Here’s a few of my favorite podcasts to listen to while on my commute:

Harry Shearer’s “Le Show”: It’s great. He is so funny and brings up some great points about the war in Iraq, global warming, and anything else that strikes his fancy. I find myself laughing out loud on the way to work when I listen to him.

Video Game Outsiders: I regularly listen to their weekly podcast, which I think is the best show on video games. The show is lots of fun and the hosts are really interesting. What I like about them is that they are varied about their likes and dislikes. Right now they are mainly focuses on the Xbox360 and DS since those are the dominant platforms right now, but they also will talk about PC games and whatever they are playing. It’s cool because you can interact with them on their forums, and they seem genuinely nice too. One reason I prefer them over other podcasts is that they don’t go into fits of random laughter. Sure, they laugh and have fun, but other podcasts seem to be just conversations between the hosts, and they laugh and laugh, and since I’m a listener and not part of the conversation, I am always thinking that I am wasting time listening to this laughter of which I have no part. I guess the hosts have no obligation to cater to me, but I don’t really have much tolerance for listening to those podcasts. The Escapist Radio podcast (formerly Gamers With Jobs) is like that. I think that they are smart and have good things to say, but there’s too much damn laughter and cackling, so I don’t subscribe to their podcast anymore. Anyways, the Video Game Outsiders podcast is not like that, and I’d have to say it’s refreshing!

Weekly Radio Address: The “official” parody of the US President. This is one of the funniest podcasts ever. The impersonator is a little over-the top on his impression, but that is perfect for this. Each episode is short, maybe a minute or two, but I look forward to the new one each week.

The Loh Life: I just subscribed to Sandra Tsing Loh’s podcast, and I am really liking it! It’s very SoCal, so if you aren’t familiar with the area, you won’t get a lot of the references. She’s got a great wit, and it’s fun to hear someone talk about Los Angeles. Living in TX for 10 years now, I miss my hometown!

Jeff Weaver wins game 7 of the World Series for the Cards. I always liked Jeff Weaver, the SoCal native. Laid back attitude rules! My friend Mikey and I saw him pitch two years ago when the Dodgers visited the Astros, which was very fun.

I posted this on the iPod Lounge Forums:

To build my smartplaylists, I use ratings and comments.

My ratings:

5=love the song
4=good song
3=ok song (don’t hate it)
2=hate the song and don’t want to hear it again
1=flag this song for editing

Things I put in the comments field:

Sleepy
Soft
Smooth
Japanese (I use this because I have tons of J-music, and a Jpop genre is not flexible enough)
Fun

Comments are fun to build playlists with, since they can be anything. The only problem is that it takes more effort to actually tag the song with the comment. That is where my Songs 2 Fix playlist comes in handy (see below)

I uninstalled iTunes 7, removed the Apple Software Updater and iPod sofware and reinstalled iTunes 6 from the cd that came with my iPod Video. I reloaded the library from scratch, and all is well. It took a while to recreate my playlists, and I will need to edit my ratings again, but I am so happy that the iPod syncs in less than a minute again. Plus, the podcasts download quicker as well, it seems. Before I actually synced my iPod with iTunes 6, I went through my 5-star playlist on the iPod and re-rated them in iTunes 6. That was the only playlist that iTunes 7 transferred to my iPod. So that is at least a head start. But I enjoy rating the songs anyways, so I got my old “Unrated 500MB” smart playlist loaded and ready to be rated. I hope Apple fixes iTunes 7. It had some neat features, just the slow sync to my iPod (and I am not alone according to the forums at iPod Lounge) was the deal killer. iTunes 7 sync = 30+ minutes vs. iTunes 6 sync = ~1 minute.

So I decide I want to clean out my podcasts from my hard disk and resubscribe. I remove all my subscriptions, then see that iTunes still keeps a bunch of podcast mp3’s in its podcast directory. So I delete them. Now I think all is good, and I can continue. But then I notice my smart playlist, Japanese Pod 101. I open it and see that it still is full. I click on one, and the exclamation point comes up, meaning it cannot find the file. I guess iTunes is looking in its database and there is no way for it to “smartly” refresh. WTF?!?! I gotta go into the XML file and remove all 298 items by hand? I HATE ITUNES!!!! what a piece of shit.

So I decided to do the Restore option in iTunes in hopes that my iPod would get better. It looked like it was going to work, as it totally cleared my iPod’s hd and started copying all my songs/movies/podcasts/photos again. But then it got some kind of error such as some media could not be copied, etc etc. I tried to sync it again this morning, and after 25 minutes of nothing happening, I just stopped the sync. Of course now I only have about 150 songs on it, and no podcasts. But at least my movies are there… So lame… I think I will try blowing away the XML files and see if that helps. When I upgraded to iTunes 7, something got messed up in that file, and my ratings were all randomized and other weirdness. Anyways, pre iTunes 7, I could sync my iPod in a minute or so. Now it either takes an hour, or doesn’t finish syncing at all.

adasf

No running this morning. The sound of raindrops on the rooftop meant I got to sleep in! (until 6am)

When my iPod and iTunes is working, they are great. When they don’t work, I hate them. Today, for some unknown reason, some podcasts will make my iPod reboot itself. Some podcasts are ok. It’s so frustrating to select a podcast, and then feel the hard disk shudder, then the screen goes blank. Then the Apple logo comes on, which, by the way, is probably not a good thing to show during startup, since most of the time you see that logo is after your iPod crashes. Just puts a small (and negative) mental note about Apple in the back of your mind since you are thinking “WTF?” when that logo appears.