Finding high resolution artwork from Apple TV, iTunes etc.

My husband collects information about music, musicians, and songwriters, and one of the things he uses to find and confirm metadata is album covers. However, the default size of artwork on iTunes is quite small and low resolution. He has all sorts of workarounds he uses (e.g. view the page source, search the HTML code for JPGs, change the pixel size in the URL, etc.). It’s cumbersome at best and adds a lot of overhead in hours to his research.

Until now.

Someone on one of his forums alerted him to a very cool website from a UK developer, Ben Dodson, that extracts just the album art from iTunes (and artwork for Apple TV shows and Apple movies) and allows it be be viewed at various resolutions. It isn’t an app and only works in a browser, as far as I can tell.

For artwork from all sorts of Apple media, including iTunes, for a particular title, go to: https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/  Once there, select the type of media (1), enter the title you’re searching for (2), select the media’s country of origin (2), then click Get the artwork (4). Wait a few seconds and the artwork matching your search criteria will display. You have the options of Standard or High Resolution (it will take a few extra seconds to display the artwork at high resolution). If the album, for example, has various covers or the title has been used by various artists, then scroll down to see each.

If you want to search by the iTunes web address instead, go to: https://bendodson.com/projects/apple-music-artwork-finder/

If you want to search for artwork related to Apple TV shows or Apple movies, go to: https://bendodson.com/projects/apple-tv-movies-artwork-finder/ Once you’ve found what you want, click the resolution and artwork you want to see from the list on the right.

NOTE: Ben Dodson has made this website free but there are some caveats, so read those on each of the web pages above. The main one is that this ONLY works with media products available from Apple, and not any other source.

 

Office 2021 standalone version announced

For those not on an Office 365 subscription who wish to stay with a standalone version, Microsoft has just announced that there will be an Office 2021 available to purchase.

Details: https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-announces-the-next-subscription-less-versions-1846303690

[Link last checked February 2021]

Word: Find a special character written as text

When you want to find a special character, such as a paragraph mark, in Microsoft Word, you have to use a special character (in this case, ^p to search for all paragraph marks). And for most situations this works as you’d expect.

But if you’ve written ^p as text in a document, as I did for a document I’m writing on Word’s find and replace functions, where I need to type the characters used to find the special character, then you can’t search for that text string by typing ^p as the search term. Instead of finding what you wrote, you get results that list ALL paragraph marks in the document, and nothing matching what you wrote.

I tried all sorts of things with wildcards, escape characters etc. before asking a specialist editors’ group on Facebook, where one of the members pointed me in the right direction—you have to add another caret before the ^p, so ^^p.

Easy when you know how!

Variations in internet speed

A Facebook friend posted some speed checks that compared what he was getting via the NBN and via his 5G-enabled phone in Perth, which has some 5G coverage. The numbers were dramatically different.

But then I did some checking of my own and found that the type of connection, type of device, distance from the modem etc. all have a part to play in what speed you’re actually getting. Here were my results from this morning (all were done using speedtest.net or the Speedtest app on my Android phone):

• Windows 10 PC, wired via Cat 5 cable to network hub to modem to NBN micronode (my plan is with iinet and is for 100 mbps down / 40 up): 100.48 up / 37.8 down (and it’s been as steady as a rock since we had the NBN installed, even increasing from a baseline of about 85 mbps down when we first got it to just over 100 now—we’re getting exactly what we pay for)
• Oppo 5G-enabled mobile phone, using Wifi to the same setup above, and in the same room as the modem (i.e. within 2 metres of the Wifi signal): 84.9 / 37.8
• Same phone, using Wifi, but in the kitchen (2 to 3 rooms away from the modem, brick walls): 52 / 36
• Same phone, using Wifi, but in the furthest bedroom (3 to 4 rooms away from the modem, brick walls): 31.5 / 35.1
• Same phone as above, but with Wifi turned off and using Telstra’s mobile coverage, WITH a Telstra-licensed cell booster device inside the house as the signal is so bad without it, I can’t make or take calls: 9.05 / 0.21 (this was the worst of all)
• Same phone, with Wifi turned off, using Telstra’s mobile coverage, and inside a shop in Bunbury, Western Australia (NOT a 5G coverage areas as yet): 124 / 22.4