I remember watching the series premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  For months I had looked forward to this show.  Plans were made to be able to watch that show.  That episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” set a new bar for exactly how awesome a science fiction show could be.  In retrospect, though, it really kinda sucked.  After the third season had begun, I barely wanted to acknowledge that the premier episode existed.

I wanted to set the proper expectations for this show, so I simply didn’t set high expectations.  What I found was a fairly formulaic first episode in many ways.  It has to be this way, and I’m fine with that.

But…

The opening scene immediately made me happy.  That cute girl looks familiar.  Is that Julie Benz, who went on to such a great role on Showtime’s Dexter?  IT IS! Way to catch me off guard, Whedon.  You didn’t even know that would happen, but way to go.

I’ve seen at least part of the original Buffy movie, so I understand the idea of the show.  That’s good because they don’t spend any time on the origin story itself.  They quickly reference it, and quickly establish that her job isn’t over.  Onward!

As the characters are introduced, I’m finding that there are only two that seem really likeable.  Willow is one, and the other is the social nemesis, Cordelia.  The rest I feel I’m supposed to like more than background characters, but this isn’t the episode where character growth really starts to occur.

Buffy is really a bit of a bitch.  I realize that she’s just fought an invasion of vampires, burned down part of her old school, and been forced to move to a new town.  That doesn’t mean she has to emasculate Xander just because he tries to be a man. She seems to have accepted him and the others, though, providing the only bit of character growth you ever get in the first episode.  The main character makes the decision that there will be an episode 2.  Well, 3 in this case because Netflix has the premier as a two-parter.

There’s also this Angel character.  He strikes me as the black sheep, the outsider, the traitor, and the Sam Malone. The only thing I am sure of right now about this guy is that he has a spinoff show, so I’m guessing he’s important.

Another surprise was that the goofy guy, used as bait, was actually turned into a vampire.  I thought he was going to be the “Screech” of this show, and now he’s a vampire?  Soon enough he’s a dead vampire.  Poor goofy bastard.  I thought you were gonna be a star.

All in all I enjoyed the show.  It was bad because it was a first episode.  It wasn’t a bad first episode.  It definitely wasn’t “Encounter at Farpoint” bad.  Most importantly, I do want to keep watching the show.

Next: Lockjaw watches a few more episodes

Why this show?  I’ve become a big fan of Joss Whedon’s work through Firefly and Dollhouse.  Alyson Hannigan is in it, which was pretty much enough for me to watch “How I Met Your Mother.” Even Felicia Day is in it, apparently, so you’d think this show would have been a slam-dunk for me.

Honestly, though, as much as the show had to offer, it was still a vampire show to me.  I’ve never really enjoyed vampires, or the glorification of the undead.  Give me a good old lumbering zombie movie any day.  I almost NEVER hear anyone wishing they could be a zombie.  Vampires, on the other hand, just bother me.

It’s not that I haven’t tried.  I’ve tried watching funny vampires, teenage vampires, silent vampires, serious vampires, vampires in other countries, alien vampires, and far too many simply bad vampires.  That is the biggest reason I didn’t watch the show.  I just don’t dig vampires.

Well it’s time.  It is time for me to put aside my anti-vampire bigotry and step forth.  Alright, Buffy, show me what you’ve got.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is still in the preview period before the official opening. Initial reviews weren’t so great. Due to that fact, and some accidents during previews, the show was shut down for three weeks for a major retooling. I was able to see the show on the second night after the retooling, so I had high hopes.

The show opened with Peter Parker telling the story of Arachne, who was punished for blaspheming against the gods in her weaving. As the report progresses the scene transitions to Arachne, hanging above the stage while dancers hang from cloth strips, swinging while more strips slide upward until they have woven a backdrop to the scene. It was stunning. It was so stunning that the crowd gave a standing ovation. That’s right, the OPENING SONG received a standing ovation.

The story is one with which we are all familiar. Peter Parker is a geek who is picked on by the jocks at school. During a school field trip he is bitten by a spider from a scientific experiment in the laboratory of Dr. Norman Osborn. Through a series of events he becomes a crimefighter, while also developing his relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

What’s great about this show is that it flows very well through the life of Peter Parker. The villains are handled as comic relief to offset against the much more serious story of Parker and his relationships.

