”
-- Mike Nerone, 2009
[ #coredevs ]
Monday, July 27, 2009
Resonance
Silently ignoring is passive aggressive. Sometimes what you want is outright aggression, demanding something more to the effect of 'Your thoughts and ideas are inconsequential and completely unimportant. I'm just going to ignore you from now on.'
[ #coredevs ]
[ #coredevs ]
Jenny Lewis, Elvis Costello, M. Ward, Zooey Deschanel
Wow.
Don't miss this one, Zooey backs up Jenny on the song "Carpetbaggers".
[ Links: YouTube, YouTube ]
Don't miss this one, Zooey backs up Jenny on the song "Carpetbaggers".
[ Links: YouTube, YouTube ]
Friday, July 24, 2009
America the Fat?
An article concerned with the ostensible culture of waifish waistlines in New York City appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday. Money, the leisure money affords, and a ubiquity of reflective shiny glass windows on buildings seem to be the primary contributors to the 25% lighter BMI of the average Manhattanite compared to the rest of America's poor slobs of whom an alarming 67% are overweight.
While reading I was reminded that it was lunchtime so I called up el Gallito de Jalisco across the street from the office and ordered two chicken fajita tacos on corn torillas to go. There are a couple of things that I dislike about ordering food to go. First, the containers in which the food are placed will soon become just that many more plastic salsa containers and forks that don't seem to cooperate very well with the rest of God's creations. Second, I am eating at my desk which basically means I wolf those tacos down in ten or fifteen minutes so I can get back to work. Well what's wrong with that?
A lot, says this article also from the Times that attempts to draw a correlation between the average time spent eating per day with the body mass index of those eaters. Do you spend less than 80 minutes eating all three meals in a day? Then you're probably fat. And American.
The French apparently spend well over 2 hours each day eating their meals. They are also some of the least obese people in the developed world. What does this mean? Well many conclusions could be drawn, I suppose.
I would wager that many people would look at these statistics and think, "Americans work a lot and don't have much time so they eat more fast food, and that's why they are so fat." Others might think, "I guess when you eat too quickly, your brain doesn't get the message from your body that you are full until it's too late and you're done eating everything on your plate, resulting in over-eating." Still others might consider, "Meals are more of a social event in the culture of other countries and dining with company is perhaps more customary than it is in America. It makes sense that a meal would last longer when you're talking with friends and family at the dinner table."
Or maybe those people are just thinking like sheep and assuming that the information they are being given is correct in the first place. The question should be asked: how much can we trust the New York Times to report accurately on the eating habits of Americans? Surely the Times isn't reporting on all of the studies that have probably been done on this subject. All of those other studies that have been done probably don't support the true message that the Times is trying to send here:
Your American way of life is inferior to the way of life in other countries with more social and liberal composition of government and culture.
The statistics gathered in the study represented in this article are obviously cherry-picked to communicate this message. This could be explained in a number of ways.
For instance, the dining French persons surveyed almost certainly prattled on endlessly about the sensations which they were experiencing with their palate as they ate. In the U.S. the surveyors usually paused their stopwatches when the eaters would stop stuffing their mouths with food long enough to chew or ask their server for a refill on their Coca-Cola. So of course it would appear that Americans eat faster.
Furthermore it is widely understood that the French eat like wusses. They probably surrender to their food twice per meal before they finally give up and push their plate away with half its contents unfinished. Americans know from experience: food is war, and you sure as hell don't leave until the job is done.
Also likely is the inaccuracy of the method of measurement used in other countries like France. They use the metric system, after all -- completely different than the English system of measurement that America uses.
If one considers oneself a critical thinker, one should consider the source of these articles. This is the New York Times. They have been caught red-handed time and time again publishing factual-appearing articles about so-called scientific studies and the like, and then drawing conclusions that are obviously self-serving. Everyone has a bias, and the Times staff and contributors are no exception. This is a fact known by simple psychological projection to most Americans who proudly uphold the values of God and country.
How dare the New York Times attack the American way of life? Our culture is superior to the culture of any other country in every way for the simple fact that our culture is American. Anyone suggesting otherwise is just a liberal America-hater spreading propaganda designed to degrade our great country and its rich history.
