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Posted by on Sep 3, 2011 in Gadgetry, Internet Geekdom |

A few *more* random things about loading music into my iPod Classic

(you might want to read this post first. And this one. And this one. Or not.)

  • that comment about ending up with one huge album called GREATEST HITS? Well, funny I should have mentioned that, because I did eventually notice that in the album listing was one huge album called – you guessed it. I had to go in and rename them Greatest Hits (Artist name), etc. THIS doesn’t show up in album flip view, which I was using to try to find the scattered tracks. Not even sure it was showing up in the album thumbnail views. I think I eventually noticed it when searching for a specific track.
  • Here’s a weird one. My brother has a Mac McAnally album (self-titled) in vinyl. It’s from 1977, and it’s not even available in iTunes. So I asked a friend to dub the album to CD. He did so, and separated it into tracks for me. I loaded the CD into iTunes for ripping, expecting to have to manually enter all track info. It came up with all track names and the album name, perfectly (I had to add the album art manually, natch). I asked my friend later if he’d put the artist/title info into the track data. He hadn’t. Even assuming iTunes is performing a Shazam-style analysis of the wave form on the tracks, this is weird because I can’t buy the album on iTunes (I did find that shazam.com had the track data for this album on their site, and says their track data is courtesy of iTunes. Hmmmm.).

 

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Posted by on Jun 21, 2011 in Gadgetry, Internet Geekdom, Music |

So how’s it going adding every CD you own?

Fine, thank you. I’ve been steadily popping one in provided I’m awake, my computer is awake, and I’m where I can feed the thing. I’ve got a stack at home and at work. As of this writing, the collection in iTunes stands at 2092 items. It would take over 6 days to listen to it all.

Searchability – what a concept. In the early ’90s I had a friend with some kind of software that had all his CDs indexed. I was never that organized. But now I can type in a composer, performer, etc.

Speaking of searchability – it’s amazing how Gracenote can find all the track info, even on obscure CDs (only had one misfire in a commercial CD), but album art is generally a google search…

Also, sweet heavens it’s annoying how the system splits up albums. There’s a way to edit the info and pull them together. That’ll be another phase of the project.

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Posted by on Jun 20, 2011 in Gadgetry, Internet Geekdom, Music |

Wherein I add all my CDs to my iTunes library

Wherein I add all my CDs to my iTunes library

because I just bought a iPod Classic 160 GB. In black. iPod classic

I’m adding all my CDs. Every single one I own. Well, maybe not the homebrewed ones that are made from live recordings, all too often of me playing. And I’m drawing the line at my wife’s Olivia Newton John collection from the ’80s, because technically those aren’t mine. But if Grace Notes can find the track info, it’s going on.

Even the bad ones. Even “Night & Day” by Chicago.

Speaking of which, why can’t iTunes find the album artwork for Chicago 19?

More as this develops.

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Posted by on Jan 6, 2011 in Gadgetry |

New Year, New Stuff

Big things in my life lately:

– I joined Planet Fitness. A new facility opened in Prattville, and I have been there every single day it’s been open. If I’m feeling slow on a given day, I don’t do much, but I’m determined to stay on it – I need to lose about 40-50 pounds and my doctor is itchin’ to put me on cholesterol drugs. Ain’t happening.

– As silly as it sounds to get worked up over a wristwatch at my age (I should really post about my wristwatch fetish), I got myself a Casio Atomic Solar Analog watch. Allows time-zone changes, the analog hands stay synched to the digital board, which syncs nightly to WWVB. Allows me to indulge my OCD about having exact time and about having the analog synched to the digital, and having the minute hand in the exact right spot on the dial at the top of the minute (don’t ask).

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Posted by on Jul 20, 2010 in Gadgetry, Music |

Music recording, past and present

Music recording, past and present

Tascam DR-07 digital recorderUntil recently, I had a minidisc recorder which I had used to record live music – mainly my own practices and performances – and which I had occasionally used to make digital recordings of public speaking. The latter were mainly sermons at church which I recorded off the sound board so that I, as the resident A/V boy, could transfer them to CD or mp3 recordings for their web site. I’d long since switched the church to other solutions, however, my music recording had fallen by the wayside because of the minidisc’s shortcomings.  This post is mainly about the Tascam DR-07 digital recorder which replaced it, but a very brief trip down minidisc memory lane will help put my excitement about this new unit in perspective.

There were two main problems with the minidisc format.

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Posted by on Jun 28, 2010 in Gadgetry, Real Life |

Troy-Bilt’s Revenge

For about the time it takes to mow the entire lawn, I worked on my weedtrimmer on a recent afternoon.

The last of the original line had spooled out, except for about a foot long piece. I looked forward to replacing the line with child-like anticipation. Because my new weed trimmer had a Speed Spool(TM), which eliminates the tedium of taking the weed trimmer head apart by allowing the user to simply insert one ten foot line through the two openings, even up the two ends so that about five feet are sticking out on each side, then start winding the line back into the spool.

This sounded easy enough, so I pulled out ten feet of off-brand weed trimmer line (same gauge as the line used by this weed trimmer), and went to insert it. Not so fast. The afore-mentioned foot long remnant was hiding inside the spool, requiring it to be disassembled after all.

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