Quick Hits: Merry Christmas Pixlpeeps!

On 12/23/2016 at 09:08 PM by goaztecs

Pixlpeeps, I hope you didn't think I forgot about you good people. I've been kind of busy today but I needed to get a Christmas Eve Eve's Quick Hits up before Saturday when STORM WATCH 2016 continues. Yes if you haven't heard what is usually Sunny Southern California is rainy. For the past couple of days we had one storm, and tonight we are getting another storm. Actual rain, not the sprinkling that I like to joke about being STORM WATCH 2016. Anyways earlier today while there was no rain I decided to replace the light bulb above my shower because it went out and really who wants to shower when that area is dark? I don't like the new bulbs that have the prongs and little plastic wings that only fit into a certain socket. Seriously can we have a universal one like the screw-ons? Anyways let's get started with Quick Hits.

Chris Watches...

We had a power outage a couple of days ago but I remembered that I had some content on my iPad that I haven't removed since my Jury Pool experience. Well the Amazon stuff needed to be connected to an internet connection to make sure everything was legit (doesn't the app do this while it's connected to WiFi?) but the Netflix stuff played with no problem. I watched more of Episode 3 of the Hip-Hop doc, and then fell asleep.

Last night while tinkering with stuff on my laptop I had the Giants/Eagles game playing

Thanks Philly. The Cowboys are now NFC East Champions. I had whatever bowl game on the big TV while on Twitter either on my laptop or phone had the game.

Chris Listens To...

So I'm getting my iTunes ready for the new year. For some reason I decided that it would be fun to update the genre labels to more accurately describe what the album was. Yeah I thought it would be fun but there are so many albums that can fit in so many different spots it got a little frustrating. The easiest were the Soundtracks. All I had to do was either place them under Movie, TV, Video Game, or Sports and that was it.

Other genres not so much. At some point I'll further fix this and maybe either consolidate some sub genres or just go back to the generic Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, etc. Of course doing this I had to re-sync my phone because every song had their genre changed. WiFi syncing that many songs is still a pain because iTunes tends to drop the signal and the only solid way is to physically connect it.

I also cleaned up my playlists

I had a lot of duplicate playlists that could be erased and now I have what I need sitting in the program.

I was going to start a new 2017 phone playlist but after going through a couple of hundred songs I realized it is similar to the one currently on the phone. Instead I will just go through my phone, see what songs I have on there, add them to a new playlist, and then download that playlist to iTunes and I should be golden.

The best news I had with iTunes is when I updated the firmware and iTunes added an icon for headphones (don't know why this was important but thanks) and this

Yes the return of Star Rankings! I don't get why Apple thought the Love button would be useful especially for folks like me who use smart playlists and stars help me sort songs. This is a lot more useful that yelling at Siri to rate the songs. Thanks Apple!

Pickups!

Ok there really isn't much here because well its Christmas time and I should be buying for others. I did however download some freebies like Mass Effect 2 for Origin (it seems like it comes with all the DLC) and a random game from Twitch.

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. Before I go Merry Christmas, and for you folks who don't celebrate, Merry Christmas! (kidding Happy Holidays) Hope you folks spend quality time with the folks you love, and stay warm and dry.

That's all for now, more later!

-Chris

One of the favorite Christmas songs because there's a little bit of Toto's Africa in it. Have a good weekend!

Halochief90

12/23/2016 at 10:37 PM

Merry Christmas!

I haven't touched my music playlists in quite some time. I need some new music to listen to.

goaztecs

12/27/2016 at 07:26 PM

I have a playlist where I rotate the music ever couple of weeks so I can listen to stuff I haven't heard in a while. Speaking of new music I need to visit the mall soon to see what hit the wall of cheap CDs.

KnightDriver

12/24/2016 at 03:48 AM

I still wish I could sort and arrange my podcasts into a playlist and let it update that way. I also wish my ipod would play through all the podcasts instead of stopping after one, or as it's doing now, stuck on replay. I have to stop it when it gets to the beginning again and select the new podcast. Stupid and annoying.

Merry Christmas to you.

12/27/2016 at 07:29 PM

The Podcast app on the recent iOS updates does this. The only thing you have to do is create a playlist, add the podcasts you want, and then depending on when they update you just arrange them to play.

12/28/2016 at 01:56 AM

Can you arrange a playlist and then never mess with it after that? The new podcasts will just download to the spot in the list you selected the first time? That's what I want.

12/28/2016 at 11:12 AM

I believe you can. There is an option under the settings on your podcast playlist where it lets you play the podcasts in an order you want called "My Podcasts" order. I haven't tried it (I think I'll give it a shot) because I like to arrange each week depending on how I feel.

12/30/2016 at 02:12 AM

Oh cool. I'll check that out.

Super Step Contributing Writer

12/24/2016 at 09:42 PM

I think it rained earlier here. I wonder if there are any storm chasers from Cali.

I have never rooted for the Eagles harder than I did on Thursday.

That whole needing an Internet connection to make sure you own this content thing is probably going to piss me off one day. Luckily, either my media doesn't have that or my Internet never dropped at a time like that.

Sometimes, I like simple ratings systems like buy/rental/skip, but for a personal catalog with full albums of unequal songs, it's better to have something more specific so Genius knows to play the cream instead of the crap.

Happy Kwanzaa!

12/27/2016 at 07:32 PM

It sounds like our little storm is making its way across the country. I don't think we have any storm chasers because we have two seasons, hot, and not hot. We get the random tornado but they're really small.

Oh I thanked my uncle who's a huge Eagles fan.

Yeah it is a freaking pain especially when folks have data caps on their internet. Luckly I think the house internet is really high so I don't have to worry but when on the go my phone plan isn't as good.

It makes sense to have something simple like and Apple tried, but since I'm already in with the stars it is hard for me to change.

And a Happy Kwanzaa to you as well!

PixlBit