I’ve only played around with iTunes 5 a little bit, but in that time haven’t seen all that much to get excited about.

The best new feature is the improved search functionality, which is based on Spotlight and lets you specify if you’re searching for an album title, artist name, song name, etc. This is great when you have chaotic libraries like mine and would like to play an album without having to browse through genre, artist (which many times could be compilations so artist is pretty much useless in that case) then album title.

The playlist folders is a natural progression for an Apple application, but I don’t particularly see the usefulness. Yeah, I can now separate out my baby music playlists from my grown up people’s playlists, but this subcategorization doesn’t carry though to the iPod leading to something of a disconnect.

And then there’s the interface. I like the gradiant gray, it’s a nice change from the brushed aluminum (which was getting rather tired-looking). But as others have noticed, this constant change in interface gets confusing after awhile. Pick a style, and stick with it. At least, for awhile. Change is good, but can’t we keep our apps looking somewhat consistent at any given point in time?

My biggest gripe about iTunes 5 (and all previous versions of iTunes, frankly): I keep longing for the ability to create playlists on a local machine using songs that are sitting on a server. I’m not asking to COPY the files, but just to use pointers to the server versions in playlists that I create on the computer I’m sitting at. In fact, I don’t WANT to copy music files from one machine to another! I don’t want to have five copies of the same song, or multiple libraries to have to manage and keep track of all around my house. That’s why I have a music server in the first place!

As it is, you can play songs that are resting in one library on another computer, and if that song is from the iTunes music store, the client computer must be authorized to play it. And you can also play music from playlists on the remote machine. But you can’t create a local playlist using remote music files. Why not? This makes no sense to me. Instead, one must create playlists by physically going to the remote machine (which, since it’s a server, could possibly be headless) or by using ssssllllloooooowwwww and not very reliable VNC. The last alternative is, as I mentioned above, actually copying files from the remote server to the client computer. But I don’t want to do that; it just creates library management headaches.

Apple, if you’re out there, please implement creating local playlists using remote files. I beg you!

Woo-hoo! Tony read my email on his show yesterday. It wasn’t a particularly clever or witty email, not even worth repeating here, but Gary or Nigel or whoever screens the emails must’ve thought it was worth reading.

On a completely unrelated note: Very cool.

Today Mommy took me to see the butterflies at Brookside Gardens. First, we met with a couple of other moms and their babies and had a picnic under a shady tree. That was a lot of fun. Then we went over to the butterfly exhibit where we went into this special room where there were lots of butterflies flying all over the place! It was really neat. After the butterflies, we walked through the rose garden with lots of pretty flowers.

A fitting update on one of my posts from yesterday:

Saints Receiver Joe Horn Visits Refugees

Sports may seem trivial in times like these, but they provide a morale boost for many people. Those who still think football games shouldn’t be held need not watch them. But in the absense of an enemy against we can rally against, we can at least rally behind our sports teams.

Rove Not Entitled to D.C. Homestead Deduction.

This summer has sucked. It’s been so incredibly hot, and sticky, and blech the whole time that I haven’t wanted to go out with Sammy hardly at all. We’ve taken very few walks, and basically I’ve had a lot of cabin fever trying to keep him entertained all summer long.

Fortunately, we’ve actually had some brilliant weather in the past few weeks. In late August, I took Sam up to my mom’s house in NJ and we spent a gorgeous week pretty much in the swimming pool. And this weekend has been beautiful so far, too. I was able to take Sam out for walks last week, and today I had him in the stroller outside while I was doing a little gardening in front of our house.

Onto another topic…

If you saw PTI on Friday, then you saw the letter from the woman who pretty much thought that life (well, sports specifically, but life in general) should stop until all the chaos brought on by Hurricane Katrina has been addressed and all the people evacuated and so on and so forth. Well, I disagree. What has happened in New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast is tragic, life in the rest of the country cannot come to a standstill because of it. After all, what can most of the rest of the country do? Contribute money. Okay, that really is needed, but that takes, what, 10 minutes? Then what? It’s not like every able-bodied man and woman can go down to help deliver supplies, rebuild houses or pluck people from rooftops. There are volunteers and uniformed personnel doing so, but there is not the capacity in that region for millions upon millions of volunteers.

True, life will never be the same for the hundreds of thousands of people in the affected areas. But the fabric of our society, from commerce to culture to, yes, even athletics, cannot simply stop and mourn. There is no enemy to rally against as was the case in 2001. The engines of our economy must continue to run if we are to help those in need in the South.

The exception to this would be the athletics (and other aspects of life) in the states that have been affected, such as at LSU and Ole Miss. After all, the student bodies at those schools have more to worry about than their football teams (or even their academics). But in places where the connections to the hurricane are a little more tenuous, life should continue on as before, but keeping the residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in our minds and hearts.

It was a very hot summer all summer long, but this weekend the weather has been really nice. Today, Mommy took me outside and I watched as she did some gardening in front of our house. She put in pretty flowers.

Today Mommy took me to a new class: Yoga for mommies & babies. Mommy is doing a lot of that kind of stuff with me this fall.

After yoga class, we met with Daddy for lunch at Mayorga.

This morning Mommy and Grandma took me to breakfast at Denny’s. There we met up with one of Mommy’s teachers from when she was in high school, Mrs. Eng. Mrs. Eng was really nice and said I was cute!

Then we went back home to Maryland and I got to see Daddy again! It was a long drive back to my house, and I fussed part of the way, but it is good to be home again.

This morning we went to the children’s bookstore in the town where Grandma Lolo lives and listened to story time. One of the books was about a silly rabbit that kept jumping into different colored paint cans and turning him all sorts of silly colors!

Later, Mommy and I went swimming again. It was a lot of fun splashing in the water.

Then tonight we went back to that nice restaurant that Mommy and Grandma took me to for lunch yesterday, except that this time we went for dinner with all the ladies from Grandma’s office. One of them is retiring and this was a farewell dinner for her.