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Jessica Suarez

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Brooklyn, You Should Vote in Thursday's Local Primary

The Down-Ballot Races That Shape Your Borough

Brooklyn, You Should Vote in Thursday's Local Primary

tl;dr version at the bottom.

Thursday, 9/13 is the state and local primary here in New York. A lot of people I’ve seen or talked to, especially in post-OWS New York, think voting and elections (national elections, nevermind the local primary that no one ever votes in) are essentially meaningless, but I wanted to give you a few reasons why that’s not true, and why its important to go out and vote this Thursday.

Democratic politics work differently here in New York City. Election efforts revolve around the primaries, around picking among Democratic candidates, since competitive races with Republicans are rare. This also means that once you’re in office, it’s easy to get comfortable. That’s because many “elected” Democrats are essentially chosen by their predecessor in that office (their uncle, dad, or other person connected to their family). They only need to wait to get elected by the large voting blocs that have promised support to their family for decades and decades. Just look at the list of names of elected officials in your area of Brooklyn, and look at who held those positions before. It starts to look like a family reunion more than a political process.

You can imagine what kind of freedom that gives to an elected official here in Brooklyn. It’s the freedom to do nothing at all, or worse, as in the case of the party’s current boss, Vito Lopez, the freedom to screw up badly. Lopez has used government grant money to solidify his position in Brooklyn as far back as 1993. And this year he’s facing charges that he sexually harassed his staff members (and then paid them). Even so, he’ll probably get re-elected, or someone that Lopez hand-picked for the job will take over the Brooklyn machine.

Anyway, that’s the depressing stuff about local politics. Have I made you want to vote even less? Sorry about that. Here’s the good stuff: A couple years ago I met Lincoln Restler and the New Kings Democrats. He and this political group formed out of frustration with their own party — the corruption, the cronyism, their dismissive attitude towards anyone under 40. Two years ago Lincoln ran for and won state committee for the 50th Assembly district — that’s North Brooklyn. It’s an unpaid position he took on in addition to his full-time job. It doesn’t sound like much, but he’s advocated and organized some things I like here: Extended G train service. More greenspaces in Brooklyn. A new farmer’s market in McGolrick Park and a supermarket in another, underserved part of Brooklyn.

Okay, so now a personal I’ll-vouch-for-this-dude story. On Saturday the New Kings Democrats asked me to accompany Lincoln to a mural dedication at PS 84. I thought I was going to be dropping off absentee ballots for people who wanted them, so I had arrived in jeans and with unwashed hair and it had been raining, so when I heard about this change I was pretty pissed and really wanted to watch the Intervention marathon.

Then Lincoln ran in from the rain (he had been at the McCarren Farmers Market talking to people), and immediately started doing voter calls, politely explaining who he was and why people should vote. Then we both jumped in a cab toward the event. The cab ride took forever on the BQE and I, for the first time since I met him two years ago, got some time to talk to Lincoln. My main question was: Who does something like this? And why? He talked about everything from their vote local campaign, to trying to register voters who have just finished parole and have been mistakenly told that they can’t ever vote again to navigating neighborhoods with different goals and needs (think about it, Brooklyn’s got Hassidic communities, Puerto Rican families, Polish families, and gentrifiers all within blocks of each other), to green spaces, parks, bike safety and new lanes.

I only went to the mural unveiling with him (which was awesome to see and learn about). Lincoln stuck around to talk to voters (sometimes in Spanish) and then he dropped me off before he went on the rest of his Saturday: Two block parties, maybe another market, more phone calls and door knocking. I asked him about this, too. But he said he just likes talking to people. That is insane to me. I mean, have you tried talking to people in New York? Even though this guy is clearly exhausted, he was interested in what I said, and in what other people said to him.

Okay so finally, why should you vote if you are in Brooklyn and hate politics and are wary of the kind of person who drives to multiple farmers markets in one day to shake hands, etc. 1. It’s time to clean up local politics, for good. Lopez needs to leave. Think of the example it sets, when bastion of liberalism Brooklyn has leaders who are putting their hands all over ladies’ thighs without their permission. 2. Lincoln is a good guy. He walks around the neighborhood, listens, and then advocates on behalf of those people. Is it that easy? Uh, yeah, it is. Some day he will probably run for some other job and will vote on laws and it will get much more complex, but right now he listens and understands the mess that is north Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Democratic party. 3. You don’t vote? You don’t get represented. Don’t give me that crap about how like, voting would be illegal if it changed anything, because people are constantly trying to take away your right to vote. Here, there, everywhere. 4. Let’s face it: You and I are not going to do this. We care about our neighborhood and community and complain on Facebook and Twitter but you and I don’t have the time, energy, or weird genetic mutation that compels us to put in the time and work. Vote for someone who does.

