1) When you rip music to your computer it helps if you can find it again. This is why you would expect your media ripper to create a folder structure of Artist->Album and put all of the songs in there. This just isn’t good enough for iTunes and it had totally ruined my music collection by putting files all over the place. For some reason, if the album has ANY (and I mean ANY!) other person contributing to a song in addition to the artist who has written the song it puts the entire album into a folder called “compilations”.  It doesn’t do this all of the time however and will also create literally hundreds of folders called Artist feat. Another Artist.  What the difference is I can’t figure out, and it has utterly ruined by Cypress Hill collection by creating literally 30 folders.  I wish Apple(spit!) wouldn’t do this.  Why is this even a good idea?  Who in the world would want it this way?  The gauling thing is that there isn’t even a way (that I can find) to stop it doing this.  Why not categorise the music by Artist and then Ablum?  Why bother even looking at the composing meta data?

2) If this wasn’t bad enough, when I try to sort out the terrible state my music collection has got into iTunes will come along and put it back the way it was before.  Not only that.  (Oh no, that would be too simple!)  It also leaves in all of the broken back references to the music which it has just moved.

3) For some odd reason when ripping my vast CD collection using iTunes it not only puts random beeps and jumps in some tracks but will also stop ripping 30 seconds from the end of the CD.  So when you are listening to the last track on the album you are treated to it simply stopping.  This doesn’t happen when I use Windows Media Player, and I can get the same effect when I use different computers so it is clear that this is not just my machine playing about.  Why, oh why would you ever want this to happen?

4) I have been using iTunes for about 3 months to listen to podcasts and it was only LAST WEEK that I found out how to play any track I wanted from a particular podcast. For weeks I have been messing around with settings, pushing buttons, right clicking and generally having a hard time trying to listen to the back catalogue from some of my favourite podcasts.  All utterly futile.  When you have a podcast downloaded you will see a little grey arrow (triangle really) to the left hand side.  I ACCIDENTALLY clicked on this arrow one day and the podcast title expanded and revealed the entirety of the episodes of the podcast I had clicked on.  I was astonished!  This arrow looks more like a decoration than a button!  Why didn’t they just create the NORMAL sort of plus and minus system that everyone else on the entire planet uses?  No.  They have to mess about with the stupid interface and confuse everyone.

5) Lets say you just downloaded a podcast that has 100 episodes, which isn’t all that rare.  Want to listen to episode 53 on the way to work?  Tough!  iTunes will only let you listen to lots of stupid combinations of “Most recent 10 unlistened” or “Least recent 5 unlistened” from any podcasts that you select.  You can select them all to be uploaded, but this tends to fill anyone who doesn’t have a 16GB iPod.  You can create a playlist and use this, but this just breaks the way that an iPod plays podcasts and is totally wothless.

I will stick with Windows Media Player (which is a vastly better program - with a vastly better name!) to listen, rip and watch my media.  I will only use iTunes to sync my iPod and download podcasts.  I am seriously thinking about buying a Creative Zen simply so that I don’t have to use this broken bile of monkey poo.

Finally, there is another thing that really annoy me. Podcasts. This makes it seem like it can only be listened to on an iPod. WRONG! When you subscribe to a podcast you are just downloading a syndication feed that links to some audio or video files. Lots of different software is available to download and manage podcasts, not just the broken rubbish from Apple(spit!). However, the name seems to have stuck with people in the industry, and I can’t think of a better one than blogcasts. Which is kind of different really…

If anyone else has had trouble with iTunes then let me know by commenting on this article.

Phoneing up the camp site before hand we heard that it was very water-logged and that they had even shut down some of the site due to it being so wet. The weather forcast said that it would rain on the Thursday, but that it should be better on the Friday, and Saturday should be much better.

When we got there it was wet, and due to the activity of people walking about it was also very muddy. We booked until Sunday just in case the rain didn’t stop. Not being perturbed we set up our tents and hoped that there would be no more rain for a couple of days. It was muddy enough that some people went into town and bought wellington boots just so that they didn’t have to stand ankle deep in mud. I stayed in my trusty walking boots, which now need a good wash!

No such luck on hoping it wasn’t going to rain! It was sunny for just long enough on Friday night and Saturday to lull us into a false sense of security. By dinner time on Saturday it was raining quite steadily and any drying out that had been done was basically wasted. The ground just got wetter and wetter until everything we did or owned was just caked in mud.

