One of the things I was thinking about for my 50by50 year was to see some live events. Maybe some sports, like hockey, football, soccer or baseball. Maybe some plays like Ottawa Little Theatre. Or maybe some live music like Bluesfest, Jazz Festival, a concert or the NAC. I thought about separating the sports from the arts, but in terms of going out, the organizational side i.e. the “prep” work to go is the same.
And I realized somewhere in there that it isn’t about “going to do x with someone”, it’s about going to do it whether anyone comes or not (I don’t control if they join or not). I like going for wings, and doing so with friends, but the commitment would have to be about MY effort i.e. arranging and going for wings, not whether the friends decide to join me that week. Equally, while I might be excited to see a specific show or game, the focus is on GOING, the “doing”, not the specific event. I have to schedule it, I have to figure out logistics, buy tickets, figure out if anyone is coming with me, find parking, and go. All of which is about the same whether it is for an arts performance or a sporting event.
So I committed to a second item on my 50by50 list:
See five different types of live performances
I’ve thought about waiting until I reach the five different types before I write about it, but where’s the fun in that? There are a couple of goals like that, but this one can be part of the shared area.
This past week, Andrea and I went to see the NAC Pops series (we had a mini-subscription), and this week it was listed as the Four Tenors. I swear that is what it said when I ordered tickets. But then they became the Canadian Tenors, and then they had their fourth member who intentionally altered the national anthem during a MLB appearance and blew up social media, and they became the three tenors in search of a name that wasn’t already taken. Now they are simply The Tenors.
I knew none of this of course. I don’t even think I really registered who the Tenors were under whatever name until Andrea explained it to me. Often when the Pops series is on, they come up with some catchy title like Broadway Divas, but it isn’t an official group name. So when I read there were tenors, I thought they were just lowercase tenors. Not an actual act. I know nothing about bands or music groups. Heck, I’m doing well to recognize U2 or The Tragically Hip — I like songs, not bands, and I almost never know who the artists are.
So I went into the night expecting a group of four lowercase tenors. And then there were only three, and the event title was simply The Tenors. Oh, that group. Okay. Didn’t really help clarify anything other than the name. 🙂
I also wasn’t that impressed when I went to the program and it says “The program will be announced from the stage.” In other words, people didn’t get their shit together in time to publish the actual schedule in the program. Nice. I’m a BLUE RATIONAL INTROVERT — I want an agenda to follow, people! hehehe Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with “spontaneous music” by a band. But for the NAC series, they have a program already set because the orchestra has to have and practice the music; they KNOW what the program is, they’re just not going sharesies! Heck, even the group description was just pulled from Wikipedia.
Which also makes it hard afterwards to review and say they did “this” song well, or “that” song really well. Because ten minutes after I left the hall, I’d forgotten what half the songs were, and even more forgotten after a day. Their set included:
The Canadian Tenors — Hallelujah, Home I’ll Be;
The Perfect Gift — Instrument of Peace, Hallelujah;
Lead With Your Heart — snippets from Manana, Forever Young, Anchor Me;
Under One Sky — I Remember You;
There were a smattering of other songs from Reba McNeil, Rankins, etc., plus a medley of Elvis and others. I am okay with Hallelujah, but as Andrea pointed out, it’s kind of saturated with tons of artists doing the covers, and she didn’t think it was the best cover. I liked Home I’ll Be and Instrument of Peace, plus I Remember You. O Sole Mio was impressive to see, but honestly, 30 seconds is enough for me. While I’m impressed that the sound doesn’t seem to match the body generating it, I could care less about that singing. It’s like opera — why do I want to see someone singing, even impressively, in a language I don’t understand, for any length of time? If there’s a backbeat to tap along to, something Spanish maybe, sure. But a friend of mine went to see 18 hours of opera one weekend in New York in languages she didn’t speak. If I had a choice of that or letting a rat chew on a body part for a minute, it would be a close call.
Now, don’t get me wrong — the Tenors were way better than being a rat’s chew toy, but the multi-cultural aspect left me bored. Even with the french songs, I found it challenging to follow the lyrics. Which would be a good time to tune out and listen to the orchestra, if you could hear them. Often they’re pretty muted during the singing.
The NAC Orchestra did do an instrumental opening and closing, and I wish I knew what the finale was (hey, look, it would be in the program, if they had generated one!). It had a spanish-sounding string section that was quite cool.