This turned into a really long thing. I didn’t mean for it to, but this is complicated and I’m just kind of learning. If you have questions or problems, don’t ask me. Go ask Lincoln. He’s always at train stations or farmers markets and he likes talking to people.

Anyway, here’s the tl;dr:

Brooklynites vote in your local primary this Thursday 9/13 to get Vito Lopez (a probable lady-groper and definite weird old-school party boss) out (or to send the message that he and his buddies are no longer welcome), and to keep Lincoln Restler (a smart Brooklyn advocate) in. Check your registration. Put it on your calendar. There’s no more new episodes of Louie and Hoarders moved to Mondays, so you and I are good.

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Quick story: I was collecting signatures one night and was exhausted and talking to a Brooklyn guy who asked about Lincoln Restler and I said “You can’t miss him at the G train, he looks like a young Al Sharpton.” I meant Al Franken. Or did I?

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I was in a band once, we opened for the Gossip

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in Greenpoint. Recommended!)

Anyway, this tape contains three or so performances I had with Obsession in Pink, a band started by two friends in Tucson. One of them, Brett, I can’t find at all. He was from Omaha and may be back there. The other guy in the band is Michael Coomers, who I met when I saw his band Coomers Explosion, and who eventually started the band Harlem. Brett and Michael invited me to join their months-old band to play synth — Obsession in Pink was all keyboards and a drum machine. Oh, and an organ that belonged to another Tucson musician, Seth Bogart, who eventually did Gravy Train and Hunx and His Punx. (We all tried to practice for a band exactly once, but he and Coomers got into a fight and Coomers kicked both me and Seth out of his house.)

For first shows, they were pretty great. My first time playing with a band in public was opening for the Gossip. Others we opened for: Tracy and the Plastics, the Rapture, the Fucking Champs. The video above is us playing our first song at the Gossip show. Even now I think our gimmick was solid — we played rough synthy minor chord stuff and wore suits (well, I wore skirts and dresses) to the shows. But our eighties was, in a word (and my bright idea), rich. We drank wine and champagne on stage, we had condescending stage banter. For this show, Brett and Coomers snuck into a graveyard and stole roses, which, if you can’t see, cover the stage. The Gossip loved us; they not only came out and danced for our set (and yelled ”sluts” at us the whole time, but when they returned a year later they asked the audience where we had gone.

I just encoded a second video of us playing a laundromat illegally, in our underwear. I’ll save that for another post.

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If you care about something you should measure it

Over the last couple years I’ve become a huge believer in self-quantifying.  It started with Your Flowing Data, a website that let me take measurements of whatever useless bits of biographical information I wanted to keep track of: The number of times I ate lentils that year, what movies

Over the last couple years I’ve become a huge believer in self-quantifying.  It started with Your Flowing Data, a website that let me take measurements of whatever useless bits of biographical information I wanted to keep track of: The number of times I ate lentils that year, what movies I watched, how stressed I was, for example. But I started to notice that the simple act of tracking and having to record my choices influenced the choices I made. I began using my iPhone to track almost anything involving behavior I wanted to change or improve. I’ve gone through a lot of tools, but here are the ones I keep going back to.

Track Your Happiness

Track Your Happiness is a survey project that is part of Harvard PH.d student Matt Killingsworth’s doctoral research. The website sends you a short survey twice a day via email or text. It asks you questions about where you are, what you’re doing, how many people you’re with, and how happy you feel. They each take about two minutes to complete. After a couple months of steady data, the website begins sending you correlations between things like your mood and how much sleep, exercise, work, and social activity you’ve reported.

