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Now with less DRM!

Sure, $2.19 a song mightn’t sound too pretty, but it’s not all bad. Most of the songs in the Top 100 list of the iTunes Music Store are still at the old $1.69 price point, but now they come with less DRM, and at double the bit-rate.

However, the part that sucks is that 4 songs out of the Top 100 are at the new $2.19 price point. It’s interesting to note that those artists with $2.19 songs are all signed onto Sony for their label – Rihanna, Jason Mraz, Beyonce – Akons on there too, but I think he started his own label?

It’s not all bad. I certainly won’t be switching to BigPond Music anytime soon. 😀

UPDATE: Okay, so maybe it is a little bad – as of the 8th April 2009, 1 out of every 5 songs in the iTunes Top 100 list is priced at $2.19. Eeek! :O

I’m Getting Things Done. I think.

So, I’m currently getting into the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.

While I’m usually pretty good at remembering things, sometimes I feel like I’m juggling too many things at once, or alternatively, I think of something on the bus or while I’m daydreaming in lectures at uni and forget it later on. Good blog posts are notorious for this.

I’m not a huge fan of carrying around a notebook around, so something I always have with me is my iPhone – and while it does notes, it doesn’t do them well enough to warrant using on a daily basis. The iPhone’s Notes don’t currently sync with the Mac in any way (that’s going to be fixed in iPhone OS 3.0, though), and while it’s simple and easy to use, doesn’t offer the functionality I’m looking for.

So, what exactly am I looking for? A couple of things:

  1. Syncing between iPhone and Mac. If I think of something while I’m out and about, I’m going to write it in my iPhone. When I get home, I want to have the same lists on my iPhone as well as my Mac, so syncing between the two is a must-have. I don’t care if it’s over Wi-Fi or over USB – either way, syncing is too important to ignore.
  2. I want something that will act as my second brain – things that I can just push items (be it text, a URL, a list, or anything) into, and forget about. While ShoveBox fulfils this requirement, it doesn’t have any sort of “list” support – and for the GTD mentality, that’s a huge negative.
  3. I need the ability to cross things off once I’ve done them – if not for the fact to show myself that I’m actually accomplishing things, then for the ability to see what I’ve already done, and can now forget about (so I stop worrying about it later on). Things currently does this, and comes with an iPhone app to boot! It’s on my shortlist, but the price for the Mac version scares me… 😮
  4. While “Projects” are good for things that need to be done that have a lot of steps, they’re not good for lists and stuff. One of my main gripes with Things is that there’s no support for folders, only areas of responsibility and projects (which can then contain projects). However, The Hit List does have support for simple lists and folders, so for usability in that area, The Hit List wins. No iPhone app as yet for The Hit List, though, and it’s not as polished as Things. 🙁 For now, The Hit List is on my shortlist.

For now, there’s no clear winner in the GTD department. When I find a winner (in roughly 15 days, as that’s when my Things trial ends), I’ll be sure to tell you right here.

Comments below – I’d appreciate it if you could point out your GTD methodology, and what apps you use to accomplish it. 😀

That’ll do, donkey. That’ll do.

Ugh.

Have I mentioned before how much I hate choosing new themes for my blog? Or for any website, for that matter…

It’s difficult because of three reasons:

  • It’s hard to find something that works for you. Being the admin of the blog, you know where it’s going. When you’re looking for a theme, you know exactly what you want – in the case of Benny Ling’s Bling, I wanted something that was simple but elegant – something that stood apart from the hundreds of other blogs out there.
  • Free is good. Unfortunately, being the poor student that I am, I don’t have much of a web budget – especially for things like WordPress themes. It’s like a wise man once said: “Pay peanuts, get monkeys”, as well as the age-old adage of “You get what you pay for”. Don’t get me wrong, though – I’d totally pay for a theme if I decided that it was going to work for me, assuming it is reasonably priced. US $50 is not my idea of reasonable.
  • Finding something that will require minimal tweaking is hard to do – especially when the theme is free to begin. It’s like the hardware and software problem – even though Microsoft make software that’s designed to work on every computer under the sun, sometimes it needs a little help. Apple, on the other hand, make both the hardware and the software – the result of which is that “it just works”.

With these three things in mind, I have managed to settle on Elegant Grunge, by Michael Tyson. I’ve had to compromise in some areas – while I haven’t given it a full test-run yet, I’m sure I’ll find something later on down the track that needs to be changed. So far so good, though – fingers crossed it stays that way.

UPDATE: No, I haven’t settled on Elegant Grunge. Instead, I’ve settled on Sator-ii, by Felipe Lavín. It’s got some pretty horrible CSS (no comments, c’mon), and has some funny spelling mistakes – but that’s okay, because I don’t think the creator is a native english speaker.

You may think I’m missing out something here – why don’t I just make my own theme? Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done – I’d have no idea where to start with a WordPress theme, let alone make a good one… Sure, I can hack my way around a CSS stylesheet, and I can diagnose and fix any formatting/styling issues with WordPress, but apart from that… Time constraints mean making my own them just isn’t feasible at this point in time. One of these days I probably should, but I’ll leave it to the experts for now. 🙂

Old Theme Is Old….

Which is exactly why we’re moving on up!

I’m currently playing around with a motherload of themes for Benny Ling’s Bling.

This may take awhile, so go right ahead and play motherload – I guarantee that by the time you finish the game, the re-theming of Benny Ling’s Bling will be complete.