So I felt like making a comment. I’ve finally noticed that the rest of the family is getting into this whole ‘blagging’ thing also. Of course, my dad’s had one for years, but he never did anything for it until recently when my sister got one also. Seems they’re finally getting out there..finally.

Anyhow, I’ve nothing new to report except that my phone bugged out a few days ago. If you may remember I have an LG Voyager. And it’s from Verizon, so all the software including music and things is all Verizon proprietary. This is NOT a good thing, as people have complained about VZNavigator (Verizon’s GPS software). Mostly they’ll complain about things like, “They disabled the built-in GPS so you’d be forced to pay for their OWN software which is super-horrible quality compared to EVERYTHING else. Well, true to the facts, I’m here to report that Verizon’s music player “VCast” is no better.

Reasons I hate VCast:

1. The so-called ‘required’ installation of Rhapsody to make it work to full capacity (although I got it to work perfectly with Winamp). I’ve had almost maulware-like performance from Rhapsody/Real Player in the past and won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.
2. Meta tag readability is extremely limited. There is absolutely no way to navigate the main menu where everything is laid out according to artist, album, genre, title and whatever else. Actually, my big hang-up is that they’ve split out each of these items into subsequent sub-menus. If you want to search on artist, they’ll list everything in alphabetical order to artist and split each of those items into album categories. Same with album. If you go into one album, then they’ll recategorize/group songs there with the artist. This is especially bad when you have things like compilations such as my music history class 6-cd set where each track is by a different composer in a different time period. Of course, I can’t just say “Various artists” in the album artist tag and then expect the player to sort by THAT instead of regular artist. They ONLY scan the track, album, artist, title and genre. That’s IT. No album artist (kills the compilation ability) and nothing else.
3. Menus change with EVERY screen. If you go into the album sub-menu of the artist listing, the menu is different than that of the song submenu of the album submenu of the artist listing. Figure.
4. The playlist capability (which seems to be my only real workable solution to the compilation problem) is horrible. To build a playlist in-program, you must first create the playlist and then go into a track listing of ALL songs (unsorted by album) and select each one and then OK out. Or you can go into a track listing and Menu/Add to Playlist/Select Playlist. This is a one-at-a-time deal though.
5. Meta-editing within Winamp is impossible for songs already on the phone.
6. Reset and Rescan will erase playlists.

Solutions to the VCast Problems:

1. Rhapsody is bad – Work with Winamp. I tried iTunes, but I couldn’t find the menu item to pull in non-iPod devices. Also iTunes is very processor heavy so I only like using it for podcasts.
2. Menus don’t read enough meta-data and are unnavigable – Hope LG releases their app-store and has a better player someday.
3. Menus change with every screen – See #2
4. Playlist creation – Winamp will work just fine. Just use their Media Library Playlist tool. Of course, Winamp for some reason adds a .pl extension to the playlist NAME which will show up in the player, but it’s a small price to pay for quick creation of them.
5. The only solution I’ve found (which still doesn’t work) is to delete the selected songs off of the phone, edit the originals in Winamp and re-copy them over. But don’t expect it to work. I had three or four songs that were missing information (showed up as ‘Unknown Album’ and such) and when I tried this, they STILL showed up as Unknown Album. Figure that out.
   Don’t do a reset. Ever.
6. Okay. I’m done ranting. I think. Besides, there are better things to talk about than Verizon’s software problems. It’s like getting Linux and Windows together to argue about…stuff. Everything. They’ll argue about ANYTHING.

Anything else I need to mention? Nah. We got snowed in for a day which messed up my class schedule, but was really fun because we didn’t go out the entire day. And yesterday I finally got to the library to look for Dr. Who videos. Now DON’T get me started on BBC and their regional restrictions. No no no..I won’t say how much I hate that, because I complained enough already. Besides, I found a video of the Easter Special 2009 and I’m REALLY excited!! Of course, why would I tell anybody where it is? Since BBC’s big on cracking down on non-regional copying (and since some BU citizens are nice enough to post the videos on other sites ‘for those living outside the Great Britain area’ I won’t rat on them. I’m all for them. We have things like Mr. Bean and OLD Dr. Who on Channel 6 (or we did up until the big Digital TV schism), so why not the NEW Dr. Who? It’s much cooler anyway.

Speaking of Dr. Who, I did research yesterday and it said that they didn’t have an official 2009 season, like they were expecting. Instead they did (or will do) 3 David Tennant specials before 2010 when they’ll switch over to the….what was it? Chris Smith? Mike Smith? Whatever his name is. The one new kid – Doctor 11 in 2010. The three specials of 2009 are Easter (already out), Nov 11 and Dec 25. Of course, I did NOT see the Christmas 2008 special, and I was really disappointed. But I saw the first half of the Easter 2009 special and it’s not yet November 11, so I’m almost fully up-to-date. And I’m really really excited, because when Gregory Smith or whatever his name is takes over as Doctor 11, I’m planning on bowing out maybe. I can’t stand TOO young of a Doctor. Well, except that they have his daughter coming back (the one created by his hand in 2008). And THAT was a really cool idea.

Am I done yet, you’re asking. Well, I suppose. Besides, I just heard something about a hair-cut. Oh boy. And I got one like three weeks ago and hardly have any to grow back. Besides, it’s winter and the more you have, the warmer your head, right?

So I’m done. Take care!!