Crankypantsing, Music

Instant Review: Songbird

Shelly

I ended up returning the refurbished iPod I bought. It was supposed to have a one year warranty, but Apple wouldn’t honor it. Hrmf. The main reason I wanted that particular older model is that new iPods require iTunes 7.4 or above. iTunes 7.4 and above require service pack 2 if you’re using WinXP. I don’t have service pack 2, and I have no intentions of getting it. Hrmf again.

What to do? As much as I’m not an Apple fan, the iPod Classic seems to be the sweet spot, in terms of providing a large amount of storage for a reasonable price. But, if it won’t work with my set-up, then I’m screwed.

I spent a couple of days thinking over my options and reading up on possible solutions to the iTunes-SP2 problem. I found several programs that came close, but nothing that was guaranteed to work. Some of the work-arounds were convoluted enough that I didn’t even want to try them. I was not a happy camper!

And then I found Songbird.

Songbird is open source, so it’s sort of like Thunderbird for your iPod. It installs easily (seriously, it’s 100% foolproof). It can pull music from your iTunes folder, if you have one, or it can automagically search for music on your drive(s), or you can manually add selected songs. It can play audio files and streaming audio. Other than that, it’s pretty basic. It does not (yet) rip or burn CDs, so you’d have to use another program for that. (There are approximately eleventy brazillion free ripping and burning programs out there.) Video playback is also supposedly forthcoming.

The user interface is basic, as well. It supports multiple tag editing (as far as I could tell, iTunes 6x did not) and playlist creation. I have not found an easy way to check/uncheck which songs to include/exclude when syncing (one thing iTunes did manage to get right), but there is an “add manually” option when syncing that might fulfill the same function. You could also create an iPod playlist, and export just those songs. My solution is to remove everything I don’t want on my iPod from the Songbird library. Since I’m using an old version of MusicMatch Jukebox to manage my real library, the “master library” is unaffected.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that Songbird does, indeed, sync beautifully with the iPod Classic. It took about 14 forevers to transfer everything to the iPod, but it did so without any problems. I give it 11 stars out of 10 for A) solving my headache and B) freeing me from Teh Eeevil iTunes.

And now I have more music-to-go than I can shake a stick at. There’s something kind of mind-boggling about having ALL OF THE SONGS on shuffle.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Clouds

Shelly

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I’m cat sitting again, and on my way home from the evening shift today, I pulled over to take a photo of these puffy, white clouds.

I like sitting for these cats. They’re easy keepers, and though they’re out in the country, they’re close to my side of town. It only takes about 15 minutes to get there. The only problem is that there are a lot of bicyclists on Hwy 45, which is a narrow, two-lane road with absolutely no shoulder. And since this is southern Indiana, it’s twisty and hilly. There aren’t many safe places to pass even a single bicyclist. When they travel in packs, and they often do, it’s even worse. They won’t pull over and let cars pass, even if there are 10-20 of them trapped behind, which makes people cranky, which makes them do stupid shit. Stupid shit, like passing bicyclists on hills and curves (and there isn’t much of that particular road that isn’t a curve or a hill or both).

I had the living hell scared out of me on the way home tonight. Some jackass was trying to pass three bikes, ON A CURVING FUCKING HILL!!! I came around the other side of the curve to find a huge truck in my lane, and there was no place to go. Luckily, we both hit the brakes, and he was able to get back behind the bikes, in his own fucking lane, where he fucking well belonged.

I really want to be sympathetic to bicyclists, but it seems to me that, if there is not a bike path, and you cannot go the speed limit, then you have no business putting your puny, little body out on a road filled with giant, hurtling boxes of doom[1]. It’s just asking for death and dismemberment. And lemme tell ya’, if I happen to be one of the people who ends up dead and dismembered, onna counta you just had to ride your bike on the highway, you’d better hope you’re dead, too, because if you aren’t, I will come back and haunt you.

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1. Really. That this seems like a good idea to some people makes me think they might be batshit crazy. I can’t think of any other reasonable explanation for their behavior.

Crankypantsing, My Garden, Pets, Photography

Rust and Lilies

Shelly

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1. If you’re a supervisor, shouldn’t you know that it’s kind of inappropriate to say “Good job, girl!” to a black employee? Aieee!

2. Slowly but surely, all paths to the library are being eliminated by road work. This morning, 10th street at the bypass was closed. WTF?! They really shouldn’t make it difficult for me to get to work in the morning, because I just might take it as a sign to turn around and go back home.