This can tell you a lot. For instance, I am happier indoors that out (that probably has a lot to due with winter, though I began the survey in the fall. ) So. okay, I’m not outdoorsy. You maybe guessed that by the subject of this blog post. But I didn’t know that I was also happier the less people I had around me, down to about three. Three is where I’m happiest before my happiness just drops. Guess that makes me kind of an introvert. One other surprising thing, at least for me: I am happiest when I want to do something that I have to do. I wasn’t happiest doing whatever I wanted. I need to enjoy something I have to do (work, chores, etc). I like work. That’s something to keep in mind if I ever win the lottery or want to retire.

Fitbit

The Fitbit is a wearable device that can track your steps, calories, stairs climbed, and sleep. I bought this thing on a self-improvement whim fully believing it would be in a drawer by the end of the month. It’s not. Except for a few days where I forgot it at home (but thankfully, it’s had no trips through the washer), this thing has always been on my person since I bought it back in November 2011.

There’s so much to like about it, but the two biggest things are that it’s always tracking, and it uploads automatically. Like the Happiness Survey, it tracks all the time, not just when I feel like keeping track. And the automatic Wifi sync works amazing well and consistently. I haven’t changed the amount of walking or stairs-climbing or sleeping I do, really. But somehow, the act of tracking has improved those numbers anyway. Here’s how it works:the Fitbit is your standard pedometer that also tracks stairs you’ve climbed, estimated calories you’ve burned and your total distance traveled. It also has a little flower graphic that grows and shrinks depending on how much you’ve moved in the past hour.

 

The two applications below are self-quantifying tools, but they’re also commitment devices.

Beeminder

Beeminder is both a self-tracker and a commitment device. It can track and graph anything you can measure, from runtimes to blog posts to pounds to lose. You can set goals or limits, and Beeminder will warn you, then charge you money if you stray too far off your goal. The biggest benefits here are the fact that it’s incremental — your final goal is broken down week by week, so it’s more important to stay on track than to think of your goal as some big, huge (or low, tiny) number that is 12 months away.

I just began using Beeminder at the beginning of the year, when Stickk and other commitment devices seemed too narrow for my purposes. So far it’s worked great. I resolved to start learning Spanish and to read more fiction this year. I’m still doing both. And since the goal is to stay on one side of the line, I am working at a slow but steady reading/studying pace. But it’s a pace I’ve stuck with, and it’s April — beyond prime resolution quitting time (which I think is February? Or even mid-January?

That graph at the top of this post is my ‘words posted to blog’ graph. I did this post to avoid losing today. Try to wrap your head around that.

Gympact

Gympact is another commitment device with financial consequences. You set a goal for the number of times you want to go to the gym each week, then you check in via iPhone app every time you go to the gym (and stay for at least 30 minutes). Fail to reach your determined number of visits each week, and the app will charge you an amount you’ve set (like $5-$50. $50 if you’re some sort of masochist rich person). But if you’ve made your commitment, then Gympact will pay you a small amount out of the pot of losers’ cash.

In the six months before I started using Gympact I went to the gym maybe five times. I haven’t missed a gym trip (2-3 workouts a week since beginning of January) since I signed up, except for the weekend after a birthday dinner and bar trip where I spent the next day laying on my couch under a blanket and eating Tums/watching Locked Up: Raw. My biceps are the sickest they ever have been, and I’ve only torn my rotator cuff once (really).

If you’re curious about self-tracking check out the Quantified Self website. It has links to over 400 self-quantifying tools.

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The redesigned SPIN is like a Lana Dey Rey song

A month ago SPIN debuted its new, redesigned, bi-monthly format. As both a music editor and a former writer of music reviews for SPIN, I was curious about it, though in a personal-low-stakes kind of way. If I were still freelancing for SPIN, I’d worry about their decision to

A month ago SPIN debuted its new, redesigned, bi-monthly format. As both a music editor and a former writer of music reviews for SPIN, I was curious about it, though in a personal-low-stakes kind of way. If I were still freelancing for SPIN, I’d worry about their decision to remove most reviews from the print edition, but now that I’m full-time employed I can enjoy it as a reader and music fan (disclosure: I wrote a review for SPIN’s website last month).

