Kevin's Musings

Christmas has come and gone. I took about a week off of work to spend with my sister and her husband who were visiting from New Mexico. It was a nice visit, did some touristy stuff in the city, saw a good band down at the Jersey shore. Relaxed. Ate some good food. I made my usual Christmas gumbo. They left on Christmas day, so Deb and I mostly just lounged around the house. We finished West Wing season 4, started season 5. I made some progress on Price of Persia: The Two Thrones for the Xbox. It was a nice break and now I am heading back toward work.

No specific plans for New Years Eve. I suppose we will find a party, come into the city to see times square, or, just sit home for a quiet evening in… definately one of the three 🙂 For our anniversary we are going to the New York City Ballet to see a set of works by Balanchine. Should be interesting.

It was 17 degrees outside as I was leaving for work. Brr! Here are some nifty iPod tips I have discovered for you.

Use Smart Playlists Smart playlists are one of the great features of iTunes / iPod. You define search criteria of your playlist, not the specific songs for the playlist. Once the Smart playlist is defined when you add new (or remove) music the playlist is automatically updated.

Name your playlists smartly I keep several categories of playlists and I like the different categories grouped together. For instance, I start some playlists with “-” at the beginning of the name and some with “!” at the beginning of the list. For This way, all of the “-” named playlists group together and the “!” ones group together. Handy! One great Smart playlist I added was “-Audiobooks” (defined as “Genre” “is” “Audiobook”) so I can quickly find any non-Audible.com Audiobooks I have.

Recently Added Playlist iTunes comes with a “Recently Added” Smart playlist. This is a nice way to quickly find content you recently added.

Add items to the Main Menu Under Settings | Main Menu you can add items that are normally buried a couple layers deep right to the main menu. I have added Playlists and Podcasts to my main menu for quick access.

Listen Faster Audible.com audiobooks can be played back faster than normal. Under Settings | Audiobooks you can speed up or slowdown the playback speed of Audiobooks. Try it on faster (or slower), you might like it!

Use Compilations In the iTunes menu Edit | Preferences | General you have “Group compilations when browsing” checked. On the Advanced tab you should check “Keep iTunes Music folder organized”. Mark the tracks of your mix albums (like Soundtracks) as “Part of a Compilation” in iTunes . Finally, on your iPod enable Settings | Compilations. This is a great feature.

Don’t Shuffle MP3 Books If you have audiobooks in MP3 you should merge them to one or two files, tag them, finally under iTunes Get Info | Options set them to “Remember playback position” and “Skip when shuffling”.

Fall Asleep Get yourself an external speaker system (ranging from $10 to $500, depending on the bells and whistles), start playback (I use an audiobook or a shuffle of my “-Meditation” playlist), and then set the sleep timer under Extras | Clock | (pick your clock) | Sleep Timer.

If you know me, you know I am pretty obsessive about MP3 players. I like music and I love audiobooks. I am almost never without my MP3 player. I was a very early adopter of the CD-based MP3 players. The CD-based players offered a huge advantage (at the time) of being able to store vastly more than the flash-memory based players. Blank CD-R’s storing 700mb were very cheap and easy to swap in and out. Flash-memory was small (storage-wise) and expensive. At the time, the flash-memory based players only stored 64mb (or at best 256mb… which still isn’t very much). Yeah, you can run with a flash-memory based player, but, I don’t do that much running. I tried a few flash-memory based players, but, they just didn’t provide enough bang for my tastes (notably, they didn’t even come close to storing an entire book with any kind of reasonable quality).

When the hard drive-based players came out they were very expensive. I still couldn’t see spending the money on them and they were verboten at my place of work, anyway (which the CD-based players were not) so I held off. About the time of the iPod Mini I tried both the iPod Mini and the Rio Carbon. At the time, I found the Rio Carbon to be vastly superior. They both supported Audible.com content, but, to support bookmarking of non-Audible.com, MP3 books (bookmarking for audiobooks is imperative) you had to convert your book first into a single MP3 file and then convert the format from MP3 to M4B (which is based on AAC). The conversion into a single file is fast and easy. The conversion to M4B is slow. At the time I was recording radio content and listening to that, so, I wanted a completely automated process to make the content listenable on whatever device. This just wasn’t possible with the iPod Mini. My other complaint was that the iPod forced the structure of Artist/Album on you. If you had a soundtrack or similar compilation album, things were laid out “funny” for my taste. I decided on the Rio Carbon. Ultimately I was very happy with the Carbon because it is smaller than the iPod Mini, is very light, bookmarks any audio format it supports, etc. It is a nice player. All was beautiful in paradise until I lost my Rio Carbon.

