As a music player, the iPod is pretty much perfect. It has lots of the sensible options that I wished my Lyra had. For example, when you look up an artist, you are given the option “Play All” or to select an album. And it groups albums by an “Album Artist” tag, allowing you to have a sensible “Artist” tag. The only problem is that it doesn’t display the Album Artist tag.

But podcasts are another story. It’s odd, since podcasts are named (I think) after the iPod. But iTunes and the iPod just don’t support them properly.

First, iTunes should give you per-feed options. Currently, you set the options globally. But the number of episodes of a show you want to keep is dependent on the type of feed, the length of the episodes and the update frequency. I might only want the last two episodes of the weekly hour-long Diggnation, but the last 10 episodes of the daily, 1 minute Ongoing History of New Music. I don’t need to waste space with 10 episodes of the large shows just so I can keep 10 episodes of the small shows.

Second, it would be nice to be able to download feeds backwards. For example, if you want to listen to a “Learn French” feed, you want to start with the earliest archived episodes and work your way forward. iTunes should be able to do that.

Third, you should be able to mark an episode to be saved or deleted on the iPod. When you sync, it currently deletes all episodes you’ve finished and keeps all episodes you haven’t. But what if I get halfway through an episode and decide I don’t want to finish it? Or I finish an episode and decide I want to keep it to show someone else? You should be able to flag it on the iPod to override the default sync options.

Finally, though this has nothing to do with Apple, but I wish more talking head podcasts were audio only. What’s the point of video? I’m just going to listen in the car anyway.

Around five years ago, I wanted an iPod. They were still white and had an actual moving wheel. They were a little big and the screen was monochrome. But they were cool. Problem was, a 5GB iPod cost around $450 Canadian. Not too affordable. So I passed and instead I bought an RCA Lyra. That giant, brick of a 20GB MP3 player cost me $350. At the time, that was a good deal.

The brick (as I affectionately called it) served me well. It really was a great MP3 player. Unfortunately, someone stole it out of my car when my mom left the doors unlocked one evening. Fortunately, this was several weeks after the screen gave out. I almost went straight out and bought a 30GB 5.5th generation iPod. But I didn’t. I held out, thinking I might buy a MacBook when Leopard is released and get a deal on the iPod with it.

I’ve decided not to buy a MacBook this year. My Toshiba must have gotten scared when I started using it to look at a replacement, because all of its former problems have disappeared. And thus: the 80GB iPod Classic (Black).

It’s wonderful. I stare at it constantly, and luckily it has a relatively matte finish so I don’t need to see myself staring back. I have spent days copying my music collection to it. I have tracked down album art for all my music and I have re-tagged almost my entire collection. I am going to write up some information that I’ve discovered in how the iPod works with ID3 tags in different views because I’ve found that information to be severely lacking on the internet. But that is for later.

For now, I must go back to my work (or obsession).

[Edit]

Silly me. I forgot the reason I started writing this: according to iPod Death Clock my iPod has 626 days 7 hours 47 minutes 7 seconds left to live. Luckily, it will still be under warranty.

The November 1st deadline looms. I’m still not done my law school applications. So much work, so little time. Things I’ve completed:

• POL218 essay outline
• POL218 presentation handout
• PHL247 assignment
• Third declension Latin nouns and third conjugation verbs

Things left to do:

• POL336 thought pieces
• The rest of the Latin language
• FLSS improvements
• Tracking software
• Readings, readings, readings

And of course law school applications. The guide says to have them done three weeks in advance of the deadline. Oops. I’ve gotten my academic reference (I think). I need to check up on that tomorrow. Hopefully I’m a brilliant student with a sharp analytic mind. I haven’t got my non-academic reference, but that is coming along.

The OLSAS software is exceedingly frustrating. I wonder if they would guarantee me admission to UofT if I offered to rewrite it for them. I shouldn’t trash it too much online, the techies might find my blog and delete my account or something. But dear Lord, what kind of idiocy is that 30 character limit on activity details? They ask you to provide the year and type of the activity and then give you 30 characters to explain what it was. I can’t even write the name of some of the companies I’ve worked for in that space. And what is the solution they’ve come up with? Enter a duplicate entry with the rest of the details. Why not just give us more space?

