My iTunes XML database recently got corrupted and it seemed I had lost all my many hours worth of song ratings. Luckily I was able to re-construct the database through an few month old backup and my iPod. In doing so, my entire iTunes library was duplicated with broken links. Since iTunes does not currently allow you to sort by the broken (’!’ icon), it’s a laborious, manual process to remove all these track listings.

That was until I found this ingenious process somewhere on the Apple forums:

1. Make a smart playlist called “All Files” with this rule: “Artist” is not “123456789″ (or any nonsense name that won’t be in your library).

2. Make a static playlist called “All Live Files”.

3. Make a smart playlist called “Missing Files” with these rules: Match all of the following rules, Playlist is “All Files”, Playlist is not “All Live Files”

4. Select all the files from “All Files” and drag them into “All Live Files”. The dead files marked (!) will not copy over.

5. “Missing Files” will contain all of your dead files. Select all and delete. Voila, a nice clean iTunes library.

I have these three playlists in their own folder. Whenever I gather more than a couple dead tracks for whatever reason, I delete all the tracks in “All Live Files” and repeat steps 4 and 5.

How to Delete a file from a playlist:

Windows: SHIFT + DEL
Mac: OPTION + DEL

UPDATE:

A reader named Art informed me of these reacent changes in deleting tracks in Windows:

Apple apparently added a new twist in the latest iTunes for Windows - the Delete option is disabled in a Smart Playlist. To get around this, I selected all tracks in my Missing Files folder, did Files\New Playlist from Selection (since it won’t let you drag & drop the dead tracks to a playlist), and then deleted them from there.

I shot this a few months ago, but it’s one of my (many) favorite clips.

Eli went through a faze where he would say the word “Bop!” whenever he didn’t get his way or was mad at someone. As you can see, Jackson was was very sensitive to this.

Posted a few shots from Halloween last night. Jackson had the time of his life. Every piece of candy he got, he would yell Dad I got this, then proceed to try and bite through the wrapper.

http://janamayne.com/

My sweet wife is blogging a bit of our life with kids, crazy good times and poop. She’s more diligent than I am at posting and she knows how to spell. I’ve got her set up with a tumblog viewable at:

Yesterday I went duck hunting with my dad for our annual season opener hunt at his duck club blind. It was a very special time as it’s one of my dad’s favorite things to do.
I was off (shooting wise) for most of the morning, but I still managed to knock down four or five birds. What really matters is that I shot two boxes of shells. Most of them at ducks. And remembered to wear ear plugs.

I also love how this photo turned out, taken by Jeff Walters with my Canon SD800. Through the magic of Photoshop’s Shadow / Highlight tool I was able to make it look fantastic.

To quote Bud, from Kill Bill: Vol. 2: “If your gunna’ compare a Hanzo sword, you compare it to every other sword ever made, wasn’t made, by Hattori Hanzo.”

This phone is so far ahead of any other phone or hand held device I’ve seen before. Such a refreshing upgrade from the Motorola Q I had for a year. For tasks as simple as setting a ring tone or adding a contact, the Q was painful to say the least. On the iPhone, it’s actually enjoyable to do these simple tasks.

I wasn’t about to drop $600 on a phone, especially when I was mid contract with Verizon and with this iPhone being the first gen (which always have issues). But after the price drop I could not resist picking one up.

Though I give this phone a solid ‘10′ since there is nothing else to compare it to, here are a few beefs I’ve found in this first gen iPhone (in order if importance to me):

1) Can’t use it as a hard drive (all other iPods do this).

2) Can’t manually manage music. Which means I can’t listen to my music at work through iTunes (all other iPods do this).

3) No Flash player. I know there could be issues using a touch screen browser with Flash, but we’ll figure that part out. Just turn it on Apple.

4) Speaker phone is way too quiet.

5) No SDK for native apps (and with update 1.1.1 they locked it down and Installer.app Beta no longer works… BS).

6) Can’t sync notes or a to do list.

7) no way to mark email “all read” or “delete all”

(Not a biggie, but) No multimedia messaging

Even with these items, I completely agree with everyone else who is gaga about all the things this phone CAN do. From Maps to Alarm clock, Safari, iPod, everything is so smooth.

I must also say this. Since getting this phone, I have only opened our upstairs computer (a laptop I use casually to check email, scores and read articles) once.

We’ve had our ups and downs, but overall it’s been a good year. I’ll never forget that time I left you on the car and you totally got ran over by some high school punks. Or that one time you took a picture of Bryan Green taking a dump at Richter7.

Now thanks to a free post on ksl.com you will spend the rest of your days in the hand a nice woman from Lehi.

I’ll try not to forget you but that might be hard now that my iPod and cell phone are one.

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My friends and I attended the Ryan Adams show at Red Butte Gardens on a beautiful warm Summer night with a light mountain breeze fully expecting an amazing show.

I saw Ryan perform once before when he opened for Alanis Morissette at the ecenter. That night he played for about 40 minutes or songs I barely knew, said not a word and left. At least Alanis rocked.

Now, after an amazing new album and news that he kicked his drugs habit I gave the guy another chance to entertain me with his talents. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was the feedback blasts that nearly even made my ears bleed. Whatever it was, he was not in the mood to entertain us. He played mostly unheard songs that felt like background music and only two songs from his new album. TWO! What an *** hat.

On top of that, he barely even mumbled a word to the audience… I’m done. There are some interesting comments about the SL show here.

If you want to hear what RA is supposed to sound like live, here are a few, not great quality, but very decent recent live recordings.

: 2007-05-15 (includes songs from Easy Tiger)
: 2007-06-28 (electric)
: 2007-06-29 (acoustic)

Coincidentally, my friends and I, after showing up late, sat down on the only open piece of lawn left with a decent view and it just happened to be right next to the Armstrong’s. I finally got to meet Dooce in person and talk to Jon again. Too cool.

I must say it was a fabulous night despite the mediocre performance.

For my b-day, I finally got my first salt water aquarium. It’s an Oceanic BioCube all-inclusive 29 gallon tank with all the lighting and filtration built in. I also got a nice custom made solid wood stand.

I have loaded it up with live sand and live rock. Apparently, live rock becomes the main biological nitrification base or biological filter of a saltwater aquarium and has a stabilizing effect on the water chemistry, in particular on helping to maintain constant pH by release of calcium.

It has to cycle for about four weeks before I introduce some fish and corals and stuff. I hope to add an anemone at some point. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve checked out a bunch of books and I’m really excited to learn all about it.

My goal is to have something close to as great as my friend Jared Cornwall’s nanocube at five months. And maybe someday a tank as fabulous as this or this or this.

Only a couple hours into my 30’s (2am on Saturday, July 14, my birthday) and I was woken to a series of miserable stomach cramps. Finally I do what my body is begging and upchuck a bit into the can. That sufficed for an hour or so, but now the cramps are back and my entire body would be better off dead.

This time I’m going in and I’m getting it ALL out…

There.

Better, but not good. My lower back is on fire and there is no pain meds to be found in the cabin. What the heck is wrong? Kidney stones? Appendix? … The fish!

I now regret the decision to buy frozen fish. The fish that tasted so good even though I had technical difficulties with the oven and could only bake at 400 degrees, not at 475 as the directions specified.

But I baked it for five extra minutes and even microwaved it for a minute… Apparently that did not suffice.

So what did I get for my thirtieth birthday???

Food poisoning?

No.

I got a wife that was smart enough to not eat the fish I prepared so she could take care of me for three days while I was half dead with food poisoning.

Best gift ever.