New Version This Week


Submitted by groovewal on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 21:00

Okay, there hasn't been a new version in awhile, one should be out later this week that will have a batch of new improvements. Stay tuned.

Importing Your Old Favorites Into 0.206


Submitted by groovewal on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 14:56

Okay, so, your favorites disappeared from the Favorites list. No problem, here's some steps to import them:

0. Hit 'F5' to save your current playlist if you don't want to lose it.
1. From the 'File' menu, click 'Open'.
2. Hopefully that should display a directory something like '..\GrooveWalrus\playlists'. Navigate up a directory, so that the GrooveWalrus directory is displayed.
3. You should see a 'faves.xspf', select that and click the 'Open' button.
4. Your favorites are now on your playlist, select the first one and scroll down and hit the Shift key and click the last one to select them all.
5. Right-click on one of the selected songs and select 'Add to Favorites' from the menu.

Update: I borked something, if you don't have a Last.fm account you'll need to do these steps first (or wait till the next version):

1. Right-click and download this file.
2. Copy that file to your c:\program files\GrooveWalrus\main_controls\ directory, overwriting what's there.
3. Exit and restart GrooveWalrus.
4. Do the steps above.

GrooveWalrus 0.206 Released


Submitted by groovewal on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 14:02

Okay, cache problem from 0.205 has been fixed, songs should play again. There seems to be a period from about 11:00am EST to about 4:00pm EST when Grooveshark.com is sluggish and therefore GrooveWalrus is even more sluggish. You can try loading the Flash plug-in from the Plug-ins menu to see if that helps. Other than that there's not a whole lot I can do right now, the caching that has been added should help somewhat if you replay your playlist (and keep it under 30 songs).

- fixed: fixed objects error in file cache, changed date checking to created date from modified
- fixed: added double buffering to get rid of track progress flickering
- added: ratings button drop-down button added, lets you rate songs on a scale from 1-4
- added: rating a song at the highest rating also 'loves' that song at your last.fm account
- added: modified song collection to allow adding single files (an option has been created to automatically add new (downloaded) songs to the song collection).
- added: autosave option to autosave new songs to download folder now on options tab > main tab
- fixed: sysloc, clipboard link sharing should work again (your recipient needs GrooveWalrus too, installed via setup.exe)
- changed: removed most edit operations from Favorites list
- fixed: fixed the error when clicking Delete from the Edit menu
- changed: got rid of favorites list replaced with list that shows songs that you've rated at the highest rank
- added: added column sorting the Favorites list

Cache Problem 0.205


Submitted by groovewal on Thu, 02/11/2010 - 14:02

Okay, so when you hit 31 songs cached, songs stop playing. Quick fix is to delete some files in your cache directory:
On Vista/7:
C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\GrooveWalrus
There should be a bunch of files like "7273ae54ab6b391a7e32bb3...", delete a bunch of them and you should be good to go again. Fixes coming out soon.

GrooveWalrus 0.205 Released


Submitted by groovewal on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 13:28

A new version is out, it's better than the last one, so grab it.

- added: downloaded files are now cached in your temp directory, makes for less errors and less downloading; it's set to store 30 files
- added: playback status text now has progress bar like functionality, playback progress is displayed along with 'buffering' status if something is being downloaded
- removed: 'Clipboard Share Link' removed from playlist right-click menu, will re-add when there's time to fix it
- added: Ctrl-9 clears all the album values from the playlist (handy if you want the album art to, hopefully, be corrected from either incorrect local or Grooveshark album names)
- fixed: only the delete key should delete items from the playlist now

Ubuntu Linux, Wine, And GrooveWalrus Guide


Submitted by groovewal on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 19:55

Right now, the 'best' way to run GrooveWalrus using everyone's Linux distribution of choice is to use Wine. It's actually easy to setup, here are the steps:

1. Open the 'System' menu and select 'Synaptic Package Manager' from the 'Administration' sub-menu.
2. Enter your admin password at the prompt.
3. Enter 'wine' in the 'Quick Search' text field on the 'Synaptic Package Manager' form.
4. You want to install 'Wine 1.2' (or later version), so right-click that and 'Mark for installation' and apply the changes to install it.
5. After Wine has installed, download the setup.exe for GrooveWalrus.
6. Right-click on the setup.exe and select 'Open with Wine Windows Program Loader'
7. After the install completes, use the GrooveWalrus shortcut to run.

GrooveWalrus 0.204 Released


Submitted by groovewal on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 05:08

Okay, new version is out, some things are fixed-up and it should be better for everyone. Using a new GrooveShark api (thanks Tim!), which makes things work again. You might experience some freezing/delaying while loading/buffering a GrooveShark song, this will be changed/worked on for the next edition. If you want to import your local songs into the Song Collection, doing that, should be easier now (I'm not sure if anyone uses this, one 'gotcha' is that the mp3 file name should (read: must) include both artist and song name for things to work out reasonably).

- fixed: main menubar now dispalys translations
- added: more menu options in the Playback, Plug-ins, and Tools menus
- changed: F11 now mutes music
- fixed: file saving actually saves files to the correct location now
- changed: managing your local song collection is now handled by the Song Collection Locations form, it's much better and should be a little more self-explanatory (still doesn't monitor those locations and automatically add files, maybe someday)
- added: add a Last.fm Scrobbling menu-option (tools menu) allows you to toggle scrobbling on and off
- changed: edit-menu menu-item shortcut-key-handling to not interfere with text controls
- added: plug-in loader now loads plug-ins to the Plug-ins menu of the main menubar
- changed: twitter default text changed to something less ridiculous
- added: new grooveshark api is now used that makes everything all better, thanks Tim!
- fixed: added update path creation, so updater might have a chance at working for 0.205

Streaming Broken, Use Flash


Submitted by groovewal on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 06:21

Okay, Grooveshark updated their stuff again (yesterday) and again (today) so streaming is busted. Use the Flash version or the Flash plug-in until things get figured out. The new version I've been working on fixes a bunch of stuff I broke in the previous versions (and re-jiggers some old stuff to make things better). Stay tuned.

Oops! Quick-Launch Icon Problem


Submitted by groovewal on Fri, 01/22/2010 - 21:25

If you used the Setup.exe version of 0.203, you might notice that the quick-launch icon doesn't work. To fix it:
- right-click on the quick-launch icon
- select 'Properties' from the menu
- select the 'Shortcut' tab
- copy what's in the 'Target' field and paste it into the 'Start in' field
- remove the '\gw.exe' part from what you pasted in the 'Start in ' field, eg. it should look something like "C:\Program Files\GrooveWalrus"
- press the 'Apply' button, then the 'Okay' button