I’m going to take a couple of weeks off from the blog and let my mind open up.
I’ve been tuning up my iPod today. I’d noticed that when you use the automatic “get album art” in iTunes, there’s a number of albums that get left out (and some get the “wrong” cover). Here’s an interesting site that helps you download and install album art for your iTunes display—this particular tool is useful if you make up a playlist of all your albums that don’t have art, and save the playlist as a text file with iTunes 8.1 or above. If this it too much hassle, you can Google for the album name, find an image and drag it into a box in a File|Get Info dialog that iTunes can show you for the imageless album.
I also found a truly freeware little program called iDump that copies your iPod music to your PC—written by a programmer in I think Australia. It took me a while to find this gem…if you just Google for “free software copy iPod,” the stuff you’ll find mostly isn’t free at all. If you find a similar program for the Mac, post the link in a comment.
I put together a second edition of my Lulu book, Better Worlds, which now includes 57 of my paintings rather than 47. (Yes, there’s only 55 in the grid above, but there’s 57 in the book). You can see a full low-resolution preview of Better Worlds online.
[Photo by George Edwards]
My friend Mike Gambone sent me a picture of us in Richmond, by his convertible Cadillac on an epic drive from Lynchburg, Va, to see the Clash play in Williamsburg, Va. This was back in the Dead Pigs days, 27 years ago. Good old Mike. He played this enormous saxophone. Edgar Allan Poe might be inside that big building.
Sometime this summer there’s a chance I’ll pass through Copenhagen, Denmark, and the towns of Bergen and Aalesund in Norway—if you’re a fan of mine living in one of these places, email me, and maybe we can make a plan to get coffee or have a meal together.
Later…
June 14th, 2009 at 10:16 am
if you ever need to copy a playlist from your iPod to – sorry – your pc (something the good people at Apple don’t want you to be able to do) try Pod to PC, it’s truly free and the only one that can do this trick as far as i know. it doesn’t look attractive but it works
http://www.podtopc.com/
June 14th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Here’s a list of links from the Apple Discussion Boards:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9313440�
The “Comparison of iPod managers” link goes to Wikipedia -will have to work your way through it to find what you want, but you eventually get to links.
When iTunes doesn’t find album art, or finds the wrong art, I usually go to Wikipedia or Amazon and copy the right image, assuming I find it.
June 14th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
The photographer and fellow traveler on that magical evening was George Edwards, now living in his beloved Austin, Texas. Look closely and you can see Edgar peering down on us.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:12 am
There’s a picture somewhere of me, maybe two or three years old, standing next to that car. Funny that I ended up going to W&M and living in Richmond… I drive by that old train station all the time.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Nice to hear from you, Tony and Mike! Life rolls on.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:24 am
..and Them You can join The pirateparty as I did. today was news about the lady.. single mother of four, american who must find millions of bugs for listening some songs
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I like gimmeSomeTune for album art:
http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/index.html
it fetches art for the currently playing song and applies it to each song in the album — unlike itunes’ downloaded art, this will not go poof if your itunes library does.
also adds neat rating/fw/back/etc keyboard shortcuts and (spotty) last.fm integration
PS thanks for the pointer to the nofx/rancid split, didn’t even know it existed
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 am
…take a couple of weeks off from the blog and let my mind open up…
If that’s a euphemism for recovering from a Michael Jackson memento mori-related cingulate gyrus infection, I’m so sorry.
Is that Main Street Station in Richmond? Where did the Clash play? (I think I skipped them in Charlotte on that tour because, um, they were playing in a mall and the tickets were steep.) I went to some shows in Richmond in the early 80s but they were in houses and/or cinderblock semi-houses close to downtown, not far from the train station, IIRC. Wasn’t the train station empty for a long time? Looks abandoned in your photo.
…nofx/rancid split…
I had forgotten [unhealthy living on my part, I know] about both of them. Yup, thanks, I lost a couple hours and a few gigs on my drive.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Or, you know, you could dump the bossy iPod altogether for an MP3 player that doesn’t try to control your life like some sort of Big iBrother. ARCHOS hands down makes the best MP3 players out there. The operating systems work just like a custom filing system. You can copy, move delete, add, randomize, and dance the jigaloo to your heart’s (and Archos’) content. Actually, almost any non-Apple MP3 product will do that. But not Zune. Screw iPod, seriously.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:45 am
I know personally I couldn’t live without my ipod. Thanks for the post!
July 26th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Although the Dead Pigs were a bit before my time, that must be the same Mike Gambone, who in addition to playing an enormous sax, was a rather spectacular economics professor. I recognized the jacket.
Mike, if you see this, it would be nice to catch–up. sppclarke@yahoo.com