Exploring iTunes

Posted on November 6, 2007 by santosht
I have owned an iPod for over a year now and I have to say that i just love it. I have loaded it up upto 60GBs. Yes 60 GBs. Until a few years ago i used to think owning 5 GB’s of music was big and now i own this huge collection. Well, with that comes the challenge to manage it. Some of you who read this may think what is he talking about, but if you put yourself in my shoes will you understand. Its not at all easy to rip all the CD’s if you lose the files, find the rare bootlegs once again, rate your music, etc, etc.
 
I started off by planning my backup strategy. I once came this close to lost my music cos of a hard drive crash. Thank God i had a backup then. Now what next? I end up buying at least 4-5 CD’s each month and then sometimes you end up listening to a few songs from each CD that you liked on the first listening. Thats no fun. So what do i do about it? I figured that "Smart Playlists" is the way to go. Using Smart Playlists you can create rules for playlists so that you can listen to songs based on your preferences. Its a lot of fun to create these playlists. I already have one called "Favourites" which is more or less like a radio-station playing all the songs i love – one after the other, yes – thats what it does. 🙂 There is another called "Guitar Gods" and of course it has Vai, Satriani, Derek Trucks, Morse and company. Another one called "Killer solo’s" which has got the best solo’s ever. 🙂 The other one is called "31" which stands for the maximum volume on my car stereo and has got all the songs which listen to Full Blast – "Killing in the name", "Revelations", "Song that remains the same", "Rusty Cage" – you know what i am talking about. While playing with all this i realized a lot of cool things about iTunes. Songs can have lyrics, Albums can have ratings, "Apple Scripts" for automation. So where does this all lead me to? I have over 10,500 songs and less than 250 songs without artwork. 🙂 About 2000 songs have lyrics and the rest dont. Adding lyrics manually was never an option. So i explore a few plugins available but i wasnt satisfied with any of them. So i have decided to write my own tool to add lyrics and maybe artwork. A simple C# program to get the lyrics from LirycsWiki and artwork from Amazon that will update the ID3 tags of my music. Its wont be very easy but i am going to give it a shot, lets see how far i go. 🙂 I hope to have lyrics to atleast about 75% of the songs i have. Good luck to me.
 
The one other thing i am excited about is Windows Home Server. I think its a promising technology and i might consider investing in it. Lets see how that goes.
Posted in Music | 1 Comment

New Look :-)

Posted on October 12, 2007 by santosht
I just changed the look of my blog. Spent a long time to figure a few things and experimenting with the colors and fonts. 🙂 Let me know how you like it, i promise i wont get offended. 🙂
 
I wont say i am done yet but ya, i am quite satisfied right now with what i got. One of the important lesson i learnt was, never play with font colors in your blog posts. It gets totally messed up when you change the look of your blog. 😦
 
Good Luck to you if you are planning on changing the color scheme of your blog.
 
 
Posted in Hobbies | 4 Comments

In Rainbows

Posted on October 10, 2007 by santosht

So i downloaded the new Radiohead album a couple of hours ago. Giving it a second listening and yeah, I just love the album. It hits the spot the first time you listen to it.

Radiohead rocks!!! 🙂

Posted in Music | 3 Comments

Within You And Without You – George Harrison (Beatles)

Posted on October 9, 2007 by santosht

 

We were talking
About the space between us all
And people who hide themselves
Behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth
Then it’s far too late
When they pass away

We were talking
About the love we all could share
When we find it
To try our best to hold it there
With our love, with our love
We could save the world
If they only knew

Try to realize it’s all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you

We were talking
About the love that’s gone so cold
And the people who gain the world
And lose their soul
They don’t know, they can’t see
Are you one of them

When you’ve seen beyond yourself
Then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come
When you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you

Beautiful lyrics. I just read a Wikipedia article and I was honestly surprised to read that it was based on Hindu ideas. Interesting huh?

 

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Radiohead ga ga

Posted on October 7, 2007 by santosht
Radiohead is done recording thier new album!! Its called "In Rainbows". Yipee! Like Dave Matthews said, they can never come out with a bad album. Every album is a masterpiece. When can i get my hands on the new album?
 
I checked their website and they have listed two options to get the album. (i) Download and (ii) Order the disc. Downloads will be available starting 10th Oct and discs will be shipped on Dec 3rd. They are processing the orders from their UK website. I tried both options. Its a Radiohead CD i need a copy of the CD and not a download. Guess how much a copy costs? £40!! Woo, thats too much for a CD. So i checked the cost of the download. Guess what? There was a blank textbox with a "?" icon next to it. I clicked the icon. It says "Its upto you". REALLY? You get to choose the price of the download. Huh. I couldn’t believe it, so i clicked the "?" icon again. It says "No really. It’s upto you.". Wow. How cool is that?
 
