blindsquirrel.org

There must be an easier way to do this or I am definitely missing something.  All I wanted to do was create a playlist that excluded all songs that were listed as explicit.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, I searched around for a bit and finally gave up and decided it would be easier to just scroll through 4000 songs, watch for the red explicit text, get info on the song, add the word Explicit to the Comment field, and then build a Smart Playlist rule that says “Comment” “does not contain” “Explicit.”

Am I missing something or should the Explicit/Clean tagging be made available as a field so we can use it for playlists, etc.?  My solution worked in the end, but it took a while to scroll through all of those songs and add to the comment field.  Thankfully I only had 4000 or so, but I don’t envy those of you that want to do this and have 10,000 songs or more.

Come on Apple, make this one easier.

I’m usually the one to give the technical help, but now I turn to everyone for my own technical help as I can’t find this answer anywhere – but I’m still looking.

I am using Firefox to access Outlook Web Access and everything works just fine.  But I noticed somewhere along the line, I think with the beta of Firefox 3, that the cursor goes to the bottom of an email when I click on reply.  It used to go to the top, which is where I want it.

I don’t want to get in to a debate on top posting vs bottom posting, as I understand the history of usenet, etc., but Outlook has conditioned us that use it to post replies at the top of the reply instead of the bottom.  I’ve been digging through Google looking for how to get FF version 3 to let me reply at the top of my email but I have yet to find anything.

Anyone?

UPDATE:  I failed to mention that this works as expected when using Safari, but I am testing Firefox.

This will be an almost exact duplicate of a post I made nearly one year ago about Infoworld and how they made the decision to clog my RSS reader with their advertisements, so I made the decision to unsubscribe.  Today I get to say the same thing about eWeek, but their feeds are even worse.  With Infoworld they at least kept a decent amount of content in the feed, but my feeds from eWeek are barely one sentence and then the rest is advertising.  That’s no longer acceptable to me and I’ll continue to get my news elsewhere.

For me the pattern is clear, I do not like RSS feeds that do partial posting in an attempt to make me visit their sites, and if you are going to include advertising in my RSS feed you better provide some content as well.  Don’t force me to go to your site.  I go through way too much data in Google Reader and I’m busy hitting j, j, j, j, etc. reading everything I can and I don’t have the time nor tolerance anymore for those tactics.

So eWeek, just like Infoworld, you’re banned from my feed reader.  I’m doing just fine on  FriendFeed now anyway.  It’s a shame, as I used to enjoy the content you provided, back when you used to provide it.  I’m sure somewhere there is an advertising exec that received a bonus for this great idea.

I like the convenience of being able to watch TV shows from my computer when I am traveling or am not in front of my TV/DVR setup – especially when that experience is free.  I think ABC does a great job with their hosting of shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, etc., but I just ran in to a problem I never saw coming.

That content is free to me because it contains ads that I have to watch.  I don’t mind that much, I’m getting free content and there are less commercials than if I watched it on live TV, so I can live with it.  But what I never expected was not being able to watch that content if there was an issue with the serving of commercials.  I just hit this error message when trying to watch the latest episode of Lost.

No commercials, no free content for you!  I guess ABC feels strongly that you can’t have one without the other.

I have always relied on the design of others for my Wordpress site.  There are some really, really talented people out there and I’ve been very happy with the themes they provide.  But I decided to play with CSS a little and modified a Theme I found that happened to be a modification of someone else’s theme.

So Nikolaos Maounis started with the Simpla theme by Phu. He modified it and made it widget capable.  I then took Nikolaos’ theme and changed colors, fonts, etc. until I found a combination I liked.  I wanted something very simple, basic, elementary, two-column, easy to read, with a right sidebar.  I’m happy with it for now, but I’m sure this will wear off eventually.

Thank you to Nikolaos and Phu for creating work that the rest of us can learn from.  Nice work guys.

