Chores

Because, like most people, I enjoy weekends where I can be lazy and not do anything, I have to suffer occasional days like today, where a critical point of all those little jobs I should have done (and didn’t) is reached. It’s nothing too taxing, to be honest. A fish tank to clean here, a garage workbench to tidy there, some settings to fix on the Mavic, an important junction box to be mended so that the internet can continue to flow into the house, and quite a lot of iTunes to sort out. Again.

At least that last one can be accompanied by some decent tunage.
I’m currently enjoying some vintage Pet Shop Boys while the beagle snores on the couch behind me and I delete a huge amount of crap from my library.
It’s not exactly strenuous, but I seem to be constantly refining the way iTunes handles my music. I do wish there was a better alternative for my musical collection.

Back to it. Braai and beers to look forward to later.

There goes the bandwidth

Oh dear. That’s the local internet broken as REM drop one hundred and something rare, unplugged, live and “other” tracks onto iTunes.

The massive cache includes stuff from as far back as 1982, as well as live performances – such as their 2003 Glastonbury set. We were right at the front for that, having enjoyed The Darkness, Inspiral Carpets, De La Soul and Suede, amongst others. What an amazing day.

Goosebumps.

If you’re an REM fan, this is like all your Christmasses and Birthdays rolled up into one. Collections will be completed. Memories will be reignited. Wallets will be emptied.

And the local telephone exchange is going to take a hell of a beating.

iTunes broke my PC

And judging by the recent traffic on the Apple support forums, I are not alone.
Suffice to say, don’t try and install any updates to the program if you’re running any version of Windows.

Something bad will happen.

Anyway, between trying to fix that, being a dragon guarding some treasure in the garden and heading out to a housewarming this evening, I find that I’m right out of time for posting anything other than this important warning.

You’re welcome.

Rejoice!

Much rejoicing Chez 6000 as it appears that after my only partially successful repair of iTunes last week, I have managed to find another 1788 tracks that were “missing”. I’m still not 100% sure that I will be able to get them onto iTunes, but at least they’re safely somewhere on a hard drive. The next step might be a little messy, but it should be pretty straightforward.

The tracks disappeared when I plugged in my daughter’s prize from Kfm (not that I’m blaming her or them) – a shiny little iPod shuffle she got for dancing in the rain while watching the Two Oceans Marathon last month.

It brought up a beautifully clean iTunes window, to which I added some songs she liked (Coldplay, Freshlyground, Slipknot etc) and all seemed well. However, when I later plugged my Big Daddy iPod in, iTunes comprehensively failed to revert to my previous library, leaving me with about 30 tracks, some of which were by Shakira.

Issues.

I have since pieced together a rudimentary replacement library, but there were gaps. Massive gaps of several thousand tracks.
I had to root around on external hard drives and the like, but with today’s discovery, there’s “only” a discrepancy of about 900 items. I have yet to check whether they are important items, replaceable items or stuff I can (or will have to) manage without. This may be a difficult task, since sometimes, I’m just heading to the lab when I have a “must listen to” moment. It will be then that these discrepancies will become immediately obvious. Rage will surely ensue.

My advice to you if your 3 year old wins an iPod is not to plug it into your computer. At all. The best way is to find another computer and use iTunes on there. Or sell it on gumtree. It will save you sleepless nights, much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I’m sure that there is a safe and surefire way of running two (or more) iPods from the same computer. More fool me for ever imagining that Apple would have made it as simple as just plugging the new device into the USB port.
By all means, let me know the best way of doing it in the comments section below, but don’t expect me to let that little silver square anywhere near my desktop ever again.

Capisce?