I also wanted to check out their ambitious print redesign as someone who does not buy print magazines. I let my SPIN subscription end. I haven’t had New York magazine since they gave it away for free with a MediaBistro subscription. I owned a Kindle and now I have an iPad but that whole obsession with the touch and feel of real things has never, ever, twinged me except when it comes to say antique furniture and leather shoes. (When people mention these things when lovingly talking about magazines or records I simultaneously hear Zooey Dechanel’s ‘Cotton’ song and picture that scene in Amelie where she sticks her paw in some beans.) The touch and feel of a real iPad is all I need.

So, the redesigned SPIN. It was made to be purchased as a physical thing, and it does feel great in your hands — there’s thick paper stock, rich, matte ink, and a pleasant gasoline-like chemical smell. SPIN wants you to hold it in your arms and manhandle it a little bit, like a Lana Del Rey song (the ‘opening act’ letter even asks you to drop it on your coffee table). Everything Type Company, who redesigned the magazine, simplified the cover and removed a lot of the text, which brings it more in line with their old design actually.

Compare this:

to this:

Getting inside, you see an immediate commitment to diversity in its pages. Past the lily-white Sleigh Bells on the fold-out cover, Frank Ocean and Santigold are the first two faces you see. There’s also a commitment to covering a lot more than music: the table of contents teases film coverage, a television show review, a newsy SOPA story, art and comic book coverage. Plus old sections, like In My Room and a labeled but very similar to “Breaking Out” are still in there.

And now to the writing itself: The long, reported, piece by David Bevan on K-Pop’s structure and ambitions is truly awesome. Likewise, I enjoyed Simon Reynold’s essay on Lana Del Rey, a ”free-floating half-life, or afterlife of pure style. Dated yet timeless beauty.” “Dated yet timeless” seems to be the theme the entire magazine bets on — there are no more album reviews, but it’s packed with longer essays, reported pieces, and long-form reviews. “Stories you can enjoy today and four months from now,” promises that same letter, which of course makes any essay about (or jumping off from) LDR hilarious in that, because of Internet Standard Time, she already felt dated by the time the magazine came out). Still, she’s more jumping-off than focus point in this piece about the cyclical nature of music trends. The next page has a gorgeous color-coded infographic on how genres reference past genres. (The company who made the infographic designed the rest of the magazine, and so the same bold, easy-to-read colors section off the magazine as well (example: the long reviews in the back are all in blue ink).

The few problems I had with this issue are also going to be dated, since they’re almost all issue-specific. For example, I don’t like Sleigh Bells on the cover, since, basically, everyone should have figured out that they are a good band without a backstory. There is nothing wrong with being nothing wild, but there is when you’re publishing a cover story about this gun-toting rock-and-roll band that is basically sibling-like, half-engaged, and perfectly sweet. Charles Aaron notes in his editor’s letter that the issue revolves around bands that “recombine signifiers” and man, Sleigh Bells are a band of purely visual signifiers if there ever was one.

I generally liked the Breaking Out-style pieces on Frankie Rose, Escort, Perfume Genius, etc., but they needed to be longer. I loved Breaking Out for the mini-stories and small, telling moments and details from each piece, and here there’s barely enough room for a few puns and a free-floating quote. The magazine, when I first flipped through it, made me think of a nerd with a brand new hot body, (like when Rachael Leigh Cook takes off her glasses in She’s All That, or like, T.I. when he puts his glasses on). But they will have to find the balance between good looks and good words. I don’t think these mini-features hit that balance.

Also there is a piece that consists of life advice from The Shins’ James Mercer, where he boldly reveals how he got older and finally got the self-confidence to FIRE ALL HIS BAND MEMBERS. The greatest love of all!

The remaining print reviews combine 2-3 releases into one tied-together piece. It turns their review section into another opportunity for deep-thinking and trend piecing. I do miss the cleverness and many different voices of their old print section.

Overall I like the redesign SPIN and the changes they’ve made. I will have to update this in four months to really know whether it is, as promised, filled with things I still want to read in four months. Perhaps then I will finally find every use of ”Lynchian” in the magazine (I found four already!). Now I’m off to check out the SPIN play app.

 

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I have some thoughts about Titanic 3D

(First I have to disclose that I work for Viacom, which owns Paramount, which is releasing Titanic 3D. But please make no mistake: If you see Titanic I will make money. Boatloads of it. Something like $3 per ticket or $2 if you take home your returnable glasses.) Men cry

(First I have to disclose that I work for Viacom, which owns Paramount, which is releasing Titanic 3D. But please make no mistake: If you see Titanic I will make money. Boatloads of it. Something like $3 per ticket or $2 if you take home your returnable glasses.)

