Tag: music

I Miss CoverSutra

My second-favorite Mac app ever (after BBEdit) was CoverSutra — MacWorld review, make sure you have ad-blocking. Alas, it didn't keep Soaps in silks and champagne as she deserved, and she shut down and went to work for Apple.

The key feature here is: It watches iTunes, and shows the cover art with artist/album/track name overlaid or under, small enough to fit in a corner of the screen. So I can unobtrusively see what's playing when I hit shuffle. There were some nice keyboard controls in CS, but I mostly just needed the labelled icon.

I've had some variation on this since the '90s, when xmms would sit in the bottom of my screen, often minimized to a 16x160 or some such tiny bar with track name.

iTunes itself has a "mini-player" with cover art, but it doesn't show the artist/album/track name at all, and it's hard to click on without hitting a forward/reverse button. You can turn on notifications, but then that's annoying, a popup every 3 minutes.

When CS finally broke in Sierra, I switched to TunesArt, which was a mediocre but functional equivalent. When I upgraded to Mojave, TunesArt broke, and the developer is absent.

I have found only two sorta-kinda CoverSutra replacements that are still working. The one I'm currently using is BarTunes (free on Mac App Store), which has a comically flyspeck-sized album preview in the menu bar, and I have to click on it to see the track name; but it seems to work. The flyspeck cover is sometimes identifiable, like Asobi Seksu's Citrus has this unmistakable tangerine cover, but in that case I'm probably familiar enough to not need a hint as to what's playing.

There's also SkipTunes ($2.99 on Mac App Store), which has a desktop preview that apparently doesn't show cover art or track name, so WHY? Haven't bought it yet.

I'd happily pay much more for a working app so I don't have to code this myself.

Dragalia Lost Tuesday Music

  • DAOKO: Performer of the music in Dragalia Lost.
  • Geazs fanart of Brunhilda/Mym

  • First-week revenue >$3M: Not great compared to established properties, but surprisingly good for an unknown title with little PR in NA. The epithet "Lost" is unfortunate, I don't know why Nintendo is so incapable of getting English-speakers to review their names before release.

  • Reddit thread on raid event: But still hasn't started yet, so you have a little time to level up; you'll want a water-elemental adventurer and dragon.

    Dragalia-raid-2018-10-02

  • The castle building minigame isn't a full city sim, but it lets you have some creativity. And unlike many, your production & bonuses aren't disabled while it's upgrading, you just can't collect coins until it's done.

    Dragalia-castle-2018-10-02

Paradise By the Dashboard Light

Hit F12 and no Dashboard appeared. Had to run Dashboard.app manually to get it to exist, and then F12 worked again. Added it to my Login Items, dunno if that's needed but shouldn't hurt.

The total neglect of this incredibly useful widget screen is baffling to me. I have weather, Deliveries tracking, stocks, Organized calendar/appointments list, PCalc, and iStat on a single screen. Used to have a nice meditation/tea timer, but it got broken a couple OS updates ago.

'80s Japan Sunday Music

And more from the same channel. A few tracks rock out, a few are too much jazz or disco for my taste, but mostly pretty great light JPop. I ain't always gotta be blasting industrial noise, you know?