When the music or story felt weak, which was rare, it was during the parts which were needed to establish parts of the story to come. Overall the music was excellent. The story was very well done, and familiar.

The wire-work ranged from the subtle chat on the balcony, hanging over the stage, to the spectacular flying battle. The work in the opening scene was simple, yet complex in a way that set the stage for the brilliance that was to come.

It was a great show. I am glad to have been able to see it after the retooling, and would gladly see it again. Now, where’s the soundtrack?

Click here to view the embedded video.

My favorite way to find things to sell, though, is to scan the auction house for items that are, frankly, being sold too cheaply.  I buy them at the seller’s asking price, and immediately place them back up for sale at a higher price.  The price I sell for more closely matches the price that the market will bear.  Sometimes, I can multiply my investment several times on one item.

Not everyone looks at these tactics the same way I do.  More than once, I’ve been criticized publicly for selling “vendor patterns” on the auction house.  Vendor patterns can be purchased in stores around the Warcraft world by anyone, though some are fairly rare and may not always be available.  Some of these patterns can be purchased for a fraction of what they will sell for on the auction house.

Personally, I see the sale of vendor patterns and items in a different light than some do.  Some of these patterns are in areas that only high-level characters can visit.  The only way a low-level character can get these items is on the auction house.  Sometimes, you might travel a long distance to visit the vendor that sells an item, only to find that it is sold out.  By purchasing these items when I can, and selling them on the auction house for a higher price, I am providing a service to others.  They don’t have to travel.  They don’t have to risk the effort, only to find the item is sold out.  All they have to do is search the auction house, and buy.

When I choose to buy an item from a vendor, or on the auction house at a low price, I am accepting a certain amount of financial risk.  One recent visit to the auction house, I spent over 1400 gold on low-priced items. I then paid deposit fees to list these items again at a higher price.  The sellers of the items got their asking price with little effort on their part, even if the price was too low.  I placed the purchase price, and the listing fees, at risk.  If I can’t re-sell the items at the higher price, I lose that money.  The seller got their asking price.  No one is forced to buy from me at a higher price.  I am the only one taking a risk in this situation.  Some, though, consider me a bad guy for doing this.

There are other benefits to my actions.  By removing items from the auction house at prices that are too low, I increase the likelihood of higher-priced items selling.  Anyone else with those items for sale sees a better chance of making a sale, because the lower-priced competition is dissapearing at my cost.  I will be competing with them for a sale, but I will compete at prices that are closer to the market prices.  My actions benefit others who are selling the same items on the auction house, because they can get a better price.

There’s another great benefit.  I don’t just buy things on the auction house to resell.  I also buy things I need there as well.  If I find an item that would require a lot of travel to find, or a lot of questing to hope that it drops from a mob, I may just buy it on the auction house myself.  I can afford it, and don’t think twice about spending the gold, because I’ve taken steps to increase my available gold.  I’ve purchased many vendor patterns and items at higher auction house prices, simply because it was much more convenient to do so.

I’ve placed thousands of gold in game-wealth at risk, and provided great benefits in the game.  I’ve made items more easily available.  I’ve propped-up the market price and increased profits for others.  I’ve made many things conveniently available with little effort, and I’ve paid untold hundreds of others exactly what they asked for items I’ve purchased, making them happy for the sale.

Some consider me a bad guy.  That’s all right.  Some consider the oil companies bad guys for their profits.  Some consider healthcare companies bad guys for saving lives while making money.  Some consider McDonalds bad for selling food people want at affordable prices.  I don’t mind being in that group.

Plus, I want the mammoth.

I’m not alone, I’m sure, in having a huge music collection. With iTunes and my iPod, this translates into a collection of thousands of tracks. Working with such a large collection is a horrible process without some organization. Early on, my wife pointed out the smart playlist option in iTunes, which made life much easier. My first iPod died after being purchased used, having a hard drive replacement, and a year of heavy use. Now I own an 80 Gig iPod Classic. When I upgraded to a new PC, I decided it was time to start over on my music organization in iTunes. This left me with thousands of tracks to work with, and a need to completely reorganize my music collection for more ease of use.

Those who heard me describe my organization style on my iPod always thought I was fairly hardcore in my way of working. Ratings, smart playlists, and genres were effectively used to give me access to what I want, when I wanted it. Still, with so many tracks, I found myself overwhelmed, and my iPod stuffed to the gills with tracks that I didn’t necessarily need with me every day. It was time to go further.