Men cry at Titanic. The first of the three times I saw Titanic 2D in theaters, a 40+ year old man wept in front of his pre-teen boys. I think about, mostly, how they must think about it. I think no man is comfortable seeing his father cry; I think if he does it at Titanic it’s potentially childhood-devastating.

The man who cried next to me said “Not again” while he was crying.

It’s hard not to want a new interpretation for Titanic 3D to make the whole experience of seeing Titanic again somehow relevant and worth it. So here’s mine: Let the love story recede and think long and hard about all the people who died on Titanic. Unlike a plane, where classes are separated but you all basically die the same way, class mattered in this accident. This really mattered. As this person writes: “The numbers make it all too clear that a rule of First Class First far outweighed any guiding principle of Women and Children First.” More first class men survived than third class children. If you were a third-class male your rate of survival was 13%.

In this interpretation this is Occupy Wall Street:

On the other hand screw the class stuff and focus instead on the love story. Or the actors. We couldn’t know it then, but we know now that Leonardo DiCaprio picks his movie roles solely based on how little they are like his Titanic character. (He skipped the premiere of Titanic 3D.) We also know now that, if caught topless and doomed, Kate Winslet would put on a bra.

I wonder if Billy Zane watched the 3D Titanic and saw his beautiful butt-cut in 3D and closed his eyes and whispered “I remember…everything” and then saw his hairline running up his head’s staircase and meeting his forehead at the clock and embracing for the last time? Probably?

Billy Zane Now
Billy Zane's hair was re-released in 2D

The CGI has not aged well. Why didn’t James Cameron fix this stuff? It’s not like Titanic is Star Wars and people would be screaming about purity and integrity. As is, the pans over the Titanic look like Legos goose-stepping across a deviantART jpeg.

Some not funny jokes to do while seeing Titanic 3D: Yell “I’m king of the world,” stick your arms out during that scene. Funny 3D jokes to make: Trying to touch Kate Winslet’s breasts during the drawing scene, trying to catch DiCaprio’s hand during his death scene. Funny 3D or 2D Titanic joke to make: When Winslet tells DiCaprio “When this ship docks, I’m getting off with you,” yell “You already did!” then hi-five for the last 40 minutes of the movie.

Titanic exists to make you cry and if you don’t cry it has failed. Like you know those horror movie previews where they show the audience gasping and crying in night vision during the movie? To show you how scary it is? They should do Titanic 3D previews with night vision and men just weeping and weeping.

This James Cameron Titanic 3D-ness is a lot like the Avatar 3D-ness, where it just seems to disappear and not be too showy. So about 30 minutes in you forget it’s Titanic 3D, and now you are just watching Titanic in a movie theater while wearing glasses.

But the glasses have a practical purpose: They hide crying eyes. Some people kept them on all the way to the street.

Okay, yeah, I cried. Just a little.

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I was hacked and it sucked

A couple weeks ago I was doing a little lite self-Googling when I found a new link on my website: Viagra UK. I clicked on it — I mean, how could you not? And it brought me to a Canadian-based online pharmacy. I had been hacked with the Pharma hack. This

A couple weeks ago I was doing a little lite self-Googling when I found a new link on my website: Viagra UK. I clicked on it — I mean, how could you not? And it brought me to a Canadian-based online pharmacy. I had been hacked with the Pharma hack. This hack is particularly vicious because it only works when you click on a link from Google, and it only works on certain links. I think it had been coming. I hadn’t updated my blog in a while, hadn’t updated the WordPress installation. My plug-in folder was a mess.

Normally I’m very good about solving WordPress problems myself. My first attempt at installing WordPress took 18 hours. It sucked, but I stuck with it. I couldn’t solve this one on my own, though. This hack it affects your template, your database, vulnerable plug-ins. So I hired someone via the Internet — I think he’s in the UK — to fix the persistent hack for an ammount of money I will miss for awhile. His name is Neil, and I recommend him. He cleaned it all up and then resubmitted my website to Google. I am, as of this week, Viagra-free.

