Pittock Acres Park, Portland, OR : Looking north-ish

Pittock Acres Park, Portland, OR : Looking east-ish out over downtown Portland. Mount Hood is visible in the background.

Pittock Acres Park, Portland, OR : Pittock Mansion itself. As can probably be inferred from all the windows, this is the side of the building with the good view.

 

Washington Park, Portland, OR : Roses in the International Rose Test Garden.

Washington Park, Portland, OR : More roses in the International Rose Test Garden.

 

Washington Park, Portland, OR : Statue of Sacajawea near the main entrance.

Washington Park, Portland, OR : Reservoir #3 (? - I'll double check that the next time I'm up there). That green colour makes me glad its not used to supply Portland's water anymore.

Washington Park, Portland, OR : Fountain near the statue & reservoir.

Now playing: Brandi Carlile – Brandi Carlile – Fall Apart Again

Microsoft released new Zunes on Tuesday. They also updated the Zune desktop software to v.2.0 (or something…in any case, it's the second version users can install). I switched over to having a Zune Pass when Urge went away and switched over to being Rhapsody. So I've used the "old" Zune software. And I got forcibly upgraded to the new software on Tuesday.

I had been planning on using this opportunity to do another MP3 player review like I did with my iPod a few months ago. Unfortunately, I don't actually have a Zune, I just use the software. So the best I can do is a review of the Zune desktop software.

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Okay, screw it, this software is just a big pile of crap. I couldn't be bothered to do a review of iTunes, and it looks like this is WORSE than iTunes, so I really can't be bothered to review Zune. At least iTunes sat there and picked up my library correctly, even if it did have to spend days converting the songs to its own format.

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Okay, I've used it a bit more, and I just can't resist complaining about it. Zune:

• Gets the wrong album art for the wrong albums (Creedence Clearwater Revival's Chronicles is not Delerium's Chimera!)
• Puts the wrong songs under an album (Emm Gryner's Public is actually an album…with, you know, SONGS, and her album PVT IS NOT 'Emiliana Torrini: the complete collection'!)
• Decides I want to see "File Not Found" errors when I try to play Disc 2 of a 2 disc album
• Assumes I LOVE a song just because I gave it 3 stars
• Shit files all over my library (instead of, you know, embedding the album art…or picking up the WMP art)
• Downloaded ~5GB of podcasts that I already had in the Podcast folder…after telling it to use the existing files
• Doesn't let me view what's playing (am I the only one who likes being able to see what's currently playing, what just played, and what's queued up?)
• Doesn't look like a Windows App (white on Vista…hurray, matching color schemes!) (this would be forgivable if WMP hadn't adopted a new Windows Vista look)

 

I apologize to any iTunes lovers who were offended by my reviewing Zune (worse than iTunes) when I couldn't be bothered to review iTunes (better than Zune) because I thought it was so bad.

Now playing: KT Tunstall – Eye To The Telescope – Other Side Of The World (using Windows Media Player 11)

Part 1 of several? : The announcement

So, Thanksgiving (in the US) is coming up soon. And I'll be flying back to Indiana on Saturday (2007-11-17). And I'll be back in West Lafayette & around Purdue for a week. If anyone wants to hang out/meet up/have lunch/etc., feel free to contact me. If you're my Friend on Facebook, you can grab my cell # (yes, it's changed since I moved across the country) off my profile there; otherwise, email should work.

Now playing: KT Tunstall – Drastic Fantastic – Someday Soon

The rainy season came to Portland on Friday, and it looks like it's here to stay for a bit. So here are some bright, sunny pictures from around the 4th of July ☺.

The main entrance to Washington Park. In this view, you're looking OUT of the park.

The main entrance to Washington Park again, only this time in front of the column, again facing out of the park. I'm on the first floor of the orange apartment building that can be glimpsed between the trees & the white/gray Vista/St. Claire building, down towards the bottom of the hill.

I didn't take this one (you can tell because it's at a MUCH higher resolution than what my poor camera can support), but my sister did. And I was the one driving the car to get us to this point, so I kind of at least played a part in taking it... Anyway, this was at a viewpoint on US 101 on the Oregon Coast. Sorry I can't be any more specific than that.

Now playing: Emm Gryner – Public – Hello Aquarius

Here's a couple of links I found interesting on the Internet today. I'll try not to just turn this into a link blog, but I've had a few requests to aggregate some of my blog readings for people, so...

 

Judge strikes down parts of U.S. Patriot Act (go Portland!)

John P. Harvard goes Halo

The Etiquette of Death by Helicopter (okay, this one is kind of weird...)

