I laughed out loud when I read The politics of chess, over on Rum and Monkey.
And then in rides the cavalry, to take the glory and claim the victory as their own. It’s typical, if you ask me… the horsey set always likes to think of itself as punching well above its social weight. When they’re not prancing about the board of life, you’ll find the Knights playing polo and drinking champagne.
This is a bit of a test with w.bloggar, as I’m struggling to get ecto to post images properly. Let’s see if this works. Actually, it’s image handling is a bit crap.
I had an HTML file I wanted to look at the source of, so I right-clicked on it in Windows, and chose “Edit”. Tell me Mr Gates, why on earth would I want to edit it in Word? I’ve never ever opened or saved an HTML file from Word, I’m not about to start now. I expected it to load up in Notepad, which would have been bearable (a real text editor would have been better), but not Word.
Everyone probably knows this, as it’s on the iTunes Music Store already, but you can download partial episodes of Thank God You’re Here via podcast. Legally, apparently. Mind you, the first few lines Anh Do’s performance were okay, but it went downhill from there. Apparently this is the best they could come up with. I thought it were crap. And it still had the advertisements from Hungry Jacks in it… Unsubscribe
Bright Side of The Road • “The Best Of Van Morrison” • [Van Morrison][1]
And, I’ve got to fix my iTunes insert code so it puts the rating as a number of stars… I might use a script rather than the normal ecto button.
[1]: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Van Morrison%22
I’ve stopped downloading the Chaser podcasts, since the quality is too poor, and I want to keep those for posterity. However, as a bit of a whinge, it did make something clear to me. Apple thinks podcasts can’t be TV shows, or movies. If you try a Get Info on a video podcast, and wish to make it into a TV show, so you can organise it properly within your library, you can’t. This option is grayed out in the Video tab.
Pass In Time • “Central Reservation” • Beth Orton
Well, I’ve come across a bug in iTunes 7. I use Party Shuffle, but since I often spend time sorting through my 7626 songs, 784 podcasts, and so on, I like to be able to just add tracks to the Party Shuffle, and not have to use “Play Next in Party Shuffle”. So I have 0 upcoming songs shown. Just so it’s always a surprise what’s going to play next, unless I’ve already decided I want a particular song. With iTunes 7, however, having 0 tracks shown next means that it stops playing when there are no more tracks. This is bad.
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill • “White Album” • The Beatles
There are a few new things in AppleScript support for iTunes 7.
artwork:
downloaded (boolean, r/o) : was this artwork downloaded by iTunes?
playlist:
special kind (none/Audiobooks/folder/Movies/Music/Party Shuffle/Podcasts/Purchased Music/TV Shows/Videos, r/o) : special playlist kind
track:
episode ID (Unicode text) : the episode ID of the track
episode number (integer) : the episode number of the track
gapless (boolean) : is this track from a gapless album?
season number (integer) : the season number of the track
skipped count (integer) : number of times this track has been skipped
skipped date (date) : the date and time this track was last skipped
show (Unicode text) : the show name of the track
video kind (none/movie/music video/TV show) : kind of video track
Most of these are expected with the addition of the new features: gapless playback and TV/Movie support. At least now we can programmatically change the tags for TV shows. There are two there that are quite interesting: skipped count/date.
They are available as columns in the list views too, I just hadn’t noticed them yet. Now it will be possible to have smart playlist additions like: skipped count < 2.
