Category: musings

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!

I was at the Apple store in San Francisco today buying a digital audio cable for my new Mac mini I’m going to hook up to my TV (more on that later!) and I picked up a couple of other things as well. At the checkout counter I was asked if I was purchasing by credit card. The San Francisco Apple store has had an extra credit-card only checkout person just about every time I’ve been there and that was the case this time as well. The difference this time was that I was also asked if I was willing to accept a receipt by email and I said I was. The whole checkout process was then done wirelessly with a hand-held device sporting a barcode scanner, credit card reader, and a lcd touchscreen. After scanning in my items and sliding my credit card the device grabbed my email address from their database and I was told I should expect the receipt by email in about an hour. I wasn’t asked for a signature. When I got back to my office and checked my email I found the email from sanfranisco@apple.com with a PDF attachment of my receipt. Neat!

I spent about 3 hours of my Sunday afternoon in the emergency room getting a staple put in my head to close up a small cut I got when a 40 oz beer bottle smacked me. The bottle was thrown over our fence from the third-floor rear balcony of the apartment building next door. We didn’t see who threw it so the police can’t do anything. You can see the staple in the little picture. There’s more details on the Vidalicious.com coverage. We were having a great time for the few hours before the bottle attacked me so the day ended up ok overall. Not my favorite Sunday ever, but not the worst either.

I’ve migrated my website from my tired old blosxom setup to this shiny new wordpress setup with a theme I didn’t design. This is the first time I’ve had a website I didn’t design and I think I’m ok with it. I’m not really a designer anyway. Please don’t make fun of me!

I’m going with this minimal theme (for now) because I’m hoping to let my super cool content be the design. You know, some sort of new age hippy “the content is the design” mentality. I guess that means my content AND my design will be sucky now. Heh.

I have a new photo gallery up with a couple of albums of photos taken while I was in India a few weeks ago. The first album is the India Highlights album with 69 of my favorite pictures from the trip. The second India Trip album has all 297 pictures and is well worth the time in my opinion! I’ve added captions to almost of the pictures so you can usually tell where we were when the picture was taken… Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Udupi, or Gokarna.

I arrived home safely after nearly 40 hours of continuous travel/waiting around. It’s very nice to be home but I’m still feeling a bit groggy and disoriented a few days later. I’ve begun the process of going through my pictures and will put some up soon. There’s some nice ones in the bunch, I think! I’m back to work and trudging through my backlog. That’s always a nice thing to come back to after a vacation.