Steve Jobs again

This time it has nothing to do with DRM though. He was talking to an education reform group this week and asked, “What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?” He went on to say that is what principals of schools are asked to do all the time when working with teachers unions.

I have never really paid attention to Mr. Jobs before, but these last two weeks have raised my opinion of the man.

Steve Jobs for President!

Well, at least I agree with him on 2 issues.

Film showing

I had another day off that did not feel like one. My normal Saturday activities were canceled today and I ended agreeing to take a projector and film out to a village for the evening. The pastor who asked me to do this wanted me to provide the film. I have no films that are appropriate for what he wanted.

I had the film lined up, but got a call this afternoon from the person I was borrowing the it from who said that I could use the film but it would not be available until Sunday afternoon. I went into panic mode and started calling around to others who might have one of the two particular shows the pastor mentioned he wanted. I talked to 8 different people trying to locate a film. Finally one of them told me about a book store that was open late on Saturdays downtown. Most of downtown is closed by 2:00 or 4:00 on Saturdays. It was after 4:00 when he told me this.

I buzzed down town and found the store, but they did not have the film I needed. Then I was on my way home when I spotted another bookstore that was open till 5:00. I got in with 10 minutes to spare. They had one of the films.

With all of this going on, I also lost my projector today. I have a business that I rent projectors from. I have rented from them several times and they almost always have a projector available. Today I showed up before closing time to grab a unit…they were already closed. I called their cell number. Ended up that they had an event (they are a media production company) that they would be tied up at till 11:00 tonight. I needed the projector by 5:00. Two other friends who have projectors were using theirs today. I ended up borrowing one from another friend and was able to pick that up on my way out of town headed to the village.

I got going late, was late getting the projector, talked a few minutes and got on the highway late. I was not there as early as I would have liked, but got the system set up about the time they originally said they wanted to start–7:00. No surprise, but we did not start on time.

It really was a great event. It was well attended by many people in the small village. The church is actually located a village over, but they have people come from this village to their church. There were no public decisions for Christ.

And all I wanted to do today was have a long run and work on a computer program. I got my long run done and the rest of the day was spent running around town looking for film and projector.

MP3 genre tag in podcasts

Yesterday I had something disturbing take place, that as I dug further, I realized it was not a new phenomenon. I downloaded some new podcasts, but could not find them in my iTunes smart playlist that I have set up for them.Missionary Talks ID3 Tags

My playlist is set to give me all podcasts that have never been fully listened to (“genre is podcast, playcount is 0”). Then I have iTunes delete all podcasts when the playcount reaches 1. This keeps me from filling up my hard drive and iPod with old episodes that I am sure never to go back and hear. If I need the episode for some reason, I can always re-download it.

But, I discovered that a couple of the new podcasts I have subscribed to have their genre marked as Comedy, Speech or other such logical name. While the genre might be appropriate, it breaks my playlist. Looking back, I found there were some other podcast episodes that I missed listening to because they had a different genre plugged in. Some were from podcasts that I normally hear, but for some reason changed their genre to something else briefly.

While the podcasting community certainly does not have no build their ID3 tags around my playlist, it does seem appropriate to mark a podcast as such. What would be nice is to be able to have multiple genre tags so that the show can be marked as a podcast and as another appropriate genre.

What’s your thoughts? Does anyone care about this besides me?

DRM Fallout

Here is some more DRM (digital rights management) news. A survey was taken by the BBC before Steve Jobs’ surprising article last week where he called for a reasonable end to DRM for digital music.

The survey actually predates Jobs’ announcement by more than a month and found that 62% of music company executives believe that dropping DRM would help the uptake of digital music sales. I certainly agree with this. I don’t currently buy (much) music on-line as I feel like it is a waste of money. Why would I want to buy DRM’d music online and limit the use of my music? If I buy a CD, I can put it on my iPod, my iRiver, my Linux machine, my Mac machine and my Windows machine. I can also drop the music that I have ripped onto a CD in MP3 format or onto a USB drive and play it on my car stereo.

Buying crippled or limited music online is a horrible mistake.

It came out this week that EMI would be willing to entertain the idea of making their music available without DRM. They have already done trial releases of some of their music digitally without DRM. I like this because my favorite artist is signed with them, Christopher Parkening.

A quote from a USA Today article says, “EMI wouldn’t have to worry about pirates, because anyone who wants to pirate music is already doing it. The paying customer is a different breed.” That would be true for all the labels. Pirates are already doing what they do. Making music easier to own will not make pirating worse, it will only endear the consumer to the label that provides the music in a usable digital format.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today we went out for lunch. Wednesday evenings are hectic and dinner is not really an option. Plus, we rarely go out to eat at night. We have our big meal during the day and then a light meal usually around 5 or 6 in the evening.

Today we went to Boston’s. The place was packed. There were so many big parties there that we ended up at a folding table in the middle of the smoking section. Fortunately for us the groups that were there were mostly high school kids. So there was not smoking going on around us.

I had spaghetti and meat balls with a side salad. My wife had nachos. Our kids at pizza and macaroni & cheese.

To make it look romantic and like I was in charge, she passed me the money under the table so I could pay.