In the first three posts of the series, I have laid out the schematics for playlists that manage the library, exclude songs from my playlists based on specific criteria, and include songs into my playlists based on other criteria.

In this last post, I’m going to talk about how I tie all of these together to create the different playlists that I actually listen to.

Playlists

• M Melting Pot
  The first thing I do to build these playlists is get together one big playlists that the subsequent playlists are built from. I won’t go into detail what these rules mean. If you’ve read the previous parts to this series, you will understand them.

  Match all
  Playlist is Charts
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is not T Repair
  Playlist is not T Rate
  Limit to 24 hours selected by random
  Live updating

• 0 Mix
  I preface this playlist with the number 0 because of the way that the Scion iPod integration works. In the playlists menu, the playlists are sorted numerically and then alphabetically. This is the playlist that I am almost always listening to. It’s really simple at this point.

  Playlist is M Melting Pot
  Limit to 50 items selected by random
  Live updating

• 1 Commute
  This is the playlist that I tend to listen to in the car when driving to/from work. The reason why? It is full of songs that I love and don’t mind hearing all of the time. One of the rules is from a group of playlists that I haven’t discussed (G Ambient). This is a genre playlist. I’m sure, if you’ve read this far, you can guess how to set that one up. (Hint: Make a playlist matching songs based on their genre tag. You can make one for each genre type.)

  Match all
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is M Melting Pot
  Playlist is not T Short
  Rating is greater than 3 stars
  Playlist is not G Ambient
  Playlist is not T Aria TV
  Limit to 25 items selected by random
  Live updating

• 2 Kids
  This is one that I came up with because I got tired of worrying about what was going to play next when the children were around. There’s one big critera for this playlist.. I simply use the Comments field to manually tag anything that I don’t want my kids to hear. I just add “x-x” into the Comments area. I also add rules to eliminate any podcasts that they don’t need to hear (eg SModcast, The Onion Radio).

  Match all
  Playlist is 0 Mix
  Comment does not contain x-x
  Album is not SModcast - Quick Stop Entertainment
  etc.. (any other podcasts to be eliminated)
  Playlist is not T Aria TV
  Limit to 50 items selected by random
  Live updating

• 8 Mein!
  This is a playlist that contains all of the music that I have written. I use the same concept as the Kids playlist for this one, except the tag that I use in comments is “Mein!” — (Side Note: wow, I just noticed that I’ve put together a little over 4 hours worth of music. Unfortunately, some of it is missing too.)

  Comment contains Mein!
  Live updating

• A Album
  This doesn’t really fall into the other categories but it’s a playlist that I came up with recently and it’s always one song. As a way to keep myself listening to full albums, I came up with a quick and dirty way to select an album at random. Sort of. By using the current month number (eg 9), it selects an album for me at random. I usually make a mental note of what song gets pulled up here. If I see it come up in another playlist, I’ll drop out of it and listen to whatever album that song is included on. The neat thing is that once I’ve listened to the album, this is automatically updated with a new one due to the song being listened to in the course of the album.

  Play Count is <#Insert Month Number Here#>
  Limit to 1 item selected by random
  Live updating

Well, that’s about all I have for this series. I hope that it gave somebody out there (you?) some new ideas for using Smart Playlists. If you have any ideas for me, please leave a comment! I love checking out new ideas and learning new ways to do all this fun playlist customization.

Below is an example of what the 0 Mix playlist ends up looking like- (warning: wide image!)

In the last two posts, I’ve discussed using Smart Playlists to formulate dynamic playlists that control my listening experience. In the first, I talked about maintenance playlists and in the second, I talked about history playlists.

In this post, I’m going to talk about what I call my Charts playlists. The playlists that make up this group are different criteria for what I actually include in my mix playlists. Let’s get to it!

Charts

• C AriaTV
  This is a way for me to throw some random video podcasts into my mixes. We briefly touched on this playlist in Part One. The difference here is that I’m only including a limited number of videos with the smart playlists options. This is a tool I will be using alot in this part.

