Posts in category "Random"

The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist

If you’re like me, you nev­er lis­ten to the radio because you’re very par­tic­u­lar about the music you hear. Thankfully, this is the age of the iPod, when some­one can car­ry their entire music library in their pock­et, and you don’t have to wor­ry about hear­ing a song you don’t like.

However, that does­n’t mean you’re always in the mood for cer­tain songs. And if you have lots of sin­gle songs or old clas­sics in your music col­lec­tion, lis­ten­ing to them means you have to search for them. Just turn­ing on the shuf­fle option in iTunes does­n’t cut it, because it’s a lit­tle too ran­dom; a song will be cho­sen regard­less of whether you just heard it an hour ago or a year ago, and regard­less of how much you like it.

really smart iTunes playlists

The solu­tion is a smart iTunes playlist: a playlist that will not only have a mix of new music and old clas­sics, it’ll adjust accord­ing to your tastes. That means you won’t need to inter­act in select­ing or skip­ping songs, and a song won’t play over and over again, unless you want it to.

Another advan­tage of a smart playlist is that you can put on some music quick­ly, with­out hav­ing to decide what you feel like. If you tend to get focused on projects for hours at a time, it’s nice to not have to con­stant­ly be choos­ing the music to play in the back­ground. And whether you’re tak­ing a 5‑minute walk to the gro­cery store, or a 5‑hour dri­ve out of town, a smart iTunes playlist will fill the time with music per­fect­ly.

Here’s how I do it.

Continue read­ing “The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist”…

You were supposed to be the rest of my life.

My hap­pi­ly ever after. My crunchy peanut but­ter soul mate.

I think of you every day, but it’s nev­er a con­scious act. More of a reflex in a con­tin­u­ous stream of thoughts: the cov­er of the album that’s play­ing, this tea is get­ting cold, maybe I’ll go out tomor­row, the way you looked the first time I saw you with your glass­es on, I need to buy floss, the humid­i­fi­er needs refill­ing…

It’s nev­er some­thing I can help. There are reminders of you in the colours of every sun­rise, in the cho­rus­es of my songs, in the back of my mind when I’m left to my own devices. You became a habit I nev­er want­ed to break.

I for­got to give you this one too. It was sup­posed to be us. We were sup­posed to own the sky, to be it’s chil­dren, danc­ing under clouds you’d lat­er paint. Sharing head­phones on a bus, me in blue cardi­gan, you with fab­u­lous hair. Walking to the gro­cery store on sum­mer nights; you’d cook, I’d do the dish­es. Catching up on each oth­ers days before drift­ing off to sleep. All the every­day stuff that would nev­er feel ordi­nary again if your hand was in mine.

It was­n’t sup­posed to hap­pen like this.

I still think of you.

And how bright your hair was when you were recall­ing the ter­ri­ble date you had last night. The guy would­n’t stop putting him­self down. “Someone’s inse­cure”, I said. You agreed. I only knew because I used to do the same thing (but I did­n’t tell you that).

You would­n’t stop bit­ing your low­er lip — how I want­ed to stop that fid­get with a kiss — and flip­ping that gold­en wave back over your head with clum­sy lit­tle fin­gers.

As wrong as we were for each oth­er, I still want­ed to give it a try. To see what it would be like to sing with you in your car, even if you thought lis­ten­ing to rock gave you an edge cause you were such a girly-girl. To find out if you could ever love me as much as you love your­self.

I nev­er asked you out cause I was too proud to make the first move. In this phase where I was tired of being the one to make the effort. Probably for the best. You’d nev­er believe that I avoid you as much as you me. Did you ever tell him why you don’t come around any­more?

I still think of you. Then again, I think about pret­ty much every­one who’s been in my life from time to time, in some capac­i­ty.

You’re the only one I hate think­ing of.

Jason + Amy Wedding Day

Filmed anoth­er love­ly wed­ding.

There were lots of fan­tas­tic lit­tle details, espe­cial­ly in the way peo­ple inter­act with their hands, but my favourite moment is when the pas­tor does a lit­tle tilt, mim­ic­k­ing the kiss between the new hus­band and wife.