@#!$% iPod !#$%^*

argh, iPod, argh! (ok, more my fault than iPod's)

So Friday I attempted to sync an audiobook (cd) onto my iPod. It's called iSpeak, an Italian language book, that would maybe kick start me learning Italian. I followed the instructions, but when it was trying to sync, it stalled and was not responding. Stupidly I used the computer task manager to end the task, hoping to just try again. When I re-opened iTunes and tried to start a song, an exclamation point popped up next to the song. This continued for about 10 tracks. In a panic I google'd what that meant to find out some very bad news. Probably because of what I did, my iPod was showing all 3800 songs I had on it, but couldn't play them. I can't really explain why, or how, just what I had to do or rather am doing to fix this blunder.

I would estimate 80% of my songs ended up missing. So on and off all weekend I was sitting at my computer adding the missing songs back on. If anyone has a better way of doing this, please let me know! Here was the process I came up with.

I started at the top, and went artist by artist in iTunes. After letting the entire playlist rujn through (with some help mashing the skip button) I could see the songs with the exclamation points. I created a folder on my desktop, found the missing song on my externeal hard drive (where I store my mp3's) and copied them into the new folder. Once I finished a letter, I would do a mass transfer onto the ipod. Next, I cleaned up the id3 tags in itunes. Of course this was annoying since 99% of my songs had album art, genre, album, etc all setup. All this was gone, and I had to fix things like the artist not populating, etc. I then started again at the letter, and went artist by artist deleting the bad files.

Then I moved onto the next letter in the alphabet. Talk about frustrating! So far I have fixed artists A-K, with allot left to do.

In between cursing myself for bringing this on, I did some laundry, watched a few movies, and chased down a case my a new different mp3 player.

Speaking of, I wanted to find a small mp3 player, and use it at the gym, or for walking the dogs. I even have this crazy idea of taking a walk during the day at work around campus. I did some research, and decided on the Sansa c series. This did not need to have a large amount of storage, since you can fit about 240 mp3 songs on 1gb, I was okay with going small. Plus, you can adda microSD flash card to boost the capacity.



No, this is not my hand, or the actual player I bought. I found the pic on google, but it is the exact model I purchased. With the 2gb microSD card I bought at the same time, it is now a 3gb player.




1g = 240 mp3s (average)
2g = 480
3g = 720 songs

Not too shabby for it's size huh. Benefits over the iPod shuffle? The ability to add memory, the display screen, most importantly, the price! A 1 gb iPod shuffle runs about $49. The Sansa c240 1gb, was $37 at micro center.

That's all for today, tomorrow, hopefully, I will find the time to write up some movie reviews for...
1.Atonement
2.30 Days of Night
3.Slipstream
4.The Brave One

ciao ciao