Kelleytown's Ex-Genius

Vegans, Monkeys and Journals

2008-03-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

Long before I started this blog I had a thought that I should jot down my thoughts somewhere. Not that my thoughts are all that worthwhile to anyone else, but only that they might somehow be worthwhile to me, and I should preserve them just in case. So the following did occur to me way back when (when dinosaurs ruled, although in actuality it was only like four years ago).

"I’ve kept a journal before, but it’s been only for very specific points of time. But it’s all the rage to do this now, although it’s now referred to as “journaling” as the ever-present corruption of the English language continues. I heard this last night: a woman on one of the reality shows asked another woman if she “journaled”.

That would be like asking Stephen King if he “booked”, which might be an appropriate question for someone from the Sacramento Kings (or perhaps even a shady character from Vegas), but hardly for an author who writes books.

Soon we will be changing all the nouns into verbs: it’s so much more convenient and so clearly focuses the conversation on what’s really important (which is to say, the speaker). It wouldn’t at all surprise me to hear someone say “Well, I ate, I drank, I TV and now I bed. See I tomorrow.”

It’s all one more symptom of the “me” generation, a moniker applied to my own generation but one that seems just as relevant to the current crop as ever before. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Apple’s latest group of products are all prefaced by “i”. Only people so impressed with themselves would find nothing out of the ordinary owning an iBook or iPod, or play their iTunes on their iStereo while taking pictures on their iCamera.

Let’s face it – if it didn’t smack of Tarzan it could have just as easily been the MePod. At least using “me” is more honest: “Me want best car. Me want good tennis shoes. Me want be like Mike.”

The self-absorbed woman on that reality show would find nothing amiss in all this. Somewhere around the age of three most kids learn the world doesn’t revolve around them, much to their dismay. But this lady either never realized that or came to another, more important epiphany that contradicted this.

She was also self-righteous, and a vegan to boot. I have nothing against vegans, although her group had an odd sort of ethic when it came to animals (they would kill spiders but not snakes; if starving she would eat alligator or dog, but not a chicken, cow or lion since they were vegetarians themselves. Yep, that ole’ lion was sitting there eating his greens dreaming of some mashed potatoes). They were, when it came right down to it, animal bigots.

Did you ever wonder why there are gorillas? I mean, at some point in evolution all the monkeys decided to become humans, but what the heck went on with the group that evolved into the great apes? My hunch is they were monkeys that were convinced to become vegans.

I can just hear it now: “Hey, you guys have got to stop eating eggs and killing termites. Have you considered that life is sacred? Just look at all the great green stuff we have all around us. Sure, it will take us 15 or 16 hours a day of eating to match what we can do with protein, but what else is there to do on this planet but lie around, eat, sleep and make more monkeys? Yes, I know you’ve heard the talk about that stuff that burns your hands but if you ask me, that’s just playing with fire. It’ll never amount to anything. And if we get real hungry, we’ll eat a dog”

Me go now.

What Apple doesn't want you to know -- Part 2

2008-01-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. Which is to say that the following isn't so much what Apple doesn't want you to know as it is what Apple doesn't tell you anywhere. But they should.

It concerns Album art in iTunes (and, by extension, on your iPod/iPhone/Touch, etc). Album art never used to be too big a deal until displays got big enough (and in color) and until Cover Flow (where you view your albums as if looking at your collection) was perfected on the iPhone/Touch. Now that more and more people are using it they've become aware that it doesn't always work properly. I can't tell you for sure how it doesn't work, but I can tell you why, and how to fix it.

There are two ways of getting and storing album art. If you select, in iTunes, "Get Album Art", iTunes will connect to the iTunes store and try and find all the art that matches your albums. It then creates a special folder in iTunes called Album Artwork and stores a copy of the artwork (in a very odd format) for each album, all automagically to you.

In theory this sounds great, but in actual practice there are a few things wrong with it. In the first place, it doesn't always find artwork for an album, or it finds the wrong artwork for an album. More importantly, because of the way it works (or doesn't) it will sometimes get your artwork completely screwed up when it is transferred to your portable device.

The latter is what we are particularly concerned with here -- the artwork can look and act fine in iTunes, but on your iPhone (for example) show the wrong songs, or the wrong artwork, or a combination of the two.

The way to fix it is to use the second method of getting and storing artwork. In this way you select all the songs of the album in iTunes, press Ctrl-I, and paste in the relevent artwork into the artwork box (after first copying it from somewhere -- I like www.albumart.org a lot, but Amazon.com will work as well).

This is a lot more work and it means that a copy of the image is stored in each and every song (unlike the iTunes store method) but the advantage is the artwork is always right -- it never gets screwed up in transfer because it can't (as when the song is transferred the artwork is also transferred correctly).

