It’s not too often that I put up software tips on this here blog thingy, but I’m trying to blog more and this is what’s on my mind, so here I go.

I don’t know about you, but my iTunes library hit north of 5,000 tracks some time ago. It’s big. And unruly. Sometimes I have to put it in time out just so it’ll behave.

The worst part of having so much music is keeping all of it in order. The best part is that I can listen to music for 16.9 days straight without stopping. But how does one keep such a largish library in check?

Well, by scouring online, I’ve found some useful smart playlists that assist with this; and some I’ve even come up with myself. There aren’t many, but maybe they’ll help you out a little:

no album: self-explanatory, right? If I haven’t defined which album a track is from, it shows up in there no questions asked. Once I add the album info, it’s gone like the wind.

no genre: same concept, but with genre info.

no rating: I think you’re probably getting the idea. Sometimes I’ll just click through here and rate music like a mofo.

no info: This one’s a little different. You ever import your girlfriend’s mix CD to discover (to your horror) that all the songs are cryptically named “Track 01, Track 02, etc.”? Sorry, Friends. “Get CD Track Names” does nothing for you because Gracenote uses the CD itself to look up that info.

Well, I use this playlist to collect all of these poor orphaned tracks so I can track down their info later. And all the OCD peeps said “Wha What?”

NOTE: A tool I’ve found very handy to help with naming these tracks in bulk is IEatBrainz. You should check it out if you’re anal like me. Oh, and on a Mac. Sorry Windoze Friends, I don’t know of an equivalent over there in your world.

Forgotten Tracks: With such a huge, um, library, sometimes I lose track of music that I once loved. This playlist solves that problem. Basically, if I haven’t listened to something in more than a year, it pops up in there. Most of the time at work, I’ll shuffle through this playlist. If something pops up and I think “Yuck, why did I ever have that?” I delete it. Otherwise, I bask in music long-forgotten from the Days of Yore.

NOTE PART DEUX: If any of you are my IM buddies or we’re friends on Last.fm, and you watch what I’m listening to, don’t be freaked out – you’ll see AC/DC pop up right after something by Hillsong right after something by 50 Cent. I like to shuffle, what can I say.

Never Played: Yes, there are plenty of songs that I have imported but apparently never played. Songs I have never heard. Wonderful songs. Terrible songs. This playlist is a fun one to shuffle through from time to time if there’s anything in there. Which there hasn’t been in a few months now.

What are some other smart playlists that are cool? Sound off.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been trying to improve this blog lately. And by some of you, I mean about 20% of you. And by 20% of you, I mean approximately 1.7 people since less than 10 people read my blog.

I’ve been going through Darren Rowse’s challenge “31 Days to Build a Better Blog“, and one of the challenges is to write what he calls a “link post”. Basically, link to another blog. And I’ve done that just now, so that’s done. *makes air checkmark*

No, seriously, when I got to this challenge, one blogger popped into my mind immediately. And that blogger is youth librarian Cliff Davidson over at Librology.

“Why a youth librarian?” you ask. And “Why a blog with only a couple of posts on it?” I’ll tell you why:

• Cliff’s a friend of mine.
• If anyone knows literature, it’s Cliff.
• He’s a darn good writer.
• I’m hoping that by linking to his blog, some of you will go see it, thus increasing his traffic and hopefully inspiring him to write a lot more thus resulting in me reading a lot more so ultimately I benefit and I can finally end this run on sentence.

So drop by Librology and check it out. Also, comment on his stuff like crazy and say things like “Please post more stuff.” and “If you don’t post more stuff, I’m just going to keep commenting on your existing stuff, and the comment threads will get way too big.”

Not everything in life is chocolate cake. Take your first bite of chocolate cake, and you’re hooked. Kinda like heroin. You don’t have to force your children to eat it, you don’t have to remind yourself to want it. It comes easy.

Some things are just as good as chocolate cake, if not better but don’t really come as easy out of the gate. I was thinking about this today as I was sipping my morning cup o’ joe, and thought, “Why not blog about it?”

So here’s my list, but I’m sure it’s not complete; add your faves in the comments:

• Coffee: Since I mentioned it above, it’s first on the list. Coffee can be a bit, well, overwhelming at first. Especially if your first cup is black. I started with coffee flavored shakes, and now I actually prefer my morning cup with no cream or sugar. Puts hair on my knees, but it’s oh so yummy. Oh, and turns out, coffee’s pretty good for you. 
• Running: I’ve mentioned this before, but even with being an athlete most of my life, I used to hate running for the sake of running. I hated running days when I played sports (maybe spurred by my coaches’ insistence on using it as a punishment), and avoided it like the plague as a leisure activity. Then one day after organized sports and the military were behind me, I woke up and realized that I was fat and more than a little bit unhealthy. So I decided to run a marathon. Yeah, at first I HATED training. But then I grew used to it and before I knew it, I craved my runs. It was like some kind of miracle. Running’s one of the best things you can do for your health and is well worth the effort of falling in love with it. If you’ve never been a runner but have always wanted to try, check out the latest issue of Runner’s World (May 2009). It’s a special beginner’s guide edition.
• Red Wine: No, I’m not a wine snob (see the next item on this list), but red wine has so many health benefits and even though your first sip of a dry wine makes you think “cough medicine”, eventually your palate grows to love it. Unless your religious beliefs or addictive personality prevent you from enjoying alcohol, I recommend giving red wine a try. Stick with it for a bit. See where it takes you.
• Beer: C’mon. Nobody enjoys their first beer. But after a while it becomes your drink of choice when dining out or just hanging out with your friends. Again, your ability to partake of beer’s goodness depends on your religious beliefs and/or your tendency toward addiction, but if you’ve never made the effort to become a beer drinker, I highly recommend it. Not many things as fun for dudes (or dudettes, I suppose) than grabbing beers after a hard day of work, softball, or hiking The Incline.
• Water: For obvious reasons, water is the King of Beverages. But children don’t come out of the womb craving water over juice boxes or soda, and often we carry this taste-bud-driven habit into adulthood. But if you discipline yourself to drink water every single day, you’ll find that before long, you crave it every bit as much as you crave Mountain Dew. Seriously. Try it.
• Chess: So I noticed that 4 out of 5 things on my list were things you drink, and so I needed to add at least one more non-drink item. Only took a second for chess to pop in my mind. Chess takes “getting used to” because it’s so complex and it takes a long time of losing before you ever win your first match. But chess challenges your brain in ways that other games or challenges do not. It’s also one of the oldest games in civilised culture. Start online where embarassment is minimal and once you have a base of skills, impress your friends with your hoity toity cultural accumen. 

So what am I missing? Surely there are more things that are unpleasant to start, but are worth getting used to?

Attention Non-Nerds: This post is not for you.

Alright, I just finished watching the season finale of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. And I’m more than a little bit puzzled.

Until now, the Terminator universe has seemed to operate under the Novikov self-consistency principle, which is summed up on Lost as “Whatever happened, happened.” Basically, a time traveler cannot change the future because any action he or she takes was always a part of history.

So John Connor was able to send his own father back to conceive him, even though alternative theories of time travel would create a paradox. (how could John Connor send his father back because had he NOT sent him back, he wouldn’t have existed to send him back to begin with…head…spnning)

SPOILER::SPOILER::SPOILER::SPOILER

But then in the finale, John travels to the future and meets Derek. When he tells him his name, Derek’s like “John Connor? Who’s John Connor?”, suggesting that because John traveled to the future, he wasn’t around to lead Tech-Com, so of course Derek doesn’t know him.

If the future is so easily changed, then when Sarah and John destroyed Skynet in 1995, how then would Skynet have existed in the future to send the various terminators back in time to kill John and Sarah after the fact?

Anyway, I guess all shows can’t be as smartly written as Lost. Sigh.

I swear this is my last review post of the weekend. I’ve just been playing a little catch up is all.

Dan’s Rating System: DVD…please don’t spend $10 to see this one.
Should the kids go? Noooo. Lots of sex, drugs, etc.

(um, semi-spoilers ahead…though it’s not really full of plot twists so I think you’ll be okay)

Was it funny? Sure. But there’s a line in the movie where a character says “I can’t do this. I thought it was going to be funny, but it’s actually just sad.” That kind of sums up the whole shebang.

It’s kind of Paul Blart meets Taxi Driver meets Superbad meets Quentin Tarantino. You’re following this poor guy (played by Seth Rogan) slip further into some kind of deep delusional insanity that scares you more than tickles your funny bone.

I see where they were trying to go with it. There are a few moments where you think “Wow…maybe the moral of the story is that deep down he really is a nice guy.” Then he kills someone and you’re reminded that you’re afraid. I found myself creeped out by the protagonist more than I found myself rooting for him.

That being said, there are moments of genius. There are also a few full frontal shots of a chubby old dude. Seems we’re becoming more and more comfortable with the male anatomy in this country. Thank you Europe. Thank you Jason Segal.

I won’t say this is a terrible movie. It’s not terrible. It’s just not that good. I laughed and there were a couple of times I think I was going to cry. It may have been out of disgust, but does that really matter?

Oh, and this guy’s in it. Go figure.

You know me; I’ll never tell anyone to not see a movie. But I’ll warn you that you’re probably safe throwing it in your Netflix queue and waiting. Maybe even drop it down a few notches below Dexter Season Four.