Yesterday, I decided that it was probably about time I backed up some files in case something goes wrong with my computer. The day before that, I got given a DVD writer for my laptop to borrow. I was going to give it straight back but they said I can borrow t for a bit longer. Since I had it, I thought that I might as well put it to use. I had some music to burn to CDs, music to rip from CDs, and some backing up to do.

I used Windows to format the disc to enable me to drag and drop the folders and files I wanted to back up. I was hoping that I could backup all my important files to one DVD disc so I didn’t have to mess around with multiple backup discs. I managed to just fit everything that I needed. I didn’t backup my desktop because the videos there will be transferred to an external drive later. I also didn’t bother backing up my music folder because I didn’t need the podcasts and iTunes libraries that were there because I wouldn’t use or listen to anything there ever again. If something did happen to my data, it would be easy enough for me to start fresh. After backing up, I closed the disc and labeled it with a marker and filed it in my Disc Case for archive purposes.

I then burnt music to disc and them ripped music into my iTunes Library. That was a simple task. I then decided that I would backup my iTunes Music Library because at times, I have heard clicking coming from my external music drive and also Windows Vista doesn’t spin down the disc when I eject it from the computer so I have to unplug it in a special way. If I just yank the USB cord from the computer, the drive makes an awful sound, and it could one day possibly destroy the drive somehow. For me to safely remove it from the computer, I have to pull the cord half out to spin down the drive, then I can take it all the way out without it making the horrible sound. It took a bit over 30 minutes and 3 DVDs to backup my iTunes Library, which was a little over 10GB.

Backing up my files on my computer will help me sleep easy and in the event on my computer fully dying, I won’t have to worry as much about the data I have lost. Also if my music drive dies, I have a backup which will contain most, if not all of my music and recovering my library in the event of a failure won’t be that painful. Using iTunes to backup my music was simple, I love how it just does it. I wish backing up what I want with Windows was as simple as that, without requiring third-party software.

After hearing an Audible advertisement on This Week In Tech over and over again, as well as hearing all the good things they have to say about them, I finally decided to give it a try. What the heck, I had nothing to lose anyway. So I went to the Audible TWiT link and signed up and got a free credit for a book. Signing up is a pretty simple process and requires a credit card but they don’t charge you for the 14 day free trial, and you can cancel before that period is up and not get billed. I had a prepaid card that I used so there was no chance of them taking more money that was on the card, which happened to be about 2 bucks anyway.

I knew which book I wanted to get. Paul Thorrott talked about it during the Windows Weekly Audible ad and when I realized they had Darkly Dreaming Dexter, I thought it was about time to sign up and try out the service. The first season of the television series Dexter is based on this book so I thought it would be interesting to see the similarities and differences these two stories had.

After everything was set up, it was time for me to find the book. To my surprise, it wasn’t there. I knew it was there because I heard them talking about it on the podcast as well as hearing a sample they played on the show. I decided to log out and browser the library without it knowing any of my details. To my surprise, it was there, along with the 2 other books in the series.

I copied the link, logged back in and pasted the link in. They are not allowed to sell this title in my geographical location. That sucks. I signed up to get that book and now I have a credit that I want to spend on a title that I want, and it happened to be that one. I went into my details and edited my address to one in the US and then I was fine to get the book. It was added to my cart and then purchased with the free credit I had.

Now you have to download special Audible software to download, but it also happens to put it in your music library, in Windows Media Player or iTunes. That is good because I want my audiobook in iTunes so I can hear it on my iPod. After downloading the software and setting it up, which was a simple process, I started downloading the audiobook.

The download was about 200MB so it shouldn’t take too long to download. Boy was I wrong. The download was slow as! I had to leave my laptop on overnight just to download it. If I was able to downloading it myself using my own download manager, I could have had that in less than quarter of an hour, not seven or so hours. The software is horrible and a waste of time. I would rather download it myself and import it into my media player myself. I don’t get why they force the crappy software onto me, there is no reason for it.

After all that nonsense I finally had the audiobook on my computer, although it did import to the wrong iTunes library (story about why I have 2 iTunes libraries one for another day.) Anyway, I easily sorted that out and I could finally listen to my audiobook on my iPod. One of the weird things is that the chapters on the iPod are random, they are not the same as the chapters on the audiobook. This generally shouldn’t be a problem for someone listening to the book from start to finish, even if you you do get out of the book, you can always resume from the place your last stopped.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the book, and the quality of it. I would definitely consider purchasing the other book from audible even if I am not to happy about suing the software they force you to install. After all the griff graff, for anyone else you is considering giving Audible a try, I would tell them to definitely do it. Although if you live outside the US, make sure you set your country to the US and also everyone should use the TWiT promo site so you can get your free book.

