• The first song shuffled up on the iPod in 2007 was Backwards by Apartment 26, but strangely, it decided not to play. Most appropriately, the next track was “So May It Secretly Begin” by Pat Metheny Group from their Still Life (Talking) album, and that played successfully. At six minutes, it covers my walk down Calhoun pretty well. That, and it’s a great track, only outshined by the next song from the album, “Last Train Home.”
• The first thing I hear walking into the office: The School of Education reconnection was delayed. That turned out to be mighty unpleasant for folks who were packed and ready to roll. Looks like we techs will be assaulting that project in February now. Don’t get me wrong though — there was still PLENTY to do today in other areas, though, hence why there was only one from-work blog post today.
• I hadn’t seen Windows Vista for a while until I got back to work today, where I run it. Guess the launch pageantry is really going to ramp up in the next week or so as CES looms. I dunno, I’m still a bit sour on Vista. For what it’s worth, there’s a new set of Realtek drivers out that work with my motherboard — perhaps it’s time to try again? Why do I torture myself so? Who knows.
• Another work anecdote: I heard today someone was having problems every time they “pulled up an internet” — haha. I was waiting for a lecture on clogged tubes.
• Alison and I have a similar problem — every time I want to tell my parents something exciting, I have to remember to tell them before I write about it on The Blog as they are frequent readers of this very site. Otherwise, I go to tell them this and they’re like “Yeah, we read it already on your blog”, and the “Wow!” factor is demolished. If there was ever an argument for leaving stuff out of one’s blog, though, I think Alison has it — it really can be quite the buzzkill in a conversation when someone already knows quite a bit about you from the Internet(s). Shouldn’t we be leaving something to the imagination?
• I wish phpBB 3 would come out already so I could get the forums going…yes, that’s what I’m waiting on. I just don’t want to put so much in the way of blood, sweat, and tears into phpBB 2 when by the time that’s finished, version 3 would have a stable release candidate out (this is my luck coming into play). Though, then again, the predecessor to this site known as The Realm ran on phpBB 1.4.4 for many months after version 2 was released…but I love phpBB 3 and I must have it for my production sites. So there. Haha.
• MySpace expanded to 300 photos per user today. Great. Two-hundred eighty four more ways for one to embarrass themselves on the Internet.
• Either William Clay Ford told Matt Millen that the Lions are his ship to turn around, or he’s holding his fingers over his ears with his eyes closed making random, unintelligible sounds at a high volume while intermittently interjecting with “Nanny nanny boo boo, I can’t hear you!” I’m not even a Lions fan and I am absolutely befuddled he’s coming back.

Welp, that’s today in a nutshell. Catch you all sometime tomorrow — hopefully not at 4:30am. :)

The post Observations & Anecdotes appeared first on Jared W. Smith.