And it isn't a terrible amount of work -- I did all 800 of my albums in about an afternoon. You also have the advantage of getting really nice artwork, as sometimes the iTunes choices, while technically correct, are not the best ones available. All in all I highly recommend doing it yourself.

To have and to have not

2007-11-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

The thing that got me thinking about doing a Blog at all was a nice take on one of my favorite (still) television shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can read it here.

He starts off with a total non-sequiter about how the country has an issue with the haves and the have nots. Now, I don't want to engage in name-calling, but it is pretty typical of a certain political affiliation to bring up derisiveness when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It's as if their own (what? Rage at the machine? Feelings of Helplessness?) colors every single observation of their lives.

I suspect this gentlemen would consider myself one of the "haves" but this is a very slippery slope. Just what is a "have"? And what does it say about you?

You can categorize some people fairly easily but I'm not sure what it means: the guy with the sign at the traffic light begging for dollars is probably not a have by even a very liberal stretch of the imagination. And Donald Trump is most definitely a have.

And, of course, folks who are "haves" include people that this gentleman would probably not like to include: Obama, Hillary, certainly all of the Kennedys. You'd be hard pressed to find any politico who isn't a big have, because that's the price of admission into the game. And almost all Hollywood types who speak out against injustice are big members of the "have" family as well.

Conversely, "have nots" would include almost all murderers, rapists and violent crime perpetrators who are currently in jail long term.

So being a "have" or a "have not" doesn't necessarily mean what the folks who try to use this as a dividing rod would like it to mean. What they really want to say is that "good" people who are have nots are being abused by "bad" people who are haves. Or, to put it another way, it's okay to be a have as long as you're a good person.

I'm so far from a "have" it isn't funny, yet I have lots when compared to many. But I got those things by working hard and it's a funny kind of thing but nearly all folks who work hard also get stuff. Indeed, it's almost impossible not to become a "have" in this country if you work hard, regardless of how nice or bad a person you are. Independent of race, color, religion, sex or physical ability nearly anyone in the United States can earn a very good living and lead a very good life as long as they are willing to work hard for it. It may take years, it may be hard at first, but it does happen and it always happens. I know this for an absolute fact as I worked for the Unemployment Office for many years and saw evidence of this every single day.

Ironically the ones who worry most about this are usually the young who have the most opportunity to succeed. They look at rich cats and think "I'll never be able to get that" when the truth is just the opposite.

The bottom line is this is not a nation of have and have nots -- it's a nation of (mostly) hard working folks with a small minority of those who believe they should have more than they do and don't want to work to obtain it. And there isn't a political leader around who can fix that (although many promise it to get elected :>)

Any Sunday

2007-11-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

I love sports pundits-- without a doubt the most egotistic, self-centered, pretentious, young (for the most part) folk to walk the planet. I don't know what it is about the profession that makes them believe what they do is important, but something is inherent there.

I like sports as much as the next (sane) person, but it truly is only a game, no matter what the game is, and like any physical effort there are so many variables and intangibles that rejoycing over a victory (or miserating over a defeat) is just the silliest thing you can imagine. Pro Football (the sport this time of year) celebrates the "on any given Sunday" mantra so much you'd think the analysts would actually get it by now, but it doesn't seem so.

The Patriots (of '07/08) seem to be a very good football team right now, but they ain't gods, and watching them play Indy yesterday I was immediately struck by how beatable they actually are. I like the Pats because I do appreciate excellence in any endeavor, but they won't go undefeated (and yet people who should know better really think this will happen) and they may well win the Superbowl but I don't think it's a given by any means. And the sports "experts" who think it's a lock just betray how little they understand about human beings.

During my regular weekly talk show (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth) my co-host and I had a great time picking against the guys who ran the sports books in Nevada. They were the experts, they set the line, and the casino profits rose and fell on the basis of what they did and by the 3/4 point of the season they quit coming in each Friday night because we were so far ahead of them it was ridiculous (of course it didn't help that we pointed this out in our studio graphics in mean spirited ways -- I was a smart ass back then).

I'm not going to pretend my partner and I were sports experts -- we weren't then and I'm certainly not now -- but our consistently good picks weren't complete luck either. We watched all the games (Direct ticket) and had a good feel for the teams and how they'd match up. And because we didn't have our hearts invested in any team we probably saw things a lot clearer than many experts who are more invested (one thing for sure -- I made a lot of money that year betting against the local favorite when the odds were right, as the odds makers consistently gave better money against to attract the opposite side).

