Rand Wacker

You know you’re in for a good show when John Favreau directs a holiday movie with Will Farrell and James Caan. We went yesterday afternoon and I was laughing my ass off within the first five minutes. Strong three or four stars, definitely a re-watchable holiday classic.

iTunes is great, but it’s interface is rather bulky. Even the shrunk-down panel is more than I want normally. I was thinking it would be useful to have a global hot-key tied to skipping songs or pausing, it would be nice to see what song (and album cover) is playing, and even perhaps have hot-keys tied to adjusting the Ratings setting.

Well, Synergy does all this, and more. It puts a tiny control bar up in the menu bar, gives you hot keys for everything I listed, and when iTunes switches to a new song it pops a little window up in the corner of the screen with the title, artist, rating, and cover art. All this for only $5!

If you haven’t noticed already, I can be a bit anal when it comes to managing data. It comes from having a longer-term view of where I will use it in the future, and wanting to be careful about manipulating things which took a long time to build. My MP3 collection is a perfect example of something which I take great care in managing.

Somewhat recently, I took the time to re-rip all of my and my fiancé’s CDs at near-perfect quality (392Kbps/VBR). The 50% or so increase in size doesn’t bother me so much as I know disk is cheap. As I was ripping, I pulled all of the album cover art I could off of Amazon and kept them in each of the album directories. Each of the major collections are stored in their own macro-level directory (a big partition for mine, a big partition for hers, etc). I’ve just recently gone through using iTunes to consolidate artist and disc names amongst the larger collections, insert cover art into the actual MP3 files themselves, and set “My Rating” for a large number of songs.

The My Rating setting is an extremely useful variable which can be used to create dynamic playlists for listening to music I really like, and getting rid of music I don’t like off of my more limited laptop drive. With the idea that I will eventually be consolidating all the groups into one uber-collection accessible from any desktop machines I have, I’m trying to do this in a way which will be exportable in the future. Even though there is a lot of bitching on the Net about it, I think Apple’s decision to have iTune’s My Rating values be individual and not get encoded into the MP3 file itself was the right decision (since this music is going to be shared in our household).

For now I’m leaving each collection separated out. This will make it easier to replicate changes back to my home file server. Eventually I go ahead and import the files into the iTunes Library itself, but at that point I will consider them integrated into my local laptop’s music collection.

The biggest problem with this whole solution is exporting and re-importing the “My Rating” settings. It appears that while you can export a full XML file of all your iTunes songs — including ratings — importing that file back in to iTunes doesn’t actually bring the ratings back in (damn!). This means that whatever ratings I set on my laptop won’t be propagated to my desktop eventually (damn!). I’ve seen on Apple’s website that they do synchronization of ratings between iTunes and iPods, but I didn’t see if that also meant between computers. Such technology would be useful, and yet another reason I’d want an iPod, but it’s still never going to be big enough to hold everything I’m going to rate.

Apple really needs to make it possible to export and re-importing rating settings, based on the title and artist of the songs in your collection.

Over the past many years my music collection has fallen prey to digital disillusion. I’ve ripped my entire CD collection (twice), grabbed album covers off of Amazon, and bought enough hard drive space to store weeks and weeks of music. Problem is, day-to-day, I listen to the same limited collection. Under Linux, I never had a good enough music manager to help me actively build playlists based on ratings, genres, or whatever strange combination of music desire hit me.

Enter iTunes (for free, no less).

Dead simple — yet powerful — interface, dynamic playlists, nice cross-fade effects, etc. I took the time to sync most of my collection down to my laptop and spent much of the 8 hour drive to LA updating cover art and making initial passes at personal ratings. Now, I can listen to a random selection of my 9+ days of “Not Crap” music anywhere I want. It’s nice to re-discover some old favorites.

I’ll definitely be buying more music now, and probably too much of it from the iTunes music store; but it pisses me off that the AAC recordings won’t play on my Audiotron (stereo MP3 component). I expect that Apple will probably come out with a home media iTunes gadget pretty soon. Something which takes ethernet (more likely WiFi) in, spits out either line-level RCA or digital optical audio, has a great remote, and probably an on-TV interface. If the interface was good enough, and worked well with iTunes, I’d buy that.

From the every-keyword-someone-might-search-for-in-the-title department:

I’ve been blogging about the wireless connectivity my new phone service is providing, but I realized I forgot to say how I set it all up (what good is this blog if I don’t share the information?)

T-Mobile offers an unlimited GPRS data plan for only $20/month. GPRS is the data connection parallel to the GSM service, and it provides IP connectivity directly to the phone, with out having to do analog modem modulation/demodulation over a noisy wireless connection (I used to really dial-up through my PCMCIA modem on AT&T’s network, and it worked, but not very well). Since the Sony Ericsson T610 supports Bluetooth, I can use the phone as a WWAN access point for both my Apple Powerbook (running Panther) and my Palm Tungsten T (running PalmOS 5).

I’ve seen a few people on the web claim that you can set this up on your own without provider help, but from what I’ve seen, you have to call T-Mobile to get the phone setup to begin with (their technical support has been a let better than I was expecting). They will tell you to create a new entry in Connectivity:Data Comm:Data Accounts and then read the CID which the phone assigns to it. This CID is used to construct the “phone number” which your laptop and PDA use to “dial-up”. For example, I created a “T-Mobile GPRS” entry which the phone assigned CID 2 to. From this, the T-Mobile tech told me to use the string *99***2# for connecting.

