Zzzzzzz!!!

Today was one of those days where my time was absolutely wasted... at least for the most part. Being that it's Thursday means that today was a class day. So, I make the trip to my 8 o'clock class, 15 minutes late, only to find the classroom dark and empty upon arriving there. Obviously, I didn't get a memo about there not being class that day. So, I went to the Mac lab where all my stuff goes on in my program of study and hung out for about two hours before going to find lunch.

I walk 20 blocks over to the gateway Mall area, thinking I can get something at Runza, since McDonald's wasn't at all appetizing to me. Problem is, Runza only takes cash, and the ATM inside the mall wanted to give me no less than $20 and I'm pushin' broke. With that, lunch ended up being chocolate covered raisins and green tea from Walgreens.

I get back to the college in time for my Digital Video Production class, where I expected to see the deadline pass for a music video project I'm supposed to be working on. Luckily, nobody showed up, but for a few people. Too few to hold a class and do show and tell. But, while I get more time to work, I also had another 2 hours to burn, since I don't drive. If it wasn't for my personal internet radio station I set up on the Mac at home and the fact that this was a good time to register, I would have gone nuts or simply fell asleep.

So um, how was y'all's day?

Looking for the perfect mix

Those that know me know I'm extremely particular in my playlists and my tagging when it comes to my digital audio files on iTunes. Not only do I do the usual genre tags, I take it a step further and use the grouping tags to fill in sub-genres for each song. For example, with the R&B/Soul genre, I use the grouping field to designate Contemporary R&B and Neo-Soul, since there is a difference in the two. Beyond that, I make sure every file is rated upon entry to my collection.

What this does is allow me to create self-updating "smart playlists" that give me exactly what I want when it comes to genre, sub-genre, and rating. But after finding an article about creating playlists that filter music in and out according to how often they're played and how they're rated, I decided to do more research into creating smart playlists on iTunes.

What I found was a response on another blog that used ratings as more of a priority. It went like this:

5-star (any song rated 5, not played in the last 3 days)
4-star (any song rated 4, not played in the last 2 weeks)
3-star (any song rated 3, not played in the last 6 weeks)
2-star (any song rated 2, not played in the last 6 months)
New (default setting in Itunes)
Unrated (any unrated song, not played in the last 4 weeks)

I then make a “hit radio” playlist, that just plays these 6 playlists mixed together. Perfect mix. When a song plays, you can then adjust the rating as required, it is easy to pick up on a song that you hear too often and drop it a star, or promote a great song you haven’t heard in a while.

You can also adjust the “last played” factor on each level to adjust to your preference & music library size.

You could easily add a “music playlist only” modifier to each rule playlist, but I just pre-emptively mark anything that I know I dont want in a music playlist as a 1-star. (comedy & spoken word stuff, as well as horrible songs that I don’t want to delete)

If that's at all confusing to you, each individual line of rules is a separate smart playlist. Since I obviously don't like music rated with one or two stars, I immediately phased that out, keeping the rules for 5,4, and 3 star ratings as well as my own personalization for new music. To take it a step further, I added a genre setting for each of these list so that they only play R&B/Soul. Then, I made a smart playlist combining the smart playlists I created.

What I have now is a very pleasing mix of songs, with the flexibility to change ratings on the fly to enable me to keep songs in rotation that I'm feelin' at the moment and to lower the rotation on songs I'm not in the mood for at the moment. Lists like these also work nice for people who own iPod Shuffles, such as myself.

So, don't be afraid to go deep into your music tags on whatever player you use on your computer. This will help you create better playlists in the future.

B.E.Z.

Back to basics again

Well, I decided to play around with this blog again instead of using the iWeb site. Really, what it comes down to is just a lack of default blog styling that I feel comfortable with. So, I still have this old template that I created for blogger and I think I'm going to ride it for a while.

I simply have more flexibility with this format than what I have with iWeb. Let's keep in mind that iWeb is a young application. I was introduced to the iLife suite as part of iLife '06 and is still very much a work in progress. Judging from what Apple has done in programs such as Pages, Keynote, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, and even the new version of Mail that's coming in Leopard, I'm sure iWeb is a application with a promising future. If that holds true, I'll probably move to it for purposes of hosting a home page. It just doesn't support what I want right now, entirely.

As far as what to expect from this version of my home page, I'm not going to promise anything. However, I do hope to get some music reviews and sports rants on here among other things. I know this post probably wasn't overly exciting to most of you, so, I'll try to make it so in future posts.

Until then...

B.E.Z.