  Playlist is T AriaTV
  Limit to 5 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Comedy
  In this playlist, I gather some stand-up comedy or novelty music together for inclusion. One thing to note here - different from other playlists - is that I specifically limit via the Last Played rule. At first, I used the star rating on stand-up comedy but I realized that I’d hear routines I enjoyed far too often to the point of playing them out. So I just do the limiting here instead of with the History playlists from part two.

  Match all
  Genre contains Comedy
  Last Played is not in the last 3 months
  Limit to 5 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Covers
  Here’s a fun playlist: nothin’ but song covers. This playlist includes another new element that I haven’t really discussed to this point and that is the Grouping tag in iTunes. I used the Grouping tag to mark different types of files. One of these are covers. I also use the entire Playlist Folder Name in one of the rules. In my experience, this seems to work without issue. I also ensure that songs that are being found in other playlists don’t also get added here. For example, a song might have a Grouping tag of “Single | Cover” — I don’t want the song to take up two slots in seperate playlists.

  Match all
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is not C New Hits
  Playlist is not C New Music
  Playlist is not C Past Hits
  Limit to 5 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Like
  This is a playlist to grab songs that I enjoy but don’t want to hear all of the time. This playlist will also grab songs that don’t fall into any of the other types of lists.

  Match all
  Rating is in the range of 2 stars to 3 stars
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is not C Comedy
  Playlist is not C Covers
  Playlist is not C New Hits
  Playlist is not C New Music
  Playlist is not C Past Hits
  Playlist is not C Mashup
  Limit to 10 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Love
  This is just like the C Like playlist except it’s the songs I don’t mind hearing much more often.

  Match all
  Rating is greater than 3 stars
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is not C Covers
  Playlist is not C New Hits
  Playlist is not C New Music
  Playlist is not C Past Hits
  Playlist is not C Mashup
  Limit to 20 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Mashup
  Much like the C Covers playlist, mashups are another group of song types that I categorize but I do it with the Genre tag.

  Match all
  Genre is Mashup
  Playlist is not History
  Limit to 5 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C New Hits
  This playlist grabs all of the singles from the current year. I flag all singles with the Grouping tag, as you may have noticed up above.

  Match all
  Grouping contains Single
  Year is 2007
  Playlist is not History
  Limit to 25 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C New Music
  This playlist grabs new music that isn’t getting all of the mainstream attention.

  Match all
  Year is 2007
  Playlist is not History
  Playlist is not C New Hits
  Podcast is false
  Playlist is not T Short
  Limit to 15 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Past Hits
  This playlist lumps together all of the singles from past years.

  Match all
  Playlist is not History
  Grouping contains Single
  Playlist is not T Short
  Limit to 20 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Podcasts
  This is a way to grab from my podcasts at random. I also allow podcasts to be played up to 3 times before kicking them out of this list.

  Match all
  Podcast is true
  Playlist is not T AriaTV
  Play Count is less than 3
  Playlist is not History
  Limit to 15 items selected by random
  Live updating

• C Unplayed
  Finally, this playlist grabs songs that still haven’t been played (trust me, there are always plenty!)

  Match all
  Play Count is 0
  Playlist is not T Short
  Limit to 20 items selected by random
  Live updating

Okay, so there you have it. Those are the playlists that makeup the majority of my listening experience. In the next (and final) post of the series, I’ll talk about how I tie together all of the playlists that I’ve discussed. I’m sure that there are other things that you could do here that fall into the same types of playlists and I would love to expand my own. If you have any, please let me know!Until next time..

In the second part of the series, I am going to discuss the History group.

History
In this folder, I create a playlist for each possible rating. These playlists are used to decide which tracks are allowed into the final mix based on when they were last played.

• H 2 Star
  So, for the first example, let’s look at the playlist for songs with a 2 star rating. As you’ll see looking at the rules below, this basically creates a list of every song played in the last 90 days with a rating less than 3 stars. This will get all of my 2 star rated songs as well as songs that I did not rate when they played. I don’t worry about excluding the 1 star songs in this playlist because they are routinely cleaned out of the Trash playlist (discussed in Part 1).

  Match all
  Last Played is in the last 90 days
  Rating is less than 3 stars
  Live updating

• H 3 Star
  I won’t discuss the rest of these in as much detail as they are all the same concept. What we are doing here is using the star ratings to decide how often we want songs to be allowed into the final mix playlist.