OSX (Panther)

In the Network Configuration Panel, under the Bluetooth device, set the Service Provider to “T-Mobile GPRS” (or whatever) and set the Phone Number to *99***2#. Leave the username and password blank. Then under the Bluetooth Modem tab, set the Modem Script to “Ericsson Infrared” (this is the one setting which is hard to find). Now, under Internet Connect you should be able to activate the Bluetooth Connection (you may have to set the same number). The computer should connect to the phone over Bluetooth and you’ll see the phone “Connecting” just like it does when access the T-Zones feature (the little round globe comes up). You’re now online!

I’ve found this connection gets about 2K per second (similar to slow modem speed). Works great for grabbing email and RSS feeds, light web browsing, even IM and basic SSH terminals. The only problem I have is with OSX’s Fast User Switching, which seems to kill any dial-up connections when you switch users. If anyone knows how to get around this, it would help when we switch around the computer in the car driving down I-5 (heh).

Palm Tungsten T (PalmOS 5)

Settings here are pretty much the same. After you’ve paired the devices in the Bluetooth prefs, you’ll need to create a new Connection in that set of prefs. Name it something convenient then enter “Connect to: Phone”, “Via: Bluetooth”, “Device: [Your Phone]“, “Model: Standard GSM”. Then finally under Network prefs, create a service called “T-Mobile GPRS”, using the Connection you just created and the phone number you used before. The Palm will require a username and password, so enter in whatever. Now you will be able to connect from that prefs panel or from any application that needs network access.

I’ve found that the WebPro browser is the killer app for me on a net-connected Palm. I’ve setup a limited My Yahoo page with all the information I usually need quick access to: Yellow Pages, Maps, Movie Times, etc. Being able to look up this information from anywhere is really useful.

I haven’t found a mail application which I really like yet. VersaMail doesn’t support SSL it seems and SnapperMail is POP only. Besides, since I can’t get a keyboard that works very will with the Tungsten T, then composing email isn’t going to be all that convenient.

Hope this is helpful to someone out there!

This is really high geekness factor, I’m posting from my laptop, connected through my GSM/GPRS phone, in the back of the car, driving down I-5 on our way to LA for Thanksgiving. IM, web, and even slow shell connections are working fine. Very cool.

I’ve been pretty happily using Safari 1.1 as my primary web browser on my Mac lately. It’s attractive and damn fast. I was in a meeting today though and found something I really missed however: bookmark keywords.

Found out though that there is a suitable substitution for Safari though, which led me to about five other cool hints.

So I’m still looking for something to make it totally unusable, heh.

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I haven’t kept up with current events as much as I normally like to. Something came across the bow recently is already too late to stop. The massive pork barrel energy bill architected by Vice President Cheney and his energy-industry compatriots has already passed in the House “with ease”, and it looks like the Senate will give it the OK before Thanksgiving.

Frustration set in for me tonight when a friend pointed me at an excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yes, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’s been fighting for the environment for quite some time now). It’s a comprehensive story; I was amazed that Rolling Stone would publish something so long, but then I remembered that their pages are really damn big. It talks to many points of Bush’s oxymoronic environmental policy, and details their all out war on any regulation which keeps our air clean. A point which hit particularly close to home:

As if to prove that point, Republicans simultaneously eliminated the tax credit that had encouraged Americans to buy gas-saving hybrid cars, [kind of an odd move for an administration so enamored with tax cuts] and weakened efficiency standards for everything from air conditioners to automobiles. They also created an obscene $100,000 tax break for Hummers and the thirty-eight biggest gas guzzlers. Then, adding insult to injury, the Energy Department robbed $135,615 from the anemic solar, renewables and energy-conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House’s energy plan.

UPDATE: I’ve been challenged on the elimination of the tax credit, and can’t find anything to back that up. There is actually a tax credit for hybrid vehicles in the new energy bill (proposed by Dick Cheney). I guess a stopped clock really is right twice a day.

But really this isn’t what got me frustrated. I started to delve into the new energy bill a bit more. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to review all 1400 pages of text; and it appears that neither did House Democrats. Apparently this bill has been debated by all-Republican committees for the past several months and then released in it’s entirety to the rest of the House with only 48 hours before the vote (the only faster bill passing of this size was the PATRIOT act, and we all know how well that worked out). At a time when our country is running massive deficits, basic social services are being cut left and right, and we’ve embroiled ourselves in an international conflict which is going to take several years and TRILLIONS of dollars to extricate from, how can we afford to pass off massive subsidies to the already well-to-do energy sector. (From the Economist article):

This is a ghastly bill, which, by the calculations of Aileen Roder of Taxpayers for Common Sense, could cost taxpayers $96 billion over the next decade.

The tax breaks for industry form the bulk of the package: $13 billion for the oil and gas industry; $5.4 billion for coal; $4.2 billion for producers of the corn-based fuel ethanol; and $1.4 billion for nuclear power.

Back to the Kennedy article and issues close to home:

After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov. Gray Davis’ request to cap the state’s energy prices. That denial would enrich Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state’s energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested “utilizing” the crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Tax cuts for the energy companies here at home, massive overcharging to the taxpayers by energy companies in Iraq. HOW IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?!?

A subscription to the Economist. Luckily, I can add it to my Amazon Wishlist.