random bits

[cellio]

Usually mail addressed to "resident" is a write-off, but yesterday we got a letter in a small envelope with a handwritten address to "current resident", which is unusual. Inside was a postcard/photo of our house from circa 1930. The accompanying letter explained that the writer had found it in a scrapbook and since it actually had an address written on the back, she wanted to send it to us, whomever we were, assuming the house was still standing. Neat! So we're going to send back a current picture, along with one of its near-twin two houses up. (Ours and the other house are mirror images of each other.)

The South Side, where I work, has been devoid of Indian food -- until now. Sree's, of CMU lunch-cart fame, has set up a satellite in a kiosk at the end of our block. Yay! An actual restaurant would be better, but I'll take "surprise vegetarian combo of the day" in steamer trays if necessary. It's still pretty good. Qdoba, let's just be friends, ok? :-) (I actually bring my lunch almost all the time, eating out maybe once every couple weeks, but when I do go out it's usually for the pseudo-Mexican salad.)

Quote of the day: "See, in Java, they force you to hack your way through the jungle with a machete. In perl they give you a flamethrower, and afterward you root around in the ashes for the data you wanted. The styles are somewhat different." - dvarin, here.

You can get almost anything at Amazon (link from merle_). Be sure to read the reviews.

The digitize-our-albums-and-tapes-before-they-rot project is still mainly in analysis mode (figuring out where to acquire what), though we're grabbing the low-hanging fruit as we see it. This will take some time. Meanwhile, we learned tonight that while you can nominally share your iTunes library with other machines on the local network, you can't actually do much with that -- you can't add non-local files to playlists or iPods, which sort of defeats the purpose, no? (And iTunes has to be running on both machines to even listen.) Just copying the files from one iTunes directory to another doesn't seem to do the trick, either. Sigh. Are we really going to have to import everything CD by CD and track by track (for the downloads) in order to share everything?

Comments

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I hadn't pointed you to the 'donk before? That's legend at this point. Definitely, check out the "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" section as well.

(It's also significantly more lightweight than it looks in the primary photo. Which is good, as it runs on a go-kart motor (http://www.willardssmallengines.com/shop/tecumseh/engines/horizontal-engines/ohh60-71216e-6-0-tecumseh-powersport-engine-.html).)

iTunes

[tc-tick.livejournal.com]

Actually, you can easily import the files into other iTunes, but you have to build the library over again. Simply share the mp3 files/folders and "add folder to library" on the other machine. It takes a while, but definitely works. In my case, I maintane an external copy on a portable hard drive that serves as a backup ard media to move it to one of the other computers. Be sure to set the options correctly in advanced to either create a local copy of the mp3/aac files or not. If you don't copy them, the shared drive needs to be present (only makes sense.)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

"You can get almost anything at Amazon..."

Now someone needs to write an Alice's Restaurant / "Amazon's Shopping Site" filk.

"27 pages of 8x10 color glossy icons..."

[geekosaur]

FWIW I use TuneRanger to keep my desktop and laptop iTunes libraries synced.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

but yesterday we got a letter in a small envelope with a handwritten address to "current resident", which is unusual. Inside was a postcard/photo of our house from circa 1930.

Oh, this is really cool!

[alice-curiouser.livejournal.com]

That is so cool about the house photo; how nice of them to take the time.

not from Amazon, but...

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

A tank for your cat (http://www.drinkstuff.com/products/product.asp?ID=4699&awc=8_1225126761_6032485b6fcc0b9e3bb206d3607653a6)

[jducoeur]

Meanwhile, we learned tonight that while you can nominally share your iTunes library with other machines on the local network, you can't actually do much with that -- you can't add non-local files to playlists or iPods, which sort of defeats the purpose, no?

Actually, that isn't the purpose of that particular feature. Far as I can tell, the point of that one is live LAN-sharing -- being able to poke around at the music of other people on your LAN, see what cool stuff they have that you don't, and listen to it. We actually did a moderate amount of this at Convoq, since a number of us were running iTunes most of the time. But it has nothing to do with moving files around: it's for listening to what the other guy has on his playlist...