Yay! We fixed the photo gallery!…Sort of.

The photo gallery hasn’t been updated for a long time so we added quite a few new photos, as well as some of Callyn’s drawings and artsy photos. I’m hoping to make it easier for others to upload photos and things so it happens more frequently :p

Also cool, the photo gallery has been threaded with a neat javascript trick called highslide. Navigating the photos is easier and flashier than before. Click on a photo thumbnail to see what I mean. Lemme know what you think!

A complete site redesign will happen when we get around to it, perhaps after school is over. Also, minor site updates coming later this month. I finally figured out how to get rid of the splash page, so shut up Justin.

If you want to check out a blog by a friend of mine, Nebetsu’s Yiddish Nebbish. (aka the blog of Steven Whitten-Dawson) is a pretty interesting thing to watch.

So I’ve began to get a little impatient lately with iTunes. Too many problems are coming up with it that makes it more trouble than it seems to be worth.

It all started with problems downloading podcasts. For no reason, I started to get “file not found” errors when I try to play a podcast. So lemme get this straight: iTunes automatically downloads podcasts for me…but if it fails its up to me to fix it? I must manually go to the iTunes store, search for the podcast, locate the episode I’m missing and download it? That’s a little counter-intuitive is it not?

Of course, iTunes customer support could help me escape from this annoying situation, right? Let me summarize my customer support experience using real world examples:

• Hi, my key won’t fit in the keyhole on the door. Can I have a different key?
• Hi, just try turning the knob and pushing on the door. It should open.
• Hi, I don’t think you understand what I meant. The key is broken. I cannot open the door unless I can unlock it. Please help me get a new key or fix the lock.
• Hi, it is unfortunate that you cannot follow our instructions. We feel for you. Tear.

Honestly, that’s what the customer support was like it was absolutely rediculous.

Another problem I have with iTunes is the ipod syncing, which is ironic cause that’s why I’ve been using iTunes for this long. My iPod is set to sync to new episodes of podcasts, meaning that after you listen to a podcast episode it deletes the episode off the ipod the next time you sync it. So let’s say you have an ipod full of songs and podcasts. Let’s say you listen to 5 podcasts over the course of a couple days and iTunes downloads 5 podcasts of the same size. When you plug in the iPod to the computer, you expect that it will delete those 5 podcasts you listened to and replace it with 5 other podcasts, correct? AM I INSANE IN ASSUMING THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD WORK?

But no. iTunes tries to move new podcasts to your ipod before removing the old ones. iTunes gives you a placebo message box saying “You don’t have enough space to sync everything to your iPod. Do you want to turn off podcast syncing for this iPod?” If you click no, it stops syncing and doesn’t delete the played podcasts off your iPod. If you click yes, then it ignores your request and still stops syncing.

You can’t remove podcasts manually off your ipod either, which means you have to turn off either music or podcast syncing on your ipod, sync it (so it will delete all podcasts or music) and then turn the syncing back on (and it will move everything it just deleted back on the ipod). Seriously, what possessed the programmers to make it work this way? The rest of us weren’t born and raised in WTFville.

One thing I’ve learned from switching to Windows is if a program doesn’t work for you, find an alternative. And I did. A simple google search wielded me this article and I plan to look for an alternative. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment. Thank you and goodnight.