Archive for December, 2007
Thomas Hawk back on Flickr
December 31st, 2007 web
It was a pleasant surprise to see Thomas Hawk uploading his fine images on Flickr after a long absence
I wonder if that has anything to do with the release of FlickrFan, which uses the Flickr API as it’s primary way of sharing photos.
Regardless, it’s nice to be seeing more of his photos again, this time via a screen-saver updated FlickrFan’s feed of photos. Good stuff!
freshen-up smart playlists
December 31st, 2007 music
When listening to music, I am listening to some kind off random shuffle mode 99.8% of the time. Yeah, I know, “death of the album” and all that.
Anyway, being having a bit of DJ in me (control freak?), I don’t leave it all up to iTunes to select the music. ‘Party Shuffle” and a few smart playlists (and a bit of applescript) keep a good selection of tunes flowing.
Party Shuffle pulls tracks from the full Library, or selected playlists, and is great because you can reorganize tracks on-the-fly. I will prune/delete tracks from the Party Shuffle that don’t fit my mood which queues up 20 or 30 songs. This generally works well, but the songs are a bit too random.
I decided I wanted to sprinkle the source playlist with a few favorites (anything rated 3 stars or higher), and some newly added tracks (added in the last 60 days), along with a random selection of unplanned tracks from the library. Unfortunately, you can’t build this kind of playlist with one Smart Playlist. I created the following smart playlists : 25 favorites, 25 new tracks, 150 unplayed, and a ‘Shuffle Source’ playlist which builds a single playlist using the other three as the source.
Whew! (Really, it’s not much work.)
I found that while doing my shuffle list pruning, I’d run across the same songs frequently, which makes sense - deleting the track from shuffle doesn’t remove it from the source playlists. iTunes does not have a ‘refresh smart playlists’ command, so I would need to manually refresh the 4 smart playlists. This is where my master plan starts to break down (too much work!), but luckily, Applescript comes to my rescue.
I found this bit of applescript code at macosxhints:
set playlist_list to {"list", "of", "smart", "playlists"}
tell application "iTunes"
repeat with the_playlist in playlist_list
delete (tracks in (first playlist whose name is the_playlist))
end repeat
end tell
Just replace “list”, “of”, “smart”, “playlists” with the names of your favorite smart playlists, and you have a quick way to refresh smart playlists.
The results? Here is my LastFM profile, which is currently rocking an ‘eclectic score’ of 86/100, which for some reason I am proud of.
iWood
December 31st, 2007 cata-wha?
I may cave-in to the iPhone in 2008… and these iWood cases sure look purdy!
sleeve heads
December 29th, 2007 music
With my record collection still back in Nebraska, this just adds insult to injury.
The Death of High Fidelity
December 29th, 2007 music
Rolling Stone has a good report on what you probably already knew,
music doesn’t sound as good anymore.
Music is mastered primarily for playback with little white stumps shoved into your ear. Which is to say, not the optimal listening experience. It’s interesting that portable mp3 players weren’t designed to playback audio to accommodate in-ear/earbuds, rather than the other way around. When played back in home stereos, the music will probably sound awful.
This christmas, I got a nice pair of headphones, and gave them for a spin listening to Rubber Soul in a lossless format. I was amazed that I heard guitar parts, vocal clarity, and even small ‘imperfections’ in the performances.
I suspect that the pendulum will swing back to High Fidelity, eventually, once people realize what they are missing.
waterboard yourself
December 23rd, 2007 asides
In an effort to better understand waterboarding, this fellow tried out several waterboard techniques and reports on the results.
The results? He’s definitely not trying that again.
Read : I waterboard!
(via Waxy.)
Cement slide at Koret playgorund
December 21st, 2007 cata-wha?
Stella on the cement slide at Koret playground in Golden Gate Park.
The Most Expensive Drink at Starbucks
December 21st, 2007 asides
The Most Expensive Drink at Starbucks happens to be a 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel, which you would have no reason to ever order unless
you are testing the limits of a free drink coupon.
(via coudal)
