Alphabet Metldown
This weekend, I embarked on a minor technology project: to move my music collection from my PC (which is rapidly becoming little more than a platform to run Quicken on) to the Mac Mini "entertainment centre" in our living room.
Seemed like a worthwhile goal, with a lot of minor yet significant benefits. We usually listen to music in the living room, but with the library hosted remotely on the PC in the other room, playback could be flaky, and listening statistics weren't reflected in the library. Also, moving the music to the mac had the side benefit of letting me reformat my iPod to mac, so I could transfer songs from my iBook as well (a nice thing, for music acquired on trips, etc).
I even had a master plan: Several months back I had acquired an external drive enclosure which exactly matched the dimensions and look and feel of the Mac Mini, and stacked perfectly on top of it. I'd plug the enclosure into the PC, copy the library files, and then reconnect it back to it's permanent home on the Mini.
What could go wrong? Turns out alot, if said enclosure is almost entirely made of plastic, with no heat sink or cooling fan, in the summer, as the drive is slaving away nonstop trying to sync about 80GB of music to the iPod.
That's right, total meltdown.
Oh, the physical enclosure itself is fine, but the drive failed entirely (not even showing up as a USB device anymore), and it was too hot to touch for quite some time after the failure.
The main thing we lost were some episodes of jPod and Supernatural, and a completely replaceable copy of the music library from upstairs. The drive itself only cost me about $70 from an independent computer repair shop, so that's not too bad.
It's just a pain.
And the other side effect? My iPod has this surreal collection consisting only of artists with names from A to D. It's as if I'd subscribed to one of those encyclopedia-by-the-month or animal collecting card deals from TV from the early 80s, and quit at D.
Random shuffle so far while I work:
The Album Leaf – The Sailor
Bonobo – Flutter
Cracker – I Want Everything
Death Cab for Cutie – A Lack of Color
Chances of an exclusively A-D collection shuffling exactly to songs by A, B, C, then D? 1 in 256.
I think that only added to the weirdness of the whole thing.
(Incidentally, songs 5 and 6 were Bea's "#5705" and Donovan's "Mellow Yellow", so the pattern ended after the first four.)
Seemed like a worthwhile goal, with a lot of minor yet significant benefits. We usually listen to music in the living room, but with the library hosted remotely on the PC in the other room, playback could be flaky, and listening statistics weren't reflected in the library. Also, moving the music to the mac had the side benefit of letting me reformat my iPod to mac, so I could transfer songs from my iBook as well (a nice thing, for music acquired on trips, etc).
I even had a master plan: Several months back I had acquired an external drive enclosure which exactly matched the dimensions and look and feel of the Mac Mini, and stacked perfectly on top of it. I'd plug the enclosure into the PC, copy the library files, and then reconnect it back to it's permanent home on the Mini.
What could go wrong? Turns out alot, if said enclosure is almost entirely made of plastic, with no heat sink or cooling fan, in the summer, as the drive is slaving away nonstop trying to sync about 80GB of music to the iPod.
That's right, total meltdown.
Oh, the physical enclosure itself is fine, but the drive failed entirely (not even showing up as a USB device anymore), and it was too hot to touch for quite some time after the failure.
The main thing we lost were some episodes of jPod and Supernatural, and a completely replaceable copy of the music library from upstairs. The drive itself only cost me about $70 from an independent computer repair shop, so that's not too bad.
It's just a pain.
And the other side effect? My iPod has this surreal collection consisting only of artists with names from A to D. It's as if I'd subscribed to one of those encyclopedia-by-the-month or animal collecting card deals from TV from the early 80s, and quit at D.
Random shuffle so far while I work:
Chances of an exclusively A-D collection shuffling exactly to songs by A, B, C, then D? 1 in 256.
I think that only added to the weirdness of the whole thing.
(Incidentally, songs 5 and 6 were Bea's "#5705" and Donovan's "Mellow Yellow", so the pattern ended after the first four.)