I was talking to Lorch a little this morning about the music player in my phone. If you’re thinking about intergrating some of your pocket gadgetry, I there’s a chance you could find this useful.

Otherwise, there is plenty on the Internet to occupy your time.

So yeah, I got that music player phone, and if you recall my months-long internal (slash-external) debate, I chose it in the interest of having fewer things in my pockets. One would like to have a phone, PDA, and ipod all in there, but if you can eliminate one or two of them, why not?

The phone has a microSD expansion slot for storing music. I’m not sure what the maximum capactiy is for that slot, but I got a 1-gig card from Newegg for 20 bucks.

In the process of re-encoding some mp3s for use on my PDA, I already had a gaggle of music coded at 96k. At that bitrate, I can squeeze quite a few songs on the card (I think around 400 or so). What I did is put my Top 20 All-time albums on there, with a little room to spare.

I did have an issue with some id3 tags when I got started. The info was wrong or missing on a number of the albums I wanted to use. Since the modern mp3 player uses this data to populate one’s “library,” it’s fairly essential. There are a lot of options out there if you have broken Id3 info, but regardless of what any of them claim, they all have an element of tediousness and frustration. No matter what technology the various tools’ software designers claim to be using, what they all fail to overcome is this: when there is so little data to go on, it’s impossible to predict with total accuracy what the file is supposed to say. *shrugs* Bottom line, if you wanna fix tags, it’s gonna take a while.

And it did. But once I was done, everything worked really well. So I guess I can’t complain that the biggest problem I had getting started was my own. I did, just for S&G’s, try to filter the music I wanted to use through BitPim. There was a “built-in” encoder that seemed to modify my mp3s pretty quickly. Trying to move the data to the phone didn’t work the way I expected, though. I tried this because I thought it might “save” me an encoding step, but really it didn’t.

The “software” that came packaged with the phone tries to push you toward using Windows Media Player for syncing songs, but I found it even more effective to use a card reader and dump files directly to the SD card. Even though there are extra “steps” doing it this way, it’s really fast.

I was pleasantly suprised by the sound quality. It’s not CD-good, but these are earbuds and a phone, for chrissakes. I listened to Led Zeppelin II on my way to work this morning, and the highs and lows came through pretty well. I would NOT want to plug my phone into the car stereo or anything, ala iPod. For that, you would want something with a much higher storage capacity, where you’re not compromising your bitrate for space. For my purposes, though, I think this will probably work out.

Michelle’s phone has a music player, too, and I’m curious to try dropping my card in there to see if the player interface or quality is any different. I don’t really expect that to be the case, though.

Got a lot of crap done around the house this weekend… My room is still not as clean as I’d like it to be, but I got more done in there than it looks like.

Took down the Christmas tree today and generally un-decorated. I was able to consolidate a few of the smaller boxes I was keeping stuff in. I still didn’t get rid of that fake tree, so I’ll have to try to remember to do that next year.

I finished enough stuff that I felt it was time to move on to things I always think about doing but never actually do. I updated my movie list, and I’m over 320 titles. Next, I’m going to get a Holidays 2006 photo gallery started. Please feel free to contribute…

I just realized that it’s after 4:30. I was going to try to get to a movie this afternoon, but I guess I won’t. Eh, I s’pose that’s OK. I’ve still got more to do at home, and the football today isn’t bad.

Happy Birthday to Joey Knitt today (officially)…

I didn’t play a ton of video games over the holidays, but for some reason, I’ve gots the Nintendo thumb– y’know, when your thumb gets all calloused and yucky from emphatically holding down that direction pad? You can see a picture of it here, although it pretty much just looks like a normal thumb, so…

Michelle is coming up this evening for Joey Knitt’s Birthday Gala & Karaoke Festival, but she has to head back to MKE right away in the morning to judge a cheerleading competition at around 9AM. I was thinking that since a lot of the “cleaning” I might need to do around the house is in good order, and the holiday wackiness is over, I might get a chance to do some (GASP!) writing on Saturday, but when I sat down to make a list, it got kind of long pretty fast.