• I’m now running Windows Vista Business Gold, build 6000, at work. The differences between RC2 and Gold are mainly visual in nature, but things also seem much smoother just in general operation. It doesn’t really handle like a beta anymore, which is pretty fantastic. In fact, I’d venture to say that it’s faster than XP about some things, and that says a lot. I’ll have more of a full review in the coming days, as the driver situation begins to shake out a bit more. I was also able to install the newly-minted gold version of Office 2007 Enterprise Edition as well. Performance is much improved. Office 2007 is one of the best software packages to ever find its way out of Redmond, and they managed to keep it small enough to fit on a CD, to boot.
• This weekend I decided to switch back to using iTunes 7 for sending files to my iPod versus Winamp’s functionality. It seemed Winamp had totally mislabeled the songs from Ryan Farish’s Beautiful album, so listening to a song from Beautiful was certainly an act of mystery, as I had no clue what I was going to get. After firing up iTunes, it prompted me to upgrade my first-generation Nano to software version 1.3. Bug fixes, better standby times…hey, why not? I proceeded with the installation. Things got off to a fairly inauspicious start, with the whole downloading of the software from the Apple servers and the like going smoothly. iTunes told me that it was going to initiate the installation, and that the iPod would restart a couple times. Then, an endless progress bar. I gave it a few minutes, and then got frustrated. I hit The Google™ and promptly found instructions to unplug the Nano, give it five seconds, and re-plug it in, and the update would resume. So, that’s what I did…and the upgrade proceeded. Sweet, I thought, until the Nano restarted and my system promptly started locking up, unable to recognize the device as an iPod. Greaaaaaaaaaat. Sure enough, after fighting with Windows to let me remove the device safely, I checked out the iPod and promptly saw that my playlists, tracks, etc. were, erm, gone. Lovely. Upon plugging it back in, the Nano rebooted again. This became a fairly common occurrence. So, once again I hit The Google™ and stumbled on this thread at PlanetAMD64, which turned out to be solid gold. After sticking the iPod in recovery mode as per the instructions, I was able to format the damn thing, restore the software to a properly working state, and get on with my day, restoring my files…in Winamp. :P Winamp 5.3 fixed a few things with iPod support, I think, because it’s working a lot better now. So, yet again, screw iTunes. :) I’ve got a bit more of an eclectic mix on there now (didn’t include all three CDs of Trammell Starks’s Music For Local Forecast this time around) and I quite like it. The software improvements in version 1.3 are nice, too, with a maximum volume limiter, improvements to battery life, and better responsiveness coming from standby. Too bad it was such a bitch to install, though. I’ve got to redo my playlists but that’s a task for Thanksgiving.
• Microsoft seems to have fixed a very annoying issue in one of its recent patches (likely the MSXML patch): I was freaking out for a month because it seemed like every few clicks, it would register as a double-click, sometimes really fouling things up for me. Thanks, MS.
• The forecast for the rest of the week: Crappy, icky, terrible cold rain. I absolutely abhor this type of weather, especially around Thanksgiving. I can’t remember having a rainy Thanksgiving in forever. Stupid coastal low, “sou’easter”, whatever. I heard rumors this morning that there would be some snow this weekend but I can’t find anything that suggests we even have a chance at that. Maybe in the mountains…who knows. It most definitely won’t be here.
• I’ve been digging back into Ryan Farish’s back catalog recently, with an opportunity to hear some of his rare works from his mp3.com days. There are so many songs that are out there that he should repackage and sell in a Selected Works Super-Duper XPanded release. “Healer” is most definitely one of those tracks that needs to live on. Pure Farish musical goodness in that one.

Catch you guys during the day tomorrow…I’m sure I’ll find something to harp on. :)

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Zune’s fatal flaw won’t certainly be in the hardware (unless it proves incredibly unreliable) — the software is a big problem. First of all, Microsoft’s old MSN Music service was discontinued in favor of the Zune Marketplace. Even worse, the Zune Marketplace uses a different DRM scheme than the fairly standard PlaysForSure scheme used on MSN Music and quite a few other MP3 players. So, if one was an MSN Music customer and wanted to spring for the Zune, they’ll have to re-acquire all the music they had previously purchased. Ridiculous? Yes! It’s like changing a car audio system from a Sony to a Pioneer and having to re-purchase all the CDs for the Sony player because the Pioneer uses a different format. Ridiculous.

The solution for these disenfranchised consumers is, of course, illegal under U.S. law — a program called FairUse4WM exists that will strip the DRM out of most Windows Media files, making them open for usage on other players. There are similar projects out there to strip the DRM off iTunes protected files, which are very handy and work great…not that I’d know or anything. :)

Folks, the online music industry is nothing short of a racket. You are still better off buying CDs and ripping them to MP3 format if you want to listen to them on any device and avoid the ridiculous vendor tie-in that comes with most of these players. It’s a damn shame that the online music business, something with serious promise just a few years ago, has turned into an incredibly anti-consumer market, just like most mass-produced media nowadays.

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Via Neowin.

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