Apple released version 7 of iTunes yesterday, and, since I culled my RSS feed list, I haven’t yet read a review of it. Unusually, I’ve already downloaded and installed it (I guess ADSL is worth it, then), and I thought I’d put my thoughts out there. It’s taking me a while to locate the icon in a list - I never realised just how much I’d become accustomed to the green notes - now they are blue. Still, no big deal there. I quite like the new sources list - having Music, Movies, TV Shows and Podcasts listed separately is good - it means I can clean up my library a bit more easily. It does make the sources list rather long, but a little more on that later. The most obvious change is the two new types of view: in addition to the list, you can group by album, or use the cover browser. The third seems pretty cool, but until the gapless playback determination has run, I can’t tell if it will be speedy enough on my setup. My music is all stored on a network hard disk, so the link here may be the bottleneck. Still, being able to flick through the covers is cool. I really like the other new view, which groups the tracks by album. I have come across a slight side-effect though. I have two albums with the same name, but by different artists. This means they alternate when in the standard viewing method, but this can be fixed by setting the Album Artist tag for each track. What’s coolest about this new view is that you can remove the album art viewer from the bottom left of the window, since this is now available in the main view. This allows more space for playlists, as I suggested above. Podcasts have gotten a nice couple of features. The first is that the number of new podcasts is shown like in Mail after the Podcasts source item. The second is that when downloading podcasts they appear in the “Downloads” list, rather than in the “screen” section at the top of the window. I don’t know if they’ve yet implemented resumable downloads, or the ability to alter the number of concurrent downloads. The new interface feels okay too, although they’ve broken system support for double-arrows at each end of a scrollbar. Overall, I think I like it. It will be interesting to see how speed goes…
I’m not yet sure how I feel about Christopher Alexander and his ideas about what has been wrong with Architechture over the past 100 years or so. I think as an exercise (more for my own mental stimulation than anything else), I’ll listen again to the programme recently broadcast on ABC Radio National (no Podcast, but I figured out a way to download rather than stream it…) and perhaps summarize and critique his ideas. Of course, there’s always the chance I won’t finish doing that…
Bold all of the following television shows which you’ve ever seen three or more episodes of in your lifetime. Italicise a show if you’re positive you’ve seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to three additional shows (but keep the list in alphabetical order). 24 7th Heaven Adam-12 Aeon Flux ALF Alfred Hitchcock Presents Alias American Idol/Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol/etc. America’s Next Top Model/Germany’s Next Top Model Angel Arrested Development Babylon 5 Babylon 5: Crusade Battlestar Galactica (the old one) Battlestar Galactica (the new one) Baywatch Beavis & Butthead Beverly Hills 90210 Bewitched Bonanza Bones Bosom Buddies Boston Legal Boy Meets World Buffy the Vampire Slayer Bug Juice Chappelle’s Show Charlie’s Angels Charmed Cheers Columbo Commander in Chief Coupling Cowboy Bebop Crossing Jordan CSI CSI: Miami CSI: NY Curb Your Enthusiasm Dancing with the Stars Danny Phantom Dark Angel Dark Skies Davinci’s Inquest Dawson’s Creek Dead Like Me Deadliest Catch Deadwood Degrassi: The Next Generation Designing Women Desperate Housewives (This was one day I was sick, and they showed them all day…) Dharma & Greg Different Strokes Doctor Who (new Who) Dragnet Due South Earth 2 Emergency! Entourage ER Everwood Everybody Loves Raymond Facts of Life Family Guy Family Ties Farscape Fawlty Towers Felicity Firefly Frasier Friends Futurama Get Smart Gilligan’s Island Gilmore Girls Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Green Wing Grey’s Anatomy Growing Pains Gunsmoke Hannah Montana Happy Days **Hogan’s Heroes Home Improvement **Homicide: Life on the Street House **I Dream of Jeannie I Love Lucy **Invader Zim Invasion Hell’s Kitchen JAG Jackass Joey - they made more than 3 of these? John Doe **LA Law Laverne and Shirley **Little House on the Prairie Lizzie McGuire Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman _Lost _Lost in Space Love, American Style **MAS*H MacGyver Malcolm in the Middle Married… With Children Melrose Place Miami Vice Mission: Impossible Monk Moonlighting Mork & Mindy Murphy Brown **My Life as a Dog My Three Sons **My Two Dads NCIS Nip/Tuck Northern Exposure Numb3rs **One Tree Hill Oz Perry Mason **Picket Fences Pokemon Power Rangers **Prison Break Profiler Project Runway Psyche _Quantum Leap _Queer As Folk (US) **Queer as Folk (British) **ReGenesis **Remington Steele **Rescue Me Road Rules ROME **Roseanne Roswell Saved by the Bell **Scarecrow and Mrs. King **Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Scrubs Seinfeld Sex and the City Six Feet Under **Slings and Arrows Smallville So Weird South Park Spaced Spongebob Squarepants Sports Night **Star Trek **Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager Star Trek: Enterprise Stargate Atlantis Stargate SG-1 Superman Supernatural Surface **Survivor **Taxi Teen Titans **That 70’s Show That’s So Raven **The 4400 The Addams Family The Andy Griffith Show **The A-Team **The Avengers **The Beverly Hillbillies The Brady Bunch The Cosby Show The Daily Show **The Dead Zone The Dick Van Dyke Show **The Flintstones The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air The Golden Girls **The Honeymooners The Jeffersons **The Jetsons The L Word The Love Boat The Mary Tyler Moore Show **The Mighty Boosh The Monkees The Munsters **The Mythbusters The O.C. **The Office (UK) The Office (US) The Pretender The Real World **The Shield **The Simpsons **The Six Million Dollar Man **The Sopranos The Suite Life of Zack and Cody **The Twilight Zone **The Waltons The West Wing _The Wonder Years The X-Files _Third Watch Three’s Company **Top Gear **Twin Peaks Twitch City Veronica Mars Whose Line is it Anyway? (US) Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK) Will and Grace