My problem with shuffle is that I tend to listen to my iPod when i am on the move and want to listen to something upbeat. Probably about 60% of my music is not upbeat, so there's a lot of skipping. I do have a couple of playlists of more upbeat songs but I had to do them manually (and rarely think to update them), because I find the genres assigned are unreliable and all of one of my albums has uploaded with the bpm info included.

Though I've become a little obsessed with my unheard songs smart playlist and whittling that number down.

Recently I made a smart playlist of all my four-or-more star songs that I had yet to play this year. I think there was about 800. It was fun whittling that number down to zero over the course of a week....

eta: I've never messed with the BPM stuff. Seemed like way too much work, even for me. I did download a program that enabled you to calculate the BPM of a song by tapping out the beats on the spacebar, but I've never used it. It would be cool to be able to do smart playlists based on BPM, though....

If you buy something high-tech, shouldn't you be given the source-code, so you're not subject to the whims of the vendor? The UK thinks so, at least when it comes to figher planes.

The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets.

Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning.

"We do expect this technology transfer to take place. But if it does not take place we will not be able to purchase these aircraft," said Lord Drayson.

The problem stems from strict US guidelines on the transfer of technology to other countries. Under current rules any British requests for the use of US technology can take 20 days to go through, obviously limiting the usefulness of a jet strike force.

[link]

Floating LCD Clock eta: and [link]

This is the most stable levitating product out there we could find and even features an auto-rotate mechanism to spin objects clockwise, or counter- clockwise. A great desktop toy that will fulfill all your dreams of levitation AND space flight!

How does it work? It's simple. Just plug the base in, then grab the LCD clock and hold it between the top and bottom of the base at approximately the height and orientation shown in our images. You'll have to find the 'sweet spot', but it's easy to do with a little practice and the unit will beep and blink at you to guide you along the way. Once you are in the right range, the micro-processor controlled magnets will take over and you can let go. The shuttle works the same way, but can be a bit trickier to get to float. Make sure you look at our additional images to see the proper orientation.

Ya gotta check out the picture. File this one under "pointless, but incredibly cool."

Why is gmail constantly telling my that I need to delete my temporary internet files? I JUST deleted them not five minutes ago and I got the message again!

Yeah, I can see not wanting to have to call tech support every time your fighter jet freezes up.

Seemed like way too much work, even for me. I did download a program that enabled you to calculate the BPM of a song by tapping out the beats on the spacebar, but I've never used it.

Is that a Mac program? If so, can you let me know what it's called?

Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning.

Dude must've watched Canadian Bacon.

Is that a Mac program? If so, can you let me know what it's called?

Yeah, it's Mac. I downloaded it years ago, so I don't remember what it's called or where I got it. It's probably still on my iBook, so I'll look for it when I get home....

eta: I googled 'itunes bpm' and this was the first match (and came up multiple times) so I think this must have been what I downloaded: [link]

iTunes-BPM adds a simple floating window to iTunes that allows you to set the beats-per-minute value for the currently playing song by tapping along to the music.

Thanks. I don't do beat mixing when I deejay, but knowing bpm would be very useful for songs I use for couples dancing.