  Match all
  Last Played is in the last 30 days
  Rating is less than 4 stars
  Live updating

• H 4 Star
  

  Match all
  Last Played is in the last 7 days
  Rating is less than 5 stars
  Live updating

• H 5 Star
  In this one, we don’t worry about checking the rating. My own personal preference is that once I hear a track, I don’t want it to be eligible for play again for 24 hours.

  Match all
  Last Played is in the last 1 days
  Live updating

• H Skipped
  I also include a historical playlist for keeping track of any songs that I have skipped in the last week. These songs aren’t eligible for play again while they remain in this list. I also don’t include Podcasts in this list as I know I’m more likely to skip these at times.

  Match all
  Last Skipped is in the last 1 weeks
  Podcast is false
  Live updating

And that does it for the History playlist. I will use this group of playlists later when I create the final mix. You may have also realized by now that it’s a good way to see everything that you’ve played as far back as you setup the playlists (90 days here).

In the next post, I’ll talk about the Charts group which is what I use to decide most of the songs that ARE included in the final mix.

I setup a few different folders to group the playlists by their purpose. These folders currently are Charts, Genres, History, Labels, Playlists, and Types. I also use letter & number prefixes on my playlist names. The reason for this? I also drive a Scion tc which has iPod support integrated into the vehicle. Unfortunately, when you pull the playlists up through the car’s stereo, it throws them all together alphabetically. By adding the prefixes, I can keep the playlists grouped (and control the order that they show up in! More on that later.)

In this first post of the series, I’ll cover the Types group as they don’t rely on any other playlists to be built.

Types
In this folder, I setup smart playlists which typically need my attention in some form. They are also used to build other playlists as well as prevent some songs from making the final playlists.

• T AriaTV
  This playlist groups together all videos in the library. It is used later to build one of the Chart playlists.

  Match any
  Kind contains Video
  Kind contains Movie
  Live updating

• T Convert
  This playlist keeps track of any podcasts that I have rated more than one star. I check this playlist regularly and just use iTunes’ conversion tools to convert the podcast to MP3, add it to my library, and then delete the podcast.

  Match all
  Podcast is true
  Rating is greater than 1 star
  Live updating

• T Rate
  This playlist keeps track of any songs that I’ve listened to a couple of times but have yet to rate. These are typically songs that just need to be removed but it’s nice to have a place to check for them just in case. I am not always the best about making sure I have rated a song when I’m listening on the iPod at work. Or, in another case, I cannot rate songs while listening in the car.

  Match all
  Play Count is greater than 2
  Rating is empty
  Live updating

• T Short
  I use this playlist to categorize all of the short tracks in my library. I consider this to be anything less than 2 minutes long. I use this limiting playlist to weed out bridging tracks on albums that I may want when listening to the album in its entirety but not necessarily in my mixed playlists. It’s not the most precise way of grouping but it seems to work overall.

  Time is less than 2:00
  Live updating

• T Trash
  Ye olde recycling bin for the iPod. I’ll get more into my star rating system when I cover the History folder but for now, let me just say that I use a 1-star rating as a means to remove junk from the library. If it gets 1 star, it gets trashed. I check this folder every time I sync the iPod. A simple select all (Ctrl-A) and then group delete (Shift-Del) rids the library of this stuff in a flash.

  Rating is 1 star
  Live updating

• T Repair
  Finally, I have a regular playlist to track items that need to be fixed in one way or another. This could be an item that is a bad rip, has bad tagging, or a track with five minutes of silence in it. I add these to the Repair playlist manually. I originally used the 2-star rating for this purpose, much like the 1-star rating and Trash but I found later that I needed the 2-star rating for other things. Since I don’t come across these tracks often, I just add them manually.

So, as you can see, this is namely a group of playlists related to maintenance of the iTunes library. If you find any of these useful or have questions, drop a comment below. Have a better way that you do any of these things and you think I should try them out? By all means, let me reiterate the comment request.

In the next post of the series, I’ll go over my History group and how this group is the backbone of my listening experience.