So, I started the search again. Although the Rio, Apple, and Creative players are really the only players supported by Audible.com, I wasn’t seriously considering Apple and Creative players because I found them to be considerably sub-par to Rio, feature-wise. After much debate I discovered the Zen Sleek was actually now a good contender as was the iPod Video. The general features I wanted, and how each player compared:

• Reasonably good battery life, should be rated at least for 15 hours
  • Rio Carbon: Advertised at 24 hours.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Advertised at 18 hours.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Advertised at 14 hours.
  • Overall: My listening habits don’t tend to get the advertised amount (I pause playback too often), but, they are a good indicator. I did get a lot more life out of the Rio Carbon than out of the Sleek or the iPod, but, I don’t see a huge difference between the Sleek and the iPod. Winner Carbon, 2nd place is probably a tie between Sleek and iPod Video 30gb.
• Support for Audible.com content
  • Rio Carbon: Native.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Native.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Native.
  • Overall: All support Audible.com content directly. Three way tie.
• Ability to use the device on a PC (to copy music to and from the device) without the need for special drivers / software
  • Rio Carbon: Requires no special software. Period.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Requires Windows Medial Player 10. After that you can use drag and drop to get MP3 files onto the unit.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Requires iTunes and the iPod software.
  • Overall: The Rio Carbon is without a doubt the winner here, for me. Others would probably disagree. The second place is quite debatable. If you use Windows Explorer to drag music to the Sleek it is probably easier than iTunes, but, to keep things organized, re-tag your files later, synchronization, etc. I would argue that iTunes and its tight integration with the iPod is considerably smarter and more powerful than Windows Media Player. If you are keeping a small amount of music, the drag and drop method of the Rio Carbon is my favorite. If you are keeping your music library on the device, the iTunes/iPod, for me, is clearly the best.
• Support for Podcasts
  • Rio Carbon: ?? No idea.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: ?? No Idea.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Tight integration with iTunes.
  • Overall: I didn’t even know I cared about this until I tried the iPod. I now subscribe to at least half a dozen tech-oriented radio shows including DL.TV and I really like Podcasts. I just plug in my iPod overnight or while I am showering and all my content is there for the train-ride. It is VERY cool.
• Store non-music data, like a hard drive
  • Rio Carbon: The player is a removable hard drive. easy. Works on any WinXP machine with no special drivers.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: You can store data on the player or put it in a hard drive mode. I think it does require Windows Media Player 10 on any machine you go to, though.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Easy, just load the data. Probably requires iTunes/the iPod software, though.
  • Overall: The easiest is obviously the Rio Carbon. After that it is somewhat of a wash. Sleek requires Windows Media Player 10 and the iPod requires the iPod software. In the case of both the Sleek and iPod I didn’t try it on a machine without the required software.
• Good form factor / weight / build quality
  • Rio Carbon: By far the smallest, lightest player in the group. 5gb.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Reasonably sized, reasonably light for a 20gb player.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Reasonably sized, reasonably light for a 30gb player.
  • Overall: The Rio Carbon stores considerably less than the Sleek or iPod, but, it also weighs considerably less and is considerably smaller. That said, the build quality of the Rio Carbon is not as good as the Sleek and nowhere near as good as the iPod. The iPod is notably thinner and somewhat lighter than the Sleek.
• At least 5GB of storage space
  • Rio Carbon: 5gb.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: 20gb.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: 30gb.
  • Overall: If 5gb is enough, the carbon is the right size physically. Otherwise the extra 10gb on the iPod Video is very nice.
• Keyguard (“lock”) so you can have the device in your pocket and not worry about pushing buttons
  • Rio Carbon: Requires a special key sequence.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Slider on the top of the unit.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Slider on the top of the unit.
  • Overall: I always wished the Rio Carbon had a slider. Oh well. The iPod has a better slider, but, the Sleek’s is fine.
• Bookmarking of tracks (nice for audiobooks)
  • Rio Carbon: Manually bookmark any file. Remembers set of files that were playing. If you don’t bookmark and then add new content to the player it will lose the position in the file.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Manually bookmark any file, but, it doesn’t remember the set of files that were playing. If you don’t bookmark and the player completely turns it self off (about an hour? of non-use) it will lose the position in the file.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: New in the last few months, you can mark any MP3 or AAC file as “remember where I was” under Get Info in iTunes and the iPod will automatically bookmark the file for you. Also notable is that when you sync with iTunes, iTunes has the same bookmark. If you then listen in iTunes and later sync back to the iPod the bookmark will sync back to the iPod. This is an incredibly strong feature.
  • Overall: The Rio Carbon and Sleek both have major quirks with bookmarking, but, while the Rio Carbon’s quirks are livable, the Sleek’s quirks are no (IMO). The iPod has the best bookmarking facility I could imagine with the caveat of you really want to have your audiobook in just 1 (or 2, or maybe 3) files, not split up into 100 files.
• User Interface and Screen
  • Rio Carbon: Very limited screen real-estate and small buttons, but, the layout works well. Easy to read screen, easy to use buttons, easy to use “in the pocket”.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Nice monochrome screen with plenty of real-estate. The buttons are are pretty good and are mostly usable “in the pocket”, but, the selection slinder (for volume, selecting items from the menu) is great for volume, but, when selecting from a long list of artists, etc. is a drag. you have to slide, lift, slide, lift, slide over and over and over and over to find what you want.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: The iPod Video screen is quite amazing. It really does kill the battery though (it appears). The user interface is very easy to use “in the pocket”. The thumb circle thing for changing volume and selecting artists work great. Also, they have a accelleration feature so moving between albums that start with “A” to “T” goes very quickly and is easy to control.
  • Overall: Rio Carbon is simple and easy, but, the iPod interface and screen just blows away the competition. There really is no comparison.
• Recharge via USB
  • Rio Carbon: Yes. Normal “small” usb connector.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Yes. Proprietary “Creative Dock” connector. This is a drag because you can only order a second cable from Creative.com (at least right now).
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: Yes. Proprietary “iPod Dock” connector. You can buy one of these cables anywhere. Bums on the streets will sell you one.
  • Overall: I have several devices that use the “small” use connector, so, it is nice that I didn’t need any special extra cables with the Rio Carbon. Second in line is the iPod as the cables are cheap and plentiful. Zen Sleek last. Forget your cable and your on a long trip? SOL.
• Playlists
  • Rio Carbon: Never really used them. Sorry.
  • Creative Zen Sleek: Supports importing M3u via Windows Media Player or creating them using the Creative software. Pretty fast and easy.
  • Apple iPod Video 30gb: You must create them in iTunes, but, iTunes supports Smart Playlists were are FANTASTIC. Just make a playlist of “Artist” “is” “AC/DC” and you are done. Ever song by “AC/DC” is in the playlist. You can make the “and” or “or” and search on any of the tagged fields. It will even make a suffle playlist with a limited number of files. Really neat.
  • Overall: iPod BY FAR.

