Music updates

So it's been almost exactly 5 days since I started my challenge (still not sure if "challenge" is the right word for it) to listen to my whole music library in order from A-numbered starts, etc.  I have only listened to 16 hours, 36 minutes, 51 seconds, and counting of music.  And I just added a lot to my library tonight (thanks to my good friend Ms. Caitlin Cullen).  So that means I have to backtrack and listen to Amy Winehouse, but I figure I'll wait until a CD break (post-Avril?) to do that so I know exactly where to pick up.  Anyway, this has been a slow moving project to say the least, and I still have no real ideas of anything interesting to do with it.  But I have taken some preliminary notes (when I remember to) and I figure at the very least I'll share them.
Things I've learned:
- Amos Lee is a male singer, and a pretty good one at that (John Legend-y?)
- Andre 3000 of Outkast actually sings, and not badly either (unless the Love Below singer is not him)
- Apples in Stereo are annoying.  Can you feel it? I don't know and I don't care. 
    - Energy sounds like Jenny Lewis

So.. rereading those here makes me realize they're not really all that interesting, but that is why I need YOU to give me ideas.  Because I am all dried out of them, it seems.  So please, to all my adoring fans, give me a project that I HAVE to stick to so that I can expand on this rather pointless assignment I've given myself. 

That's all for now.  I have been in the process of reading James Joyce's Ulysses for over two months now and have not made any real progress since coming home, so I'm going to try to fulfill one of my goals from my September 9th post and READ ULYSSES!!!!

Goodnight to all.

Music.. Challenge? Help Me Decide!

So I was thinking the other day when I was browsing my music library that there are a lot of bands on there that I haven't listened to even once and that that is fairly disgraceful and completely unacceptable.  In order to right this wrong, I am going to listen to every item in my whole music library consecutively from A-No Artist, which extends beyond Z and artists that start with numbers!  My conditions are not that I have to have music playing at all times, but that every time I do want to listen to music, it has to be in this order, no skipping, no replaying, no cheating.  This also only applies to the music library on my computer as it differs from the music library on my iPod (due to space restrictions) and trying to continue on my iPod will be too complicated.  However, if I am near my computer and want to listen to music, it has to be from the computer.  I can't put off listening to a certain dreaded artist by plugging my headphones into my iPod instead.(click to enlarge image below; library size specs can be seen at the verrry bottom, so you know what all of this entails.)

Now this may heed a few different results.  If things go well, I will feel that my music library has been suddenly renewed without needing to download something new, even though some particular artists have been at my fingertips for years.  Or I may rediscover some old gem that I've forgotten about.  I will feel like less of a poser for having certain artists on there and have nothing to say about them because I can't even recall their genre, let along music.  On the other hand, I am positive I am going to have to endure several horrible albums, including some stand up comedians (Dane Cook?), untalented pop artists, and others I am embarrassed to say I used to listen to (I would lend an example, but it's too difficult to choose just one).  The positive side of this effect is that I may finally realize it's okay to delete the whole Blink-182 discography I've held onto "just in case!" because there will never be a situation in which I'll allow those songs to come from my iPod (no offense to Blink-182 or their fans, they were just the first to come to mind). 

The question is, how can I make this more interesting?  How can I give you something to read about this experience?  Or is it a dead subject after this post and I should just ask you to wish me good luck?  If you have an idea to make this challenge extend beyond the challenge to my ears, heart, and brain (btw Oxford Comma is winning, so far) and turn it into a project, etc. then leave a comment about it here.  I have already started.  I'm only in the beginning of the "A"s.  So there's still time to give me all of your brilliant ideas and I'll try to think as well.


In other news, it's September 11th, so you know what that means!  Call my grandparents and wish them a happy anniversary!

Goodnight!

Mac Widget Review #1 "Organized"

"Organized," brought to us by the same people who brought us "iStat Pro" has been installed in my dashboard for approximately 14 minutes (although it came out last October, I'm slow I guess).  I love it already.  In that 14 minutes I've been able to delete 3 other widgets from my dashboard (sorry iCal, Stickies, and World Clock) and well I guess that's all really.  But how great?

Most of the reason I stay away from installing too many widgets is because I have limited screen space and I don't like having to shuffle things around (take my iTunes library for instance - I could never own an iPod smaller than 30g and even that has reached its limit & it was very painful for me when I had to start manually selecting songs).  But with this widget, so much space is freed up on my dashboard!  It has the functionality of iCal, World Clock, Post-its, and To-Do Lists, but takes up the space of a calculator (pictured below: four different screen shots from the widget).  Now I have room for at least four sizable widgets and maybe even a couple smaller ones.  I mean, obviously you could fit a million widgets on your dashboard, but if you're like me and don't like overlapping, this widget really helps you out.