In the Times' defense, they have also published an article discussing the correlation between fast eaters and economic growth (with far better quality graphics than their fast-food report, I must say). Predictably, this article was largely panned by other liberal "scholars" and mostly ignored.
So to the New York Times and other eggheads I say this: keep your questionable statistics and let the facts speak for themselves -- quietly and meekly like the nerds who study them. There is nothing wrong with our fast food, and America does not need to change in any way to continue being the great and mighty country that it has always been. We Americans are unique in the history of the world, and chosen by God to be leaders of the free world and grateful recipients of His blessings of Freedom Fries, Doritos Cooler Ranch Tortilla Chips, and the Colonel's Original Recipe Fried Chicken. May God continue to bless America.
While reading I was reminded that it was lunchtime so I called up el Gallito de Jalisco across the street from the office and ordered two chicken fajita tacos on corn torillas to go. There are a couple of things that I dislike about ordering food to go. First, the containers in which the food are placed will soon become just that many more plastic salsa containers and forks that don't seem to cooperate very well with the rest of God's creations. Second, I am eating at my desk which basically means I wolf those tacos down in ten or fifteen minutes so I can get back to work. Well what's wrong with that?
A lot, says this article also from the Times that attempts to draw a correlation between the average time spent eating per day with the body mass index of those eaters. Do you spend less than 80 minutes eating all three meals in a day? Then you're probably fat. And American.
The French apparently spend well over 2 hours each day eating their meals. They are also some of the least obese people in the developed world. What does this mean? Well many conclusions could be drawn, I suppose.
I would wager that many people would look at these statistics and think, "Americans work a lot and don't have much time so they eat more fast food, and that's why they are so fat." Others might think, "I guess when you eat too quickly, your brain doesn't get the message from your body that you are full until it's too late and you're done eating everything on your plate, resulting in over-eating." Still others might consider, "Meals are more of a social event in the culture of other countries and dining with company is perhaps more customary than it is in America. It makes sense that a meal would last longer when you're talking with friends and family at the dinner table."
Or maybe those people are just thinking like sheep and assuming that the information they are being given is correct in the first place. The question should be asked: how much can we trust the New York Times to report accurately on the eating habits of Americans? Surely the Times isn't reporting on all of the studies that have probably been done on this subject. All of those other studies that have been done probably don't support the true message that the Times is trying to send here:
Your American way of life is inferior to the way of life in other countries with more social and liberal composition of government and culture.
The statistics gathered in the study represented in this article are obviously cherry-picked to communicate this message. This could be explained in a number of ways.
For instance, the dining French persons surveyed almost certainly prattled on endlessly about the sensations which they were experiencing with their palate as they ate. In the U.S. the surveyors usually paused their stopwatches when the eaters would stop stuffing their mouths with food long enough to chew or ask their server for a refill on their Coca-Cola. So of course it would appear that Americans eat faster.
Furthermore it is widely understood that the French eat like wusses. They probably surrender to their food twice per meal before they finally give up and push their plate away with half its contents unfinished. Americans know from experience: food is war, and you sure as hell don't leave until the job is done.
Also likely is the inaccuracy of the method of measurement used in other countries like France. They use the metric system, after all -- completely different than the English system of measurement that America uses.
If one considers oneself a critical thinker, one should consider the source of these articles. This is the New York Times. They have been caught red-handed time and time again publishing factual-appearing articles about so-called scientific studies and the like, and then drawing conclusions that are obviously self-serving. Everyone has a bias, and the Times staff and contributors are no exception. This is a fact known by simple psychological projection to most Americans who proudly uphold the values of God and country.
How dare the New York Times attack the American way of life? Our culture is superior to the culture of any other country in every way for the simple fact that our culture is American. Anyone suggesting otherwise is just a liberal America-hater spreading propaganda designed to degrade our great country and its rich history.
In the Times' defense, they have also published an article discussing the correlation between fast eaters and economic growth (with far better quality graphics than their fast-food report, I must say). Predictably, this article was largely panned by other liberal "scholars" and mostly ignored.
