The Hopp Stop

Daring Fireball has a good overview of yesterday’s Apple event, in which they updated the nano and touch and introed iTunes 8 (not to mention previewed an iPhone update promised on Friday–hopefully this is the update that will turn me back into “Apple fanboy” instead of “disgruntled Apple fanboy”).

Regarding the new iTunes release, there are a lot of nice touches that make it easier and more enjoyable to manage a large media library. For example, you can now manage settings for podcasts on a per-podcast basis. Why would anyone want to do that, you may ask? Well, I would like to have all of my podcasts but one set to delete a podcast “episode” after I listen to it, with the one exception being NPR All Songs Considered concert podcasts–I’m working my way through converting the better of those into individual MP3s, so I want to hang on to those podcasts even after i listen to them. Prior to iTunes 8, you didn’t have the granularity available to make such an exception. Thanks to this iLounge article on becoming an instant iTunes expert, I learned about the new podcast setting capability, as well as other tweaks.

One downside to iTunes 8 is that it turns on the little iTunes store arrows next to each song, artist and album in your library. Clicking on an arrow takes you to the relevant iTunes store page. Beyond the fact that I don’t buy much media from the iTunes store, I dislike the visual clutter and wasted space with these arrows and so have turned them off via Preferences. Well, you can’t do that anymore–Apple took away the choice. However, an enterprising MacFixIt reader shared a workaround (for Mac OS X at least) that lets you kill them off. Check it out here. I’m back to being arrow-free.

The Kills’ album that came out earlier this year is good stuff. Gay-Lynn and I are digging it right now.

In another vein, I particularly enjoyed this week’s NPR All Songs Considered blog. If you aren’t listening to the podcast regularly, head here to check it out. There’s some great back-and-forth about the good and the bad of ’80s music, with the real fun coming when they talk about the bad.

I’ve got my pre-order in for Rock Band 2, slated to arrive on September 17. I chose to just get the game this time, since I’ve already got the full instrument set. Supposedly the new version of the guitar and drums are big upgrades, but I’ll wait and see what the reviews have to say before dropping the dinero for that. Also, the instrument bundle isn’t out until mid-October.

The full tracklist can be found here. Highlights for me:

• Modest Mouse, “Float On.” Awesome! I can only hope that some more Mouse will come via downloadable content. And how about some more New Pornos? The one tune included in Rock Band 1 is one of my least favorite New Pornos tracks.
• Bon Jovi, “Living on a Prayer.” There hasn’t been enough cheese rock in these music games. How awesome would it be to have some Warrant, Poison or Motley Crue? Hopefully they’ll open the floodgates on this genre. See also the Journey tune, although that hair metal is a few years before my time.
• Motorhead, “Ace of Spades.” A classic. I think they used this in the scene in Grosse Pointe Blank where Cusack has a shoot-out in the convenience mart that stands on the site of his childhood home.
• Interpol, “PDA.”
• Lit, “My Own Worst Enemy.” A guilty pleasure of mine from my college years. “The car is in the front yard, I’m sleeping with my clothes on…”

Fan favorites among the readers? Let me know in the comments.

I-280 connecting SF and the Valley used to be a free-speed zone, with very little enforcement from the CHP. This started changing in 2007, to the point where it seems like there are more cops on 280 than on 101. It really takes a lot out of driving on my favorite freeway.

Last week, I saw a CHP car cop shooting people with what was likely a laser gun, with a bike cop sitting next to him, waiting for the green light to go catch speeders. Today, there were 3 bike cops out, although no sign of any car cops. Bummer.