Dennis D. McDonald (ddmcd@ddmcd.com)consults from Alexandria Virginia. His services include writing & research, proposal development, and project management.
Instead of carving a pumpkin this year (last year I carved Thomas the Tank Engine and the year before John Kerry) I created a playlist containing selections from my music collection that I thought had a spooky, ethereal, or weird sense.
Since learning how to use the iTunes "Sharing" feature, I've grown accustomed to being able to access the music from my Upstairs Computer on my Downstairs Computer via my home wireless network.
It's a great feature, one that makes me look at having to rent a digital cable box for every TV with a jaundiced eye.
I've been using iTunes a lot to check out various audio streams using the "radio" feature in iTunes. I currently have a playlist of radio streams that include Bollywood and movie soundtracks, various "Ambient" and "Electronica" signals, a variety of Jazz, Latin, and Tropical channels, and all the Classical music I can find. It's quite an amazing variety. If I hadn't already given up CD's as an obsolete medum I'd be buying a lot more music.
I've complained before about iTunes seeming preference for locking in file formats. I have loaded many of my CD's into iTunes and have also purchased some music from the iTunes store.
I came downstairs to my basement office Monday morning and saw what a Windows user is most fearful of -- the Blue Screen of Death. Something had happened during the night to cause a massive failure on my Dell Latitude D505 laptop.
I've had several weeks of experience now using iTunes to manage some of my music. I've found that "composer" and "artist" information are often switched or even wrong, and that individual movement names for symphnies or concertos may show up in the "performer" field.
Back in the 90's, having switched to CD's from LP's, I invested heavily in "smooth jazz" before I realized how much better "real jazz" is. Nowadays I avoid "smooth jazz" stations on the radio and their limited playlists (sometimes I think they add only one or two new songs every year). Now I stick mostly to jazz, latin jazz, latin pop, movie soundtracks, and classical.