I hit Google, looking for clues from others. I wanted to see how others used the features in iTunes to manage their music, and how I could use those tricks myself. This post is an attempt to gather what I learned, and pass it along.

The first major change I needed was to properly categorize my music into genres that made sense. I like Rock music, but I could care less if it’s Alternative Rock, Classic Rock, Progressive Rock, or Indy Rock. I must have had two dozen genres that, to me, just meant different ways to subdivide Rock and Roll. The same went for Pop, Latin, Christian, Country, and so on. I simplified my collection down to genres that made sense to my own way of thinking. iTunes 8 made this easier
than ever before with the grid view. I could multi-select artists or genres, depending on the view, and right-click them to select “info.” By changing the genre for multiple selections at once, I could simplify hundreds of tracks at once.

Now, using a trick I learned from the web, I created a smart playlist that I called “Music Only.” This playlist gives me everything in my collection that doesn’t fall into certain genres like Spoken Word, Podcast, Audiobook, and so on. In theory, this should give me only music. Is it perfect? No, but I’m tweaking it as I find failures in the system. As you’ll see, I use this playlist as the basis for my other smart playlists, so as I tweak this list, I tweak all my smart playlists.

Next up in my organization scheme is ratings. I use a ratings scheme that makes sense to me. One star is a song that I don’t want on my iPod. Maybe it’s an interview track in an “iTunes Exclusive” collection, a segueway track that I don’t care for, or something so horrible that I only keep it at all to complete an album on my PC. Two stars is for tracks that I keep on my iPod because I may want to keep the whole album for some reason. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and The Beatles’ “Seargent Pepper” are examples of albums that I keep the whole album on my iPod, but that contain tracks I don’t care to listen to otherwise. Three stars and above are actually ratings that matter for music I like to varying degrees. My biggest favorites get five stars. Most music I really like is four stars, and anything I generally enjoy gets three stars.

Rating thousands of songs is a pretty huge task. I need a way to make it easier. First, though, I need playlists to represent the music I like. Because playlists are shown in alphabetical order, I call these playlists Aardvark (five stars), Absolute (four and five stars), and Actual (three to five stars). These names ensure that the playlists will appear near, if not at, the top of my list in iTunes and on my iPod. To create these playlists, I made a smart playlist for each. The first option for each is “playlist.” My Aardvark list requires that a track have a five star rating and be in the playlist “Music Only.” See how that “Music Only” playlist up there has become more useful?

Now that I have my playlists for rated favorites, I need a playlist for songs I haven’t rated yet. I call this “Unrated” which puts it down the list of playlists on my iPod. The requirements for this list are that each track be part of the “Music Only” playlist, and have a rating of zero stars. Now, I can take my iPod with me, and listen to the unrated playlist, and rate music as I listen. Two clicks on the center button, and I can select the number of stars to rate the music.

Now, at this point, I’m left with a lot of one-star music on my iPod. To get rid of this, I can go into iTunes after I’ve synced my iPod, and uncheck those tracks. An even better idea, though, is to change the music sync options for my iPod. Instead of syncing all checked music, I now sync only certain playlists. I sync the unrated list, as well as Aardvark, Absolute, and Actual. Now, anything with three stars and up will automatically sync. Since this leaves out the two-star tracks I want just in case I want to listen to “The Wall,” I made a playlist called “Everything” that includes the “Music Only” tracks with two stars or more, and set this to sync to my iPod as well. The only things that shouldn’t sync now are one-star tracks, so each time I sync my iPod, any one-star tracks will automatically be removed. In the image below, you’ll notice that the “Everything” playlist is not synced. This was to make space for episodes of “Top Gear” and “24.”

Even this left me with so large a list of unrated songs that I broke down my unrated list into four lists. One with “Rock” in the genre (not exact, but containing the word “Rock”), one with “Christian,” one for “Latin,” and one called “Misc.” The “Unrated Misc” inludes all zero star tracks that do not contain one of the other three genre keywords in the genre. Now, I can listen to a smaller list of tracks such as “Unrated Rock” and rate them without feeling as if I’m being yanked from side to side by style changes of the music. I also set these individual playlists to sync to my iPod. Note in the two images below, the different ways I looked for zero-star music.

