrong, the storms haven't been brewing for long, we've had some decent weather over the past few days, and I did get out to enjoy it. A couple of days ago we stopped off at some impressive rapids on the Kipawa River. It took us about 1.5 hours to get to the trail head and another 30 minutes to drive in to park the car, so there was only time for a few photographs before we had to be off to a dinner reservation.

The river is the site of the anual Kipawa River Rally, a recreational paddling event for kayakers, canoists and rafters. If it isn't obvious from the pictures, Le Grande Chute is pretty much a waterfall and a section of the river usually portaged around. As described on the Les Amis site, “this two-drop, 30 m waterfall has been considered an unrunable Class VI meatgrinder since paddlers first started running the river...” The area was just too interesting not to be explored, so we made a stop on the way home Sunday afternoon (at the same time making this a multi-day journal entry).

On the Sunday back at the river, we enjoyed a good two hour hike through a tight wooded trail and over the rocks on the riverbank. There was only one close call where I thought I was headed for a dunk, and yes, it made me a lot more cautious on the way back out.

I just started a Flickr account to host some of the full resolution images instead of serving them directly from the company site, so there should be a few other images online soon from this set. We have bandwidth to burn, but Flickr is what all the cool kids are doing right now. Plus they already have a commenting system and other features in place.

Drop us an email if you can come up with a plugin for Mira to allow controlling the weather. ;)

---

Guess where I was this morning? If you said “in bed” you'd be wrong (that's probably were I would have preferred to be :) Instead I was one of the first 1000 people to visit the newest Apple Store.

The Sherway Gardens location places Toronto along-side Los Angeles as the only two cities with three stores. I'm not a fortune teller, but I suspect Toronto may eventually get a fourth store with a fifth in a nearby suburb. With a static population of at least 6 million, including the suburbs on the edges of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), I believe this is a unique landscape, having always been an leading area in connectivity coupled with a higher than average concentration of Mac users.

So I went, I saw and I got the T-Shirt. It was my first store opening event of any kind. Line-ups aren't what I'd consider a fun time and I know how busy an Apple Store can be on any regular day. But this day was a little different and unusual, so it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The plan had been to pick up an iPod nano along with the Nike+iPod sport kit for my girlfriend's birthday, which falls on... September 2nd. Surfing the Apple Store online the other day, prior to ordering, I discovered this store would be opening so I decided to wrap the whole thing in a store visit. We arrived at exactly 9:30 am and promptly added to the growing line outside the shopping center. At this point she still had no clue what we were doing there.

Of course the store surprise didn't last too long because others in line just couldn't stop chatting about things like upgrading memory in their minis or how Apple was late in upgrading their portables. We still had fun people-watching though as there's never a shortage of colorful characters. Literally (though I only saw one bright red hairdo today).

When we left the store she still didn't know what I had purchased. And in a couple of weeks when I actually buy her the iPod, she'll be able to use that shiny new Nike+iPod kit too. Being pragmatic, I wasn't going to get the actual nano when we may be just a couple of weeks away from a significant iPod announcement. ;)

The rest of the birthday celebration isn't a suitable topic for the general readership..