Sounds like shitmydadsays is watching ESPN baseball.

A new site (new to me, thanks to Daring Fireball), Finer Things in Mac, pointed out that iTunes 9 gives you more control over your smart playlists:

Smart Playlists in iTunes 9 have become smarter. They now offer more granular, nested control over rules for collecting content.

I've had some pretty complex playlists in my iTunes, using multiple Smart Playlists to get to a single Really Smart Playlist; this now makes my life easier.

Random thoughts from 25-35 year olds (via jchausse) had some pretty funny things in the list.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and
the link takes me to a video instead of text.

Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart",
all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

That's enough, Nickelback.

Also, it had the third "beer pong" reference I've heard in three days (the others being during a visit to my brother's new house and the latest episode of This American Life). The sad thing is I don't even know what beer pong is, which should tell you what a quiet college life I led.

I watched this video on the train last night (via the Radio Lab podcast) and thought it was very cool, not to mention more moving than I thought it would be:

Flip Flop Fly Ball is kind enough to provide a public service to the younger generation of baseball cap wearers: Ballcap sticker removal provides the instructions needed for removing the sticker from your new hat. Thanks Flip Flop Fly Ball!

Buzz Andersen on Benjamin Franklin's Daily Schedule:

When you're a person who works alone, and whose fortunes are completely dependent on your own day-to-day productivity, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of working all the time... Franklin's plan is an inspiration to me because it reminds me why I went down the tough road of being an indie developer in the first place: to live a more balanced, reflective life.

I think I need to try harder to take a page from Franklin's playbook. It took a while after going out on my own to not work all the time and get into a good work/life schedule. But lately I've been slipping and working too much, and I think it's time to reign that in...

The Pixies seemed to be everywhere this week:

1. This weekend I finally watched loud QUIET loud, the documentary about the Pixies' 2004 reunion tour, which I enjoyed. And despite a friend's warning that it would "bum you out after seeing it," I didn't feel that way at all. I thought it just showed the band as humans each with their own issues.

2. Doolittle was (finally) released for the Wii version of Rock Band 2 this week. Prepare to receive more of my money, Harmonix...

3. Yesterday a friend pointed out that the Pixies plan a Doolittle North American tour. Haven't seen them since the '04 tour, so this might be a good reason to get my lame ass to a show.

The cinematic for the upcoming Beatles Rock Band game is very cool: great visual style that grows with the band as it summarizes their entire career in under 3 minutes. The LA Times had a good article about it, breaking down some of the imagery and metaphors in it.

Somewhat-hidden in the cinematic are numerous "placements" of Beatles songs: Handbills mention "Come Together," "Benefit of Mr. Kite," "Rocky Racoon" [sic], "Maggie Mae," "Carry That Weight," and others. The group runs down the street past Maxwell's Silver Sundries into a pub, which has the "Mean Mr. Mustard" lyrics scrawled over the door, the all day breakfast price of "1 & 1 is 2" (but shouldn't that be "1 & 1 & 1 is 3"? Nope...see update below), and menu items like "Honey Pies" and "Savoy Truffle." In the car-turned-plane Ringo has a box of goodies from Strawberry Fields Farms, and dashing onstage you see a typewriter and paper on the ground while "Paperback Writer" plays. A lot of little details are in this very detailed mini-movie.



Update: This blog has a much more detailed annotation of the cinematic — there's way more than I had originally noticed. Also, "One and One is Two" is an old song I never heard of; I was thinking it was a misquoted lyric from "Come Together" ... of course Harmonix would never make such an easy mistake!

"A love of baseball plus a love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly Ball." Flip Flop Fly Ball has some interesting baseball-related infographics, including Green Monster (comparing the size of Fenway's left field wall), Ballpark Orientation (the direction batters face at each stadium) and Major League Fields (ballpark shapes).

An eventful few days makes Brian & Hilary future spouses and future homeowners. Big congratulations to both of them!