One of the podcasts I listen to daily (well Tuesday to Saturday) is Cnets Buzz Out Loud podcast. I have been listening for about a year now and in that time, my favourite host, Veronica Belmont has left, and the show has become dull, we at least in my opinion. For this reason, I have unsubscribed from the podcast.

There were other factors that also influenced my decision for example news that I am not interested in and/or news that I have already seen on half a dozen websites and end up hearing on another (or a few other) podcasts I currently listen to. I am interested in mainly technology news, which is what BOL mainly consists of, but before I get to download and listen to the podcast, I have already read most of the news, especially the big announcements, either on Digg or in my RSS reader. I don’t really need to hear it again in a podcast, even though if it is big enough, I will hear it on next weeks TWiT or other podcast on their network.

So I have unsubscribed from their podcast and now have about 40 minutes extra each day, or 200 minutes a week, to listen and watch the current media I download. I couldn’t think of any good reason to keep downloading it everyday and listening to it. The past few months, I haven’t really been listening to what they have been saying and generally zone out or use it as background sound while I am on the computer. Oh well, I won’t miss it that much, I still have my other podcasts to listen to and watch.

Yesterday was the day that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, made his yearly MacWorld Keynote about his consumer products. Last year at this event, he announced the revolutionary iPhone, a device that amazed everyone. This year, the amazement was back with the announcement of a new MacBook. I set my alarm to get up in time to get live updates of the goings on in the keynote, but I managed to sleep through my alarm but woke myself up just in time to see the announcement of the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air, a ultra-slim notebook computer that weights under 1.4kg and at its highest point is under a measly 2cm. It is amazing how slim it is, but what is even more amazing, it all the functionality and power they have put in the tiny package. But if you want one of these, you do pay a premium price of $2999 NZD for the base model. Sure, you can get more powerful computers for a lot less than that, but you won’t find a computer this thin, that still has all this functionality left in.

I do think the MacBook Air looks amazing and would love to own one of these, but in reality, a computer like this would not suit me, I would need something ore powerful. There will be many people in this same boat that don’t care that much about size and wouldn’t get a product with reduced performance than a bigger notebook computer. The computer is nice and would be great for people to carry around everywhere with them in their bag or something. This would suit someone with a more powerful computer and wouldn’t mind a small notebook without a bit of performance and wouldn’t mind something small and can afford the price for this.

Last year, Apple announced their entry onto your television. They admitted that they failed to deliver, but they are going to try again with Apple TV Take 2. Take 2 has a few new features such as viewing photos from .Mac and Flickr and a new interface, but the biggest change is the fact that it is now an independent product, it no longer needs a computer for you to take advantage of it. The store is now accessible from the Apple TV and you can buy music, movies, television shows as well as download podcasts right for the device. And all this, is available to current Apple TV owners in a software update available in a few weeks.

But that’s not all, there are now iTunes Rentals in the store. For a small price of $3.99 USD for new releases of a dollar less for library titles, it is an attractive option to rent movies. There is also HD movies for the Apple TV which cost $1 more and are around 4GB in size for a full, 720p resolution movie. This is a great way of getting movies right when you want to see them, at nice HD resolutions. When you rent the movie, you have 30 days to start watching it, and from when you push play, you have 24 hours to watch the movie, you can also watch the movie as many times as you want in that 24 hours.

I think it is good of Apple to give people the Take 2 software for free and not make a new product. I also hope that they have a huge success with the rentals, because I do think it is a great way to rent movies. I live in New Zealand so the iTunes rental stuff won’t be here for a long while, but when it does come here, it would be a great way for me and my family to get movies, much easier to get movies when we want them and not have to pick them up from a video shop. I do hope that they lower the delay from the DVD release and the iTunes rental release so they can compete with the video rental stores. If I want to see a movie when it comes out on DVD, if I can borrow it cheaper then the video shop, but if it is not there and I really want to see it, I will make that trip to the video shop to watch it now, not in 30 or so days. It is a brilliant start and I hope they roll it out internationally as soon as possible.

Those two big announcements were amazing, but the thing that interests me the most was the thing that was under-looked by everyone. The hype of the other announcements overshadowed this, but then again this isn’t anything evolutionary or really anything to be excited about. The product I am talking about is Time Capsule. Basically, all Time Capsule is, is an Airport Express with a hard drive in it. The product was mainly based around the wirelessness of the MacBook Air and the other MacBooks, but also the amazing backup feature in Leopard, Time Machine.

