Thursday and the sand in my vacation hourglass is running low.
Also running low, the time between my writing this and our departure in a little more than a week for our John Muir Trail “redo” hike. I put a meeting on the group’s collective calendars for next Tuesday to do a shopping run at REI and some pre-trail pack stuffing and checking (yes, we are so bound to technology that we “calendar” our hike planning sessions). As time gets closer, I get more and more excited… I really can’t wait to get out on the trail again. Later next week I’ll publish our finalized itinerary with GPS links for the data-driven and curious. But, for now, let’s do some boring blogging.
Vacation with the parents-in-law has so far been perfect. Sharaun’s folks are low-key vacationers, not really wanting to run around and see this or do that… but rather wanting to spend time together hanging out and relaxing. I can really identify with this kind of vacationing. Last night (Wednesday) we had some friends over for some barbecue, drinks, and Olympic-watching socialization. We’ve been to a couple different parks to let Keaton run around and play, made a visit to the zoo, and are planning a trip halfway up the mountain tomorrow to go swimming and picnic at a little tucked-away spot on the river. And, even though I’m technically not on vacation today… I sure am giving work the short shrift.
Now to change the subject a bit, to the nerd-stuff…
With the advent (or rather, my recent discovery) of programs like Simplify Media, which streams your home-based music collection to your iPhone, I’ve become painfully aware that, despite previous monumental efforts on my part to clean up and standardize the MP3 tag structure of my music collection, I’ve still got a long way to go. This becomes immediately apparent when using applications like Simplify, which rely solely on the MP3 tag data of your collection to sort and display your music. Minor differences in band naming schemes (to capitalize the ‘I’ in Architecture in Helsinki’s name or not, for instance) presents as two different artists, as an example.
Because of this, I’ve dutifully undertaken my most monumental tag “cleanup” effort to-date: Using a combination of tagging and renaming programs to scroll through my entire library and edit things for efficiency, accuracy, and useability. I figure that this whole remote-streaming/access to home music collections is the way of the future, so I may as well baseline now and be ready for the glory that is to come. It’ll take time to change all those instance of “Eric Burdon and The Animals” my preferred “Eric Burdon & The Animals,” but I think it’ll be worth it. Update: I wrote these paragraphs a couple days ago (on one of those days I didn’t end up posting), and have since finished my great tag-update. The work didn’t end up being that bad and, even though I still have a few things to tidy, I got it done in relatively short order.
Bye guys, I’m off to dial into a meeting (told you it was some sort of quasi-vacation)…
Also written on this day...
- two entries on the week - 2009
- no. shut up. - 2007
- hump on meth - 2006