DL

October 10, 2007

Another iPod annoyance explained and a minor mea culpa

Filed under: Technology,personal — Dave @ 9:02 am

When I got my new 160gig iPod classic I was very excited. I had recently outgrown my 60gig 5th gen iPod and now I was going to have so much elbow room that I’m trying to grow more elbows.

Although it was now going to be able hold all my music, podcasts AND all the video bits that I’ve been accumulating, I didn’t want to wait for it all to sync so I only synced a few of my most listened to lists. Almost right away I discovered a problem. My smart play lists are not working. Specifically, they have stopped live updating.

Trolling around the apple support boards I find that many people profess never to use the smart play lists (SPLs). Maybe it’s because I’m a geek but I can’t imagine using my iPod without SPLs. When I listen to a list of podcasts I don’t want to hear podcasts I’ve already heard. So my podcast list requires podcasts to have a playcount==0.

I’ll listen to songs more than once, but I don’t want to hear the same list that I heard yesterday, so my music lists usually pull the songs from a least-recently-played list.

SPLs are the number one reason I stay in the iPod camp. I would gladly experiment with other MP3 players (they’re cheaper) if they would implement live updating SPLs.

So I’ve been frustrated and blaming apple, but it seems like it was my fault.

Many of my SPLs contain other SPLs. Apple has had problems in the past with nested SPLs and I thought “Now it’s back” but I found that the iPod will not update SPLs when the SPLs it contains are not also on the iPod.

Ok, I can understand that to a point. If my list A has a rule saying that, among other criteria, a song must also be in list B, and list B is not available, I can’t really figure out what list A should be. So Apple’s approach on the iPod is that list A is calculated in iTunes, where list B is available and then written to the iPod as a static list. The list will not update until the next time you connect to iTunes.

The fix to getting SPLs to update on the iPod as songs are played is to make sure that any and all included SPLs are also on the iPod. Or, in my case, my lists are nested multiple levels deep, I just sync everything again.

Problem solved.

I still blame Apple to some extent though. They could have handled this differently. They could have silently included dependent lists and hid them. Or they could have put up an error informing me that I’ve marked a list as “Live Updating” but that I’ve neglected to included dependent lists during the sync.

September 28, 2007

Workaround for iTunes podcast annoyance

Filed under: Music,Technology,personal — Dave @ 12:46 pm

When apple finally started supporting podcasting the implementation was so shoddy it felt like they were forced to support it but that they really really hated the format. Well, it’s taken apple, what, two years? and finally they’ve left it … still poorly implemented.

Of all the problems though, to me the biggest was, somehow they made podcasts downloaded from iTunes behave differently from podcasts downloaded through other mechanisms.

They created a special section in the menus for podcasts. But it didn’t trigger off any particular metadata (that was editable through iTunes) so I couldn’t take podcasts that didn’t come through iTunes and fix them up to appear there.

Ok, so podcasts downloaded from iTunes get to go into the new section and podcasts downloaded any other way just goes into the music pile. I guess that’s OK. Through smart play lists I can create my own list to hold my podcasts. They have their list and I have mine.

But wait, iTunes podcasts were showing up in my lists. As far as the smart play lists were concerned, iTunes podcasts were just like regular podcasts. Cool, I can just use one list, my smart play list to get at both iTunes and non-iTunes podcasts.

Denied! Although iTunes podcasts show up in the smart play lists, they can’t be played from there. (!?)

So if you had a smart play list that was limited to the 20 most recent podcasts and let’s say 3 of them were downloaded through iTunes, you’d see 20 tracks in iTunes and on the iPod, but when you started playing the list you’d see the counter said it was playing 1 of 17. Why? To serve us better I guess.

Ok, I guess I just have to subscribe to all my podcasts using the same mechanism. But wait! Not so easy because iTunes does not support opml files for either import or export. So I have to move them all by hand, one by one.

I moved all my subscriptions into Juice, which has it’s own issues but at least mp3 files which happen to be podcasts will behave like mp3 files with respect to play lists.

But how to I get all the old podcasts that I still have to listen to out of their special, iTunes only, resort menu?

I tried pulling the MP3s out of iTunes entirely and re-importing them but NO, iTunes still knew they were special and treated them that way. So clearly there was something about the files themselves.

I finally found out what that was.

When iTunes downloads a podcasts it adds a special extended tag ITUNESPODCAST=1, to the MP3. It doesn’t expose that tag through the iTunes interface, so you can’t change it easily. But using a tag editor such as MP3Tag you can find this tag and delete it, turning this “special” MP3 into a normal MP3 that obeys all of your finely crafted smart play lists

Oh, except smart play lists are now broken on my new iPod classic.

Damn!

August 10, 2007

Another one, this time animated

Filed under: Technology — Dave @ 12:00 pm

Graphics created in Paint.net and animated with UnFREEZE

flashhome.gif

August 2, 2007

This is really geeky, I know

Filed under: Technology — Dave @ 4:41 pm

But I was playing with paint.net, a free, open source graphics program for the .NET platform and I created a button graphic in the apple-like glassy style. I think it’s so cool I want to write an application around it. Here it is:

Glass Button

I typically use Paint Shop Pro but since they were bought by Corel their app pesters me everytime I run it to upgrade. So I’m looking for other options. I’d like to move to photoshop but it’s way too expensive.

Speaking of which, given how expensive it is, why is almost every tutorial on the web for doing various graphics operations written for photoshop? Why does it seem everyone has it? They can’s ALL be professional photographers or graphic designers can they?

And, speaking of tutorials, I followed one of the few non-photoshop tutorials on the web to create this button

July 9, 2007

FTC disses Net Neutrality

Filed under: Politics,Technology — Dave @ 12:12 pm

link

The report has no force behind it and has no effect other than to state the view of the FTC. It recommends against legislation to ensure net neutrality preferring to let the market solve the problem.

You know, like the way the market solved problems like poverty.

I’m a huge fan of net neutrality and I’ve seen so much disinformation about a topic which I don’t think is really that complex. I should see if I can’t write something down that makes it clear what the issue is.

The head of the FTC, Deborah Platt Majoras, is a Bush appointee. Her previous career was with the law firm Jones Day protecting big business. Of course, she can do so much more to protect big business as the head of the organization whose job it to protect us against the abuses of big business.

June 1, 2007

Cool List of Freeware

Filed under: Technology — Dave @ 9:58 am

I’m not against paying for software and I’ve spent thousands on software over the years but I love checking out free software. I would love to stop paying for office software for example. That kind of functionality just seems like it should be part of buying the computer. I get a new PC every year or two and each time I get more hesitant to spend the money for the MS office suite.

I also don’t like the trend of commercial software to be more in control of my experience. I’ve heard stories of software disabling parts of itself when it gets old, so you need to buy upgrades. I have commercial software, paint shop pro, which, since it has been bought by corel, nags me with ads for other corel products, not to mention it crashes now.

Well, I came across another list of free stuff that I’ll be checking out

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