Time Capsule is nice because you get the benefits of the Airport Extreme, with gigabit ethernet and 802.11n, and on top of that, you get Network Attached Storage, with either 500GB or 1TB of storage. At this point, this is the only way to backup using Time Machine to a network drive and makes the backup process just that much more easier, convenient and completely automatic. You are no longer required to plug in a hard drive into a USB port.The price of the product is very competitive and not that expensive, you are not paying much more for having all these features put into one easy package.

There was another thing that was announced, which are new features of the iPhone and iPod touch. They were cool and make me want them, but they are irrelevant to me and I don’t really have much to say on them. I later watched the keynote video and I was interested right through to the end, well except for the performance at the end. Steve’s keynote speeches are always interesting and amazing, even though there weren’t many things that were so innovative that it blew me away. I’m waiting to see refreshes for the two older MacBooks which I am sure we will see sometime during the first half of 2008. I can’t wait for the next Apple Event and a bunch of new announcements.

Today is the day Diggnation come out for members. Usually on this day, I would download Xvid Diggnation from a mirror. Unfortunately the mirror I use isn’t mirroring this week and I cannot find an alternative so I can get Diggnation early. This makes me uneasy because I am missing out and it has also ruined my Saturday Schedule.

Generally how it goes is on Saturday, I download Diggnation early in Xvid format to watch at night time. Then the next day, Sunday, I download the Quicktime HD H.264 and watch it at night then again too. This has been my weekend schedule for the past… 3 weeks now (I think) and I do not like my schedule being disrupted.

I am also thinking about downloading Diggnation a 3rd time each week, once in iTunes so I can put it on my iPod Classic when I get it. I’m not sure if it is worth it though. I wish I could just throw the Quicktime HD or Xvid onto it but iPods don’t support it. I vote for DivX/XviD support in Apple products!!!

I found this Quiz on someones Last.FM journal so I decided to do it and post it here. I have my reasons for the small library, quantity of plays and why most of the music in my library is shit. First, i have just recently re-riped all the music to a new drive and its all my sisters music. Also FYI, I have no pirated albums. Here we go!

Total Playtime: 3 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes, 23 seconds
Total Disc Space: 8.91 GB
Total Songs: 1318
Total Albums: 95
Total Artists: 100

Sort by Song Title; What are the first and last songs?
First: 1 Thing - Amerie
Last: Your Star - Evanescence

Sort by Artist; what are the first and last artists?
First: 1 Giant Leap
Last: Zed

Sort by Time; what are the first and last songs?
Shortest: Foreword - Linkin Park : 0:13
Longest: All For You - Goodnight Nurse : 15:10

Sort by Album; what are the first and last albums?
First: #1’s - Destiny’s Child
Last: What To Do With Daylight - Brooke Fraser

Top 5 Played Songs:
1. Somewhere I Belong - Linkin Park : 8 times
2. Faint - Linkin Park : 8 times
3. Numb - Linkin Park : 8 times
4. When You Were Young - The Killers : 7 times
5. What I’ve Done - Linkin Park : 7 times

Find “love”, how many songs come up?: 74
Find “sex”, how many songs come up?: 3
Find “death”, how many songs come up?: 19
Find “hate”, how many songs come up?: 4
Find “wish”, how many songs come up?: 1
Find “want”, how many songs come up?: 14
Find “need”, how many songs come up?: 11
Find “the”, how many songs come up?: 530
Find “and”, how many songs come up?: 213

Now it’s your turn. Reblog this entry and change the results for your own music library. Comment/Pingback here when you have done it.

As you should all know, Apple has dropped NBC Shows on iTunes because NBC wanted to increase the cost to $4.99 per episode. Thats an insane $100 plus for a whole season. You can get the DVDs after the season has aired for a quarter the price of that or get it on TV and only have to pay the provider subscription. This is a stupid move and can only lead to a loss for NBC.

In fair honesty, why not pirate it. You get a higher quality than iTunes provides, it’s incredibly cheap to download and you have the freedom to watch it where you want. I admit to downloading TV shows and I don’t think its doing any harm. I don’t have time to watch TV so I end up downloading my shows and watching it before it airs in New Zealand. I also get the freedom to watch a show when I want to watch it and on what device. I am not restricted in any way (except for the speeds I can download at.)

As a Digg user said, “In other news, every BitTorrent site in the world has announced that they’ll still be carrying NBC shows. Enjoy the revenue drop you greedy shits.” No one could have said it any better than that.