The first day at Microsoft: A fender-bender

Now playing: Josh Ritter – The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter – Wildfires

"Insane Super Fast Tetris. Click HERE to watch." (well, obviously clicking there wont work, but that was the suggested "improvement" to this post) (clicking on the below links will work. unless the Internet is dead. again.)

Just video links, no actual content...

From Larry Osterman: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/09/12/got-tetris.aspx

From Emil, via YouTube search reading the comments after showing him the previous vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CUoviec-uY

(I've now tasked Emil with following up on his search with a bit of real world research. Right now we're thinking mandatory freshman dorm project...)

Now playing – Amy Millan - Honey from the Tombs - Wayward and Parliament

More pictures from Rose Festival Weekend (these are the LAST, I promise). Next up are pictures from the 4th of July when my sister came and visited.

Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Columbia River, near Rainier, Oregon.

 

Slightly different angle of the Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Columbia River. Taken from a lookout point on Highway 30 outside Rainier, Oregon (while it was raining/drizzling).

Some beach on Highway 101. For some reason I can't remember which one this was, but it was basically just a spot to pull off of on the road. I think it was between Warrenton and Seaside, but not sure now.

Nehalem Bay from another pullout on the 101. It was drizzling again by this point.

Now playing: Lifehouse – Who We Are – Broken

There's just something incredibly beautiful about being in a high location and looking out over a city at night.

There's also something terribly beautiful about having a clear night and being in a location with no outside light bleeding in, and then looking up and seeing all the stars (& planets & satellites (& planes)).

I should get up to the roof of my apartment building more often.

Now playing: KT Tunstall – Eye To The Telescope – Suddenly I See

I got my first ever iPod today. It's a silver iPod Nano (but not one of the new ones released today). It was a raffle prize from work for participating in a health-&-wellness ("let's try and cut employee health insurance costs by making them actually, you know, healthy to begin with!) program.

So here are my first impressions.

Unboxing

To be honest, this wasn't that intuitively obvious. I've heard all this hype about how easy Apple products are to open up, etc, but this one you had to peel off invisible tape before the plastic shell would open up. Nicer than having to cut it up, but still confusing to me. After opening it up, everything was pretty simple. I can't really say it's any better than opening up anything else…you open box, you remove contents. That's the whole story.

The Device

I like the form factor. Nice and thin. Silver looks good, but I think I'd prefer black. Silver just strikes me as oh-so-2003ish (the only other silver devices I have are my TC1000 and various accessories I've purchased in silver to go with it). The screen seems a bit small, but this generation of the Nano doesn't support video, so that's not really a big deal. The display is more than adequate to display track information and provide basic navigation. To be honest, the UI looks really nice on the screen; probably a combination of a good display and a good UI.

Not so hot on the click wheel design. Okay, let's be honest: I hate the click wheel. Let me get this straight – I have to move my fingers around in circles to actually DO anything with this input method. Umm…why can't I just press something and be done with it. If you don't think you can scroll through lots of stuff, try using the HDD6330. You start an action, like scrolling through your songs, and it accelerates as you hold down. Although WMP Mobile doesn't have functionality like that on my HTC StarTrek…but then again, I don't really need that on a 2GB device (although there are 345 tracks on my SD card, I organize them by, I don't know "Artist" and "Album" and "Genre", so it's still easy to navigate). My other problem with the wheel is that it seems much less accurate to me than using a D-pad. Maybe I've just been trained too well to use D-pads for navigation (EVERYTHING I own other than this iPod uses directional pads: phone, MP3 player, remotes, headunit in my car…).

Haven't taken a look at the headphones, and probably wont, since I really like the ones I have now. Also, I really miss the AC power adapter. It effectively means I can't use listen to these in bed, because I'll have to worry about accidentally falling asleep and not pausing/turning off the device, then find out the next morning that I've now drained the battery and wont be able to use it that day. I guess a lot of other devices are going this route, and it's irritating.

Connecting

The cable is nice – integrated clip to keep it from getting messy. Otherwise, it's USB, just plug it in, even shows up as a generic mass storage device. Nice. So does my phone. And my flash drives. And my MTP MP3 player. I can't really give props for doing the right thing when basically everything else I've worked with does the right thing (but oh the fun I'll have mocking the first device that DOESN'T behave properly!).

iTunes

Up until this point I'd say the iPod was okay. After trying to deal with iTunes for 2 days, I've started looking for an alternative sync program. If I can't find one I like, this device is going in the trash, because it'll be worthless. And yes, I know that's a very strong opinion about iTunes, but it has so many inconsistencies, problems, and is so resource intensive that I really don't see what alternative I have.

Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have a better feel for the iPod as a device, and I'll create an update with those my revised opinions then.

Now playing: Orbital – Live At Glastonbury 1994-2004 – Dr Who? (playing on the Zune software, not iTunes)