So to the New York Times and other eggheads I say this: keep your questionable statistics and let the facts speak for themselves -- quietly and meekly like the nerds who study them. There is nothing wrong with our fast food, and America does not need to change in any way to continue being the great and mighty country that it has always been. We Americans are unique in the history of the world, and chosen by God to be leaders of the free world and grateful recipients of His blessings of Freedom Fries, Doritos Cooler Ranch Tortilla Chips, and the Colonel's Original Recipe Fried Chicken. May God continue to bless America.
Monday, July 20, 2009
And all God's people said Amen
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
[ link ]
”
-- Abraham Lincoln
Remark to law partner William Herndon,
quoted in William Elroy Curtis (1902)
Remark to law partner William Herndon,
quoted in William Elroy Curtis (1902)
[ link ]
Thursday, July 16, 2009
We Are Living In The Future
This text was originally written for the comments section of a kottke.org post on December 6, 2005.
Some major edits have been made since then.
I don't get this sense very often these days, but I relish it when I do. The first time I experienced the "Holy mackerel! We're living in the future!" feeling, it was a strange sensation triggered by settling into the backseat of my friend's new Nissan Maxima, and listening to his radar detector boot up as his car turned on and the rest of his console lights began to glow, and Nine Inch Nails' "Into The Void" from The Fragile beginning to boom on his kilowatt sound system. Since then, similar such experiences have been few and far between.
But on a more serious note, I believe that our current collective stress-out about petroleum and fossil based fuels and energy, as well as the constant threats from terrorism, global warming, cancer and pandemics, overpopulation, etc., are going to force the human population into some pretty awe-inspiring advances over the next couple of decades. We're talking huge leaps forward. These significant improvements include:
1. Solar power
Complete transition to solar power as the primary source of energy supply to all residential, commercial, and industrial energy demands. All the following improvements will be brought about based on this single momentous accomplishment.
2. Natural/organic habitats
Transition to family and community based habitats which are ecologically and culturally enriching. These constructions will spring up in place of reclaimed land from industrial and commercial sites, and will be interconnected by a brand new nationwide (and soon thereafter planet-wide) transportation network (electric trains, electric computer-navigated automobiles, transition of major airlines from bulk travel to on-demand commuter flights, etc.) making it a seamless and painless process to commute from a major metropolis to your family back on the farm.
3. Sane climate control
Regulation of the Earth's climate by means of a world-wide biosphere control scheme. This will include doing things like using phytoplankton fertilized with iron deposits in the oceans, as well as a number of other measures. The world will no longer depend on petroleum and fossil fuels for energy, pollution and carbon emissions over time will be drastically reduced. Biosphere control mechanisms built into energy-harvesting technology will begin to terraform whole swathes of uninhabitable and non-cultivatable land into useful regions which will nearly immediately (within a span of five to ten years) cause tremendous cultural and global change. Our planet's appearance from space will be significantly altered. These global processes will be controlled with complete assurance and confidence by our civilization, and will not get out of control. (No over-cooling or wildly fluctuating temperatures -- these technologies and their effects can be carefully modeled and monitored using evermore advancing computing techniques and information about the planet's weather machinery and its internal relationships.)
4. Geo-political stabilization
Furthermore, since the dependence on petroleum will be eliminated, the economic (and hence, political) interests of the US in Middle Eastern countries will diminish greatly, reducing the strain on that region's already oppressed people, which in turn will have a calming effect on the activity of terrorists.
5. Digital-only information distribution
Elimination of content and information distribution entities such as the recording and motion picture industries. While this will simply exchange power from one entity to another (network service providers) it will serve to streamline the process of production and distribution making it easier than ever for individuals and organizations to create and communicate information. Happily, even network service providers will be rendered obsolete as free, accessible, and ubiquitous high-speed wireless networks begin to organically blanket the North American continent within the next 15 or 20 years, and also the rest of the globe within 50 years. Continuing advances in wireless networking technology makes it a sure bet that this will happen. These networks will be maintained as a public utility, and regulated only by local and regional community technicians and benefactors, thereby eliminating telecoms such as SBC/AT&T and Comcast once and for all. Finally, the true vision of free speech will be realized as seamless, obstacle-free distribution networks deliver content from its sources to a global audience. Such a network will obviate most concerns about government wiretapping, since most communications will occur without bottlenecks or major backbones. Eliminating single points of large bandwidth usage will remove the ability of the spy agencies to route large amounts of communication traffic from single sources.