I bot the digital download for a price that i felt was right. I am not gonna tell you how much i paid. But i can tell you that i wasnt stingy. 🙂 Cant wait for October 10th. 🙂
 
Here is the link to get the album: http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/Quickindex.html
 
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I wish

Posted on September 26, 2007 by santosht

This is something i scribbled when i was at JFK, stuck there for a few hours having missed my flight to Seattle and missing home.

Who could have believed that 5 weeks can pass so fast? It seems like only yesterday when I was still planning my India trip. And here I am now, back at JFK airport. Huh, why does time fly so fast? L

Time goes by very fast when you are having a good time. I wish it did not. I wish that my trip was longer, I wish I could have left on the 18th like Janhavi (my niece) was forcing me to, wish I could have spent more time with my family, wish I could have seen the Ganapati festival, wish I could have caught up with my friends one more time, wish I could have played another game of cricket, or at least seen the India-Pakistan Twenty20 game, wish I could have seen another day of the Mumbai rains, another ride in the auto-rickshaw, another vada-pav….

Though I still have some Indian Rupees still in my wallet, I know they won’t help me much here. It’s time for me to pay dollars for the doppio-espresso I have ordered.

 

Posted in Random thoughts | 3 Comments

…and here are the zoo pics

Posted on August 3, 2007 by santosht

 

After visiting the Aquarium i decided to go to the Woodland Zoo in Seattle and i did enjoy it a lot. Though some of my friends told me that this was not the best Zoo they have been to, i had a great time. The Komodo Dragon, the butterflies, the lizards, bears, birds, etc were just awesome.

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Norah Jones

Posted on July 31, 2007 by santosht

 

 

 

I got a pic with Norah Jones and i thought it deserves a mention here. 🙂

 

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Finding Nemo

Posted on July 31, 2007 by santosht

 

I went to the Seattle Aquarium one more time a few weekends ago. Although i wish i went there on a weekday to avoid all the rush, i had a great time. I remember going to the Aquarium in Bombay as a kid with my parents and getting thrilled after seeing those BIG fishes. I thought that maybe with time, the excitement will go down, but no, its as much fun even today. I still remember taking Kalpita to a well near my house to show her tor-too-toise. 🙂 When she was little, she could not say tortoise, she always said tortootoise. Cute. Dont know if she pronounces it right even now. 🙂

I just loved the Aquarium and i am sure i will go there a few more time. I only wish my nephew and nieces were there with me. I can almost imagine them pulling my hand and shouting "Hey see mama (mama means uncle in my mother tongue), there’s Nemo here…". Click the pic to see all the pics i took.

I know some of you will find me kiddish but guess what, i went to the zoo two times last week and still couldnt get enough of it. 🙂

Posted in Hobbies | 1 Comment

Human touch

Posted on June 27, 2007 by santosht

There is this small shop called CD Warehouse in the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue. Its a small place and they buy and sell music CD’s, DVD’s and posters. I go there quite often to check what they have got and basically buy used CD’s. They really give u some good deals. I have bot a few Black Crowes CD’s for as less as $1, yes one dollar besides a lot of others for under $5. Its fun to shop at this place and buy CD’s that you want to try, cos its so cheap out there.

This is not the only shop that sells used CD’s but i frequent this shop more than anyother in my area. Reason: Their Human Touch. Let me explain. When i was a kid, i was still in school buying music was a big event. I think i bot a cassette once every 6 months. Factors we considered were
(1) Its something i want to buy ofcourse
(2) Vikas does not have the cassette. This was very important as we did not want to end up with duplicates
(3) Length of the album. This may sound stupid but we did consider that… and as a matter of fact, i sometimes do that even today.
(4) The price. This one is very interesting. Cassettes were priced at Rs. 35, Rs. 38 and Rs. 40. Yet, a Rs. 40 cassette was considered expensive. As it would have taken us a few weeks (if not more to save those extra 2-5 bucks).

I remember the times when we were at Rythym House (thats the best shop in Bombay to buy music – CD’s and Cassettes) deciding on which cassette to buy when some guy will come with a basket with 15-20 CD’s and not even take a minute to even calculate how much will the bill come to. I used to think about the day when i can do that. There were so many cassettes i wanted to buy but i could not afford em. Buying a CD at that time was like buying a house – no jokes. It was something i could have never imagined me doing. But those days was fun. I miss those times Vikas.

Coming back to CD Warehouse. They have this note that caught my eye. The note read something like "Please dont steal. We are here for you. If there is some CD that you really want and cannot afford, please talk to us and we can see whats the best we can do for you." Man, thats something i always wanted as a kid. That was really cool.

Someday, i want to start my own music store with a cafe. I dont know if i will do it, but i think i will really enjoy doing that. That day, i shall do something similar to make sure that kids like me, who cannot afford some of the CD’s, get a chance to enjoy the music…

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