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Finally managed to fix that annoying bug in the photo gallery where the photo box wouldn’t resize to fit the photo.

All is well and life is good!

Finally, a reason has come along to actually get me, dare I say, excited, about.. politics!?  Ron Paul is the presidential candidate a lot of us have been waiting for, especially going into a post Bush America.  He has some amazing ideas, and a consistent, proven track record on where he stands on the issues.  I believe he is exactly what America needs to get back to its true self and headed back in the direction of the country our founding fathers envisioned.

Please, take a minute to learn about Dr. Paul, and if you agree with his idea’s and would like to see him as our next president, spread the word.

Here are a few links to read / watch to get familiar with Dr. Ron Paul.

• Abolish the Federal Reserve
• About Ron Paul
• The Ron Paul meet-up group
• Youtube: Ron Paul Revolution - Memphis Style
• Ron Paul interview at Google
• Congressman Ron Paul at the First GOP Presidential Debate

So I was trying to copy some of my iTunes music and realized how absolutely silly and stupid this process can be, for several reasons.

1. If iTunes is allowed to manage your library and folders, the resulting folder structure can be a pain to browse.  Unless you know exactly what song you are looking for, exactly which album it is on, you won’t know right off where to look.  Sometimes it will be in the Artist folder, sometimes it still be in the Compilations folder.
2. The PSP does not support nested folders in the Music folder.  This in itself is absolutely stupid and lazy on Sony’s part, but I’m not going into a full fledged rant about it.
3. DRM. Easily overcome with QTFairUse, which is handy for just this purpose, playing your legally purchased music on a device other than an iPod.

So, this leads me to the fact that there is no program out there, that I can find at least, to make this process as easy as it should be.  Why!?  If I had any Windows programming experience, I would hack at it myself, but I simply don’t have the time to even attempt such a feat.

The program itself should be relatively simple.  It would parse the iTunes XML file, display a list of all tracks in the left pane of a two pane window in a sortable, live-searchable list.  The right pane would be the PSP’s Music folder.  There would be one check mark at the bottom: Copy into Artist folder.  If checked, when you drag from iTunes to the PSP, it would create a single folder for the Artist’s name and copy that track into the folder.

Very simple, very fast way to copy music straight from iTunes to the PSP.  Now all we need is someone to code it.

Note to self: pick up a used copy of Lumines.

Buddy sent me a link to this video of someone pretending to be Hitler getting banned from Xbox Live, enjoy.

I loaded the Google Talk app on my CrackBerry today, so those of you with Gmail can ping me anytime anywhere right from your browser!  Give it a shot, I’m curious to see how this works.

Take that, Apple!

Finally, after weeks of anticipation and bugging the piss out of the Telcom guy, my 8830 is here!  Such a pretty little Blackberry, about the same size as my old Moto Q, but not as slim.  I’ve been waiting on the Verizon 8830 over the Cingular 8800 for the speed boost of EV-DO over EDGE, otherwise the phones are very similar.   So, after playing with it for the afternoon, here are my thoughts in no particular order.

• Navigation is a breeze, I love the navigation “ball” versus the “clickwheel”, and the dedicated menu button instead of a context-sensitive “clickwheel” click is nice.
• The keyboard takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s designed in such a way where you can sort of “slide and push” without too much thought  and it actually works quite well — very little “fat fingering” keys so far.
• Web browsing is quick with the EV-DO network access, and the browser handles all my favorite mobile sites much faster than on my Q.  The font’s are a bit different, but a minor gripe.
• The internal GPS has been forcibly disabled by Verizon on all 8830’s, which SUCKS!  Apparently, from what I’ve read on the BB forums, this GPS crippling was done purposely by VZW in order to bring VZNavigation as the exclusive “turn-by-turn” navigation for the phone.  I want to be able to use all the hardware features of my phone without having to pay Verzion to use their shitty app just to get the GPS that’s ALREADY THERE!
• The ringer volume is horrible.  I was sitting in my office alone with very little noise browsing the pre-installed ringtones and I had to hold the phone about an inch away from my head in order to hear the ring tone!  Apparently this is a common issue with the 8830’s.  I changed the profile ringer volume to “high” in the settings, but the difference was barely noticeable.

I haven’t had a chance to try out the media capabilities of the phone, waiting to pick up a MicroSD card so I can actually transfer some stuff over.  So, overall it’s a great phone for work, it gets me my e-mails quickly and I have the web in my pocket with me at all times, and I don’t have to pay for it!  What else could I ask for, really? :)

I managed to catch this piece of absolute comedic genius on Adult Swim last night. The viewing experience cannot be accurately related with mere words. If you are a Star Wars fan, you will laugh your ass off at every little scene in the episode. I also really enjoyed the little commentaries by Seth and the other guys that make Robot Chicken. It was a small glimpse into their world but IMO it really showed them off as just a small group of really good friends trying to make people laugh, and that they do.

What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?

Got most stuff working.. live search works, the photos page actually displays photos now, advanced navigation works. All I need is to fine a suitable theme and I’ll be good to go for a while.

There is still a small bug when displaying photos, the container box doesn’t resize correctly the first time you view photos, you need to view a photo, hit ESC to back out, change photo sets then everything works properly.  Annoying, yes, and not very easy to fix so far, but I’ll keep hacking at it.