iM bACK!

Wow, It’s been a while since my last post. Most of you guys could have removed me from your bookmarks (or maybe there was no bookmark for me after all! :-O) thinking that Jason’s poor excuse for a blog has once again hitted the blogger’s block and is on a one way trip to internet limbo.

As always, I have a perfectly logical reason for this. :D

Presenting *drum roll please*

voila!

My iPod!

Here’s my white 30GB 5^th generation iPod. She’s turning 3 weeks next Monday. Along side her are the accessories she came with: an AC wall charger because I don’t leave my pc at home running all day, a sumajin LOOP case, white to match the aesthetics (not available here, got it from Singapore, many thanks to Richmond!) and if you look real closer, there’s a brando screen protector that takes care of her front and back.

So what have I been doing the 21 days at least? Let me enumerate the ways.

1. Re-rip CD’s via audiograbber. Why? Because I’ve been ripping mine on Windows Media Player since version 10 got out and most of my music files are on .wma, which moves me to my second task..
2. Convert non-mp3 files to mp3 via Dbpoweramp. Since my CD drive is now bust re-ripping CD’s, I need to multitask so I can store as much music as I can to my new ipod. Since I have a lot of non-MP3 audio files and only one CD drive, this was the way to go. Now, the last time I used this encoder the MP3 Lame codec was free, but on it’s latest release, they we’re asking for money. Good for me I have backups of old installers, so all I had to do was revert back.
3. With all the non-mp3 files ripped and converted, I have gained the task of addressing to the my existing mp3 collection: correcting tags. Now, I’m talking about a lot of MP3 files here, most of them is downloaded so the tags doesn’t come right at all. Thank to MP3tag, I was able to do them all in a jiffy.
4. With all this said and done, I should be finished already right? I mean, what more is there to do? Wrong. Ever noticed that while playing different tracks you have to adjust the volume just to make up for the loudness or weakness of it’s sound? And we all know how OC ipod owners when it comes to its battery life. We wouldn’t touch it unless we have backlighting on so to conserve precious playback hours. The answers to our prayers: mp3gain. The bigger your library, the longer it takes, I basically don’t like to wait so I let it run overnight.
5. No ipod is an ipod until you conduct a break in. Without breaking it in, how would you know if there’s something wrong with your battery? (Paranoia in ipod owners are perfectly normal). So what I did was let it play until I dies (bad for Li-on batteries, only do it once a month or so, just to calibrate the battery.) for 4 times and then charge it full. That’s a cycle. Now do that for 4 times. That should get you ipod running it’s promised hours. So for my 30GB, that’s 14hours of music playback and 2hours of videos.

With all these said and done, all I have to do is buy more cd’s (ouch!)

Until next time, happy podding!