pres.umptuo.us

I was strongly opposed to using iTunes at first because I didn’t like the way it managed my music, as back then I just threw all of my mp3s into a folder and double clicked a song I wanted to listen to. I rarely used playlists, and relied on the filename to contain all of the pertinent information for a track.

Things changed when I got my iPod, and I realized that I would have to switch to take full advantage of everything the iPod offered. I’ve never gone back since, and can’t even imagine how I lived without it.

What follows are the methods I use to organize and sort my music with iTunes, and perhaps this article will contain some tips that others can find useful.

I’ve always been very big on singles. Full albums are great, but it’s rare that I’ll find an album where I want to listen to all the tracks on it. My first problem arose while looking for a way to distinguish the singles from my albums. The very easy solution came by just adding the comment “Single” to those tracks, and then creating a smart playlist with all my singles. Problem done and solved, and now I can listen to to those songs without coming across album tracks that I’m not familiar with.

But when I do want to listen to my full albums, the quickest way is just to choose “Browse”, and then “Albums” on my playlists. To stop incomplete albums from being listed here, the album tag is completely stripped from songs that are not with their albums. A minor drawback is that I’m now missing this info on a good 60% of my tracks, but I really didn’t see any other way of doing this besides creating a playlist for every single album.

Now, here’s something neat that I’m rather fond of. I get a lot of music recommendations from friends, and I figured it’d be fun to keep track of who gave me what. When I get a rec from a friend, I’ll add their initials to the comment field of the song. This allows me to create a smart playlist with all the songs they ever recommended, and it’s rather interesting to see their different musical tastes. Great for nostalgia with ex-girlfriends too, I’d imagine.

My music collection is massive, totalling over 14 gigs, and I wanted a way to listen to my newest songs as well as songs that I just really felt like listening to. The natural way is to create a smart playlist with the x-newest tracks (25, 50, 100, your choice depending on how often you get new music), however I like digging through and throwing some old classics in from time to time as well. The other problem is when there’s a song I really like and don’t want to see it taken off the playlist because it’s been on too long. Thus, I created a “Current Favorites” playlist for these songs. This playlist is pretty much the only one I listen to, certainly a drawback because I can burn myself out on some of the songs quite quickly, but it’s a good way to find out which songs are the really good ones.

You’ll notice that I name my playlists with some odd characters in front. These are used to sort and group my playlists, because they don’t show up on the iPod, and now my genres are grouped together, friends are grouped together, and the Current Favorites playlist is always listed as the first one. A clever hack.

Last is my ratings scale. Songs with a rating from 3-5 are fairly common and should be self-explanatory. 2 stars means it’s fairly craptacular and forgettable, and if the time comes I might as well toss it from my collection. 1’s I’m not even sure how I got them in the first place, but more importantly they’re used if I notice something wrong with the track, ie incorrect song title or scratches heard, and they’re not “flagged” and I know to take care of them.

I believe that’s about it. If anyone’s got any tips or methods they use I’d love to hear them.

Sony Video Chief Admits Strategic Mistakes. What? You mean it was a bad idea to create new digital formats so you could own all of the rights yourselves? I never would have thought.

Link to my previous Sony rant.

Gene Kelly’s got new moves in the new Volkswagen Golf GTI commercial. Amazing the way they did this, it’s extremely well done. Here’s a quick write-up on how it was achieved. From Lawrence.

I like how I get an e-mail from Ghirardelli that says this:

Eric, Show how much you really care by surprising your sweetheart with Ghirardelli Chocolate. Choose any size of our Masterpiece Boxed Chocolates and receive (( 10% off* your purchase. ))

And I just say, “Hah, yeah right” and hit delete immediately.

PostSecret. This entry sums up what the site is all about.

Flickr coincidence. Someone takes a photo of someone taking a photo, and six weeks later the person in the photo contacts the original photographer. Amazing.

The opening text crawl for Star Wars: Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith. My thoughts are best summed up by the comment made over on The Movie Blog: War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!

I’m gonna go ahead and jack Ken’s link to this Postal Service video that he posted over on his Displaced Designer blog. It’s a 40-minute long appearance by the Postal Service on KCRW. Very cool to see them do the stuff live, and watch as Ben runs back and forth between the drums and his guitar.

Calvin & Hobbes snowmen brought to life. Man, I’ve always wanted to do this. Damn you So Cal and your tropical weather.

I ate Korean BBQ at Manna in K-Town this Friday with a good sized posse from Eagle Rock. $14.99 for all you can eat, although their meat choices are a bit slim. Three different cuts of beef and one cut of pork that resembled a giant slab of bacon. No chicken, unfortunately. It’s a very young crowd that goes there, and a lot of fun if you go with a lot of people.

Our fun for the night came when we noticed a sign saying we’d be charged for any leftovers. We started freaking out about what to do, and tried hiding the beef underneath our salads and kimchi and even thought of tossing it into the nearby bushes (the restaurant is outdoors). I finally got suckered into stuffing a napkin full of beef in my pocket and smuggling it into the bathroom for disposal. Mission accomplished, and when I came back out, the check was already calculated and all our beef-hiding efforts were unnecessary.

