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.

1. Setting up rules and mailboxes could be more streamlined or at least have a keyboard shortcut
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Projects

Quite a few of these on the go. My latest Wordpress project will be online for testing soon. I’ll let you know when that happens.

I’m in the process of starting a new Podcast, this time with Fireball Tim. I got the domain name, have an intro done and we will be doing testing this week. Yes it will be car related. And yes, you will hear about it here first. At least until we get 5 or so of them done, then we’ll tell everyone! Ask nice and I might post the intro.

Another site I just did a bunch of work on is KCL Productions. I cleaned up the navigation and completely rebuilt the portfolio section using lightbox. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Full re-do of the site will be coming later in the year more than likely.

MTTS

Most of you know that I won’t be going to Chicago. I am, however VERY excited about LA. Besides it being the last stop, it will also be the third anniversary of the show. If you are in or around LA the first weekend of August, I expect to see you!

My Music

I know you are all jealous that I actually have the time to do this, but boy am I glad I did. My music library is now about 17gb lighter than it was before, I removed all of the crap that I didn’t know I had or didn’t want and cleared out a bunch of old podcasts that I already listened too. Only need to do a final rebuild of the library and it will be done.

Video and photos

I really need to get back on this. Part of the problem for video is I lost a piece for my suction cup mount I use in the MINI. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make a new one without spending the $15 to replace it. I have an idea and hope to have it figured out soon.

As for photos, I’ve just been lazy. I did, however, get a replacement clip for my gorilla pod (another piece I lost months ago) and I’m dying to start using that again. Watch the flickr for something soon.

Ok, that’s it for now. Back to the job boards.

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.