I would have bought another Rio Carbon, but Rio is pretty much now defunct. Given my analysis above, I have decided on the iPod Video 30gb and am very happy with my choice.

One final thing, I mentioned problems with compilation albums with the iPod Mini before. You can now tag the tracks of a compilation album as a “Compilation” in iTunes and it will group these together in “Compilations”, so you don’t have tons of stray artists cluttering up your Arist list (unless that is what you want).

Got out second-ish snow last night. This morning there is several inches on the ground. I swapped out the shoes for boot and I am glad I did. I walked through places where the snow was at least 4 or 5 inches. Very cool! The train was running late so I took my time getting ready – worked out perfectly.

As you may know I have been on the quest for the Holy Grail, well, for a new MP3 player that suits my tastes. I thought that player was the Creative Zen Sleek. I was wrong. It turns out Apple has made several usability updates to the iPod recently. I picked up and a 30gb iPod Video and I absolutely love it. I will write more about why I love it so much in an upcoming entry.

We are probably going to see the Narnia movie this weekend. We’re looking forward to it.

I started playing ICO for the PS2. I think this was one of the launch games. If you have a PS2 and like adventure/puzzle games you owe it to yourself to pick this game up. It is unique and phenomenal.

Well, off to finish some Christmas eShopping…

Looked outside last night as I was heading to bed at about 3am and (woo hoo!) the ground was covered with snow. We were supposed to get 1-2 inches today (Sunday), but, that got moved to Monday evening. We are still crossing our fingers. We are hoping to have our first white Christmas in years.

Many thanks to my brother in law with scanning support for my Mom’s recipe collection. He did a bunch of scanning for me, and I did a bunch of cropping, straightening, merge multi-card recipes, etc. and now have nice, color, scans of all the recipes I grew up with. You can check them out on my Flickr. Neat stuff! The low res default versions are very readable, but, the high resolution are up there if you have a Flickr account.

We saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Digital. It was a fun movie, nicely done, but, having just finished the book (which was quite long) the 2.5 hour movie felt like a readers digest of a readers digest. They did a good job, but, so much was crunched. Oh well. The dragon scene was really amazing.

