Author: dallas

As you may know, my iPod is full. Since first reporting that I have added another 5 or 6 albums to my library (I went on a CDBaby shopping spree) and have had to once again reconsider my strategy. I now have a system that requires some manual effort but I think may work for me for awhile.

Here’s the gist:

1. The iPod no longer syncs with all playlists, but instead syncs to a few chosen playlists that are handy to have around for parties and for general-purpose listening as well as a special ‘iPod’ smart playlist.

2. The iPod smart playlist is defined as so:

That first ‘3-5 Stars’ playlist is another smart playlist I’ll explain later. The ‘Not on iPod’ playlist is a regular playlist and lets me selectively exclude albums and songs. The ‘MacBreak’ one is a one-off for some video podcasts I have but don’t watch. I might just stop downloading them altogether… hmm…

3. The ‘3-5 Stars’ playlist is defined as so:

It also includes tracks not yet rated so I’m not forced to rate every new album I add before it will be copied to the iPod.

4. I have to use a smart playlist including another smart playlist so I can combine some ‘and’ and ‘or’ logic (or ‘Any’ and ‘All’ in iTunes-speak).

5. The ‘Not in iPod’ playlist is my stoke of genius that allows me to remove albums I never listen to on the iPod without setting their ratings artificially low. I have some music I may want to hear once a year in my iTunes but never on my iPod. Genius!

My 40GB 3rd generation iPod has been on the verge of full for awhile but now it’s solidly in ‘full-land’. I added pretty high quality cover art to a bunch of my albums the other day using Corripio and that added almost 1GB to my iTunes library. I have the iPod set to sync automatically (managing it manually is not an option) and to skip unchecked songs so I had just been unchecking albums I rarely or never listen to up to now. I’m pretty much out of the obvious choices now, though. I don’t actually listen to the majority of my digital music library on a regular basis but I love the idea that I could.

So now I’m at the point of trying to figure out how to choose the 37GB or so (that’s how much music actually fits on a 40GB iPod) of my music that covers everything I’m most likely to want to listen to at any random moment. I think when I buy a new iPod I’ll probably go for a slimmer model with a smaller drive so for the next few revisions this size drive is likely to be the largest I’ll have.

I started by created a new smart playlist that was everything rated 3 stars or higher, or not rated at all (ie, no 1 or 2 star tracks) and I thought I was in luck when that turned out to be just over 37GB but for some reason it was still too big. I ended up setting a few Orbital albums that I seem to never want to hear (I guess I heard them too much in college) to 2 stars so they would not be included. That worked, but now it bugs me that the ratings are not really ‘accurate’. A little crazy, I know. I could have just unchecked them (and I may) but then they would never get played at all since I’m very unlikely to seek them out. I feel like I should be able to come up with a smarter way.

I already have several ‘self-modifying’ smart playlists (basically, a track will be taken off of the playlist when it’s played and then randomly show up again later) that I listen to when I don’t feel like picking what to listen to so I might be able to use one or more of those as a basis. I would also, of course, always want to have my most recent library additions included. That is, unless I somehow mark it so it won’t be included. I want to try to make sure I’m never missing a song I want to listen to but also somehow try to make sure my iPod playlist never goes over 37 or so GB, as well. Maybe some sort of system based on play count combined with date added to the library so tracks I find myself never listening to eventually go stale and disappear? Unfortunately I do occasionally lose an album and forget to listen to it and it’d be a shame to have those end up gone forever. It’s all so complicated!

So, at this point the iPod is full and is missing some Orbital that I don’t really ever choose to listen to along with other albums I just keep around to be able to say I have (or something). The manual management of the whole thing is driving me crazy.

UPDATE: I came up with a pretty good full iPod strategy. You might like it, too.

My friend Mark Tapio Kines is a filmmaker and he has made a short film for a film contest. It’s a thoughtful and inspiring film and you should go see it. You should also vote for it so he can win the contest. You must register with the website to vote (oddly I already had a login I don’t remember making!) and after you register it doesn’t take you to the correct spot to vote. After registering just come back and click on the short film link again and then vote. Also watch some of the other short films entered into the contest but don’t vote on them.

While biking home yesterday I went past a brand-new Dodge Charger sitting outside of someone’s house and I had to take a second look. It’s a nice looking car and does a pretty good job updating the classic Charger muscle car look. This new version shares some design elements with the Dodge HEMIs that have been around for a couple of years. The release of another American-style big engine, gas hungry, power car shows that Dodge is not ready to throw in the towel against the forces of rising fuel prices. It seems pretty ludicrous to me that anyone would buy these things when it costs about $54 to fill one up with gas! I did a little research and they actually get better gas mileage than I expected, though.

I saw this across the street from my house a week or so ago. I had never really thought about how spiral staircases get from wherever they make them to wherever people have them installed, but now I know. And so do you!