3. One day last week, I came home to a note from FedEx on my door, telling me that they’d left my package with Charlene. Okaythen! Who the hell is Charlene (an apartment number might have been helpful), and whose package is FedEx trying to deliver to me? Because I hadn’t ordered anything, so I knew it wasn’t mine. Nor did I have any way to find out who the package rightfully belonged to, to inform them that Charlene had their goods.

Of course, my iPod is being shipped FedEx. Hopefully, they won’t leave it with Charlene.

4. Windsor and Newton’s Galeria line includes an iridescent acrylic medium. I didn’t buy any, but I did make note of it. Ooooh! Shiny! I did get a tub o’ acrylic structure medium for the new painting, as well as a few new brushes and two big, fat tubes of cerulean blue and naples yellow paint. There shall be painting this weekend!

5. Across-the-hall neighbor trapped a kitten, and I got to go over and hold it. She’s super cute and not nearly as wild as my neighbor first thought. I’m betting that her owner moved out and left her. That tends to happen a lot in college towns. I held her for about 30 minutes, and she was perfectly comfortable. She purred, but not in an anxious way, and when I rubbed her ears, she leaned into it. So if any local folks are looking for a nice cat, I can hook you up. (Yeah, fat chance, I know!) She’s all black, short-haired, with two little white toes on one hind foot, and a small white patch on her belly. And a DC-10 motor.

6. Harriet could not be any cuter, not even if she tried. I have no new photographic proof of this, because I was too in awe of her ubercuteness to take peechurs. She was in a Mood, last night, though, so there was much kidney beaning, boinging, and wrinkly-snarly-smiley face making. (Lamprey face-making, even. Totally ridiculous.) And much rolling around with legs in the air, flippy-flapping like a happy trout. I should also mention the snorting and the nubbin wiggling. There was quite a bit of that, too.

She was very happy about something, and when Harriet is happy, it’s impossible not to be happy right along with her.

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Surprise Lily Keeps Surprising

Uncategorized

Retail Therapy

Shelly

I may have mentioned, in passing, that someday before I die, I would like to have real, live, matching towels and wash cloths? Well, that day has finally come. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and Target had some decent and pretty ones on sale. I got mixy-matchy chocolate brown and sea foamy teal bath towels (two brown with viney sea foam pattern and two solid sea foam), light tan hand towels, and an assortment of wash cloths in various shades of tan to brown.

Normally, I would have gone with deep blues, teals, and aquas, but since my tile floor is a peachy tan color, I thought I’d better do something to bridge the gap between that and my teal shower curtain. Because I will not give up the teal shower curtain, and there’s not anything I can do about the horrible color of the floor tile. Brown with sea foam is not something I would have ordinarily considered, but it’s actually a yummy color combination.

Pets

Status Reports

Shelly

1. Spotty fish is very nearly completely unspotty. All the ammonia burns are gone, except for a small patch of about five scales on his side. That will be gone soon, too, and I will be back to not being able to tell Fish One from Fish Two.

2. Harriet’s lump removal surgery is scheduled for September 9th. I was afraid that I’d have to talk them into doing the surgery, because the vet seemed hesitant. Apparently she took my concerns about it bothering Harriet seriously, though, because she put a note on Harriet’s chart, recommending that it be done.

Art, Collage, Paintings

In Progress

Shelly

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acrylic and collage on canvas
38 x 38 inches

This is really rough. The paint is just a quick layer to block in the main shapes. I usually block in with the complement of whatever the end color is going to be, if I can manage to plan ahead that far. It probably doesn’t matter with acrylics, but with oils, doing so makes the colors pop.

The tree is all collaged with pages from an old paperback copy of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. I read it in high school and can’t imagine wanting to read it again (the first time was painful enough!), so it was a good candidate for recycling.

Crankypantsing, Pets

Excitement

Shelly

When I took Harriet for her last potty break last night, there were two fire trucks and four police cars in the street out front. I haven’t a clue what they were there for, but there were cops in our parking lot, talking to people.

I thought all the lights and noise would make Harriet tweaky, but she was all business and completely ignored the confusion. The only thing that got her attention was my neighbor’s dogs, who were off-leash in front of his apartment. They were between us and the dumpster, so we had to walk past them to throw Harriet’s “doggie bag” away. Leash your dogs, people!