Now, all this is fine and dandy. Each day, I take my iPod to work and play music while I work. As I listen, I rate music as i can. Obviously, I can’t sit all day and rate music, but I am able to get a lot of music rated this way. Each day, my rated lists grow, and my collection is more usable. Still, something is lacking.

When I drive, I often like to listen to more upbeat music. My favorites ratings are great, but they don’t allow for whether a song is good, hard, driving music. I used to have a standard playlist called “Slammin” that I would drag tracks to, but manually creating playlists is the old way, and I need something better. I need a classification system beyond ratings and genres that allows me to divide my collection into more specific playlists. For this, I use the little-recognized “Grouping” tag. If you go to the “info” page for a track, you’ll notice the box for “Grouping” now that I’ve pointed it out. All in all, it’s a pretty useless tag, but we can use it here.

Thinking about how I’d like my music classified, I have three basic classifications. “Slammin’” is for the good hard music I like to drive to. “Radio” is for music that I would play on my perfect radio station, consisting of Folk, Americana, easier-going rock and oldies, and some eclectic things thrown in. I know, perfect is in the ear of the listener, but I like a nice, enjoyable, slow mix sometimes, and “Radio” is the classification I use for that. In addition, I use “Explicit” to classify songs that may have curse words or content that I’d rather not play when my son is in the car. For good measure, I added a fourth category called “Other” that will make sense in a moment.

To classify my music, I simply edit the “Grouping” field to include the tag for that group. If a song falls into multiple classifications, I separate the keywords with a dot. slammin.radio would indicate a song that is both properly upbeat for driving, but also fits the eclectic mix of my ideal radio station. Slammin.explicit might be a really good song for me to listen to, but not my son.

To make use of these new grouping tags, I build a smart playlist identical to my “Actual” playlist of three stars and above, but I add a new option to include songs with “slammin” in the grouping tag for driving music, or “radio” for my eclectic mix. I can make a copy of my “Slammin’” playlist that also excludes the “explicit” tag to make a “clean” playlist for when my son is along for the ride.

Why did I also include an “Other” tag? That’s easy. I’m making inclusive playlists, but I also need an exclusive playlist, so I know what hasn’t been categorized yet. I make another copy of “Actual” but this time, I want it to include tracks that DO NOT have “slammin,” “explicit,” “radio,” or “Other” in the grouping field. These are all songs that need to be classified. Everything will eventually have a tag, but if none of the first three are appropriate, I use the “Other” tag to allow the track to fall out of the unclassified list. Unlike the unsorted list, I don’t tell the unclassified list to sync to my iPod, because the tagging must be done in iTunes anyway.

Isn’t this a lot of work? Yes. The great thing is, it doesn’t have to be done all at once. By allowing the smart playlist system to work to my advantage, I can go as fast, or as slow, as I like. I always have unrated music I can rate, at least for a while longer. I’m down to under 1000 tracks left to rate. On a good day, I can rate 100 tracks with little effort. Classifying can be done in batches. If I know some songs in the unclassified list I want in my slammin list, I just add the tags. I quickly classified a couple hundred songs into my slammin list to make it usable, so any additional work will enhance my experience. If I add a new CD to my collection, I can easily rate and classify it on the spot, and save the rest for later.

Obviously, I could go even further. If I had the years for all my music in the tags, I could easily make a 1980s favorites playlist. The techniques used above can be applied in many more ways, to allow you to make your iPod work the way YOU want it to.

So, in summary:
* Fix your genres so they make sense to you.
* Make a “Music Only” smart playlist that will serve as the basis for all smart playlists you create
* Create smart playlists based on ratings, including an unrated playlist
* Synchronize playlists, rather than simply “checked music”
* Rate your music
* Categorize your music to match the way you listen. (hard, funky, easy, dance, crap, etc)
* Create smart playlists to use your categories
* Take some time to rate, and classify, as you can. Don’t sweat it if you don’t do it every day.

Oh, and one more thing. If you have an iPod and an iPhone, or multiple iPods, you can sync them all to the same music library by selecting which playlists you want to sync to each device. My iPod has most of my music on it, but when I have an iPhone, I may only want my Aardvark and Absolute playlists. More likely, I’ll only have my Radio playlist, but that’s just me.

The funny thing is, when I am driving to work and back, I’m usually listening to an audiobook.