If you’re like me, you have a lot of podcasts. I have more than a hundred subscriptions of both audio and video, which makes it too difficult to navigate in my iPod, and it’s too many clicks to sort through the ‘new if its blue’ interface. Fortunately, the Smart Playlists provide some decent solutions to this.

Smart Playlist: “New Podcasts”

File > New Smart Playlist: Playcount is 0, Podcast is true.

I don’t keep any previous episodes in my podcast subscriptions, so anything that isn’t new is automatically deleted. I manually refresh, but depending on your situation there is always the option of incorporating the ‘Date Added is in the last 7 days’.

As they are downloaded, every new podcast will show up in this smartlist. Between audio and video, I separate manually and watch them in succession.

However, this doesn’t solve the problem of mobile listening as the list is still quite large. In addition, the blue-dot interface is somewhat lacking on the iPod. The solution is in another smartlist…

Smart Playlist: “Daily Podcast Queue”

File > New Smart Playlist: Podcast is true, Play Count is 0, Rating is 1-star.

As you sync your iPod for the day (I also do this manually), select several of the podcasts you want to listen to for the day, and add a 1-star rating to them. This will add them to a smaller selection of podcasts that is not only your most-interested in items, but they will also run in succession. There is nothing worse than getting to the end of The Sound of Young America halfway through your busy train ride only to fumble in your pockets and elbow several Japanese salary-men to find your next selection.

These are very basic smartlists, but they are a nice introduction to the way they work. As this iTunes series continues, I’ll be talking about utilizing the star ratings to apply a kind of objective meta-data to your library. Combining your star ratings with variables like Play Count and Last Played will get you some really great results, stay tuned!

Download Firefox or please check out a number of alternative browsers, a second favourite of mine is Opera.

There are pros and cons to any browser. Firefox is infinitely customizable as there are always new developments for its third-party plugins. Unfortunately, this is also its downfall. In order to get the best experience from Firefox, every new install of it needs countless downloads to get to that specific functionality that you are used to. For a work computer, my mom’s computer or any other that is not used (almost) exclusively by me, I would recommend Opera instead, as it has some advanced functionality pre-installed.

However, for Firefox in particular, let’s talk about a little-known, and entirely built-in function called “Quick Search”.

…

If you already use Firefox, right now press Cmd+L (Alt+D on PC) type: “google stanford encyclopedia philosophy” in your address bar, and BAM you have google results without ever going to google’s search.

Firefox has google preinstalled as a command, but you can change any search field you come across to a Quick Search.

Right-click the search field for this site at the top corner of the sidebar and select ‘Add a Keyword for this Search…’

A prompt will come up next that looks as though you’ve added a bookmark, name it Blue and Brown Books, and put the keyword as ‘bbb’ like so:

You’ve now saved ‘bbb’ as a Quick Search. Hit Cmd+L (Alt+D on PC) and type “bbb wittgenstein” and BAM you’ve now immediately gone to the search results for the archives on anything that has the word ‘wittgenstein’ in its content.

You can imagine the power of this simple action. Since finding out about this, I’ve put ‘def’ to search dictionary.com, ‘thes’ to search thesaurus.com, ‘wiki’ to search any wikipedia article, ‘imdb’ to search the imdb database, flickr, ebay, etc. The coolest one is ‘maps’ for google maps.

Take a few minutes to surf to all of your frequented sites and really think of some simple and useful keywords for your searches. If you need to find any of them to edit, they all save to the default ‘bookmarks’ folder.

How many times have you wanted to search for… “Grok” on Wikipedia, but found it frustrating to open a new tab, type in the wikipedia URL, wait for it to load, and then type in the “Grok” and wait for your results to come up? It has happened to me many many times. It might not seem like a lot of time, but if you can truly adapt this to the way you think (or ‘Grok’) about using the internet, it just makes sense. Also, I don’t really know why, but I think it’s really cool to find minuscule ways to make my life better in these kind of extremely small and superfluous increments.
Taking now what we know about Firefox’s Quick Searches, and the basic ‘launcher’ notion of Quicksilver, I’ll talk about how to skip the middle-man and use the Quick Search functionality from anywhere at any time with the Quicksilver plugin, and elaborate on these plugins themselves. Grok on!

If you are a Mac user, and find the built in Spotlight functionality useful, you might want to consider the similar, yet infinitely more powerful application Quicksilver. Not only is it able to find, move and get deep inside items and applications by proxy (without ever having opening that item or application) it also looks a lot prettier!

Quicksilver is not for the light at heart. Your grandmother or mother is not going to be using this in its advanced forms. The concept of this app is that it makes it possible to do away with the ‘folder’ hierarchy of data management. Think of it as Google’ing your entire life (at first).

…

It is extremely important to point out that you should not be scared by the Quicksilver. Accept the Quicksilver, it is your friend. Install it, and if nothing else, use it as a shortcut for opening applications, or like a spotlight replacement. It may take some time, but once you understand how this application works, you’ll use more and more of its branches as you go. Honestly, it had taken me about six months before exploring further ’skins of the onion’.

Aaron’s Introduction to Quicksilver:

Step 1: Download Quicksilve: http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Step 2: Turn-off the keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight (from the pref. panel, just click both of them off)

Step 3: In Quicksilver’s Preferences, change the ‘Command’ section’s hotkey to Cmd+Spacebar

Step 4: Make a point to, instead of searching manually through the Finder for your documents or even moving your mouse to the dock for your applications, Cmd+Spacebar and start typing its name, or file extension or anything you can remember about that object.

If you’re like me, you have about eighty folders labeled ‘junk’ or ’school’, each of them have multiple papers, music etc. It used to actually bother me that these junk folders were so unorganized… consider that superfluous. Type, and find, immediately.

