John Hesch

Jon Schmidt has a some free Christmas tracks in 192 kbits/sec MP3 format for free download. There’s also a few of his more popular tracks too.

To help you get into the Holiday Spirit and to assist me in climbing the charts at music.download.com, I need your help. Please download (for keeps) the following MP3 tracks, which have a bit rate of 192 kbs (aka, pretty much CD quality), and most have never been previously released as free MP3 downloads. Once again, please download these songs and pass along this email to your friends to do the same.

• Still,
  Still, Still
• Christmas
  Medley
• Bring
  a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
• I Saw
  Three Ships
• Winter
  Serenade
• Wexford
  Carol
• Waterfall
• To
  the Summit
• Sacred
  Ground
• All
  of Me

Pretty cool, thanks Jon.

I have been a subscriber of Napster for awhile now. The new reorganized and legal Napster, that is.

The other day I tried to launch the Napster GUI and it kept freezing on me. I tried uninstalling the application and then reinstalling it, but that didn’t help. I wrote to Napster tech support but never received a response from them so I started searching for an answer. The problem is there is so much noise from the old illegal version of Napster that I couldn’t find an answer right away.

Finally, afer three or four hours I found out that the problem was actually with Windows Media Player. Something was corrupted with the folder where my licenses are held. These are the licenses that allow me to play protected content.

Here’s how I fixed the problem.

1. I reinstalled Napster
2. I found the DRM folder in Documents and Settings\All Users and renamed the folder to DRM2. I had to check Show Hidden Files and Folders from Folder Options in Windows Explorer first.

Restart Napster and I was good to go.

Several weeks ago I upgraded to the RC of Firefox 1.5 which basically disabled most of the extensions I had installed. I have been able to find upgrades to some of my extensions but two of my favorites, Spellbound and Minimize to Tray, haven’t been released as 1.5 compatible.

Today I saw a post on Lifehacker showing how to force extensions to work in Firefox 1.5.

Keep in mind the following is a hack and may cause Firefox to become unstable.

1. At the location bar, enter: about:config. This will show you a list of Firefox internal preferences.
2. Right-click on the list, select New > String
3. Enter “app.extensions.version” (without quotes) for the preference name.
4. Then, enter “1.0″ (without quotes) as the value for app.extensions.version.
5. Restart Firefox 1.5, then enable those disabled Firefox extensions.
6. Restart Firefox 1.5 again to active the extensions. Done.

I successfully reinstalled Spellbound but Minimize to Tray still won’t work. At least I can check my spelling now.

Visual Studio Express.

Microsoft is giving away free one year licenses for some of their best development software including:

• Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition - An ideal environment for dynamic Web development.
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - A powerful and easy-to-use database to complement each Express Edition.
• Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition - Productivity that is ideal for first time or casual Windows programming.
• Visual C# 2005 Express Edition - A great combination of power and productivity for the Windows developer.
• Visual C 2005 Express Edition - Horsepower with a finer degree of control than other Express Editions.
• Visual J# 2005 Express Edition - Ideal for those with prior Java-language experience or learning the Java language.

Not a bad deal for a hobbyist, novice, and student developer.

I found this tip at Sound Money Tips.

If you want to find and compare prices on airline flights quickly, use Google. Simply enter the origination and the destination in a Google search box. For example Las Vegas Seattle. At the top of the Google results page you’ll see a place to enter your departure and arrival dates. You can then quickly search Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, and Priceline. Very cool.

Someone who has my email address in their address book was infected by a virus today and spewed out tons of emails to me with virus’s attached. Not really a big deal as my virus scanner scans all incoming email attachments, and if it detects a virus it deletes the attachment while allowing the email to be received.

But, it’s a pain to have to delete all the emails as they fill my inbox. If you are using a POP3 email address, have access to your cPanel and have SpamAssassin installed it’s pretty easy to stop the offending email at the server level.

First locate the offenders IP address from the headers in one of the emails. Next log into cPanel and go to MAIL and then E-mail Filtering. Add $message_headers contains “IPADDRESS”. Now all email from a particular IP address will be blocked before it ever gets to your inbox.

I’m expecting a letter sent via UPS last Friday. The letter was sent from Salt Lake City, Utah to St. George, Utah using 2nd Day Air. In case you don’t know, St. George is approximately 350 miles south of Salt Lake City. I assume I would receive the letter on Tuesday but after checking the tracking number I found out it won’t arrive until Wednesday.

Why would it take five days to travel 350 miles, you ask? Well, the letter left Salt Lake City on Saturday and flew to Louisville, KY arriving on Saturday morning. Approximately nine hours after arriving in Louisville, KY the letter was boarded onto another flight and returned to Salt Lake City arriving a few hours later. Update: Actually as I read this tracking again the letter stayed overnight in Kentucky. The letter is now sittling in Salt Lake City apparently waiting for the flight to St. George.

What possible reason could UPS have for sending the letter to Kentucky and back before sending it 300 miles south to St. George? Does all UPS parcels leaving Salt Lake go to Kentucky first? I wouldn’t expect this kind of waste from a public corporation.

Here’s what the tracking information looks like.

Once again it’s time to begin preparing KZION for the holiday season. I think a lot of you feel the same way, KZION at Christmas time is pretty special. It’s a nice break from the normal playlists and a time to hear old favorites and make new favorites.

Traditionally, Christmas music begins the day after Thanksgiving (US) and ends New Years Day. I use a graduated process to introduce Christmas music to the playlist by starting off with a 25% mix and slowly moving towards a 100% mix, two weeks before Christmas.

Also, during the two weeks prior to Christmas I open the automated request system to all members of KZION. That’s a ¹$1.97 value.

If you’re an LDS artist and have not submitted your Christmas CD please do so ASAP as I’ll be taking a break in December from adding music to KZION.

Happy holidays everyone!

1. Half of the monthly membership fee of $3.95 and dividing it by 2. [back]

All times are MST

To air November 6, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM - Somebody’s Mother with music by Sharee Jackson - A Friend Like You
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM - Potomac with music by Molly Bice - Not Too Far From Here
• Naaman’s Miracle with music by John Treasure - I Follow After Jesus will air during the Sounds of Sunday
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM - Summer Thunder with music by Beverly Suafoa - He Came For Me

To air November 13, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM - I Love You with music by Felicia Sorensen - Perfect Love
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM - You Are Special with music by Afterglow - I Am A Child Of God
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM - Palsied Man/Friends with music by Rob Abney - Hold On, The Light Will Come
• Family Prayer with music by Felicia Sorensen – A Prayer from the Heart will air during the Sounds of Sunday

To air November 20, 2005 (Thanksgiving Edition)

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM - Ten Leppers with music by Pearsons - Once There Was One
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM - The First Thanksgiving with music by Mayflower Chorus - America Bound
• The Storms Of Life with music by Katherine Nelson - Some Times He Lets It Rain will air during the Sounds of Sunday
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM - Thanksgiving with music by Heidi McCombie - Come Thou Fount of every Blessing

To air November 27, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM - A Savior with music by Gate City Singers - In A Stable
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM - Precious Gifts with music by Gate City Singers - Christmas In Your Eyes
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM - The Music of Christmas with music by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir - Hallelujah Chorus
• Joseph with music by Highland Trouveres - Bethlehem will air during the Sounds of Sunday