I just got home with my new toy, a 120GB iPod classic. It’s the first iPod I’ve owned so this is something of a new experience.

I plugged it into my laptop (an eeePC, running Hardy Heron) and RhythmBox started up automatically. It looked good as the new device appeared in the side-panel and there seemed to be a synchronisation check.

When it came to pushing the music library from laptop down onto the iPod, things got a little tricky. First I tried to drag and drop the ‘All Artists’ listing from the music library to the iPod item. This caused RhythmBox to shutdown; there was no error dialog to point out what was going on.

I started googling and discovered that one of the first things that happens when you plug an iPod into a Mac/Windows PC with iTunes is that it’ll format and create a basic directory structure for the music. I’d assume this is somewhere below (or hidden) from the standard top-level folders which were already present: Calendars, Contacts, iPod_Control, Notes, Photos, Recordings.

There were a few old forum threads where people had difficulty using RhythmBox to sync their iPods. The best suggestion I could see was to use gtkPod.

So, the simplest thing that can possibly work (but no simpler):

• Eject the iPod and physically disconnect;
• Install gtkPod using Synaptic;
• Re-connect the iPod and it should auto-mount;
• Close RhythmBox if it’s already open or it opens automatically;
• Open up gtkPod. It will more than likely detect the iPod and ask you to confirm the mount location. It then launches the wizard to create the necessary default folder structure. Alternatively, use the File > `Create iPod’s directories` menu item.
• Choose the model and it should make the updates. Then just use the toolbar icon to Save the changes to the iPod. Once this is set, you can close gtkPod.
• Open up RhythmBox and you should be able to drag the ‘All Artists’ listing that contains all your music onto the IPOD device in the side-bar.

And from there you should be laughing. I’ve even found that the Last.fm plug-in will scrobble the tracks played on the iPod since the last time it was connected. Very neat.

One other thing. My iPod model wasn’t on the list available in gtkPod. It’s one of the newer 120GB classics. I just gave the 160GB Silver option a crack and it worked fine. I guess your mileage may vary though.

I had a laptop hard-drive go on me a few weeks back. After starting over, here’s what I currently have installed. The list is in no particular order:

• Putty
• WinSCP
• GIMP
• XAMPP
• SharpReader
• Firefox 3 beta
• Nokia PC Suite
• Google Earth
• Polar WebLink (for my heartrate monitor)
• TortoiseSVN
• Beyond Compare

I’d expect that as soon as I get my MP3s back on this machine I’ll have WinAMP and the Last.FM scrobbler installed. I can’t be too far off needing an IDE either…. it may be time to try NetBEANS.

[update 28th June]

• FireFox 3 (with firebug, ietab, twitterfox, del.icio.us)
• Opera 9.5
• Internet Explorer 7 (side by side with IE6 thanks to MultipleIEs)
• Winamp & the Last.fm Scrobbler
• Eclipse (plus subclipse, php, pydev)
• MultipleIEs
• NetBeans

[update 10th July]

• CDex
• MusicBrainz PiccardTagger
• Juice Podcast Receiver

Blarg… almost six months since a post.

Last night I upgraded the blog software from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1. This supposedly locks down a few security issues and patches miscellaneous bugs.

After momentarily thinking I’d hosed the database and would need to revert to a daily backup, I realised I had incorrectly configured the table prefix variable. This was because the head revision in subversion differed from the deployed wordpress instance. Bad Dwight.

Another side effect of this blunder was some general weirdness with Feedburner. After some investigation, fooling around with the plug-in, and an eventual version upgrade, things should have returned to normal.

I definitely need to write myself a process guide for future upgrades!

I’ve had it up to ‘here’ with Dope Wars and Fun Wall invitations on FaceBook. Some of us have work to do!

So I googled and found a simple guide on how to block those annoying invitations.

Last night I got my act together and purchased some hosting and a domain name.

Tonight I’ve installed WordPress and grabbed a simple but effective plug-in, aptly named Import New Blogger To WordPress, to drag everything out of my old blog at Blogger.

Now I just have to wait for the DNSs of the world to do their thing before dwightgunning.com comes online. I’ll have some more about my host, TextDrive and the blog setup/move when things come online.

I’m in the process of moving this well and truly neglected blog over to a new server and some new, yet to be decided, blogging software.

The rationale is that having my own hosting motivate me to post more often. It’ll also give me an outlet to let loose the various bits and pieces of prototype and sample apps I’ve created over the years. I keep telling people I’m a web developer but it seems rather fake without my own website. It should be some fun too.

No doubt the minuscule readership I once enjoyed will have either removed me from their aggregators or forgotten the url entirely. Hopefully some more frequent posting about interesting stuff can bring a few people back and entice a few newcomers.

Time will tell.