Magical iPod

For a while now I’ve been concerned about the ability of my iPod to magically play music. Not the fact that it can actually do what it does ie. “play music” - but that it always appears to be playing music even though I’m quite sure I didn’t want it to.

For example, I’d open up the little temporary case I have it in and notice that it’s playing. Or I’d check on it after a coffee break and see that it started playing again. I’ve double-checked the hold button, but that always appears to be okay. So I quickly turn it off - constantly worried about the battery in the poor little bugger.

A couple of times it got so bad after a day of work I noticed that the battery was down to the red - even though I had charged it the night before.

Then this morning the clouds parted and I discovered why my iPod was acting so magical. The very first day I got it I tried out the alarm clock. Low and behold, I had never gotten around to turning the function back off and so every morning around 8:55 he was powering up and playing my most recently played tracks. Now there’s something they don’t mention in the manual!

At least now I’ve had the opportunity to read the apple iPod battery page from front to back and vice-versa a number of times and understand the following:

• That I should never leave said iPod out in the sun
• I should always use the hold button
• I should minimise my skipping
• I should avoid using the EQ

All of this in the quest to get as many music-hours out of my iPod as possible!

Posted by Christian Posted in: Computers, General, Music 3 Comments » 21 May 2005

Musical Baton

.. Because Jina told me to.

Total volume of music on my computer
Currently 3010 songs Approx 10 days and 6 hours, 16.53GB

The last CD I bought
Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze

Song playing right now
Skin on Skin - from the same album

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me
In no particular order:

• Queens of the Stone Age - Tangled up in Plaid
• Tool - H.
• The Mars Volta - Cygnus… Vismund Cygnus
• Interpol - Stella was a Diver and she was always Down
• Death Cab for Cutie - The New Year (or Title and Registration)

I, on the other hand, don’t really have anyone I can pass it on to. So feel free anyone - come take this baton off me. I’m a jogger without a pal.

Posted by Christian Posted in: General, Music 1 Comment » 18 May 2005

Sick and remaining sick

I hate getting sick.

And what I hate even more than just getting sick is getting sick and remaining sick. I’m quite sure that both Sara and myself have some sort of collapsing immune system which is not adjusting to the other persons ails. In fact - it’s more like a game of ping-pong between us.

<Christian’s body> *SNEEZE*
<Sara’s body> *Breath* .. pause .. *SNEEZE*
<Christian’s body> *SNIFF*.. aaaaaaaa*CHOOO*
<Sara’s body> .. [a couple of days getting better]
<Christian’s body> *SNEEZE*
<Sara’s body> [once again catches christians cold]
<Christian’s body> .. [body returns to normal state]

<Sara’s body> *SNEEZE*

etc ad infinitum

I guess it’ll be our fate for this game to continue until one of us perils.

Posted by Christian Posted in: General 1 Comment » 14 May 2005

Visual C Sharp Queer-ies

I don’t know what they were thinking. But ExecuteScalar(), or even, *ulp*, ExecuteReader() can’t possibly be the easiest way to retrieve data from databases in VC#

I’ve slowly been weening myself into a Visual C# frame of mind - but tell you what. While years of PHP has taught me that coding can live in the realm of normal people, VC# reminds me that it’s not all peaches and cream.

I think the hardest thing for me is not the syntax, I mean is it ever? The problem lies squarely on the mindset. Take database queries. We have PHP in the left corner and ASP.NET/VC# in the right

PHP:
mysql\_connect("localhost","username","password");
mysql\_select\_db("database");
$result = mysql\_query("SELECT * FROM blah");
mysql\_close();
while ($row = mysql\_fetch\_row($result) ) {
  print($row[1],$row[2]);
}

VC#:
private System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection sqlConnection1;
private System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand sqlQuery = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand();
this.sqlConnection1.ConnectionString = "workstation id=WORKSTATION;packet size=4096;integrated security=SSPI;data source=localhost;persist security info=False;initial catalog=database";
this.sqlQuery.Connection = this.sqlConnection1;
this.sqlQuery.CommandText = "SELECT * FROM blah";
sqlConnection1.Open();
SqlDataReader myReader = sqlQuery.ExecuteReader();
while (myReader.Read()) {
  Console.Writeline(myReader.GetString(0) + "," + myReader.GetString(1));
}
myReader.Close();
sqlConnection1.Close();

And this is without a shit load of the code that gets auto generatored, lots of error checking and lets not forget the event handling… now someone please. Please. Explain to me why.

My brain hurts.

Posted by Christian Posted in: Computers, Web Development 2 Comments » 9 May 2005