Until next time…

There’s something coming. There’s a new car on the horizon. It’s coming very slowly. It makes a noise. It has kittens painted all over it. With a new kind of fur. Cleaner, but with a unique smell. Yet, one of these kittens is not prepared to have a good time. It stands alone. Away from the crowd. It’s your kind of kitten. Now the time has come to climb into that car and to shake the paw of destiny.

No… no… They Might Be Giants are not Satanists. They are not posing as an easy-listening Nazi rock band trying to lure intellectuals into believing what they already know to be true. No. Listen to the sound of my voice. Put away your big blue cigars. And make way… yes, make way, ladies and gentlemen… for They Might Be Giants!

Firefox 1.5 has been released (well, last night). If you aren’t running Firefox, you should be. Feel properly ashamed and go download and install it now. If you are running Firefox, some of your extensions or themes will need to be updated, but, most popular extensions and themes are probably updated by now.

So, what themes and extensions do I use, you ask?

• Noia (eXtreme) theme — is there anything nicer?
• Del.icio.us extension – makes tagging pages fast and easy
• Forecast fox – weather forecasts in the corner of your browser
• Flashgot – Download lots of stuff from a page, or just one link (using your favorite download manager)
• Gmail Delete Button – Adds a “delete” button to Gmail
• Web Developer – If you are a web developer you need this one
• Aardvark – slice up web pages for printing, etc.
• Download Manager Tweak – Make the download dialog look nicer
• Customize Google – do lots of cool things to customize google.com and Gmail
• Google Toolbar for Firefox – Provides a nice spell checker for web forms and other nice Google search options

I played a little bit of Half-Life 2 for the Xbox. It is getting good marks, which, having finished the PC version, is understandable. While the overall experience of HL2 wasn’t was good as HL1 (HL1 is an amazing game), HL2 was really good.

All that said… if you don’t have a PC or a PC that is up to snuff to play HL2, the Xbox version is probably a reasonable compromise, but, if your PC can handle it you should definitely play it on the PC. The PC control (mouse + keyboard) is much better, the graphics are much better on the PC, and while the PC loads the levels in a streaming fashion (i.e., no “Loading” screens) the Xbox version displays loading screens constantly. The one last feature that seems to be woefully missing (maybe I just overlooked it?) is “Quick Save” — on the PC you can just hit F5 (or some such) key at any time and you are back playing in a second or so. On the Xbox you have to press several buttons, it is really annoying.

Anyway, if you like FPS games you need to play HL2. I have seen the PC version going for really cheap lately, but, keep in mind (with the PC version), if your hardware isn’t up to snuff the $30 – $50 you will spend in the game is just the tip of the iceberg.

We went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the city. It was lots of fun and took lots of pictures. I will be posting the pictures on my Flickr account soon. It was fun to see the parade live after seeing the parade on TV when I was a kid.

We saw Derailed. It was fun, but, if have you have seen lots of movies you probably won’t be overly surprised.

I am continuing to like my Creative Zen Sleek. I have been learning how to use it better, solving most of the problems I was having. The Creative forums are a great source of support – helping me figure out how to best use the unit.

Finally, Microsoft has stated it plans to sell 3 million Xbox 360’s by the end of 2005. It humors me they state this and they are planning to roll out the Xbox 360 in other countries within the next couple weeks when they cannot roll out systems in a single country. I talked to several local chain stores who have not received any additional units since they received a few units on the day of the release. I don’t see how they can sell 3 million units unless they actually start shipping. Oh well. It should be interesting to see if this changes by Christmas or of it magically gets fixed after Christmas.

Just for grins, last night at about 9:50pm l went to check out the line for WalMart in Linden NJ’s midnight Xbox360 sale. It was cold and rainy when I got there. There were about 25 people in front of me. I hung out and talked to the people around me. Reportedly they had 14 systems… 4 premium and 10 core (kind of ridiculous). At 10:45 a manager came out and confirmed the total and breakdown. He counted of 14 people and let them in. He also told us WalMart had received a total of 60,000 systems for all of their stores (also ridiculous).

This morning, also for grins and expecting nothing I went to the Circuit City in Upper West Manhattan. There were at least 50 people in front of me and they had reportedly been letting people in “for a while”. Circuit had maybe been selling them since about 7am. Of course, long before me they were sold out. On the subway I talked to two of the guys who got systems. They had gotten in line last night at 10pm and they had only gotten Core systems… And they had gotten literally the last two. People who had gotten in line just minutes behind them, spent the night in the almost freezing rain went home at 10am empty-handed. Hopefully they were aware of the shortage, but, I overheard at least a couple people angrily stating “that’s unfair.” I stand by the fact that the Microsoft-imposed shortage is stupid, but, ummm…. Not unfair. Oh well, people have a funny sense of fair.

Off to work…