Anyway, this is all to say I am going to start posting in this blog again. I’ve got to make the whole hack-to-not-hack thing worth it.

And please let me know if I turn into a Viagra sales-lady again.

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Don't Stop Til You Get Enough

My birthday happened a few weeks ago, and my birthday bar party happened a couple weeks later. I’ve had this idea — to insert myself int a Michael Jackson video — for a while, but my birthday seemed like the right time to follow through. Bizzy also talked to Nate and

My birthday happened a few weeks ago, and my birthday bar party happened a couple weeks later. I’ve had this idea — to insert myself int a Michael Jackson video — for a while, but my birthday seemed like the right time to follow through.

Bizzy also talked to Nate and me about it for Paper Magazine’s blog. I have a feeling a lot more of these are coming.

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Menu Bar Showcase

I realized that my computer glow’s been keeping me up past my bedtime. I went looking for a solution and found a small program called Flux, which changes the color of your monitor as the light changes. It sits in your menu bar. That’s when I also realized

I realized that my computer glow’s been keeping me up past my bedtime. I went looking for a solution and found a small program called Flux, which changes the color of your monitor as the light changes. It sits in your menu bar. That’s when I also realized that almost all of my menu bar programs solve some sort of work problem I’ve had.

HazelHazel runs various folder and file housekeeping things for me. For example, it deletes files from my downloaded folder after three weeks. And it takes any zip file I drop into my promos folder, unzips them, uploads the mp3s to an iTunes playlist called “promos,” then deletes the zip and mp3s out of the promos folder (since it’s saved in the iTunes music folder now). I never remembered to clear out my downloads folder, and it gets full quickly during the workweek.

iScrobbleriScrobbler. This is how I scrobble music for Last.fm. Smaller and less annoying than Last.fm’s official scrobbler.

Despite its shaky development, Quicksilver is still the first program I install on any osx computer I own. It allows me to do many tasks without leaving the program I’m in, including controling iTunes and rating tracks, sending quick emails (without opening a browser or Mail), sending IMs, adding tasks to Things, and renaming files. I have a problem with focus, so this helps me banish distractions quickly.

PomodoroThis is a Menu Bar Pomodoro Timer (called Pomodoro), for fans of the Pomodoro Technique. I’m not very devoted, but when I’m working on a lot of little projects the little ticking helps keep me focused.

Dropbox
DropBox for file syncing. I also use this to sync my Things file across computers, since air syncing will probably never work.

Jungle DiskJungle Disk is my program of choice for cloud file backups. It syncs the folders I choose to Amazon. I have it set to check for changes ever hour. I’ve had two laptops stolen, two hard drives failures, and one totally lost Linda Ronstadt interview, so once every hour seems safe.

TextExpanderTextExpander gives me a lot of problems, so I’ll probably switch to another text expansion program soon. But TextExpander is currently what I use to insert HTML into posts and to correct some of my more common typing mistakes.

Wi-Fi SyncWi-Fi Sync is a program for jailbroken iPhones that allows you to sync with iTunes ovre Wi-Fi. I only have one cable that I keep by my nightstand (my iPhone is also my alarm clock), so I need this to sync.

FluxThis is the newest program on my Menu Bar. It’s Flux, and it dims and changes your monitor’s display to look more like evening light and the lighting inside your home. It supposedly reduces eye strain and night time sleeplessness. I haven’t noticed a difference yet, but it does make the screen easier to stare at late at night.

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Make Your Own NPR Station

I mentioned using an iTunes script to insert NPR news updates into my daily listening. The Doug’s AppleScripts version hasn’t worked for me in a while — probably because it hasn’t been updated since 2007. I did a little tweaking, and now it works just fine. It doesn’

I mentioned using an iTunes script to insert NPR news updates into my daily listening. The Doug’s AppleScripts version hasn’t worked for me in a while — probably because it hasn’t been updated since 2007. I did a little tweaking, and now it works just fine. It doesn’t have a nice icon though, just an ugly generic script icon. But! -it works great, and I highly recommend it if you use a Mac and like to keep iTunes playing all day. [Edit: Link was broken and weird earlier, should be good now.]

