Desperately Seeking: My Youth

More accurately, Skate Videos!!! G&S’s “Footage” (1990, I might‘ve seen it) and Transworld’s “The Dreams of Children” (1994, don’t remember seeing it) and “Sick Boyz” (1988).

“Sick Boyz” must’ve had some great distribution because our little skate shop in Huntington, WV had it, yes, on Beta. I put good mileage on my tethered remote control and watched slow-mo shots of Natas Kaupas and Julien Stranger doing probably the first ollie boardslides on handrails in Santa Monica, CA.

And this is amazing. Designed by skater Rob Dyrdek, his hometown in Ohio built a skate “plaza”, a more natural concrete/nature park with reproductions of various world famous skate spots. It’s basically a real version of a THPS level with benches, handrails, gaps, planters…

How to help iTunes destroy your mp3 folders

I know better than to use the defaults! I go into the advanced preferences and check “Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized” and change the iTunes folder to where all my neatly organized mp3s folders are. Still I don’t see any songs in the library… I’ll Import them!

[Much churning]

Ta Da! I now have a different folder for every slighly misspelled artist name, title, album, ID3, and filename. Even better, any special collections folders I had, like, say, “girl groups”, are now empty, those songs neatly sprinkled throughout the mess.

OK. I wanted iTunes to manage my collection, fair enough, so let’s see what we can do now. I see a set of songs under a misspelling. Surely iTunes will let me fix this mess. Oh wait, I have to fix them all ONE BY ONE.

I’m open to suggestions…

4/20/05 Update!

I’m currently using ID3-TagIt to fix all my id3’s (at least all tracks with NO tags now have artist and title) and then I’m going to use iTunes and redo the operation…saving to a new location! Ideally everything will be rebuilt correctly. I think iTunes might still truncate folder and filenames, but I can live with that and fix the filenames with ID3-TagIt easily. I don’t think iTunes can store a multi-artist comp in one folder, so those will have to be fished out and reassembled with ID3-TagIt, a PHP script or something.

Wish me luck.

Get it together

Basically, 100 ways to get your s!@% together.

It makes good sense. Unresolved issues (physical, mental, financial, emotional) take energy to live with. They provide distraction, limitations, stress, uncomfortable situations, the list goes on… Of course, they want to sell you a book, but the list spells out what you need to do pretty well. Some of them are easy, you can get them resolved in a day or week, then there’s stuff like:

I am on a career / professional / business track which is or will soon be financially and personally rewarding.

Some of what I’ve yet to resolve:

  • I am putting aside enough money each month to reach financial independence.
  • I have nothing around the house or in storage that I do not need.
  • I use well-made sunglasses.
  • I have had a complete physical examination within the past 3 years.
  • My will is up-to-date and accurate.
  • I drink at least 2 liters of water a day.

Comforting

My girlfriend writes,

Awesome! We’ve been on lockdown this afternoon because of some nut outside with a gun… we’re apparently safe now, but who knows…

A Warning

[Warning: Miscellaneous parts inside.]

This came in a package at work a while back. Thankfully no one was injured by the apparently random contents. For our work’s white elephant party I added a stick of gum and a paper clip and repackaged it as a “MacGyver Tool Kit”, complete with infringing artwork.