Anyway, I had the plan that we would go Hay-on-Wye at some point during the weekend, so we went there on Saturday. We eventually decided that Mandy and I should go and Matthew would stay behind and go to the Rhyader “fun day”. Apparently the fun day wasn’t all that fun, and consisted of a few giant games (like a large connect four) and was very “small town” if you know what I mean.

For those of you who don’t know Hay-on-Wye is a town that has more book shops (mainly second hand) per mile than just about anywhere else on the face of the Earth. Just walking around it for a while you are hit by the amount of books that are present in the town. There are millions! Mandy and I went there with a certain number of authors in mind, but unfortunately found nothing. I was a little disapointed, but I realised that there are a few reasons why I didn’t find what I was looking for.

1. There are a lot of books. So therefore asking if anything is there just gets you blank looks. Most shop owners don’t know what they have in their stock, just due to the numbers of books there, but also due to the fact that lots of books also come in.
2. Looking through each bookstore takes a while and different stores have different ways of stocking and categorising books. I didn’t have all week to look through every store, but you could easily do that.
3. I assume that, although there are books coming in to the shops, there are a lot of people walking around and buying them. So the good and popular books go quite quickly and so finding them can be a little tricky.

I am back home now, and drying off. Everything in and around the tent is wet and muddy and I will probably spend tomorrow cleaning everything 50 times over as it is all caked with mud. Joy…

It would be nice to go camping and it not rain and spoil things. I’m thinking that we should just book ourselves into a hotel next time.

Try it out for yourself.

We had to walk in order to pick them up, which is about 4 miles, but we needed to take Matthew with us.  He enjoyed riding on my bike (although he is a little small for it).  After getting home we put them back in the shed with the plan to go for a bike ride today.

However, when I got the bike out of the shed I found it had a puncture in the front tyre.  After getting quite angry, but still being able to repair it I then attached a bike seat so that Matthew could ride on the back of my bike.

Our little trip nearly started out as a disaster as as soon as I picked my bike off of the wall (with Matthew attached) it fell sideways and I had to struggle to bring the bike back up again from a funny angle.  I’m not certain that the seat is entirely safe as it makes the bike very top heavy and when I slowed down (for the hills) I ended up falling sideways.

Still, it was a plesant bike ride.  We went up to the cannal at the end of a lane near our house.  I didn’ remember, the last time I took that lane, just how hilly it was.  Plus, I am quite out of shape and so I wasn’t able to peddle all the way up in one go.  I just need to get more practice in!

I’m not from the USA, nor do I live in their country, and therefore not eligible to vote in their election. However, I still have an opinion and I think that a potted plant is a definite step UP from the current idiot.

Last night I was out celebrating my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary with the rest of the family.  As usual we went to the Beefeater, where the food is borderline microwave-tastic!  Matthew was as good as gold.

Mandy and Matthew made me a cake.  Here is a picture.

I think it is an exceptional cake!  It is an exact copy of a book which I spent many hours reading and thinking about and is well thumbed.  I suppose that this is my first geek cake.

My dad got me a book called God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, which I will be reading with relish.  Not literally of course, I mean that I will just be eagerly willing to read the book because I’m sure I loath religion as much as the author (Christopher Hitchens) does.

I think it is fantastic.  The garden to our house is a bit of an oddity really.  It was left overgrown for about 10 years and was used as a builders yard for a bit.  We still have a large circular saw in a cast iron base hidden behind a hedge.  I have been working on clearing it up for months, although I’m not making much headway.  However, one good thing about the garden is all the wildlife I see.  We have multiple species of birds, squirrels and I even saw a mouse the other day, but having a fox living nearby is just great.

The fox kept coming into the garden, cramming as much bread as he could into his mouth, and then leaving again.  So I can only assume that there are little foxes about somewhere.  I went upstairs to get a better view and Matthew was awake so I pointed the fox out to him.  He straight away identified it as a fox.  He must have learnt something from us reading him Beatrix Potter books.

This connects something I was thinking about the other day.  We usually put out some bread at night (try getting a 3 year old to eat crusts) and they are always gone by morning.  I just thought we had hungry birds!

Apart from two letters that is.  These letters are W and U.

When I say U he repeats back “me!” and when I say W, which I pronounce as “double-u” that is exactly what he hears and repeats back “double me!”.

How on earth do you get through to a 3 year old that it isn’t double you, but two letter U’s put together?  I’m sure he will work it out eventually!

However, when I poured the water out over the rhubarb this grey blob shot out from underneath and hid in the hedge.

Turns out that there was a rabbit hiding underneath it (now wet), and it must have been there since I had come outside about an hour before.  I think we had better harvest the rhubarb before it is eaten up!