Syndicate

I have my fair share of gripes with iTunes. Things like multiple artists on a single track breaks things (Suddenly you have 20 derivations of one artist and all of the others they happened to collaborate with). It won’t rescan a music libraries for new or changed tracks, it presumes that it acts as a gatekeeper for all music being added. I could go on, but it seems pointless.

Like it or not, I’m using it to fetch podcasts. I would use alternative interfaces but none of them that I’ve tried have been able to file podcasts under the Podcasts menu heading on the iPod. That simple issue is binding me to iTunes.

As for how iTunes deals with podcasts. For being the implementation that essentially got naming rights on the technique, I think they handle podcasts pretty poorly.

• Why is is that I can only add podcast feeds by navigating their ‘podcast directory’ or dragging a link from my browser (a feature that is none too obvious)? Shouldn’t I be able to get a prompt to enter a url? Seems easy to me.
• Why can’t I actually control how iTunes fetches new items? I get one ‘fat knob’ control for this that applies to all of the feeds I listen to. I only want one of the NPR hourly news feeds, no matter if I listened to the old one or not. But I’d like access to all of the entries from Cory Doctorow’s feed or all of a category on IT Conversations.
• Why doesn’t iTunes actually keep an attached iPod synced up to iTunes? I shouldn’t have to manually tell iTunes to update the iPod after its been plugged in all night. I should just be able to go.
• Why oh why does the iPod only list podcast entries in reverse chronological order? This means that multi-part stories have to be manually selected one at a time to make them play in the proper order.

Taken individually they’re all pretty minor complaints, but in aggregate it makes me wonder how they came to be the standard bearer. For being the self-declared interface experts, they don’t seem very competent.

At least that’s what my phone told me yesterday.

We’re in the middle of our parenting preparedness classes. Trying to absorb enough information from nurses and other instructors that we feel like we’re somewhat prepared. All in all they’ve been pretty good so far. The Birthing instructor is reasonably well organized and does a good job with things. However, the breastfeeding nurse last night was scattered. She had an outline posted and even sort of followed it despite all of the tangential paths she rocketed down.

Yes, rocketed; I’m not sure she knew how to speak any slower.

Coming up: 2 more birthing classes, “Boot Camp for Dads”, “Baby Business” (intro to the hospital), and “Babies, Baths, and Booties” (or how to keep your kid clean and dressed). We also have another ultrasound on Thursday.

Went to see Flogging Molly on Saturday night with my usual group of concert buddies. All I can say is that it was a wonderful show in a small venue.

It was actually one of the few concerts I’ve attended where the opening bands were notable in a positive way. The Rolling Blackouts opened the show to luke-warm audience reception. They weren’t fantastic, but they were a good deal better than some opening acts I’ve been subjected to.

After that the Scotch Greens took over. I don’t know how to describe them in any way other than Bonanza meets Punk rock. Once you got past the electric mandolin and occasional harmonica antics, they were really good. It would seem that “Punk-Fusion” or some-such is one of my favorite meta-genres.

Just like last year, Flogging Molly put on a great show. They really get great audience feedback going in small venues. Both times I’ve seen them they have raised the bar for best concert I’ve attended.

Since my semi-local NPR station seems to have dialed down their power output, I can’t actually receive them in a useful way now (my VW has nearly no AM reception and the FM reception is fairly dismal anyway). To help rectify the situation, and avoid the mega-corp radio here, I’ve borrowed my wife’s iPod.

The real question now is, what podcasts should I listen to to replace my usual news intake. I’ve grabbed a couple of the obvious NPR feeds (7am news, Marketwatch, etc) as well as those from a few other sites I enjoy, but I only have enough content for my drive to work now, not the drive home as well.

Anybody have suggestions?