iPod (cont'd)

After my pseudo anti-Apple post the other day, I thought I'd update you on my experiences after a couple days of usage.

I finally have my music collection fully imported into iTunes and everything seems to be smooth sailing

If any of you do happen to get an iPod in the future, just remember to:

1) Convert your non-compatible music using something like EZ CD-DA Extractor instead of iTunes
2) Make sure you remove all playlist files from your library before importing
3) Import in small-ish batches to make sure that all folders get imported
4) If you have your music in folders, you can drag a folder into the iTunes playlist section and it will automatically create a playlist from that folder

and you'll have a much smoother transition than I did.

A few things that I've found really quite nice about the iPod
1) If you pull out the headphones, the iPod automatically pauses. So simple but yet a nice touch
2) The ability to rate the song on the iPod (never could do that w/ Archos)
3) You can flag a song to be excluded from Shuffling. That way all of those audio books and comedy tracks won't pop up when you decide to shuffle your music collection. That used to drive me nuts on the Archos.
4) Automatically downloading podcasts to the player. I never used podcasts before because it wasn't a big deal to have them automatically transferred to my computer. But now that they automatically get transferred to the player, I have something to listen to in the car in the morning when the current news is too depressing and makes me want to move to Canada.

This is especially nice now that I don't need to use an FM transmitter or casette tape adapter.
5) Great battery life. I used to listen to the Archos for about 5-6 hours at work and it'd be dead. Now I can listen to the iPod at work all day and the battery is still not even halfway depleted.
6) iTunes is pretty good at grabbing your music's album art from the web. I tried to use that feature in Windows Media player when it came out and it was AWFUL. I'd say iTunes can find about 75% of the album art (assuming that the ID3 tags are properly populated). I've been slowly populating the rest of the album art using Amazon.com or Google Images to find the artwork.

That's about all of the random thoughts that I have at the moment...

EvilApple

I recently upgraded my mp3 player to one of the brand new 80Gb Apple iPods. I'm still very anti-iPod, however, I'm getting mp3 integration installed in my car next week and it was designed to work with...you guessed it...the iPod.

Up until this point, I've always just hated the iPod / iTunes out of principle, without ever really using either product.

Now that I've had my iPod for a couple days now, I'm starting to find lots of reasons to despise the Apple products. Unfortunately, due to the integration with my car, I'll probably keep the iPod instead of going w/ a better player from Creative or Archos, but I thought I'd post the annyances that I've come across with my new gadget.

1) When told to synch up Outlook's contact list and calendar, iTunes completely locks up. This happened each time I tried to synch for the first day. Finally I reset all of the synch settings, instructing the iPod to only synch music & movies. Sure enough...solved the freezing problem.

2) When you have a large library of files in .wma, iTunes gladly asks if you'd like it to convert your files over to iTunes compatible (AAC) files. I had a couple thousand songs that were in .wma format, so I told iTunes to go ahead and convert them. iTunes took between 1-5 minutes for EACH song that it converted. In other words, it would have taken a week to convert all of those songs.

I cancelled that conversion, and just used EZ CD-DA Extractor to convert into AACPlus V2 files and all 2000+ files were converted in just a couple hours. (NOTE: These AACPlusV2 files are great...very small files compared to .wma and even smaller compared to .mp3)

3) If you have any .wpl or .m3u playlist files in your music library, iTunes will create duplicate copies of any songs on the playlist when importing into your library. After clearing out the iPod and starting my library import from scratch, I found that a ton of my songs had been imported twice. A quick Google search on the problem revealed this gem. Instead of importing the playlist files as a playlist, it simply imports all of the songs on the playlist...even if it already imported those files. So I again deleted everything out of my iTunes library and removed all .m3u and .wpl files from my mp3 directories.

4) Even though I have appx 10,000 songs in my "Full Albums" directory on my computer and I told iTunes to add this entire directory to my iTunes library, I only ended up with about 8,000 songs in my iTunes library. After I realized the a good chunk of these were duplicates, iTunes really only imported about half of the folder that I wanted to import.

I have now blanked out my library and the iPod again. I'm going to have to go through and import chunks of albums at a time instead of importing the entire directory. Hopefully I can figure out why it selectively imports some but not others (iTunes didn't import my VH - Live Stages cd...hmmmm)

Stay tuned for more rants as I complete my conversion over to the iPod dark side...

Been a while

It's been a while since I've been on here, but wanted to post a couple pictures from the Pi Kappa Phi 10-year reunion from a couple weeks ago. The Miami chapter was formed in 1996 so alumni from the founding through the present all converged on Oxford for a very nice banquet celebrating the occasion.

PiKapp 10-year

Sep 16, 2006 - 4 Photos

Thanks to Lugi and Bally for the pix.

Get it while you you can

The Microsoft Windows Media DRM has been broken and there is a simple application out there to remove the DRM protection from your protected WMA files.

I'm not going to link to it to avoid violating the DMCA, but just do a Google search for "FairUse4WM" and I'm sure you can score a copy.

I'm sure it won't be long before Microsoft releases a "critical" update that patches the DRM system to prevent this software from working, so if you're interested, un-protect your music while you still can.

Schoolyard justice

The days of resolving school disputes in the principal's office are long gone. Now if you have a problem at school, just sue the other person and take them to court

The article didn't mention if the lawsuit was drafted in crayon or glitter ink...

5.1 THX on the cheap

I've been shopping around for a new 5.1 channel surround setup for my apt since my old college setup finally died. After shopping around for home theater in a box, component, & bookshelf systems I finally decided to just go the cheap route and get myself a nice pair of computer speakers to use with my home theater. I finally settled on the Logitech Z-5450s.