I would rewrite the thing for free, just to save future generations the pain that I’m enduring.

Next up is my personal statements. York needs two. Grrr. Well, at least I have something to put in there: “I knew more about law than most of your graduates when I was 12 years old.” I don’t think they would appreciate that, though. I’ll say it more long-windedly and politely.

In completely unrelated new: Kubuntu 7.10 is out in four days! Huzzah. I’m not really sure why I’m excited. I’m doing quite fine with what I have. But I do like reinstalling things.

A mashup of the following songs:

Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
Wonderwall - Oasis
Writing To Reach You - Travis
Sing For The Moment - Aerosmith

If you’re seeing this on Facebook, click the link up top that says “View original post”.

I didn’t like the last design. One of the reasons I haven’t updated in many months. I have had things to say, but I just couldn’t bring myself to look at that previous monstrosity.

I pretty much like this design. However, you may notice that the work is unfinished. It was originally intended to be the new look for a completely rewritten version of my blog. Unfortunately, I’ve had to delay the rewrite due to other projects. So I adapted the design backwards to work with the current framework. In doing so, I screwed up a couple of things and took some shortcuts to get around the shortcomings of the current system. I could fix them, but I simply don’t have the time at the moment. So, this is it for now.

I will, of course, now have to come up with a new design for the rewrite (which I hope to get around to starting by Christmas).

Ever leave a comment on some website and wonder if anyone replied? Who has time to go back and re-read all the comment threads you’ve joined every day? Enter coComment. It is a comment tracking service. It tracks comments on integrated websites allowing users to keep an eye on articles they’ve commented on around the web. Sounds cool. I’d need to integrate it into my site, which leads me into the real purpose of this article.

There are all sorts of cool features I could add to this site. I want to add track-backs and ping-backs and integrations to other services. But I’d have to code it all myself and I only have so much time on my hands. Wordpress has been looking plenty attractive lately. Every time I see some cool new thing I want, it is already available as a Wordpress plugin.

But then I got to thinking. Nobody reads this site except maybe Megan. If I switched to Wordpress then I wouldn’t get to spend so much time writing my own extensions. Then I’d have to face the reality of the pointlessness of this site. But as long as I get to spend all sorts of time writing code I can ignore the fact that I never update and nobody ever reads.

Of course, if I integrate coComment, then that might clue me in a little more.

View/Download Details

That’s all I have for now. I really will write something at some point. I swear.

If you reading this on Facebook, this will make no sense.

Well, another few months have gone by and I’ve redesigned the site yet again. I decided to try for a more minimalist approach. I succumbed slightly to my love of structure by running the vertical guides around the content and by having noticeable headers for the articles. Writing this entry is difficult because I narrowed the content section but forgot to adjust the size of the post forms. Oops.

I’ve increased the space available for my del.icio.us link roll so I can add descriptions of the sites. I’ve color coded the links and written a Javascript to detect external links and mark them. If you’re using Firefox or Opera or maybe IE7, you’ll see pretty little check marks beside visited links.

Finally, it’s the return of the quote machine. It’s not actually working as I write this, but when I get the chance I will update the old scripts and import the old quote database.

The lack of the right 50px of this text box is really getting to me. I can’t write coherently. Yes, that’s the reason I’m sticking with.

This is just a short observation. I read somewhere just recently about someone who had found the light of web standards. He specifically referred to his prior use of spacer.gif. You know the spacer, a transparent 1×1 pixel GIF you use when you can’t quite get things positioned right. Maybe you used it for filler, or putting a 10 pixel gap between two inline elements. Not a pretty solution. And now with margins and padding and dimensions applicable (I want to right appliable) to everything, we no longer need it. But there is a replacement: div style=”clear: both”. We’ve all done it. Needed to expand a block to hold a float and so we just tossed in an empty div to clear the way. Naughty naughty. I thought we were supposed to separate content from layout. But what can you do?