(click for larger image)

Also, it's free (like most widgets), but iSlayer encourages donations, so donate!  Not that I've gotten there yet, but I'm unemployed and currently missing my debit card, so there's really not much I can do for them.  My donation is this free plug I'm giving to the small circle of people who read this (and I know most of you are Mac users).  So if you're poor, too, but want to help iSlayer, you can send your rich friends a link to this and we can all feel better about ourselves, and I can start to feel like an internet celebrity (even though that's not my goal). 

So, go to http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ anytime relatively following this post date and you should be able to find "Organized" right there on the front page (that's how good it is), but if you're reading this to catch up on all my posts now that I'm a famous blogger and you need to know how humble I was when I started, then just do a simple search on that same link or from the iSlayer website directly and you, too, will have a cleaner and more efficient dashboard!

p.s.

i just have to make note that the last post was my 9th on this blog (including imported Paris ones), on the 9th day of the 9th month in the year 2009.  coincidence?  you decide.

twenty-nine goals, big & small

1. finish redoing my résumé
2. clean/reorganize my room
3. e-mail professors to keep good standing for references
4. write more in blog
5. write more in tumblr
6. write more on twitter
7. write more in journal
8. write more in cw journal
9. read Ulysses
10. learn to cook
11. 200-sit up challenge 
12. rejoin gym
13. find a job (preferably one with health care)
    
14. study for GREs
15. spend less time online (conflict with goals 3-6, 22 and 13?)
16. keep in touch with and/or visit friends that aren't in NY
17. eat more healthily
18. start saving money
19. go to sleep earlier
20. floss more often
    
21. keep speaking/reading/listening to French
22. email French family
23. figure out my stance on the Oxford Comma to facilitate consistency
24. utilize futon or chairs more and bed less
25. go to museums I haven't been to and also to ones I have
    
26. start taking books out at the library, THEN buy them if they're worthy (will help with goal 18 and will help me not have to repeat goal 27 at a later date)
27. get a bigger bookshelf
28. drink more water, less soda
29. dance when no one is watching.live.laugh.love. (cheating? 3-in-1?? Oh well.)

not in any particular order, except maybe some of them.

Lessons from the Disney Channel

Since being home, I have had the opportunity to babysit my 4 year old sister ("4 and a half!") for the past week before she begins kindergarten. In the mornings, before she starts dragging me to the pool in the afternoon and before my mom and step-dad become insistent that it's a beautiful day and she needs to be outside, we've passed the time watching ample Disney Channel shows. So, I thought I'd write a post to let everyone in the world out there above the age of 14 (or maybe I should be more generous since it's likely there are people older than that watching Disney still) know what kind of Lessons the kids (et al.) are learning these days.

• Spanish is a legitimate language to learn and therefore it will be featured. French may be featured as well, but only "bonjour" and some combination of "hon hon hon," "ze" instead of "the," and "ah oui, c'est bon." Read: for mocking purposes, not learning ones. Read: Disney knows nothing.
• On a related note, characters who speak some Spanish are always Mexican. And mostly know how to count.
  
• Related note numéro deux: "Let's count with Mickey Mouse, because when it comes to count, we can trust Mickey Mouse." Rough quotation, but the part in bold is what's important. Here we learn two things, we can trust Mickey Mouse with all of our counting needs (even though he probably has one less finger) and Disney doesn't know how to conjugate verbs.
• Animation can only be in extreme 2-d (for a trendy sketch/water color effect), computer animated, or one of these paired with the occasional real-world shot of grass or the sky, as these animated characters pass through.
• A lesson we've all learned a million times: duct tape fixes everything. What Disney tells us, however, is that that rule is not limited to our own personal objects. When leaves start to fall, you can tape them right back up, too.
• Hannah Montana is as annoying as you'd suspect.
• In general, making fun of foreign countries is appropriate when your audience is between the ages of 2 and 6.
• Four creepy older men are the entertainment of choice for aforementioned audience. (Remember The Wiggles? Now there's the "Imagination Movers.")

There may be more to add by the end of this week, or day, but there's a starting list. As you can see, the youth of today is learning a lot of great things. I can't claim that the Disney of my day was much better, but I didn't catch onto that bandwagon until I was a bit older than my sister, so I had quality television like Sesame Street as a precursor. They know what's up.

Well, until my next inspiration...