I really need to quit sleeping away the weekends. That’s got to be one of the most detrimental things to my productivity. I end up having maybe 5 or 6 good hours each day where things are getting accomplished, where I should be shooting for 10 or 12. Since Michelle has to leave so early in the morning tomorrow, I might as well get up too, get started earlier.

Other than that… –OH!

Check it– one of my ‘tasks’ for the weekend will be to strike the karaoke machine that Michelle got me for my birthday… It seems like such a shame to put it back in the box until the next party. Wondering if anybody has a brilliant idea or two for what to do with a karaoke machine until you really need to croon..?

The last time I was up north (Thanksgiving) I brought home the balance of boxes that were still being stored in my old bedroom closet. Among those was a plastic storage bin with all of my comic books and related paraphernalia.

In the grand scheme of things, my comic fanboy stage was relatively short– stretching from the summer of 1991 to an abrupt halt in the fall of 1993. I was around for a Marvel mutant renaissance of sorts, as well as the birth of Image comics. This was also an age of decadence in the history of comic collecting, as the publishers flooded the market with ‘special edtions,’ multiple covers, hologram cards, and Big Anniversary Issues.

It was hard for a kid of 13 or 14 to buy all this cool shit they were throwing at you when you probably didn’t have a job during the school year, and only worked part-time over the summer. Still, how could you get through the month without picking up the latest Uncanny X-Men with its 5 different covers that, when fit together, formed a picture that held a message you could read if you bought the sixth cover with the decoder ring, and if you sent that secret code phrase with your proof of purchase for all six issues along with $9.95 for shipping and handling, you could get a pack of FREE, limited-edition, holographic Cable pogs, which would be sure to fetch $20-$30 dollars EACH on the open market in… y’know, 30 or 40 years or something.

So my ‘collection’ may be modest at best, but last night as I cracked open that box and thumbed through my first 25 issues of X-Men, I realized how engrossed I became in all the stories and characters and their histories. There’s a LOT that I still remember about things as random as the events surrounding The Infinity Gauntlet series. Sadly, I remember very little about 8th grade math. I don’t even remember who my math teacher was in 8th grade. Nope–! Shit– yes I do! It was Mr. Wang– Wong? Anyone remember how to spell that? Phew…

But I digress.

My point is that in a very short stretch of time, I read a LOT of different stories and got in touch with some old characters that naturally had a lot of depth. There is good reading to be found in a lot of comics. There is also a lot of shit (and this dynamic can be found in any storytelling media that’s out there). But as I curl up to give another read to Superman #505, I have to admit that, for better or worse, a number of my sensibilities about writing (most notably, character development) have their deepest roots in comic books.

Maybe I should try writing for a soap opera. Y’know, a comic-booky one, like Days of Our Lives.

Read this story this morning, and thought it was kind of interesting:

Think-off.

750 words?? No problem…

Had a busy close to the last year, so I’m sorry if you were looking for something deep or insightful as we wrapped up ’06. Here’s a little recap:

– Took a ride down to MKE and went out to dinner w/ Michelle and her cousins on 12/28. We had a good time. They’re fun peeps. I think next time we should do something somewhere a little quieter; it was hard to talk at Nice Ash on Thursday.

– Slept in a little on Friday morning and didn’t get back to Oshkosh until about 11. Had errands to run around town, and started the arduous process of cleaning up for the party on Sunday. Cleaned the garage, which was kind of neat. Dave Slotten came over late, though, and we played Street Fighter and watched Get Shorty.

– Saturday I had a lot of cleaning to finish. I was up pretty late w/ Dave, though, and I slept until about noon. The place looked really good by the time I finished. Jen & Joe and Michelle all were over by the evening, and we played dominoes. I think Joe won. I definitely lost.