The path to change was travelled quickly once meeting my wife. Within a month of being together, she was pregnant. Shortly after we were married, a few months later, I started thinking about getting a tattoo in honor of my daughter. I browsed around the ‘net with only the word ‘elf’ in mind. Pretty quickly, I came accross a piece of art that really struck me for a reason that I can’t quite put my finger on.

It was Amy Brown’s Dragon Sword. I tucked away the image and started making changes to it over the next year. I didn’t want the girl to be a fairy so I removed the wings and the rest of the background as it just seemed it would be too much for what I wanted to get done. I also removed the trailing brown cloth that hung from the arm sleeves as I didn’t really care for them. I also removed the dragon head from the sword. I put it away in hopes to one day be able to get it.

A week and a half ago, Bridget & I were finally able to afford gifts for one another stemming back from Xmas. One of the gifts that she gave me was an $80 certificate redeemable for tattoo work at Alan’s Cool Ink, where we had our joint tattoos done. I dug out the design and tried to remember where I had gotten the art from. After a few days of searching, “Amy Brown” suddenly popped into my head. I was able to find it easily after that. I decided that I actually wanted the dragon’s head on the sword as it went with my intended meaning of the tattoo. I also wanted it in a different location so I found a larger version of the image and redid all of the editing on it.

Only in the last week or so had I decided that I wanted to write something other than my daughter’s name at the bottom with some kind of banner. With editing, I had tried to make the woman in the piece look more like an elf. I started researching phrases in Elvish and found one for “I Love You” which read “Amin Mela Lle.” I did more research and found out how to write this in Quenyan Elvish, a language from Tolkien’s world.

I printed out a mockup from Photoshop with everything except the banner at the bottom and took it over to Maverick Fisher, who had already done my last tattoo. Unfortunately, Maverick was already booked within the next 30 minutes but he was able to pencil me in for 5:30 that evening.

I came back at about 5:00 and Maverick had just gotten his dinner. He came out and told me he needed to eat and I assured him that I wasn’t worried about it. I was thirty minutes early as it was. We got started shortly after 5:30 and the start of the outline was underway a few minutes before 6:00. After about an hour and forty-five minutes, it was done. Maverick was really into the piece and that showed in the result.

The meaning behind the tattoo is one of the eternal devotion I have for providing my daughter love and protection whenever she may desire it or need it. In the tattoo, she is the woman and I am the sword.

I am very very happy with it and Maverick was as well. He took some snaps and the tattoo will not only be immortalized on my leg but in his book.

Now to find a design for a tattoo honoring Keira!

Everything went relatively smooth with the c-section. No, I didn’t see anything. I didn’t want to see anything. I went out of my way to not see anything. We decided to name her Keira Jolie to honor my wife’s father. My wife was named after two movie stars that her father thought were gorgeous (Bridget Bardot & Ann Margaret). So we decided to go the same route.. although I had to clear the names with Bridget. So we went with Keira Knightley and Angelina Jolie. A strong contender was Naomi Watts but Bridget hates the name Naomi. She was born 5lbs. 9ozs. and 19 1/2″ long at 12:58PM on August 17th. She has been gaining weight like a champion. She must get that from me. There haven’t been any problems, really. We took her to the doctor’s office last week because we thought she might be getting an infection in her belly button but it turned out that it was perfectly fine.

What else…Katrina is coming. I’m just glad that damn thing isn’t hitting us. The fourth largest storm in the Atlantic and the largest storm in the Gulf ever. Yeah, that really would have sucked if it had hit us. We’re getting a few gusts here and there but nothing major so far.

I have to get ready for the power going out by playing video games and using as much electricity as I can ahead of time. I’d hate for my power bill to be under $150 this month.

Peace out.

One excuse I’ve used is that I haven’t had much time and energy lately. It’s not that sitting at a keyboard, thinking, and pressing keys in a selected succession really requires much physical energy. I could argue that it requires alot of mental energy but hell, have you read my posts on here? I think it’s more that my work commute has been hell when it comes to time/energy. It’s taking, on average, 1hr45m to get home from work. Yes, this is only about a 15 mile trek. With 98 being reduced to one lane and the war between the two sides of the Merge Point battle, (I’ve been meaning to post my frustrations with both lanes and how to correctlly merge) it takes quite a while of start-stop travelling. By the time I get home, my mental and physical energy is just trained to the point of “Oh, screw it.”

