Hey there readers.

I recently decided to drop the akaRaff moniker that I have been hiding behind for the past 4 years so I will no be updating this site. I have started a new site behind my real name, Dave Raffaele, that will continue the tradition of sharing things that keep a 30 something guy going.

Thanks for your support and hopefully you will continue to follow me over at my new site.

Enjoy!

The Skinny:
This morning I was listening to Hype Machine team’s “love feed” and I got the urge to drop something. Since I was at work, it was important that I could easily find some new tracks, which the Hype Machine took care of, and more importantly be able to get them back to my home machine. Luckily I had everything I needed right on my work pc. Compared to back in 2005 when it took me 2 days to put one of these together, solving problems like this and putting together a drop is now as easy as tying my shoes.

Songbird and Dropbox are a duo made for this job. The first thing I did was change my download directory in Songbird to one of my Dropbox directories. Then I spent the day listening to my favorite mp3 blogs using Songbird and every time I heard a song I liked I would just click download next to the track. The file would end up in my local Dropbox directory and was auto-synced up to Dropbox’s site. When I got home all I have to do was go to my home machine’s local Dropbox directory and all of the mp3’s I downloaded were waiting for me. I couldn’t have scripted it any better.

I love music but I think I love technology advances that make music hunting easier a whole lot more.

Enjoy.

Continue to the playlist…

I bought an iPhone about 3 weeks ago and I am still wasting 4 hours on a Sunday playing around with new applications. It does everything I have been trying to do with my past smartphones and completely solves the major problem that I have been trying to solve for years…i am able to walk or drive while streaming music over the internet. All of my dreams have finally come true. Check out Pandora.com and then imagine having that on a phone that you can take anywhere you want to. It’s sick.

In the next few days I will do a post listing the apps that i have actually kept on my phone. I just need to put this damn phone down for an hour so I can write it.

Enjoy.

The Skinny:
I really wish I had downloaded and saved all of these drop MP3’s back in 2005. As you can see from this re-tread, some of the mp3’s I used for this are no longer available. If anyone has copies of these that they could share please forward them on I will get them added to the list.

This drop was originally posted on June 16th, 2005 and based on the playlist it seems as though my mind was in many different places at the time. The outcome was a bit of a mess but I think I managed to get a couple of tracks in there that I can still enjoy.

The original post can be found here and the original Webjay.org playlist that supported it can be seen here through the Wayback machine.

Enjoy.

Continue to the playlist…

Zen to Done: for those who try but suck at implementing “Getting Things Done“. I am at the top of that list.

Enjoy.

Every July 3rd, Plymouth opens the beach for 4 hours, lights 6 or 7 HUGE bonfires, and let’s people drink and shoot off whatever fireworks they want to. Trust me…it is as nuts as it sounds. I recommend experiencing it for yourself next year. Click here to see some more shots of the Insanity.

Enjoy.

The Skinny:
It’s always fun to go back and look at what I was doing 3 years ago on this site. I used to create these playlists every few weeks called akaRaff Radio Drops. It was a great way to find new music and share it with my friends. I used to use a site called Webjay.org to support the process, but unfortunately Yahoo bought them out, killed them, and in turn killed all of my old drops. So, I have decided to dig through my iTunes and start reposting my old playlists via some newer technology. I thank the Internet Archive and it’s Wayback Machine for keeping a snapshop of all of my playlists on file. Without them this would not be possible. So sit back and enjoy the 2005 sounds of akaRaff Radio Drop 01. It’s cool to see that some of the bands on this list have actually made it “big”. The Band of Horse’s ‘Our Swords’ was actually called ‘Base Song’ when I first posted this.

Enjoy.

Continue to the playlist…

I have been getting a lot of traffic to this post which I originally wrote back in November of 2005. I thought I would share it again since it still works and is one of the most important digital music listening assets I have. Re-Enjoy.

For anyone who listens to mp3’s streamed from the web and has iTunes streaming them for you, then you have probably encountered Apple’s M3U playlist issue. An M3U playlist is one of the “standard” playlist formats used to easily group or share a list of audio file links and most mainstream audio players can read and play them. I say most because the folks at iTunes have definately missed the boat and have completely botched the playing of the M3U.

Normally if you download a M3U playlist to your computer, your default player (ie. WinAmp, Window Media Player) will load it and then proceed to play each song in order. Apple’s iTunes on the other hand loads the links to the songs into your library, creates a mess, plays the first song, and proceeds to stop. Up until now the only work around for this was to save the M3U to your desktop and drag it to iTunes as a playlist directly. But thanks the folks over at itweaks.com, this issue is no more.

Enter M3U2iTunes. This little install program for MAC and Windows allows you to finally associate M3U playlists with iTunes and have them perform as expected; like a playlist.

M3U2iTunes simply creates a single playlist named “M3U Internet Stream” and places all songs from the downloaded m3u playlist into the M3U Internet Stream playlist.

M3U Internet Stream is always used as the target for m3u playlists. Rather than creating a new playlist each time, the M3U Internet Stream playlist is removed and recreated (so you won’t have a huge mess of new playlists in your iTunes libraries).

There is a Macintosh and a Windows version of M3U2iTunes. Each requires iTunes 4.5 or higher.

This makes me very happy and it works like a freakin charm. Download it and try it out on the next akaRaff Radio Drop.

Enjoy.

Instead of sending someone a link or pictures via an email or over IM, next time send them a FlowGram. A FlowGram allows you create a real interactive experience for whomever you want to send information to. Instead of them trying to figure out why you are sending them the link, you can actually walk them through the website or photo-album with your own words. Unlike other techniques like Screencasts, screen shots, or just talking over the phone, FlowGram allows your audience to follow along with you or start clicking around and interacting on their own. It is pretty slick. Check out the widget below for a sample of what you can do with it.

If you want to sign up for the beta, TechCrunch has the information you need. Hurry though…they only have 1000 beta keys to give away.

Enjoy

I love this recipe and I am not a huge fan of chicken. Charlotte’s Boursin Roasted Chicken will make chicken seem like an aged Rib-eye. It is one of my go-to dishes when entertaining friends and never fails to impress. With 4 ingredients, the ease of execution of this dish will make you want to slather Boursin on anything and everything. I am confident you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Step #1: Prepare your beverage of choice.

Continue to the recipe…