As I wrote about a few months ago, I started checking the Amazon MP3 store along with the iTunes Store when shopping for music, and I was surprised that most of what I was looking for was not only available from Amazon, it was cheaper as well.  Well, I have been buying more and more music lately and I can’t remember the last time I ended up buying it from the iTunes Store.  This is a huge change for me, but money talks.  I am getting individual songs a little cheaper, but I am usually getting full albums $2 cheaper.  That’s significant.  I still check with iTunes and I make sure to compare the number of tracks on the full album because once in a while iTunes has more songs for the money than Amazon does, but that has been really rare.

Apple, I realize you have the majority of the market share right now, but as one of your loyal customers that has way too many of your products than most people should, I think you have a problem here.  Not only do I have more Apple computers and iPods than any household should, I’m a share holder!  If I’m comfortable using another service over the iTunes Store what does that say for the average customer?  It may not be today, it may not be this year, but I think you need to address the pricing issue before others see what is going on and Amazon starts eating away at your market share.

I can’t believe I wrote about this a little over a year ago, but this just showed up again on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and I thought it was so ironic that nothing had really changed in all that time that I thought I’d write abut it again.

It looks as though the decision on whether Pennsylvania will go smoke-free has been delayed yet again.  You can read about it here.  It’s business as usual when it comes to politics and Pennsylvania.

I love reading Robert X. Cringely’s articles.  Always have.  He’s definitely one of my favorite writers.  In his most recent posting he states that Apple appears to be looking to unload its Pro applications in preparation to clear the way to acquire Adobe.  Interesting idea, but I’m not sure I agree as Apple’s Pro apps are some of the tops in the industry and Apple has made acquisitions that sure up that side of the business.  It might be nice for Apple if they controlled Flash, but I’m not sure any of that affects me much as a consumer.  Plus, those Pro apps only run on OS X, not Windows.  That may come in to play with the company that would want to acquire such applications.

While listening to my weekly fix of MacBreak Weekly, the topic of GPS came up and I was happy to hear that some of the folks on the show feel the same way that I do about the Garmin Nuvi GPS – it’s an excellent product.  So that got me thinking.  I don’t care about an Adobe acquisition as much as I would like to see Apple acquire Garmin.  I have used Magellan, Tom Tom, and Garmin GPS systems in my car and I have always felt the Garmin was the best.  I have the Nuvi 350, which fits easily in a pocket and takes us through turn by turn directions.  I like the interface better and I definitely like the maps better.  I’ve always found the Garmin to be very accurate as well.

Whether or not the rumors are true about the 3G iPhone having built in GPS, I think it is a safe assumption to believe it will be in there some day.  It’s just the way most phones are headed.  Nothing revolutionary, just evolutionary.  Many already have GPS included.  So why not take the best GPS technology and marry it with one of the best phones out there?  If not an outright acquisition, at least license the Garmin technology for the GPS solution that Apple uses?

If I remember correctly, I believe that even Garmin is working on a phone.  That could be an interesting product depending on how well they implement it and its final size, weight, and especially battery life, but Apple has already set the bar pretty high with the iPhone, so Garmin will have its work cut out for it.

So Apple, you know what you have to do; acquire Garmin, kill the Garmin phone, integrate Garmin’s GPS technology in the iPhone, wrap your interface around all that tech, and price it aggressively.  Oh, and figure out how to achieve decent battery life.  Easy, right?  So go get started already – I’ll be over here waiting with my credit card.

I’ve owned a 2007 VW Passat for the last 10 months that typically gets anywhere from 350-370 miles on a tank of gas.  With gas prices getting higher and higher I decided to try to drive a little more “gently,” meaning less aggressive starts at lights and stop signs, a little slower on the interstate, etc.

Well, I had to fill up for the first time since trying this new method and I had driven 450 miles.  Not too shabby for making such a small change to how I drive.  That translates to less stops at the gas station, which translates to less money coming out of my pocket for gas.  That’s a good thing.