On my way back from work Friday and the whole night thereafter, I noticed my car was pulling to the right and wasn’t quite handling like I was used to. The dead giveaway though was how my car scraped even harder on the bump on my driveway than usual. Sure enough, I check it Saturday morning and the rear right tire is totally flat.

We jack the car up, take the tire off, and remove an extra-long screw that got embeddd in the rubber. Luckily it was almost dead center in the tread, so we used one of those little tire repair kits, pump it back up with air, and good as new. Lucky I didn’t have to go out and get a new tire.

More pics of Batman Begins have surfaced. Still not too happy with the suit though; the shape of the mouth on the mask just looks wrong, like it’s too small and narrow. Notice that the cowl and the suit are indeed separate pieces, so the head can turn side to side. Still got my hopes up for this one.

Music video for Postal Service’s “We Will Become Silhouettes”. As mentioned in a previous post, this is directed by Jared Hess, director of Napoleon Dynamite. I dig the kitschy 70’s feeling.

I revisited my old stomping grounds today to see (hear?) Aaron McGruder speak at UCI as part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. festivities. I saw him speak at UCI a couple of years ago, although this time the crowd was much larger and a lot more organized. Crystal Cove auditorium was nearly filled to capacity, while there couldn’t have been more than 30 people when I last saw him. Good Bush-bashing and complaints made about the news media were done all around. I especially dug his comparison of the Democratic party to Apple.

(Paraphrased) I see the Democratic party a lot like the Macintosh. It’s artsy and creative. It’s better? I don’t see why everyone isn’t using it. And Barack Obama is a lot like their iPod. Popular, but not enough to win everyone over.

Indie 103 has been playing a very cool mash-up of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall”. I’m not usually a fan of remixes, but this one is really well done. I managed to snag a copy online, but it looks like the link I got it from has exceeded its bandwidth limit. If you’re nice enough I’m willing enough to pass the mp3 out, or do a search for yourself. According to MusicBrainz, it is called “Boulevard of Broken Songs” and done by Party Ben.

I’ve become very big on music sharing. Not the whole p2p Napster/Kazaa thing, but on sharing good music with friends and getting recommendations for new music to listen to. I even add the initials of the person who recommended the song to me in the comments field of my mp3s, allowing me to create a smart playlist of a particular person’s tastes in music.

I never did get around to discussing how I organize my mp3s and my strong penchant for using a taxonomy to sort them. However, that I’ll save for another entry. My original point is that I’d love to find a way to setup a repository of music, where I can throw up the latest stuff I’ve been listening to and would love for everyone else to listen to and see what they thought, and others can similarly share their music.

Maybe I’ll run across something or figure a system out.

Last note. I need to write more. Which I’m doing now. So expect more lengthy entries, unless I get lazy again, which isn’t entirely unlikely.

I forgot to mention that I wasn’t too fond of the music used in In Good Company. Yeah, they used Iron & Wine and the Shins, but when I first heard the Shins playing I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck it was doing in the movie. It felt out of place with the tone of the rest of the movie, and good music in movies isn’t heard when it doesn’t want to be heard, but stands out when it helps emphasize a scene.

Sideways did a fine job using subtle Jazz music.

I Stole Brad. I know far too many girls who would sport this.

I went to the movies yesterday and caught a double feature of In Good Company and Sideways, both very enjoyable films with a good mix of drama and humor.

Company reads like a typical chick flick, starring Topher Grace of That 70’s Show and Scarlett Johansson, but the story focuses more on Grace’s character becoming the boss of Dennis Quaid’s character and the parallels that run through their lives, with Scarlett playing the daughter that falls in love with Grace. It sounds cheesy, yes, but they managed to pull it off in a movie that never felt sappy. Recommended.

Everyone must have heard of Sideways by now, which managed to pick up the Golden Globe last night for best comedy / musical. I’ve been asked if I felt it deserved the award, but as anyone should know, I’m completely biased towards Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but not surprised it didn’t win considering Sideways is the type of movie that they love to give awards to.

My first impression of Sideways was along the lines of a what a typical indie film would be — heavy on the dialogue and story, with subject matter relating to a middle-aged writer struggling with his manuscript and finding life completely miserable and making me feel the same in the process. It was everything I just described, but no miserable feeling at all. Paul Giamatti did a great job with his character, and the subject matter of wine tasting is brought on the audience in a way that everyone can understand. Recommended over In Good Company, although both were excellent films.

Bill Gates Strikes a Pose for Teen Beat Photospread, 1983. Drool.

woods K7: http://www.mrkaniff00.com/my%20car.jpg
woods K7: dude nathan looks like a foriegn exchange student wearing those clothes
valloq: lol!
valloq: and the bag
woods K7: ya
valloq: and his little folder
valloq: lol!

Something that was posted over at Kottke.org a ways back, but I never came up with a good answer. Well I kinda sorta have one now, but I think the main motivation for posting this is just to see what other people come up with, so it’s highly encouraged for everyone who reads this to either leave a comment, or blog about it yourself.

Taken verbatim from Kottke.org:

To start off each year, a question is asked of the Edge membership. This year’s question is: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”

I believe, but cannot prove, that there is someone out there for everyone. Except for you mean people. And the ugly ones too, can’t guarantee that for you.

C’mon, did you really think I would leave this entry on a sappy note? You are not knowing the Eric.

The Onion couldn’t come up with a better story.