Quick updates on a few things I have mentioned here at w(t)f over the last week or so.
Mail.app
Been using this for a solid week now with Gmail POP3. It’s been pretty good I must say but there are a few things I think could be a little better.
- Setting up rules and mailboxes could be more streamlined or at least have a keyboard shortcut
- Flagging a message needs an easier keyboard short cut, or someone at Apple needs to stop with those rediculous symbols that I don’t understand.
- Restoring the window from the dock needs to be more elegant/easier to figure out, but this is a problem I have with most Mac apps. cmd-n works, but then I have to close the new message window.
- Better keyboard navigation in general would be keen. Arrow and tab keys are my friend
Next will be getting my address book and iCal current. I’m really excited to see how well they integrate.
Random surfing today led me to this post by Mr. Merlin Mann on using smart playlists in iTunes to do more than just organize music, but as a utility to find stuff that you don’t listen to.
Using one of the tips, I was able to clear out over 6GB of old podcasts that were left behind for whatever reason.
That empowered me to keep going with the pruning, especially after a search for duplicates showed me that I had over 1400 tracks that were doubled or, in some cases, tripled!
So, into finder I delved, searching for duplicates, moving them to a folder on the desktop and deleting them from my music folder. Also deleted a bunch of empty folders and tracks that I know I will never, ever listen to again.
As soon as I finished that, the stray mp3’s were archived onto my backup drive in a single zip file (just in case) and I emptied the trash. All together I think I was able to clear out close to, if not more than, 10gb 15gb of crap!
It’s not that I needed the space because all of my music lives on an external drive with 200GB of available space. It was the fact that my music library was a mess, and I was tired of it. I’ve been moving that folder from PC to PC to the Mac for the last 10 years. Trust me when I tell you it was a mess.
But not any longer. As I type this, my iTunes library is currently rebuilding itself and I expect it be done by the time I wake up in the morning. Once complete, I will do another check for duplicates and get rid of any that don’t belong and rebuild once more. A lot of work? Sure it is. Do I have the time? Sure I do. That’s why I decided to do it.
Sure there are programs out there, but have you tried any of them? Honestly, they pretty much suck and with the amount of dis-organization I was experiencing, it was just as easy for me to do it by hand this time.
I feel much better now. Thank you.
