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The way that we use iTunes and iPods (or other MP3 players, as I’m told such things exist) has totally changed the way we listen to music. I would consider myself a ‘power user’ where playlists are concerned and try to rate all my songs and am very careful with genres, groupings etc. I really go the extra mile (like Andy B does), for example:

• A playlist of all unrated songs, so I can find ones that I have still to rate
• All songs - that’s to say everything that is not audio book, iTrip transmission signal, podcast or hour-long mix
• Stuff I should play more regularly - high rated songs that have not been played in last couple of months
• Never played - well, like it says on the tin …

I could go on and on (and sometimes I do). Actually, there is something else I’d like to do: be able to create a playlist that is derived from another playlist (e.g. play all 4* songs that are contained in the ‘live music’ playlist) or, for super-power-user stuff, be able to hand-craft the query, SQL style, rather than rely on the interface provided.

Despite all this, I have a problem - I’m missing music.

In the never-ending urge to cram iTunes (and hence my iPod) full of music I find that I put a few albums on at a time, they don’t get added to a playlist and it takes a while for me to get around to rating them - I never rate on early listens, got to get to know the tracks a bit first. So these tracks don’t end up on the rated playlists and because I shuffle my songs for variety, I end up losing these new albums in a black hole. I’ve tried creating manual playlists for recently added stuff, but I prefer the smart playlists option as it keeps things tidier. Ideally, what I need is an option to select the ‘last 80 songs added’ or something like that, not ’songs added in the last month’ because they’ll soon slip off the radar.

So I’ve come up with a revolutionary new way of using my iPod that I’m going to share with you here. And here’s how it’s done:

1. Select Music
2. Select Albums
3. Select first album on list
4. Listen through in entirety
5. Repeat process, moving on one album at a time

Revolutionary? Well, not at all, but it feels like it. Heck, I still have the songs shuffled, but I’m getting to hear songs and albums that have been hiding in the dark recesses of my iPod for too long. I’m re-familiarising myself with all my music and discovering tracks that I haven’t heard for a long time; I’m also re-evaluating entire albums - do they really need to be on there after all?

What have you done to change the way you listen to your music collection recently?

The book heads for the printing press the end of next week. Yeehaw!

Update: the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon.com (thanks for pointing that out, Craig).

In the meantime, here’s what the book might look like if you just happened to have the world’s shiniest table to stand it up on:

Well, how many accessibility-related presentations have you seen online or in the real world that started with the quote from Tim "inventor of the World Wide Web" Berners-Lee:

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

Bored of it? I know I am. So, thanks to Bruce and Patrick for coming up with some alternatives. I suspect that there may have been beer involved when they came up with this idea. Who’s gonna use this one in their next accessibility presentation?

Why would blind people be using a computer anyway?

To anyone who left a comment here and wondered why I, with my distinct lack of commentors, would not deem it sensible to allow yours though. I am sorry, too, that I am such a dumbass not to realise why the reason that no-one commented was *not* because no-one had commented, but rather that I’d never discovered the ‘Comment Moderation’ area in Wordpress.

232 comments awaiting moderation.

Eeek!

I really should look around Wordpress.

And I really should get around to redesigning this flaming personal site of mine instead of using this off-the-shelf design.

This is an experiment to see if it’s possible to selectively print sections of a large document usings CSS print styles after the page has loaded without affecting the on-screen display.

Why might you use this? Well, the inspiration came from a page of interest rates from banking and savings products. Customers have often complained that the interest rates were split up on different sections - they wanted everything in one page. But what about those people who only want to print out the section that relates to them? One solution is to build the page using include files with separate printer-friendly pages that are linked to. This solution uses DOM scripting to dynamically apply print CSS styles depending on the link that has been clicked on - if the user clicks on ‘print this section’, all other sections are set to display none for print.

This technique could be use in

• FAQs
• Product information pages
• … well, wherever you feel it has value

This has been tested and works in

• Windows
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Netscape 6.2
  • Netscape 8
  • Opera 7.0
  • Opera 8.5
  • IE 6
• Mac
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Camino 1.0
  • Opera 7.54

Notes:

The ‘print this section’ links are dynamically inserted for any section that is marked with the class name of section and are hidden using print CSS. No JavaScript, no see the links!

