April, 2006

musings — 5 Comments
20
Apr 06

My iPod is Full

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.

musings — No Comments
19
Apr 06

Neato Short Film

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.

musings — No Comments
19
Apr 06

Muscle Cars are Back

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.

outside — 1 Comment
13
Apr 06

AT&T is Spying on You

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (commonly known as EFF) recently filed suit against AT&T alleging that the phone company has been helping the NSA to spy on their customers. The EFF claims to have seen some secret documents with proof. The case has just begun but shocking details have already been revealed. An engineer who used to work for AT&T has come forward to support the EFF’s lawsuit and has released a statement. If it turns out to be true, the ramifications are huge. It claims AT&T gave the NSA full access to all of the data on their network as well as the data on other networks that passed through their network, and the NSA installed equipment to monitor that data. With a network provider as big as AT&T, that would probably end up being maybe 1/3 or more of all US Internet traffic. Wow!

outside — No Comments
5
Apr 06

Smithsonian Networks


The Smithsonian Institue is teaming up with Showtime Networks to form Smithsonian Networks. The joint venture has the aim of developing television programming for a new cable channel called Smithsonian on Demand. At first thought that sounds pretty cool as they may produce some quality documentaries using the large archives of material contained in the Smithsonian, but a lot of people don’t see it that way. A part of the deal is the restriction of access to content in the public archives, and that would essentially kill the production of many documentaries before it ever begins. The Smithsonian claims they need the money badly and would not be able to continue on without more cash flowing in. I can see the reasoning for both sides of the argument, but it’s still a sad turn of events.

toys — 18 Comments
4
Apr 06

Mac mini media center

I had long been planning to buy a Mac mini to hook up to my TV and stereo replacing the DVD player and adding media center functionality, and I finally did just that. Last night I connected the mini’s DVI output to my plasma’s HDMI input and the digital audio output to my AV receiver. The short version of the story is that it pretty much just worked but with a few unresolved issues and some minor hiccups along the way.
As you can see in this poor picture of the Mac mini in my stereo cabinet along with the HD cable/DVR box, the mini is quite small. The 5 year old DVD player it is replacing filled the entire bottom shelf area. I hooked it up to the tv, the stereo, power, and an extra keyboard and mouse and, with much excitement, flipped the whole setup on! The Mac automatically configured it’s video output based on some information passed to it by the TV via the digital HDMI/DVI connection and I was greeted with the sight of a white apple logo on a grey background signaling the bootup process for Mac OS X. It continued to boot up into the initial setup. Here’s the language selection screen. It was actually a bit anti-climactic since I’ve seen a screen like this when setting up several previous Macs. It was just like any other, other than being on my TV.


I went through the set up process and noticed the first issue when the familiar Mac desktop came up. The edges of the desktop were chopped off! About half of the menu bar at the top, half of the dock at the bottom, and some from each side was missing. Here you can see an example. I have Safari open to a baby name website looking for a name for the new addition to the network. We ended up choosing ‘Lucy’.

After some research I realized it’s an issue common to pretty much all ‘computer hooked to a TV’ setups and it’s somewhat surprising that it hasn’t actually be resolved by these software developers by now. I guess it’s complicated because every model of TV is a little different. It’s called ‘overscan‘. I’ve tried several things, including the DisplayConfigX software, to potentially fix it but nothing has worked in my case. If you know how to get it working with my Panasonic 42″ plasma let me know!

UPDATE: I figured out the overscan problem and posted the solution.

Continue reading →

musings — No Comments
3
Apr 06

Spiral Staircase Delivery


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!

musings — No Comments
3
Apr 06

Store Receipt By Email


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!