If you are familiar with Quicksilver up to this point, please keep an eye on the ‘apps’ section, as there will be more Quicksilver goodness elaborated upon soon.

I used to have huge issues with bookmarks. I am one of those people who, when stumbling across something interesting whilest surfing the webs of internet, will bookmark the said item of interest with little to no categorizing. I end up with a mess of random bookmarks mixed with my frequently visited sites.

In addition to this problem, I use multiple computers in a day, and like to have all of those ‘frequently visited’ sites at hand. I have a lot of them afterall, and honestly can’t seem to even remember them. (which, I feel is a bit odd, because I don’t seem to recall the interesting things that I find interesting…)
I am a Firefox user, so I decided to fix my problem with an extension called Foxmarks which creates a small host file that is uploaded to the internet’s magical vastness, and then by way of a username and password, it accesses and downloads from that file to keep your bookmarks synchronized cross-desk, and cross-workstation provided you use the Firefox web browser.

This has been adequate for maintaining the issue of cross-workstation procrastination, and the tendency to make ‘interesting site’ piles, however, in the screenshot above you will notice that my bookmark toolbar is filled, and that the double arrow >> on the right implies an infinity of ‘bullshit marks’.

I had heard of Google Reader and RSS before, RSS is how podcasts get to my iTunes, or how blog entries are posted in sequence. I had always thought RSS was a very difficult Web 2.0 tool that I couldn’t control or understand, but essentially, it is a certain format that almost every ‘post’ has attached to it. “Really Simple Syndication” is the format, and it allows your complex post to be essentially broadcast in a lightweight form, and then re-interpreted and rebuilt so it can be read at another location.

Think of it abstractly as radiowaves for the internet. A radio is a way to read compressed information that travels through the air, just as an RSS feed would travel from a website. Instead of reading information from the site, the RSS takes the post in a raw form, and spits it out as a subscribable feed.

Google Reader is basically a way to read that lightweight information and categorize it in a very simple, and organized manner. It’s a bit difficult to understand until you actually try it.

The beauty of Reader is that, like mostly all other Google products, it’s simple, easy and accessible. You’ll require a Google account, so use your Gmail login if you already have one.

http://www.google.com/reader

Look in your ‘favourites’ bookmark folder and start typing in websites under ‘Add Subscription’. If you don’t have any that work, (you shouldn’t have any that don’t work, but just in case you do..) try these:

www.boingboing.net

www.lifehacker.com

www.foundmagazine.com

www.blueandbrownbooks.com

If you aren’t sure about a certain URL, just try to add it as a subscription. Google will search the site and find the feed for you, if there is one. Every post that is made in any one of those feeds will now show up in a categorized format, the new ones that come in will pop up just as email comes to your inbox. This is a way to keep track of your favourite sites and all of their posts.

Now, my bookmarks are exclusively used for stumbled upon bullshit.

This is but one more example of how Google will be taking over the world one day. All hail the Goog.

If, like me, you work in an office environment and wear a tie, you probably don’t fit the shirt that goes with it. This is not just that the male form is naturally awkward and unappealing, but instead because form-fitting shirts are typically much more expensive than your typical outing at the Sally Ann.

The most common problem that I have personally with shirts is that they are too tight in the neck in order to fit properly in the chest and midsection. If I get a shirt that fits in the neck, it’s too large in the chest and midsection.

What I have found works best is to purchase shirts for how they will fit for the neck and arm length, and then modify them. This will also work for any collared shirt that buttons up in the front. (Although I am not too familiar with ‘female’ dress-shirts or bust-lines, I would say that one would theoretically take all of the same steps.)

Step 1: Purchasing Your Shirt

Be sure this shirt fits comfortably at the neck and has decent length in the arms, depending on the design of the shirt it may have stripes or more complex patterns plaid patterns, it may be a bit more difficult to modify your shirt the more complex the pattern is. Choosing a simple design like basic stripes, or no design at all will decrease the chances that your shirt will look messed up.

This suits second-hand clothing the best, personally, modifying a shirt purchased for more than 10$ might not be worth it given the absolute danger that this project can be to the shirt in question. The typical rule of thumb out to be that if you are purchasing a shirt for more than 10$ you should probably be expecting it to fit as well.

Step 2: Fitting Your Shirt

Take the purchased-comfortable-in-the-neck-and-arms shirt and button it up. Turn the shirt inside out and put it on. The idea now is to take in the shirt on each side, pinning the bagginess to fit your chest and midsection. Start with the bagginess in your arm and temporarily pin the areas at the lower part of your shoulder, following the seam to the four-way seam intersection at the armpit, all the way down to the bottom of your shirt.

It is important to start around your shoulder before your armpit so you don’t leave any bagginess in the arms. Also, depending on the kind of pattern the shirt has, you might want to keep it roughly match as you pin. If it is a striped shirt, try to stay along the same stripe. If it is a plaid shirt, try to keep the pattern as consistent as possible.

Step 3: Sew and Check

Take the shirt off and sew a line along the pins, taking them out as you go. Any sewing machine will do, from the ‘mini’ variety you can get for under $20, to the more expensive in-table kind. Once you sew your new line, turn the shirt right-side in and try it on, be sure it fits and the patter looks consistent.

Step 4: Double Up and Cut

If you’re happy with it, turn the shirt inside out again and double up your stitch for strength. Cut the excess fabric and the old stitch line off and you should be able to wear your new shirt comfortably. I have found that the double stitch hold the threading together a bit better, and prevents the nasty un-threading that occasionally occurs.

Hopefully this helps somewhat, or at least gives you an idea of where to begin with shirt alterations. Please do this with shirts that aren’t expensive, and be careful with needles because they’re pointy.