6. No more government-sponsored resource mongering (imperialism)
Because energy will become a non-issue, governments around the world will be able to shift attention away from internal economic problems caused by diminishing resources and focus more on forward thinking policies and technological advancements brought about by open collaboration with multi-national coalitions and government sponsored partnered entities.
7. Space travel
Fast. And soon. Within the next thirty years.
8. World peace
Without strain on population for competition for scarce resources such as energy sources for the industries of developing nations, there will be little to no political wrangling for power or military action required between nations.
9. True free markets
When information and energy becomes completely free, the markets for goods and services will also become completely free. This is because no market is truly free without the complete freedom of information. When all buyers instantaneously know the real-time value of any good and service, then all sellers must sell at that price, or else lose the sale because of a failure to meet the price agreed upon by the market. However, this is not how the markets currently work. Normally, buyers bet blindly at prices, without conferring amongst themselves. The markets rely very nearly solely upon speculative pricing. This speculative pricing engaged in by buyers only gives sellers and producers an advantage because they control the quantities of goods produced based on an unbalanced mixture of speculation on market demand and just shear capriciousness. When resources become a function of free energy, the only true product will be the quality of a given product's design and its execution. Because of a mutual understanding of all options for a particular product, its price will be clearly determinable by purchasers in the marketplace. Energy sums per product will no longer be a factor. Instead, only time, thought, and (in rare cases) rare, non-recyclable materials will be considered as contributing to the actual value of a product. Barrier-to-entry into a market will be as thin or as thick as the challenge to compete against other designs, conceptions, and implementations of a given product.
10. No more hunger
With unlimited energy at our fingertips, the developed world will be able to manufacture and transport all the modern equipment necessary for industrialized agricultural in regions of the world where food is scarce and at famine levels of unavailability. Nowhere will water be scarce or limited -- ocean desalinization will be cheap and easy without energy restrictions.
11. Destabilization of Earth's electromagnetic sphere
Instability of Earth's electromagnetic sphere will cause problems for long distance communication using signals transmitted over radio spectrum. However, the global network of broadband short-access wireless networking will make the problem moot. Unfortunately, many thousands of people will die from cancer due to the increased ultraviolet radiation from the Sun that the weakened electromagnetic sphere will allow to penetrate to the Earth's surface. Thankfully, all types of cancer will be cured within five years of its worst outbreak among the global population. That's what happens when a global killer comes along and begins to kill indiscriminately and widely. When rich people start dying early for no reason, cures are discovered.
12. Global population stabilization
Global population will go through some severe fluctuations on its course to stabilizing at around 11 billion people, and while this will cause severe heartache for individuals worldwide and leave a psychological and emotional imprint on our cultural consciousness which will be remembered in our history books and stories passed down throughout the generations for centuries to follow, the overall standard of living for all peoples in all nations will improve, and human atrocities and suffering will be reduced and practically eliminated, even during the most traumatic periods of our civilization's growing pains. Why? Because of free, ubiquitous, real time information distribution and communication, when the entire world witnesses their own families dying at the same time as the families of those in other parts of the world dying from causes outside of anyone's control, we will become that much closer to each other, despite our cultural differences and the illusion of national boundaries. We will unite against the prevailing forces that thwart our survival.
13. No man-made apocalypse
Nuclear war will never erupt between any nations, because political and militaristic posturing, manipulation, and confrontation will all cease to be tools of national entities, due to the fact that energy is no longer a commodity, and complete land reclamation and restoration from desert regions and polluted areas is commonplace.
Why I am so optimistic about our future?
