1 step forward, 2 steps back December 18, 2006 ~ 11:11 am
Posted by Julie in : Craftiness Is Next To Godliness, Technobabble , trackbackTwo fine examples of Murphy’s Law:
1.) In anticipation of opening the 80 GB iPod Mom got me for Christmas (which I will not let myself open before Sunday), I spent part of yesterday uploading my massive CD collection. I got through about 30 CDs when I thought “Hmmm, I should listen to one of these.” iTunes had recorded it with more crackles and pops than a box of Rice Crispies. Apparently what I neglected to do was check the “Repair CD errors” box before importing. You guessed it, I’m starting from scratch tonight. This will definitely keep me occupied until the weekend, since by checking the box, I have slowed down the recording speed. *sigh*
2.) Last night I was knitting big brother’s scarf while watching “The Devil Wears Prada” in the glow of my Christmas lights. In other words, it was dim. I reached the end of one skein of yarn and went over to the stash to grab another. I did not compare it to the first skein, since I saw that it was heather blue, the color that I needed. This morning on the bus, four inches into the new skein, I noticed that it was indeed heather blue, but not the same color of heather blue as the first skein. What remains to be seen is if I actually have a skein of the same color as the first one at home (I heart Cascade 220 and tend to collect it, so this may well be the case), or if I accidentally bought non-matching skeins at my LYS. At this point, I think I’ll continue to knit and play it off as a design choice. I will now call it “Asymetrical Irish Hiking Scarf” and repeat my new mantra, “Only Allah is perfect” as I knit it. Because I have to have the damn thing in the mail by tomorrow. D’oh!
I would say “At least all the Christmas shopping is done,” but at this point I think Murphy would consider that “taunting” and call me on it, so I won’t.
Comments
I forget if you’re using a Mac or not, but I just rip all my CDs to mp3 using FreeRip. It’s pretty quick and the quality is good. I never really liked ITunes ripping capability. I thought it was a little slow.
How was Devil Wears Prada? The Wife really wants to see it.
Vince~Because the Mac is now old and decrepit and incompatible with iTunes 7.0, I’m using the PC. Which is just blazing fast (I was getting up to 23.1x last night). Or was, when I was ripping in non happy error repairing mode. This morning’s rip, with error repair mode in place, was at about 7.0. But we need it on the iTunes to put it on the iPod, so there you have it.
And the Wife would enjoy Devil Wears Prada. I know I did. I watched it and thought “Wow, I’m glad I bought this. I would like to re-watch it.” That doesn’t happen often.
Dude-that sucks.
Lori~Yep.
Do not tempt Murph - no, no, no! Not evah!
Love the asymetrical designation!
Yea, or I would find some way to call you on it, though I like shopping last minute. Its when the imagination flows.
Sparky~That’s the excuse guys always use to cover the fact that they’re giving everyone a roll of toilet paper for Christmas because that’s all that was left at the store.
Seamus~I didn’t mean to tempt Murphy, it just happened.
How about the DEVIL WEARS JULIE’S KNITWEAR?
I commend you on all your knitting and Xmas Hoopla!
How’s that for synchronicity? My whole post last night was about Murphy’s Law kicking my ass lately. Your’s sound far less painful, plus my post was BEFORE my water heater stopped heating water today. During my shower. With shampoo in my hair. Yep. Crackly music and unmatched yarn? Not as horrid as rinsing your hair in cold water in December.
I can’t help with the knitting issues, but there are a few very good CD rippers — I use Audiograbber 1.83 and I get almost perfect results every time (I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever had a problem ripping a CD, either during the actual ripping process or the result thereafter). The nice thing about Audiograbber is it can automatically do the CDDB look-up for you and organize your music (pre-iTunes-organized), use more than one CD drive (to speed up the process), and then eject the disc when it’s finished. I currently have a 60GB Video iPod and when my last hard drive catastrophe hit, it was on my “music” drive, so I had to re-rip over 250GB of music. Wasn’t fun, but at least Audiograbber let me do it quickly-ish, and since it is relatively automated, it made the process compatible with iTunes and reasonably non-irritating, all things considered.
Congrats on the (soon-to-be) new iPod, and lemme know if you need any Mac- or PC-side utilities — and for pre-reading, hit http://www.ilounge.com for any questions you might have or any excitement you can’t bury until the weekend
Isn’t brother color blind? As in, won’t notice?
How’s the project coming along?
Aimee~I’m at 47 inches. Scarf only needs to be 55 inches. This is doable.
Katey~Actually, those exact words came out of my mouth yesterday. He’s red-green colorblind, with blue one of the few colors he does see. I’m still not sure he could differentiate between the shades of blue, but I ripped it back anyway.
Boogie~I’ve been surfing the iTunes forums trying to come up with a solution to the crackling, but nothing so far. It appears to be a problem many people have with 7.0, but no solutions. Is it easy to convert the songs over to iTunes once you’ve ripped with Audiograbber?
Geewits~You win, although our heater has gone out mid-shower on me in February before, so I do know what it’s like. Hope it gets better!
Mrs. M~I’ll commend myself once it’s all done!
Julie:
What Audiograbber does is rip cd’s as mp3’s (not aac) — you can tell it to look up the CD info online and you can tell it to automatically stash it in a folder of your choosing (with the artist as the main folder and the album as the sub-folder) and it does that. Once it’s finished you open iTunes and drag it in and that is pretty much it. Since everything is on the PC side, you should be able to rip discs (at around 20x), drag them into iTunes (thus importing them) and then, if iTunes automatically organizes your music folder, you’re all set.
Whether you use Audiograbber or something else, be sure and check your first post-rip music files to insure they ripped correctly. It’s possible it’s iTunes that’s the problem, but it could also very well be the process itself (ie ripping) that is the problem (could be a bad IDE/SATA connection or something else).
Good luck and lemme know how you do.
-B-