– Sunday was the New Year/birthday party. Thanks to all who attended; it was a good time. Met Wordy’s GF, Jessica (finally). Michelle got me a karaoke machine for my birthday. I’ll have to start looking for more CDs. We karaok’d during the party and Jen was particularly vocal about what she wanted to sing. Petters did ‘Billie Jean.’ Wordy even sang.

– Monday we got up in time to go to “breakfast” at around 1. We went to ‘American Table’ on Main Street. Most of us were not impressed with the meal. Jen & Joe and Nick & Emily had to head out shortly after, but Wordy & Jessica stayed for the day, so that we could hang out w/ the Brown-Lorches? and Knitts in the evening. There was cake. And lots of leftovers. Michelle and I stayed up late talking. I wish I had off today.

(For those of you keeping score on my 2007 holiday vacation schedule, I’ll be off work from 12/22 through 1/2.)

Thanks to everybody who made it a fun holiday season. I had a good time, and it was nice to see everybody. Hope we can do it again, sooner than later…

Sorry, I ended up having a (sort of) busy day @ work with really nothing at all, but the point is that I wasn’t bored. Now that I’m at home, I have all sorts of other crap to work on, so I’ll be brief.

I have long heard rumor of a Silver Surfer movie that was due to follow in the longer and longer line of Marvel heroes brought to the big screen. As with any comic book hero, the key is try to bring the more “human” nuances of these well-developed characters to a new medium in such a way that they will appeal to a wider audience.

The failures in this area of the respective production staffs of Daredevil, The Hulk, and Fantastic Four (particularly that last one) could not be more complete.

You can imagine my dismay, then, to see a trailer for the Silver Surfer movie, which will be delivered as a sequel to 2005’s Fantastic shit-storm.

Pretty soon I’m going to have to stop going to comic book movies.

Ah well, off to clean downstairs and watch Episode 2 😛

Another influential figure from the 20th century fades into the abyss… rest peacefully, President Ford.

Is it me, or does this news just make you want to watch some old school SNL?

More to come later in the day…

Had a very nice holiday weekend… the quick synopsis:
– Spent 12/23 at the Behling’s house in S. MKE w/ the Bock family. Good times. Quote of the evening for me was from me, on my cousin Aaron and his current physique– “Yeah, last year you were thin. This year, you look like you could kick somebody’s ass.”
– 12/24 we were at Grandma Markowski’s house. We had a delightfully filling meal (per usual), and made use of the Polish-basement-bar to an unprecedented extent. I laughed the hardest when Grandma opened her first gift– a book, titled “50 Uses for Your Cat”
– Didn’t get to sleep @ Michelle’s house until about 4AM on the 25th, and after that, slept in for a good portion of 12/25. Had more gift-exhangey excitement w/ her fam. I got back to Vegas around 7:30.

Anyway, during the course of the weekend, I had a few occasions to surf a little on the internets and mess around w/ my laptop, and I noticed that the boot-up time is POSITIVELY EXCRUCIATING. I’ve defragged and refragged and uninstalled this and reinstalled that, and I just wasn’t satisfied. I do have a theme-mod packager sitting on top of Windows, but in and of itself, this software doesn’t really eat resources. I came to the conclusion that what really needed to go was some of the installed shite that I never use, and as much of the proprietary bloatware that I could get rid of.

The nice thing about de-bloatifying your system is that, even if it doesn’t result in a marked increase in performance, you probably didn’t need that disk-sucking mess on there anyway. So, everybody wins. The first two items I removed (links point to the alternatives):
– Adobe Reader
– QuickTime

In the past, what with owning a Stinkpad, I’ve kept the IBM tools (many of which *are* useful) up-to-date as well. But, I notice that there are a number of Thinky-processes that kick in at startup, and maybe I don’t need all of ’em. I’ll probably trim some fat in that region next…

If you’re at work– try to stay awake, and if you’re at home– put some pants on for chrissakes!!

Check out this story: Military Deaths in Iraq Exceed 9/11 Toll.

Here’s hoping our elected leaders can show us some real progress before next Christmas…