The White Stuff

[jadesfire]

Well, that was a bit too much like hard work. It took me an hour and a half to do the 2.5 miles from home to work this morning. Every bus seemed to be full, so I waited half an hour there (yes, I do have some feeling in my toes again now, thanks for asking), then it took half an hour down the main road, which didn't seem to have been gritted since Monday. Thanks to the continual snowfall/slush/freezing cycle, it was covered in an inch or so of ice, so there was much slipping and wheelspin pretty much everywhere. Even the bus took a dive to the left every time it stopped, freaking the driver out a little, not to mention the rest of us.

Knitters, I'm not sure about making it to Blackwell's at lunchtime. Due to my klutziness/carefulness, it's taking me forever to walk places, and as one of the few members of staff here, I don't really feel I can extend my lunchbreak. Also, lind is off ill and B is still fighting the train network. Maybe next week, once it's melted.

Speaking of which, I don't mind the snow so much, it's the thaw that's starting to worry me. Last February when all the snow melted, the river rose to within an inch of the bottom of our window. And there wasn't as much snow then as there is now.

*gulp*

This is not going to help my attempts to wean myself off Rightmove, is it?

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Moving onto happier thoughts, did I mention that I have an iPod Touch? Once or twice, maybe? I'm sorta kinda in love with it right now, but I have two questions for more experienced users:

#1. What free/cheap apps should I get? I already have Stanza and Echofon and a Sudoku game. Any other must haves?

#2. Is there any way to get the damn thing to remember what I was listening to before I turned it off? Several of my audiobooks are just albums (ie MP3 not M4b) so it won't remember which track I was listening to, and the 'recently played' is no help at all. My Creative used to remember and start up where I left off. Is there any way to make the Touch do that, or am I just going to have to improve my memory skills?

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Since I can't live without a desk diary, I went out and got myself a half-price Moleskin one yesterday. It is black and leather and absolutely gorgeous. You didn't need to know that, but it's making me happy and I felt the need to share.

Anything to take my mind off the amount of snow still falling outside...

Comments

[greyias.livejournal.com]

WordsWithFriends - same bat username

Ooh, I didn't realize you were turning it off. Does that mean the Touch is easier to turn off than the iPhone? I have to hold down the top button and use a slider to turn it off. I usually just press the button on top once, quickly, to put it into sleep mode. It keeps playing music or whatever it was doing like before. One trick I've been doing to pause it without having to go through the menu is remove the earphones. Then press the top to put it to "sleep". It doesn't use up much battery in sleep mode if it's not playing music.

I would use the conversion thing only for things that are either really long that you want it to remember where to resume in, regardless of whether you've turned it off or listened to another song. The conversion thing shoooould work regardless of how many tracks, but I've never tried it on something like the Big Finish dramas that rip everything to a separate track. You might also want to experiment with the "part of a compilation" tick box and the "part of a gapless" album if those aren't checked as well, that way iTunes knows it's "together". (You can right-click and "get info" on batches of files, so you can do batch edits if you need to.) Let me know how it works out! I'm curious to know if it can work without having to manually compile it into a new file together.

Ahh, Echofon is in the app store? I really need to pay more attention. As for Spotify... if you can only connect to a paid account, and never having used Spotify before, then I'd say no. Check out Pandora. Not the same functionality from what I understand, but you can still choose your music and listen to it (when you have WiFi access)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I have to do the same thing to turn off the Touch, but I'm getting all confused now. Because pressing the button on the top once locks the keys. How do I make it sleep? *iz baffled*

It's Big Finish dramas that I'm listening to, so I'll try some of those out as well. Not having used iTunes before, it's still all a bit mysterious to me, and I haven't had a chance to sit down and prod it properly yet. I'll try those things first, thanks.

I've got Spotify on every other computer (even at work \o/), and it'll work the same way as Pandora, I assume - I'll get it when I have wifi but not when I don't. Also, my understanding is that it doesn't run in the background like normal music? Music isn't really my priority, - I'm more about ways to entertain my brain when I'm on the bus ;) I've got the same username on Wordswithfriends too, so will check it out next time I have a connection.

Gotta love the 21st century :D

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry to confuse you. Lock the keys is the same thing I'm calling sleep.

If I think of other apps, I'll let you know. (Kindle and the Sherlock Holmes game based on the new movie available in the UK? I'm having rather fun with those too.)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

But...if I lock the keys, it keeps playing *flail*

oh, hang on. If I pause it then lock the keys, it'll be fine, right? That makes more sense.

Stanza does the job of Kindle, but I think I may have to have the Sherlock Holmes game. Haven't seen the film yet, but I want to sooooo much!

[greyias.livejournal.com]

You simply must see the film! It was exactly my kind of romp, so I think you'd probably enjoy it. (And from picking up and starting on the Holmes canon, it actually seems rather true to the character, which surprised me!)

On the Touch, are you listening with earphones, or through the speaker? If you're listening through earphones, simply unplugging them should pause it. My little sister has found some way to forward/back/pause without unlocking the thing, but darned if I can figure out how she's doing it. It has to do with some swipe motion after pressing the home button I think. This requires research, methinks.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

We're hoping to see it in February at this cinema (), which we've been wanting to visit for ages.

I'm listening on headphones so will try the unplugging thing. The rest sounds a little advanced for me for now.

ooh! And I meant to say that in other Geek News, J resurrected my laptop. Good riddance Linpus Lite, hello Ubuntu NBR \o/ What with that and the Touch, it's pretty much geeky heaven over here at the moment ;)

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Laptop resurrection! \o/ Oooh, is Ubuntu shiny? The nightmarish SUSE version of Linux made me wary of giving it a shot, but if it's user-friendly...

If I figure out the other method, I'll let you know whether it's easy. Headphone unplugging is my lazy way of doing it.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

[incidentally, link fail! this is the cinema (http://www.therexberkhamsted.com/)]

The Netbook version of Ubuntu is incredibly shiny and almost ridiculously easy to use. To the extent that when you want a new programme, you search for it in the package manager then just click 'install'. It does everything for you that you want - I've got VLC and Wine (for Spotify) which were my two 'must haves', and a very pretty wallpaper behind my icons, which I couldn't have in Linpus. If you want user-friendly Linux, I couldn't recommend it more.

[greyias.livejournal.com]

FWIW, a week later I finally figured out my sister's "trick"!

You press the "home" button twice, and it brings a little version of the music bar up at the top of the screen, and you can play/pause, go forward, backward, and mess with the volume. It's a double tap, sort of like a double-click.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Hokay, I'll try that. I'm not having much luck with the compilation thing though - all the tracks in my compilation albums show up separately *sigh* I'm kind of disappointed because if Winamp could manage it, I'd hoped iTunes could, without me having to go hunting for the answer.

*shakes fist* Curse you, Apple, getting my hopes up like that.

Thanks, though. I'll let you know how I get on!

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry about that. The compilations will still show up as separate tracks, at least, I haven't been able to get them to do anything else for the products we make, which are all compilations. I'll keep nosing around to see if I can find a better solution.

And yes, ahh, I love how Apple products are supposed to be so user-friendly, but they're so ridiculously counter-intuitive at times.

Icon is for iTunes.