I believe that stress on a population causes characteristics to emerge which make the population at large more effective at survival. Continued future stress on the ever growing human civilization will force innovation and adaptation the likes of which we have never seen or imagined before. People are capable of great things, and will do great things, if they are done right. All it takes is a balance of careful, metered trust in the genius of inventors and innovators, determination, spirit and will. I believe that these things will win out over corruption, greed, and apathy. They have to. Corrupt, greedy and apathetic individuals will get naturally selected out of the gene pool, leaving the rest of us to become careful, caring, clever and conscionable stewards of our planet and solar system.
If these things don't happen, well, who cares? We will just go extinct. And one doesn't worry much about dying when one is dead.
Some major edits have been made since then.
I don't get this sense very often these days, but I relish it when I do. The first time I experienced the "Holy mackerel! We're living in the future!" feeling, it was a strange sensation triggered by settling into the backseat of my friend's new Nissan Maxima, and listening to his radar detector boot up as his car turned on and the rest of his console lights began to glow, and Nine Inch Nails' "Into The Void" from The Fragile beginning to boom on his kilowatt sound system. Since then, similar such experiences have been few and far between.
But on a more serious note, I believe that our current collective stress-out about petroleum and fossil based fuels and energy, as well as the constant threats from terrorism, global warming, cancer and pandemics, overpopulation, etc., are going to force the human population into some pretty awe-inspiring advances over the next couple of decades. We're talking huge leaps forward. These significant improvements include:
1. Solar power
Complete transition to solar power as the primary source of energy supply to all residential, commercial, and industrial energy demands. All the following improvements will be brought about based on this single momentous accomplishment.
2. Natural/organic habitats
Transition to family and community based habitats which are ecologically and culturally enriching. These constructions will spring up in place of reclaimed land from industrial and commercial sites, and will be interconnected by a brand new nationwide (and soon thereafter planet-wide) transportation network (electric trains, electric computer-navigated automobiles, transition of major airlines from bulk travel to on-demand commuter flights, etc.) making it a seamless and painless process to commute from a major metropolis to your family back on the farm.
3. Sane climate control
Regulation of the Earth's climate by means of a world-wide biosphere control scheme. This will include doing things like using phytoplankton fertilized with iron deposits in the oceans, as well as a number of other measures. The world will no longer depend on petroleum and fossil fuels for energy, pollution and carbon emissions over time will be drastically reduced. Biosphere control mechanisms built into energy-harvesting technology will begin to terraform whole swathes of uninhabitable and non-cultivatable land into useful regions which will nearly immediately (within a span of five to ten years) cause tremendous cultural and global change. Our planet's appearance from space will be significantly altered. These global processes will be controlled with complete assurance and confidence by our civilization, and will not get out of control. (No over-cooling or wildly fluctuating temperatures -- these technologies and their effects can be carefully modeled and monitored using evermore advancing computing techniques and information about the planet's weather machinery and its internal relationships.)
4. Geo-political stabilization
Furthermore, since the dependence on petroleum will be eliminated, the economic (and hence, political) interests of the US in Middle Eastern countries will diminish greatly, reducing the strain on that region's already oppressed people, which in turn will have a calming effect on the activity of terrorists.
5. Digital-only information distribution
Elimination of content and information distribution entities such as the recording and motion picture industries. While this will simply exchange power from one entity to another (network service providers) it will serve to streamline the process of production and distribution making it easier than ever for individuals and organizations to create and communicate information. Happily, even network service providers will be rendered obsolete as free, accessible, and ubiquitous high-speed wireless networks begin to organically blanket the North American continent within the next 15 or 20 years, and also the rest of the globe within 50 years. Continuing advances in wireless networking technology makes it a sure bet that this will happen. These networks will be maintained as a public utility, and regulated only by local and regional community technicians and benefactors, thereby eliminating telecoms such as SBC/AT&T and Comcast once and for all. Finally, the true vision of free speech will be realized as seamless, obstacle-free distribution networks deliver content from its sources to a global audience. Such a network will obviate most concerns about government wiretapping, since most communications will occur without bottlenecks or major backbones. Eliminating single points of large bandwidth usage will remove the ability of the spy agencies to route large amounts of communication traffic from single sources.
