iTunes Genius is Brilliant
Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
– Thomas Edison
I’m not sure about the ingredients, but I’m sure iTunes Genius is brilliant.
– Me
My need for music is closely tied to length of my commute. And the soundtrack of my current 10 minute commute is sports talk radio combined with obsessive repeats of my favorite track of whatever CD is loaded in the player.
Make that past-tense. The soundtrack of my commute was sport talk radio combined with obsessive repeats. Because I’ve discovered how easy it is to make and burn a Genius playlist to CD. And now the soundtrack of my commute comes courtesy of iTunes Genius.
- Select a song in iTunes.
- Click on the Genius button in the lower right.
- Modify tracks as needed (delete for an audio CD, or increase for a MP3 CD).
- Click on the “Save Playlist” button on the upper right.
- Find the Playlist (named for the original song), right-click and “Burn Playlist to Disc”
- Enjoy
Decisions, Decisions
Thanks to Tivo, I’ve started watching Classic Albums. And after watching the show on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I felt the urge to pick up some classic Elton John.
Back in the day, I had allowed myself to be deluded into thinking that songs should be kept in the context of their original albums. That delusion faded about the time it became trivially easy to cherry pick the best tracks off a CD.
Unfortunately, that leaves me the problem of selecting a version. The iTunes music store has about 10 versions of Rocket Man, 10 versions of Daniel, and 5 versions of Levon. It’s pretty safe to rule out any non plus versions, but that doesn’t really make a dent in numbers.
The last, lingering traces of my old delusions bias me towards songs off the original album. The technologist in me wants to look into remastered versions. And the procrastinator in me says maybe next week.
Costco +1
A shout out to the nice people at Costco. I needed them to bend the rules to our mutual benefit. It would have been easy to hide behind the rules. But they recognized the opportunity and rose to the occasion.
Star Trek
Best movie I’ve seen this year. Abrams has revitalized Star Trek by deconstructing it.
But I can’t help but feel that this was an action movie with Star Trek characters rather than a Star Trek movie. Not that I’m complaining.
What are you doing?
For customer “Dwight Shih”, project “weblog”, I am ranting.
I get it. People implement a time tracking system so that they can roll up activities for accounting purposes. But
- Rolling up data is easy.
- Collecting data to roll up is hard.
Customer, then project, then task may be the natural accounting hierarchy. That doesn’t mean that you have to make people enter data that way.
15 down 20 to go
That’s Obese.
Wii Fit, 25 December 2008
Since that inauspicious beginning, I have lost 15 pounds and moved from borderline obese to solidly overweight. Another 20 pounds and I’ll achieve borderline normalcy.
From Florida and Only Florida
Brand loyalty is a finicky thing – strong enough to guide purchases over years and weak enough to evaporate in a flash. We had always been a Tropicana family, recently fending off a brief incursion of Simply Orange at the hands of a visiting nephew.
Then PepsiCo introduced a major overhaul of the Tropicana packaging:
The brand is what gives the product its authenticity and credibility. The brand includes everything from the name, the look, the logo, the color and the package.
When you change the look of the packaging, you lose some of the power of the brand in the mind. It no longer looks authentic. And worse, consumers think you have also changed the contents.
We weren’t outraged by the change in packaging. We bought some of the new containers. But with the change we took a closer look at the package … and discovered that Tropicana includes oranges from Brazil.
All things being equal, we try to support local business. Which is why we’re now drinking Florida’s Natural – “From Florida and Only Florida”.