I have had to double up on the attribute setters in the script so that IE didn’t get upset. It’s not perfect, but it works and isn’t really nasty. No, honestly, it isn’t ;-)

el[i].setAttribute("className","section print");
el[i].setAttribute("class","section print");

View the Example Here »

And if you like what you see, why not digg it for me? Thanks

Copy the Code Here

Get the JavaScript here and the HTML here

Like a lot of people, I felt like I should do a post-SXSW round-up, but guess what? I already did it! No ‘post’ here - it was all done at the time (which was good from the point of view of immediacy, but was a pain to keep on top of at the time, I tells yer).

My posts from the four days’ events are available here (on Sitepoint):

• SXSW—First day roundup
• SXSW—Day two, still going strong
• SXSW Day three—Waiting for the bubble to burst?
• SXSW 2006—It’s a wrap!

So there I was having a surf from Malarkey’s site to Brothercake, all techy stuff and what have you when I stumbled upon Brothercake’s (aka James’) secret past - that being that he used to make music. It prompted me to dig out some of my old tracks and having listened to them I felt compelled to put them up here and share them, warts and all. Much the same as James, these are housey/rave tracks that I put together back in the early 1990s, pre-Mac, pre-Garage Band. Basically a few samplers and an Atari ST. So, for any old ravers out there, here’s some good old fashioned ravey shit to take you back to those dancing-in-muddy-fields-till-the-early-hours for you. And yes, it really does sound very 1992 (all happy pianos and stuff!)

Note - they were all recorded back off old C90 master tapes, so it’s not CD quality. Format is AAC (iTunes-friendly) Enjoy!

• Bubbles (4.8mb)
• Feel the Bass (4.6mb)
• Storm (4.9mb)
• I Know I Can Make It (4.4mb)
• Bass on you (5.4mb)
• Spring in my step (5.3mb)
• Itchy & Scratchy (3.6mb) (more like an old Miami Bass/Electro thing)

Ever the apologist, here I am again justifying lack of activity on this site (and some others) over the last year or two (the list of other time-suckers can be found here). What’s the justification this time? Well, it’s a good one.

While travelling around the globe a couple of years ago, I started doing some technical editing for Sitepoint. It was a great way to earn a bit of money to pay my way while not getting in the way of moving from place to place - no bar work or fruit-picking for me! Much of this editing work was carried out in the back of my van in the late hours while my wife-to-be snoozed. When I returned to UK after travelling, I was approached about some more potential writing work. Despite the fact that I knew I had an extremely busy year ahead of me, somehow I felt brave enough to take it on. Over seven months, while dealing with two house sales, buying a new house and making tentative wedding plans, I spent many evenings working on this project. Today, for the first time, I saw the evidence that it was finally coming to fruition - Sitepoint have added the book to their ‘coming soon’ section.

So, what’s the book about?

At this point, it might be worth re-reading this post about the poor state of many beginner web design books on the market. The reason for my trip to the book shops was to really get a feel for what’s out there and to make sure that I was on track with what I was writing. I couldn’t have been happier at how bad it was - it made me realise that what I had started writing for Sitepoint was much needed and much overdue.

Who is this book aimed at?

Well, chances are it’s not aimed at you. As much as I’d like to say it’s a cutting edge book about CSS tricks that you and I love to peruse, or an accessibility book with a slightly different angle than those currently out there, it’s neither. This is what it is:

• It’s a book that you can give to your web newbie mother/sister/auntie
• It doesn’t presume any foreknowledge of HTML or ownership of any expensive/fancy web authoring software (nor does it suggest going out and buying any)
• While it’s for beginners, it’s not going to call anyone a dummy ;-)
• It’s a web design book that refuses to teach bad, outdated practices as a way of getting eye-catching results more quickly than the ‘proper’ method. For example, the first time you will see page layout covered is with CSS in chapter 4. Tables are covered - but in a chapter about managing data in tables, just where they should be .

In short, it’s a book that aims to teach complete beginners how to build web sites that conform to web standards such that they won’t need to unlearn bad practices at a later date, or even know that those bad practices exist.

Well, I’ve talked it up so much, about time I provided a link:

Build Your First Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS

Publication date is March/April (I believe the latter ismore likely). If you think you know someone that this could be of benefit to, please do add your name to the notification list (by joining the Sitepoint Book Buyers’ Club). I am looking forward to seeing the finished result … and I really do wonder what bizarre and completely off-topic picture this book will have on the cover!