Download: Play NPR Hourly News Script

What it does: When you click on “Play NPR Hourly News Summary” in your iTunes Scripts folder it will check and see if there’s a new five-minute NPR news summary available. It’ll then ask you if you want to listen to it now or not. If you have music playing at the time, it’ll wait until after your current track to play. From then on it’ll look for a new copy of the podcast every hour and play it after your currently playing track. Each podcast is about five minutes long, and this script is designed to chop off the unnecessary beginnings and endings so you just get the news.

How to install it: Unzip this file and drop it into [user name] > Library > iTunes > Scripts. If there isn’t a Scripts folder in iTunes, make one then drop the app in there. The next time you open iTunes you can run this script via the Script menu. It’ll be this icon.

You’ll also need to subscribe to the NPR Hourly News Podcast. You can do that via iTunes.

If you need more detailed instructions, you can use the original Read Me PDF on the Doug’s AppleScripts page.

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How To Get Through A Big Pile Of New Music

Right now I’m working through a playlist of several hundred tracks from different sources: Email attachments, CD rips, RSS feeds, Etc. A lot of this listening is a job. And like any job, I’ve thought about how to organize and streamline it. It would take a lot of

How To Get Through A Big Pile Of New Music

Right now I’m working through a playlist of several hundred tracks from different sources: Email attachments, CD rips, RSS feeds, Etc. A lot of this listening is a job. And like any job, I’ve thought about how to organize and streamline it. It would take a lot of time and screen shots to go through the applescripts and filters I’ve written for iTunes, but I thought I would share a few basic ideas/tips that I use for getting through the pile. This works best for getting through lots of unknown/new artists, tracks you’re curious about but not committed to reviewing or writing about or even keeping yet.

1. Create a folder or playlist and treat it like an inbox.
Just like it’s inconvenient to check multiple applications and sites for your various email accounts, it’s inconvenient to stream music on Hype Machine, find MP3s scattered around your laptop/iPod, hit play inside every RSS feed in your feedreader, etc. At least for me it is. So I have one playlist on iTunes that anything new must go to. I download anything I want to listen to, rip CDs and put them in that playlist, add podcast MP3 streams, etc., and it all goes into that folder, which automatically adds tracks to the playlist.

This doesn’t work for stream-only tracks, which is probably why I don’t usually listen to stream-only promos.

2. Decide what happens to music once you listen to it. Make rules.
Is one listen enough to decide whether to keep something or research the band a little more? Is five listens? How about keeping, deleting, or re-listening to tracks once you’ve rated or tagged them as worthwhile? This is especially important for the blind listens, when you’re just trying to discover new stuff.

3. Make a smart playlist with those rules and filters. This is the playlist you will listen to.
My playlist says that tracks must come from my inbox playlist, and that they must be unrated (plus six other, less important rules). This is my “new music” playlist. This works best in iTunes, but I know other players have filters.

4. Make yourself a ‘trash’ playlist to go with your inbox playlist.
This is how you know what to delete. Make rules for this as well — if you skip a song more than three times, if you rate it below two stars, etc. Once in a while, go to this playlist, select all the tracks, hit option + delete, and get rid of the tracks permanently. I’m not precious about keeping whole albums, so this doesn’t bother me, of course.

(Bonus Tip) If you’re using iTunes, listen to your playlist through the iTunes DJ function.
If you make “unrated tracks” part of your filter criteria, then the song you are listening to will stop playing if you rate it during playback. If you are listening to the iTunes DJ, it won’t stop playback. Just set the “Source:” (bottom left corner) to the playlist you need to get through to work this way.

(Bonus Tip) Download the NPR script from Doug’s Applescripts
Here’s the link, but it’s down right now. This script will make it so that, once an hour, iTunes will go to NPR.org, download the latest five-minute hourly news update, and queue it after the currently playing track. It’s like creating your own NPR station. I call mine WBRR (Worst Blog Rock Radio).

There’s so much more I could mention about tags, filters, applescripts, hot keys (I made it so I don’t have to switch to iTunes to rate tracks, just hit option + apple + number to rate tracks) that I think makes all this even easier, but I got it all from Googling. You can too. Plus, that stuff is so specific to the way I listen to music, I doubt it would be useful to that many people. Anyway, I hope the rather general (though, admittedly, iTunes specific) things above help you. EDIT: I’ll try and do another post soon with download links to scripts and actions that couple help. Just have to organize and upload them.