One of my favorite reads is Dan Shanoff, not because he's good but because he's so consistently wrong (look at his straightup football picks this season -- my sister could pick better than that on the basis of team colors being pretty) and yet still believes he understands sports. I love how he's constantly "shocked" by this or that upset (particularly when he, as usual, predicts the outcome wrongly, based on his "superior" sports knowledge). Yep, he's right sometimes, but no more than I am. He's a kid, and like most kids they believe there is a certain truth to the universe and that he knows that truth or can come close to it -- well, there is, of course, and it's this: in any contest involving human beings, anything can and will happen.

Which is why we watch -- because on any given Sunday...

What Apple Doesn't Want you to Know...

2007-11-04T09:11:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time on the Apple support forums, mostly helping out with Apple TV and iPhone issues. I've been on the Apple forums for quite a while -- so long that I'm a "level 4" (awarded to only those who've been extremely helpful) which mostly stems from the days when iPods rarely worked right for those of us with PCs.

Anyway, as much as I enjoy helping out there it absolutely frustrates me no end that I can't post some of the most useful things to know, due to the forum policies (and Apple's own "We control your content" policy). So, regardless of the fact that no one will ever see them, at least I can write them down here for my own peace of mind, such as it is.

These are mostly for the iPhone, but owners of the Touch, Video iPods and Apple TV will find some useful information as well. Nothing top secret here -- you can find all of this yourself if you search the web and have a technical sort of mind, but for those without the inclinations it might help a lot.

1) Ripping DVDs. The number one thing most folks want to do on their iPhones/Touch is to watch movies. Why not, it's what the device is really designed to do, with its gorgeous screen and ability to send video output to your TV (more later on this). But short of buying content from the iTunes store, Apple doesn't want you to know that the best and easiest (and free) way of getting content is from the DVDs you own.

They take this position because the DRM folks have held it's illegal to use your DVDs in any other way than God (that is, the movie studios and MPAA) have intended; namely, to pop into a DVD player. You can't back them up, you can't convert them to a more convenient format (or any other format) -- in short, you don't really own them, you just rent them for viewing (in which case you probably ought to never buy any DVDs anyway and just use Netflix).

For those of you who disagree with this there is a program called Handbrake, for both the Macs and the PCs. It's free and it will rip your DVDs wonderfully although the PC version does not do it for copyprotected ones. Hey, you say, aren't all my store bought DVDs copy protected? Yes, and that's why you want to buy AnyDVD which will remove that pesky annoyance and allow you to back them up properly (and, more importantly, convert them to a format you can put on your iPhone/Touch).

2) Ringers. Apple won't allow you to put any ringers on their phone that you don't buy from the iTunes store. Not even from music you already own. So you buy it twice (because you can't just buy a ringer, you first have to buy the song and then you buy the ringer from that song!). This is, once again, because God (the ASCAP variety) says that just because you own a CD doesn't give you the right to use it for anything other than playing in a CD player (really! They don't even want you to record it to MP3s to use elsewhere, but they haven't figured out a way to stop that... yet). So the rights to a ringer are different than the rights to a CD than the rights to having the song on your iPhone etc. etc.

The first time the iPhone came out third party folks did not like this and wrote applications that got around this limitation. So Apple came out with a new update (1.1.1) that stopped this nasty stuff from happening. Anyone want to guess what happened next? That's right, boys and girls, someone wrote a way around that protection. And so it goes -- I always bet on the folks who can hack, because most of them do this stuff for fun and they are very very good at it, while the folks who do the protection stuff do it for a living (and thus don't have nearly the emotional investment in the process, and usually aren't as smart anyway).

For you Mac folks there is iToner, for us PC types there is iPhoneRingToneMaker (doesn't have quite the "ring" of iToner, does it?) and either one will allow you to use any of your own sound files as ringers, which has a lot of advantages over having to buy what is available at the iTunes store.

3) Sending Video to your TV. This isn't exactly something Apple doesn't want you to know per se, but they don't spell it out. You can't use anything other than the special video cables Apple sells for sending output to your component or composite TV. What's more, you will need both the cable as well as the universal output jack if you want the ability to remotely control the video (starting/stopping/RW/FF) and you will indeed want this. Total cost: $100 for both.

It's pricey but worth it. The picture, using a ripped DVD (with Handbrake using the iPhone defaults but bumped up in resolution to 640) is absolutely pristine on either composite or component (component will have a slight edge in sharpness and color clarity). It's as good as the original DVD to my discriminating eyes, although blacks do suffer from a little blochiness (you really only notice this on title pages, however). Slideshows will also output but nothing else (so the dreams you had of having Safari on your projection TV will have to die. Sorry).

I have more stuff I may post later if I feel like it (or not -- hey, no one will ever read this but me so I'll do what I want :>)