The THX certification and wireless rear channels sealed the deal for me (and the fact that it cost 1/4 of what I would have spent on a component system didn't hurt).

So check it out...and note the lack of speaker wire running out of the rears (there is a power cable since each rear has its own amp).

Click on the picture for the full album:

2006_08_15 THX Speakers

Aug 15, 2006 - 7 Photos

H20 Power

Charge your cell phone with water.

Next I want my car to be re-fueled while it rains...

Support Israel

I received an email from the JCF of Cleveland soliciting donations to a fund that will move children away from the Northern regions of Israel to "youth villages" in central Israel, out of reach from Hezbollah's missiles. I donated to the campaign and decided to post here in case anyone else would like to contribute.

For more details, click here

Dropping the Bomb

Add the EuroCom F-Bomb computer to the list of poorly named products. Apparently there's a marketing director somewhere in Europe who's about to lose their job (although they have suceeded in generating a good amount of internet buzz...)

AOL = Evil; Reuters = Stupid

Headline: AOL may offer free high-speed Internet != Story

You've got to love a headline that has absolutely nothing to do with the story:
"Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit may offer its full menu of services, including e-mail, free of charge to anyone with a high-speed Internet connection, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter."

At least AOL may finally stop charging gullible people for things that they already give away for free on their website

New RAZR a stretched version of the old RAZR?

This site has some photos of the new Moto Canary (RAZR 2). Is it just me or is this think waaaay too tall/long?

Car Similarities

Someone recently posted a thread to one of my Jaguar forums commenting on the similarities between the tail lights of the Jaguar XJ and the Ford Taurus.

I decided to take a look at the rear-ends of both of these cars (made very easy by the rear-view photos provided by Autobytel.com):

 


While the general shape is the same, I don't think the tail lights are all that similar.

While I was doing this comparison, I decided to do a couple other comparisons.

The most egregious copying of the Jaguar styling, in my opinion, is the Kia Amanti.

See the following side-by-side comparison of the Jaguar S-Type and the 2006 Kia:





While I'm on the topic of Korean car manufacturer's blatantly stealing designs from other car companies, here is one more (Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata):


 


Lastly, I decided to compare the profile views of my current car (the Jaguar X-Type) and my old car (the Ford Contour):


 


You can definately tell that both cars share the Ford Mondeo platform...but the Jag is so much more fun to drive :-)

Note: I appologize for the tiny pictures...for some reason Picasa is not correctly uploading the full-sized images.

One Expensive Picture

I'm now the proud owner of the following digital image, courtesy of Cleveland's Operation Safe Streets (aka Operation Oh-Sh*t-we're-broke-how-can-we-make-some-money?).

I figure as long as I'm paying $100 for this picture, I might as well get some use out of it.

So...In case you were wondering what my car looks like as I drive back from my lunch break someone drives it down the street, here you go:

 

(Note the proper use of the directional during lane changes)

And in case any of you were wondering...I was doing 38 on a 5-lane (2 each direction with turn lane) road. You would think that the road would be 35 mph...but apparently I was wrong. 

City Vision

The final class in the CSU MBA program is a class on contemporary business strategy. The final project for this class has traditionally been to create a strategy for a particular business. However, since my professor is from Washington state and has a severe disdain for the City of Cleveland, my class was tasked with creating a strategy for the City of Cleveland.

My group was supposed to be professional consultants presenting a strategy to the City so we created a website on which to distribute our strategy. It really isn't a very good paper...however, since it has consumed most of my time for the last month, I figured I'd post the link to my group (City Vision) website.

Increase the value of the paper hanging on the wall

Congrats to Miami U's Richard T Farmer School of Business for ranking in the top 20 undergrad b-schools in the nation according to Business Week magazine.

I'm all for things that will make my undergrad degree more valuable. Come on Miami, how about moving into the top 10 next year, ok?

Now I just need CSU's MBA program to receive some sort of accolade besides being the least-expensive MBA program in the state of Ohio.

Another odd accident scene

Ever since I started commuting across town due to my new job, I've seen quite a few impressive accidents. You may remember this one from a while back. This morning I passed another one.




It's a little bit tough to tell...but that's a minivan, completely flipped upside down on I-90 E.

Too bad they don't have video of the car actually flipping over...I'm curious how it's physically possible for a vehicle to end up like that.

You've got to be kidding me!

Another example of Conservatives Gone Wild.

(Link will be valid for non-WSJ subscribers for 7-days, then it will require a login and password)

Humorous results of another frivolous lawsuit

A while back, Apple got sued by someone who claimed that their iPod caused hearing loss due to the loud music being piped into their ears through the iPod.

This was pretty rediculous...to imply that it's Apple's fault that the user is dumb enough to blast loud music. However, Apple today announced a software update for their iPods to allow parents to lock in a
maximum volume so that their stupid children don't deafen themselves by turning up their Kelly Clarkson too loudly.

Will we now see this change occuring in other "dangerous" products?

Cars will have lockable maximum speeds so that that kids can't take turns too fast.

TVs will have a timer on the power button so that kids can't stay up too late watching the Amazing Race and miss school.

Computers will have locks so that kids can't surf...oh wait...that already exists...

A Client in the News

One of Vizion Solution's clients made the news yesterday.

TCP makes compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)...those spring shaped lightbulbs.

As if I needed another reason to dislike "Amazing Race"...

As long as people continue to watch awful reality shows like Amazing Race, well written and acted television shows will continue to be yanked off the air.