My sleeping has been entirely out-of-wack lately. As evidenced by the timestamp on this post, I can’t sleep. This has been going on night after night as of late. Maybe my brain is psyching me out for the arrival of my baby girl. I’m not quite sure. Last night I was up and felt like shit all night. I eventually had to call in to work and slept until 3 in the afternoon. Not entirely what I intended because now I can’t sleep. I still feel like crap, too. No Pepto in the house and I’m not making a trip out to get some at this hour. I’ll just have to bite down and experience a less-than-perfect day at work today. It’ll really just make me quiet and more dedicated to having the headphones on while I write code. Maybe the time will fly by quicker.

Another reason I can come up with for not posting is that my ‘net connection has been less than reliable. About two days after the storm, my modem just refused to sync up to the provider for any time longer than 30 seconds. It’d just drop out and start trying to find the network again. So I called support and it promptly told me that customers in my area were experiencing problems. I can dig that. The next night, it’s still not working. Now they’re saying customers across the board are having issues. Okay. But it’s Friday! I need my Internets. I shoot another call around midnight and the message is gone but I’m still not getting a stable connection. I call Sunday (Saturday was busy) and get on the phone with a tech who has me do all kinds of stuff that requires me to put the phone down for minutes at a time. Nothing. He can’t find a problem. He sells me a modem protection plan (although I did catch him not giving me the fine print information) and I schedule an appointment for last Wednesday. The guy is going to come out and look at the modem. I decide to just switch the thing off for the night.

Monday night. I get home and switch it on. “Wait a minute. That thing looks like it’s actually staying on! Son of a bitch! I knew it!” It works fine for a week.. on this past Monday, it starts doing it again. Expletives follow. I switch it off for the night.

Tuesday- it’s working fine.

So, I’m probably dealing with a modem that’s overheating or something. Not much else makes sense to me. Then again, I’m just slightly above retarded when it comes to hardware.

The last reason I’d have for posting.. not much has seemed really worth posting lately. At least, I tell everyone the stories and have the conversations before I get around to posting them. Which is actually kind of odd because I rarely talk to anyone outside of the people that I work with.

Then again, I just managed to make an entire post out of why I wasn’t posting anything.

Maybe I need to just lighten up and shoot the shit more.

Bang, bang.

Speaking of which, I stepped on a scale last night and much to my surprise, it read 220. What the? I really thought it was messed up. I checked to see if the needle default was off-zero. It wasn’t. I have somehow managed to lose 30 pounds in the course of the year without even realizing it. Great stuff.

Not much going on and that’s the ironic thing. The busy nature of life seems to have all originated from work. Work has been crazy. Chaotic crazy. Working through the day and not taking lunch crazy. I don’t like that crazy after a few days of it. Yeah, I’m a complainer. Waaah!

We’re in Post-Hurricane World over here. A world that really, really sucks. And even more unfortunate is that we are in Pre-Another Hurricane World. It’s not unrealistic that we may be in the middle of Hurricane Emily in a week’s time. That would really suck.

Ok, so on to the details of Hurricane Dennis. And no, you will not find me make one reference to the got-damn cartoon character. We decided that we weren’t going to evacuate. Namely because we don’t have the money to go stay anywhere and we don’t have a place to go for free that is really out of the strike zone. So on Friday, we get off of work early. I really need to get gas just to be able to make it home. Every gas station is completely out of gas until I get to one next to Big Kahunas, a locally overpriced outrageous and not all that it’s cracked up to be water park. Regular gas is $2.50/gallon. It’s up about $.20 from the day before. Heh. I wait in line for about 20 minutes (I was lucky) and in the course of that, I come really close to smacking about three people (cutting in line, washing their windshields at the pump, etc.) and then head home. We have no plywood so we are the only people on our street with their windows not boarded. Dennis ends up hitting not very far from us but causing far less damage than Ivan did from further away.

It’s the post-Hurricane stuff that really sucks. Like the lack of electricity or any other modern day convenience that we take for granted. Let me tell you — lack of electricity in the company of an 8-month pregnant woman and a 2 year old daughter is extremely bad. You might be able to make due on your own but in the company of that combination, it is bad news. Well, the power is back but now it’s time for the REAL convenience brought on by a hurricane. The drive time to and from work.

