Rubénerd :)

Fire up the Terminal and type this:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

I’m on tethered internet so I can’t (and don’t feel compelled) to download iTunes 10, so I can’t check if this works or not. If it makes your Mac explode, don’t come to me for a replacement. I would replace it for you, but I’ve got a lot to do right now you see.

Apple has released new stuff, so because Slashdot and the like dub me an Apple fanboi it’s my civic responsibility to discuss them… from my iTelephone. We still don’t have home internet, you see :(.

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In a worrying trend, it seems Apple will be furthering Facebook integration this time with iTunes. MacRumours is hardly an impartial source on such matters, but that ratio above doesn’t look too favourable.

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Can that time really be right? Back in Singapore my dad and I combined have well over 130GiB of music and I don’t remember seeing a time like that!

I’ve figured out why some iTunes users have been reporting problems with subscribing to the Rubenerd Show through the iTunes Store. I deleted my own subscription, searched for "Rubenerd Show" in the iTunes Store and resubscribed to only be given a small circle and an exclamation point.

When I right clicked and chose "Show Description" I was given the above dialog box. No wonder it isn’t working, it’s trying to access new shows from http:///show/feed/ for some reason!

I don’t know how or why this happened. I’ll be contacting Apple about this to see if I can get it pointing back to the proper URI again. I believe my good friend Felix Tanjono submitted my podcast to the iTunes Store back in 2005 back when Australia and Singapore didn’t have access to it.

While I’m sorting this out you can still go to iTunes, choose the Advanced menu and click Subscribe to Podcast, then enter the following address as a stopgap:

http://rubenerd.com/show/feed/

Sorry about this, I don’t know how this could have happened :-(.

Despite having an Australian iTunes account and having purchased a few random tracks over the years, I’ve largely refrained from buying digital download music online. For me it’s been a case of value for money: sure online downloads are cheaper [most of the time] than an equivalent CD but I don’t have the freedom to rip the audio at quality levels I want for the devices I want. Perhaps the fact I’m also obsessed with future proofing myself plays a part too.

Going to Apple.com today though I found one more reason to dislike audio downloads online ;-). If I wanted yawn inducing, generic, mass produced, disposable, forgettable music I’d tune into a terrestrial Top 40 station. Coldplay aside of course.

Do I sound old yet?

I guess I’ve always been the type of person who likes collecting things, perhaps a bit too much for his own good.

Case in point I reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook Pro this evening so I could reformat the drive as case sensitive. As I was about to copy over my iTunes music library from one of my backup drives I noticed big the folder was, and how huge the Podcast folder had become!

I guess I’ve been downloading and listening to podcasts since early 2005, and they do build up! The question is though, what do I do with all of them? Some of the shows in this folder are no longer being produced or are even available anymore I think, and it’d be a shame to delete this collection after downloading for so long. In a nostalgic way it’s fun to listen back to old shows to see what people thought was exciting a few years ago. Look, it’s an iPod that plays video! Google will never buy YouTube! Ants on Mars! Irn-Bru in New York!

It also raises another question: if I don’t delete this folder, how large will it be in 2009? 2010? 2020? Will I need to contemplate buying even more terabyte hard drives or invest in a Blu-Ray burner and stacks of double sided discs just for this stuff?

So much for podcasts being free right? :-).

Nothing more to say. Fortunately the admitted it and changed their policies. Wait, that was something else to say wasn’t it? I guess I’ve never been very good at reining in verbosity.

It was another one of those "I knew it wouldn’t work but I was hoping it would" kind of situations. Amazon has released a MP3 download service that has no Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) tacked on and unlike all the other so called "iTunes killers" it is a pleasure to use.

And surprise surprise you need an American postal address before you can finish the transaction! Yay!

Seriously can music companies really be angry over illegal downloads if they don’t care about their customers overseas? The local Singaporean music association has their painfully embarrassing “Be HIP” campaign which does nothing to create new methods of distribution which clearly people want and would use, then blames us. Pure genius.