Movies, iTunes, iPod

Movies to see:
Science of Sleep
Idiocracy

The recent update to Apple’s iTunes is a huge improvement, despite the occasional bugs, especially on the iPod front. It not only is much more visually rich and attractive, but the syncing is significantly easier to use, not to mention intuitive.

I don’t know about the rest of the population, but a 60 GB iPod simply is not sufficient for an 86.68 GB song collection, and this has been very limiting. I use to manually manage my songs and videos, which was a huge pain if anyone’s ever tried it. Essentially, it entailed dragging every single file I wanted to be on the iPod from the Library to the iPod Library. It worked fine for a while, but then it started to become annoying when I wanted to change the tags for some of the songs or videos, and noticed that, since the computer and iPod don’t sync, I’d have to do the same change twice, once on the computer and once on the iPod. An incredible waste of time to say the least.

However, I recently had an epiphany. I realized that if I put all the music and video I wanted on my iPod into a playlist on my computer, I could have iTunes simply sync that playlist every time I connected. This meant that I could make sure everything was up to date (tags, play count syncing, etc.) on both my iPod and computer. Not only that but now if I want to add a new CD to my iPod all I have to do is drag it to the “Master” playlist, and the next time I hook up my iPod, it’ll be synced automatically.

Now I know this may seem like a very obvious solution, but if I can help just one more troubled soul out there, I could go to sleep proud that I made a difference in the world, albeit a very superficial one.

On games and movies for the iPod:

I’ve just bought Vortex on the iTunes Music Store (they finally dropped the ‘Music’ after about a year of offering TV shows in addition to songs) after adoring Zuma while bored on the bus. Both of these are games designed specifically for use on only the iPod 5th generation (i.e. video enabled), and they are gorgeous. The graphics are great, the gameplay is fantastic, and the fact that you can save your progress was a stroke of genius on the designer’s part. So if you have a video iPod, consider shelling out the $4.99 for Vortex or Zuma (the only ones I can vouch for as amazing).

I’ve also just bought my first movie from the iTunes Store, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. As mentioned in the Stevenote on Tuesday, all video on the iTunes Store will be 4 times the size of what was previously offered, and on my 17 inch monitor, it doesn’t look half bad, but on the iPod it looks fantastic. I’ve downloaded my share of movies and converted them to iPod format, but none ever looked as good as this did.

Sidenote: Saw The Black Keys at Amoeba (got a pin and a poster, which I ripped off the wall and had them sign), then Ima Robot at Safari Sam’s on Tuesday (another poster, no signage though). New club, pretty nice, but no air conditioning. What were these people thinking when they built this place? Pictures will be posted as soon as disposable camera film is developed.

Bruin Woods ‘06

I had a great time last week with all my buddies that I see once a year for a week up in Lake Arrowhead.

Brian, Chelsea, Rachel, Riley, and I hangin’ out up in the treehouse at Bruin Woods in Lake Arrowhead.

Can’t wait to see you all next year (but hopefully sooner)!

In other news, it turns out I have four impacted wisdom teeth which require surgery under anesthesia to remove. This will happen Thursday (August 17, 2006) morning, so don’t expect much out of me for about 2-4 days afterwards.

I drove a car for the first time EVAR today. It was surprisingly easy… I’ll be having another lesson tomorrow morning, then another on Wednesday afternoon.

For anyone who has a mac and is a student:

Schoolhouse is possibly the most useful program for assignments I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

“With the ability to sort and organize your assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily Schoolhouse is a must have for any student on-the-go. The power of smart groups allow you to interact with your work as simply as your iTunes library. Newly introduced in this version are Classcasts, the ability to publish your assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. And with powerful automatic graphing of your grades and a GPA & Finals calculator you’ll never be in the dark at the end of the semester.”

It seems that this app can export assignments to iCal or even to an iPod. How sweet is that? And it’s free (although I’d gladly pay the developer for it).

To all you Windoze users out there… umm, well… good luck, I guess. I’m sure pen and paper will work fine to remember stuff.

My Sidekick 3 is working great; it has many much needed upgrades which the SK2 lacked (mainly the track ball and the size of the device, no longer does it have the dimensions of a bar of soap). My only complaint is that the battery becomes depleted after a very short amount of use compared to the SK2, but hopefully this will all be sorted out in the next OTA (Over-The-Air) update.

Check out Tapes ‘n Tapes, by the way. A link to a torrent of a music video of theirs is here. They’re awesome.

Just ordered a bag from Iron-on Resistance along with some shirts from Oddica, there’s a coupon right now for $7 off your order if you write in the code ‘tell’ so I figured I’d just go ahead and get Blackbird Migraine and Ghost Cameras printed on the ever so soft and communist American Apparel.

Still working on my summer work of second semester Honors World History (I’ve already finished second semester Honors World Literature) from 10th grade which I missed while in Italy and Japan. I have to finish this or they won’t let me into 12th grade. Damn Pali thinks I have a textbook delinquency too, so they won’t give me my schedule for next year (I turned in all my books for sure).

Vegas

I’m in Vegas for the weekend. I’ll be back Monday night! This is coming off of a Macbook in the Apple Store in Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas. A black Macbook at that. Man are these keyboards nice…

Comment on headphones

After trying many headphones both inexpensive and expensive, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the Ultimate Ear super.fi Pro 5 are the best in-ear headphones I’ve ever used. My main problem was the lack of bass in the Etymotic series (specifically the Etymotic ER-6, which I own) which I orginally bought for its astouding clarity, but paid for it later when I missed the clean and clear bass found in even the inexpensive Sony Fontopia series. BUT I warn everyone who either owns the Fontopia series headphones or is considering buying them:

If you own them, be careful of the part of the wire that is supposed to go behind the neck, its breaks EXTREMELY easily and renders the headphones useless. To anyone considering to buy the Fontopia series headphones, be sure to buy the Neck Strap Headphones MDR-NX1 because they are the same headphones internally but have the addition of a neckstrap that won’t wear away to nothing. But be warned of the headphone’s short cable as well, it should be fine if you put your MP3 player in your breast pocket or have a small MP3 player like the mobiBLU Cube that can simply hang from the input jack, but for everyone else, either use an extender or if you own an iPod, consider the Apple iPod Radio Remote.

Hope this helps some poor soul like I once was trying to find the perfect headphones.

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