6. No more government-sponsored resource mongering (imperialism)
Because energy will become a non-issue, governments around the world will be able to shift attention away from internal economic problems caused by diminishing resources and focus more on forward thinking policies and technological advancements brought about by open collaboration with multi-national coalitions and government sponsored partnered entities.
7. Space travel
Fast. And soon. Within the next thirty years.
8. World peace
Without strain on population for competition for scarce resources such as energy sources for the industries of developing nations, there will be little to no political wrangling for power or military action required between nations.
9. True free markets
When information and energy becomes completely free, the markets for goods and services will also become completely free. This is because no market is truly free without the complete freedom of information. When all buyers instantaneously know the real-time value of any good and service, then all sellers must sell at that price, or else lose the sale because of a failure to meet the price agreed upon by the market. However, this is not how the markets currently work. Normally, buyers bet blindly at prices, without conferring amongst themselves. The markets rely very nearly solely upon speculative pricing. This speculative pricing engaged in by buyers only gives sellers and producers an advantage because they control the quantities of goods produced based on an unbalanced mixture of speculation on market demand and just shear capriciousness. When resources become a function of free energy, the only true product will be the quality of a given product's design and its execution. Because of a mutual understanding of all options for a particular product, its price will be clearly determinable by purchasers in the marketplace. Energy sums per product will no longer be a factor. Instead, only time, thought, and (in rare cases) rare, non-recyclable materials will be considered as contributing to the actual value of a product. Barrier-to-entry into a market will be as thin or as thick as the challenge to compete against other designs, conceptions, and implementations of a given product.
10. No more hunger
With unlimited energy at our fingertips, the developed world will be able to manufacture and transport all the modern equipment necessary for industrialized agricultural in regions of the world where food is scarce and at famine levels of unavailability. Nowhere will water be scarce or limited -- ocean desalinization will be cheap and easy without energy restrictions.
11. Destabilization of Earth's electromagnetic sphere
Instability of Earth's electromagnetic sphere will cause problems for long distance communication using signals transmitted over radio spectrum. However, the global network of broadband short-access wireless networking will make the problem moot. Unfortunately, many thousands of people will die from cancer due to the increased ultraviolet radiation from the Sun that the weakened electromagnetic sphere will allow to penetrate to the Earth's surface. Thankfully, all types of cancer will be cured within five years of its worst outbreak among the global population. That's what happens when a global killer comes along and begins to kill indiscriminately and widely. When rich people start dying early for no reason, cures are discovered.
12. Global population stabilization
Global population will go through some severe fluctuations on its course to stabilizing at around 11 billion people, and while this will cause severe heartache for individuals worldwide and leave a psychological and emotional imprint on our cultural consciousness which will be remembered in our history books and stories passed down throughout the generations for centuries to follow, the overall standard of living for all peoples in all nations will improve, and human atrocities and suffering will be reduced and practically eliminated, even during the most traumatic periods of our civilization's growing pains. Why? Because of free, ubiquitous, real time information distribution and communication, when the entire world witnesses their own families dying at the same time as the families of those in other parts of the world dying from causes outside of anyone's control, we will become that much closer to each other, despite our cultural differences and the illusion of national boundaries. We will unite against the prevailing forces that thwart our survival.
13. No man-made apocalypse
Nuclear war will never erupt between any nations, because political and militaristic posturing, manipulation, and confrontation will all cease to be tools of national entities, due to the fact that energy is no longer a commodity, and complete land reclamation and restoration from desert regions and polluted areas is commonplace.
Why I am so optimistic about our future?
I believe that stress on a population causes characteristics to emerge which make the population at large more effective at survival. Continued future stress on the ever growing human civilization will force innovation and adaptation the likes of which we have never seen or imagined before. People are capable of great things, and will do great things, if they are done right. All it takes is a balance of careful, metered trust in the genius of inventors and innovators, determination, spirit and will. I believe that these things will win out over corruption, greed, and apathy. They have to. Corrupt, greedy and apathetic individuals will get naturally selected out of the gene pool, leaving the rest of us to become careful, caring, clever and conscionable stewards of our planet and solar system.
