Crock-Town: deskstation

Showing posts with label deskstation. Show all posts

Friday, January 23, 2009

A Little ZEN to go with you iTunes GENIUS

This morning on the treadmill, I was noting that I listen (pretty much every day) to Ah-Ha's, "Take on Me," in its entirety, simply because I am not warmed up enough mentally or physically to change or filter the music. [I suppose one day I will be shuffling toothless around with a walker singing the lyrics to this song with 100% accuracy.]

Anyway, iTunes has built in 3 varieties of "Shuffle By," but I need more.

Thus, I coined, "Zen Playlists"... every time you listen to a song within one of these playlists (filtered by play date), that song no longer meets the playlist criteria, and is removed from the list:

You can go back as far as you like in the past, depending on how your files are tagged, and you can go up to the prior year.

--CD

If you dig this kind of thing, see http://internet-treadmill-workstation.blogspot.com/.

Monday, December 08, 2008

the case for DVR, and why TiVo has the best UI

Protecting kids (and adults) from Commercial Advertisements on television is a life molding choice.

To illustrate, when I recently visited with family, my niece was telling us to be quiet during the commercials, telling us why she liked the commercial... and she knew what happened at the end.

At this point in my life, being a 8+ year DVR user, I resent having to watch any television commercial. Luckily, with TiVo, I do not have to.

Why do I resent the advertisements? Because they are sinister…. drilling into my conscious and subconscious mind what I should like/dislike, covet, or purchase;

Implying a new duster/mop/floor cleanser will save my marriage;

Telling me a new car will make me feel like an 18 year old man again.

Moreover, these are the same strategies of repetition that the Bush administration used to drill words into our minds like "WMD," "No Child Left Behind," and others. In fact, all good political strategists use these techniques.

And guess what? So does commercial television advertising. This is about as close to evil as you can get.

It takes away one's creativity and freedom of choice and signs you up to be a rat-race consumer member.

As it happens, that is why I choose TiVo as part of my internet desk station, where I can email and excercise simultaneously, or take a break and watch my

Monday, June 30, 2008

Internet Treadmill Workstation Review, Summary: Product Only

[Note, 12/8/2008: due to popular demand, all internet treadmill walk-station/work-station/desk-station posts have been moved the the following blog, http://internet-treadmill-workstation.blogspot.com/. ]

[added 2008.09.26: The Internet Treadmill Workstation, Wired Home Gym, and more generally the challenge of surviving and staying healthy as an information technology professional/knowledge worker have all generated enough interest to merit splitting this topic off onto another blog, which can be found at http://internet-treadmill-workstation.blogspot.com. Drop by. It might save your life.]

# # #
Hello there.

My name is Crockett Dunn.

I am an over-full-time IT business owner, trying to survive (I mean that quite literally- trying to survive physically- spare my body) in a post-information-revolution world, rather than die young of complications from "sitting on my arse all day syndrome."

In case we haven't met, you might not realize that brevity is not one of my strongest points (as illustrated by the copious number of postings about the Internet Treadmill Workstation (originally inspired by the guitar treadmill station) + Total Internet Home Gym Solution I have refined to perfection over the past several years.)

Note that although these are, raw, uncommented simple product links, these are far from arbitrary. This is the best of the best-of-breed products, derived from years of practice and working with a licensed physical therapist.

I have a graveyard of burnt treadmills, inadequate laptops, too-little Smart phones, key-missing-keyboards, torn mouse cables, and so on. The following products have passed the test.

fitenesss first:

Smooth Fitness 9.45ST treadmill with 60" Deck, Hydra Suspension and Motion Control