neurological dryer lint

in a quest to jack up my levels of laziness to colossal new heights, i went on a hunt today for an easier way to tag my itunes library with album art.

a side note... i've long maintained a long-standing aversion to 'music library' apps that manage your stuff for you (every library app i've ever used has been a poor substitute for even my weak organizational skills - most have simply been eye candy with a cheap sort-by-letter algorithm)... but if i'm going to be more interactive with my ipod - previously i fired it up in itunes once every few months to add some new music in batch, but now i'm going to move video/podcasts on much more frequently... so i finally put the time in to sift through the wreckage of incomplete ID3 tags and duplicate songs to make it semi-organized.

part of that was adding the aforementioned album art. i'm now in the G's. i knew there had to be an easier way than my search, cut & paste from amazon, to photoshop to resize, and then into itunes method.

jackpot! thanks to lifehacker (quickly becoming one of my favorite daily blog reads) i found the itunes art importer, a handy little app that searches amazon for the songs you have highlighted in itunes, grabs an image, and applies it to the songs with one click. hotness! also thanks to lifehacker i found that itunes has a built-in de-dupe feature (edit -> show duplicate songs).

tonight's stop on what has been deemed simon's barbeque tour did not actually feature simon tonight, but nevertheless we hit up walt's bbq on colerain ave. it was a tiny little joint, barely enough parking for us and our group of eleven filled half the place. the verdict - great sauce, tender chicken, didn't try the ribs, bland cornbread, and some hella-good mac and cheese. tasted like there was ricotta in that mother.

and we also lined up an ad-hoc trip to chicago with darren and emily glass, which should suit our enormous collective need for a "frickin break" and a chance to get out of town. and apparently for all of us (read: emily and renee) to go to ikea, while darren and i, well, avoid shopping.

picked up playing the angel, the recent depeche mode project. never one to pursue this band with vigor, its recent deluge of playtime on smallville got me thinking, hey, these guys were alright back in the day... maybe it works? and it does - while it's goofy and monotonous through much of the disc, if you like (or ever liked) this band, it's worth a listen. moody, with beats that scream "not too shabby", as well as writing that seems thoughtful on the surface but ends up being fairly hollow. a good throwback.

oh, and i'm finally reading anansi boys. neil gaiman is a danged genius. this is the funniest thing i've picked up in a while. i can't wait to talk about it when i'm done. and i also just realized i've been thinking of it as 'anasazi boys' even though that's totally not the title. woo, score one for literacy.