If these things don't happen, well, who cares? We will just go extinct. And one doesn't worry much about dying when one is dead.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Auto-add music to iTunes playlist
A macrumors newbie going by "wholesaledaddy" outlined the following steps for automatically adding new music files to an iTunes library playlist:
Instead, you will have to attach this task to each folder that you want to monitor. In order to do that, you should first make sure that the first step of the Automator work-flow monitors only the folder to which you will be attaching the work-flow.
See that first step? There is only one folder being watched. The work-flow has been named so that it is specific to the folder on which it will be operating, in this case "Add Music (tmp).workflow".
To get this work-flow attached to the folder that will "catch" all your new music files, just follow these steps:
Once again, an example of how shitty iTunes really is, and why everytime I hear someone parroting the stupid Apple marketing catch-phrase, "Macs just work, you know?" I want to slap them in the face with a large trout.
Apple fan-boys will no doubt palliate and gloze for Apple and iTunes, "Well, why are you downloading music from sources other than the iTunes Store??" To them I say, "Shut your pie hole. It's a computer. I write software for a living. A COMPUTER SHOULD JUST DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT IT TO DO."
1) Open automator. It should be on your dock or in your applications folder. It think it's pre-installed on all osx macs.It would be nice to attach this work-flow to a "download" action in your primary web browser, and then monitor a list of folders or directories to which you commonly download music files. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do this.
2) On the first screen keep the selection on "custom" and hit the "choose" button.
3) In the left hand column under "Library" select "Files and Folders"
4) In the next column double-click "Get Specified Finder items"
5) A "Get Specified Finder Items" pane should open on the main screen.
6) Click the "Add" button on this screen and select the folder that you download music into
7) Now from the second column from the left double-click on the "Get Folder Contents" action.
8) I wouldn't click on the "Repeat for all each subfolder found" checkbox unless you want all the subfolders to be put into the same permanent folder.
9) Now on the left-most column click on "music" then in the next column dobule-click on "Import Files into iTunes"
10) On this action pane you can adjust the settings to have the selected music files put into whatever playlist you want
11) Almost done. Now you need to create a folder where these imported songs can be moved to so they will not be imported again. This can be a subfolder of the folder you just imported music from or anywhere else you want to store your songs.
12) In the leftmost column click on "Files and Folders" then in the next column click on "Move Finder Items"
13) In this pane select the new folder you just created
14) Now simply save this series of steps that you have created (which is called a "workflow" file). Go to file and click save-as. Note: I created a separate "automator workflows" folder in Music to store these files
Instead, you will have to attach this task to each folder that you want to monitor. In order to do that, you should first make sure that the first step of the Automator work-flow monitors only the folder to which you will be attaching the work-flow.
See that first step? There is only one folder being watched. The work-flow has been named so that it is specific to the folder on which it will be operating, in this case "Add Music (tmp).workflow".
To get this work-flow attached to the folder that will "catch" all your new music files, just follow these steps:
- With the work-flow opened in the Automator application, choose "Save As Plug-in..." from the File menu.
- In the "Save Plug-in As:" field, enter the name of your work-flow.
- The "Plug-in for:" selector should currently be "Finder". Choose "Folder Actions" instead. A new "Attached to Folder:" selector will appear.
- Choose "Other..." and select your special folder that will be catching your new music files.
- Click the Save button.
- Done!
Once again, an example of how shitty iTunes really is, and why everytime I hear someone parroting the stupid Apple marketing catch-phrase, "Macs just work, you know?" I want to slap them in the face with a large trout.
Apple fan-boys will no doubt palliate and gloze for Apple and iTunes, "Well, why are you downloading music from sources other than the iTunes Store??" To them I say, "Shut your pie hole. It's a computer. I write software for a living. A COMPUTER SHOULD JUST DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT IT TO DO."
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Feel good, Wednesday
Here's some stuff that just makes me feel good.
[ YouTube, mp3, mp3 ]
Elvis Perkins in Dearland - Chains, Chains, Chains.mp3
Elvis Perkins in Dearland - While You Were Sleeping.mp3
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I &hearts Jenny Lewis
[ YouTube, mp3, mp3 ]
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