Yes, kids. This morning it took an hour and forty minutes to get to an office that is maybe 15 miles away. I don’t live in a city, so I don’t want to sit in traffic like I do. There’s a reason for it. As if traffic isn’t bad enough, you have to go through a toll bridge which as of tomorrow, will probably be back to charging tolls. Why’s that? Well, Highway 98, a tiny strip of land surrounded by water that gets washed out every time a hurricane hits, will be repaired. And then we’ll have the joys of 600,000 people trying to get through a twenty foot wide road. My numbers are off for exaggeration (and lack of facts). Don’t quote me.

So- yes. Tons of bitching from me. What less could you expect? Hopefully I will be able to start forcing myself to update this thing on a more regular basis. Even if that means that all I do is bitch and bitch and bitch. Trust me… I’ve got the topics stored up.

FOR ONE: Why the hell does nobody on the road understand how to merge? These people are impossible.

I give.

I know I do. Allow me to site an example. At this point, you are probably wondering what in the hell that title is about. Well, it has everything to do with something that is making my skin crawl at the moment.

So, I’m at Target this weekend doing the shopping thing. We’re just picking up a few things and I decide: “You know what? I really want some new clothes to wear to bed tonight.” I take my daughter and we go running off to the appropriate department. After a bit of fun (I bet people hate it when me and my kid are in a store), my wife finds us hiding behind some clothes. We move on to finally looking for some clothes for me.

That’s when I come upon it. Boxers. But not just any boxers. No, these boxers are covered with the album cover for Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon.” I immediately feel a ton of bricks hit me that read “WTF? Why?!”

I hate trying to be above things. You know, like bands I enjoy becoming popular. I mean, who cares, right? It doesn’t change the fact that I like them. And, hell, this was a different thing altogether, man.

Yeah. It’s not like it’s the most hidden unknown album in the world. It’s probably only residing in every college dorm across the country. But, still.. on some boxers? This just feels wrong.

And then I bought them. And they’re most comfortable.

*sigh* So, there’s my Pink Floyd boxer story. I saw them and bought them. For some reason, it still makes me feel a tad bit weird. Now if only I could find some boxers that made me feel comfortably numb..

I guess it’s really not that bad. We’ve sold more than 50 copies of “The Conspiracy of Silence” and that’s really cool. I’m just so damn impatient.

Also on the Underscore front, we’ve been working with our label (enpeg:digital), to get something going as a promotion for us. I can’t say anything about it until it’s official but I expect that to be in the next week or so. Hopefully.

We are looking at going back “into the studio” this month to start recording our sophmore release. It will be different. We don’t want to repeat the same album over and over again. We really have nothing to lose and no expectations to fit. My only expectation is to make sure that the release is quality and something that I’m proud to say that I was involved in - The Conspiracy of Silence met those requirements.

If you haven’t already, please go buy the album. It’s $2. Okay, I’m done begging.

On the other front, not much is really happening. After the Great Downfall of my machine in May, I lost everything. Fortunately, I have most of it backed up in one form or another but re-loading everything can take a while.

Two projects that I was supposed to do - both over the ‘net with people I have never met - fell through. No need to really go into them because they’re not going to happen anyway.

The current running champion in the “been my friend the longest” department, Blackie, and I are kicking around the idea of doing our long-talked-about over-the-’net project. I would do the music and he would do the vocals. He’s currently writing songs and I hope that one will pull through.

On the solo front, there are still alot of things that I would love to do.

I loved the industrial front of Japanese Death Machine. I would still like to put out some more JDM stuff - but it would probably be alot more bent on death and destruction of sound than the previous “FLA” imitation that it was.

I enjoyed the experimental electronica IDM thing of Thunder Ninja Kid and I may in fact revive that around the same period of the first album - shortly after the birth of my next daughter. Those who don’t know, I recorded the first album in the middle of the nights of November after my first daughter was born as a way to deal with.. the changes. ;)

And, of course, there is always the much-imagined solo album with singing that I would love to one day get a chance to write.

I know. I know. Big eyes. Sore jaw.

Regardless, Underscore comes first.