Overall, as always, I enjoyed the night. Wasn’t the best show we’ve seen, wasn’t the worst. And better than being a rat’s chew toy. What greater praise can I give?
One of five live performances checked off from my 50by50 list, and accompanied by a fun panda.
I mentioned in an earlier post that not all of my 50by50 commitments were going to be “bucket list type” things. Some of them, in some ways, are really just getting myself squared away. Deciding who I am, I suppose.
And I’ve been struggling with one aspect of my identity for quite some time. Who am I when I’m online?
Way back when I started engaging on the internet, I shared jokes and humour. I ran a trivia contest by email for a very long time. I wrote movie reviews and shared those. But I always wanted to get to the point where I was sharing my own writing online. I struggled though between writing stuff that was essentially “for me”, or more accurately, “about me”, and stuff that was more business-oriented or professional. Like writing about my own jobs vs. writing about HR processes.
I waffled on how it looked online. Awhile ago, I switched to having two sites — one personal, one for writing. Yet are those really different? Are there two sides to me? I wasn’t even sure I got the split right. I made the writing one the “PolyWogg.ca” web domain, as I liked the idea of being PolyWogg for my writing. Yet that left ThePolyBlog as my personal area. Then I would go to write something about goals, and I couldn’t decide — was it “polywogg” as it was about a serious approach to goal-setting, something I am fairly knowledgeable about, or was it “thepolyblog” as it included my own goals?
I’m heavily influenced of course in that division by lots of writers out there who have a “professional” site for all their books and things, and perhaps a “personal” site where they share recipes and stories about their families. Or knitting patterns. Links to Instagram, etc. I kept telling myself if I was going to ever get to that professional writing stage, I should plan now to have the two sites, keep them separate, never the twain shall meet.
Which I have realized is ridiculous. One of the reasons writers often do that is so that publishers and editors and agents (oh my!) can see their “work” all together, not cluttered with personal stuff. But I don’t care about publishers or editors, and don’t get me started on my feelings about most agents (think lawyers and used car salesmen, and drop a level or two). So why am I separating things?
There is me. Only me. PolyWogg, with a blog that I call the PolyBlog. But it is all me. And it is far less work to have one site than two, even just on overhead management.
So I decided to merge the two websites and put everything under PolyWogg.ca. I could have just as easily called this “Fixing my website”, but that is just the activity. I’ve embraced the totality of who I am electronically, and jettisoned some other elements in the process too.
I have struggled a lot with my social media presence. The short version is that I don’t “get it” for certain types of interactions, how to scale up so to speak. I have tried more postings, less posting, more content, less content, different days, different times of the day, different types of content. On Facebook, where I have limited myself to about 100 friends and am not looking to expand that number drastically as it is primarily for friends, I have extremely limited engagement on my posts.
Take my memes for example. I loved the idea of trying to create my own little brand of meme, following in the footsteps of some giants on the ‘net who have created little shareable cards with their logo and some text. I did quotes, I did jokes, I did lunchnotes for kids. The vast majority by far received ZERO response. Most of them not even a single like outside of my wife, and those are often pity likes. 🙂
I stopped them when I was getting no response. I switched my focus a bit to sharing my TV reviews and photos. I watch a lot of serialized TV, review episodes, and post the reviews to Twitter. Since I was actually clicking to NOT share them on FB, I started letting them go through too. I figured a handful of people would start liking the shows they watched. Nope, one or two, occasionally, but not very often. Even though my occasional posts about cancellations, etc., attract some comments, I get nothing on my TV episodes. So I have gone back to Twitter only for those. I’ve even tweaked my setup a bit on those for what makes sense for me, even if it reduces my hashtag pickup occasionally.
I’m almost finding FB to be a negative influence on my life. I’m not talking about people who are obsessed with it, constantly refreshing etc., I mean that while it is a good tool to reduce feelings of isolation, those feelings do not diminish if you’re posting into the wind and there is no echo coming back. I actually have felt more isolated at times with some of my posts, particularly where I have shared something I felt really strongly about, and received nothing but silence. I feel like sometimes I’m craving the likes too much, too much desire for acceptance or positive feedback.
So a week ago, I withdrew from FB. I didn’t delete my account or anything, I just stopped posting. I have logged in each day once just to scan for news announcements from friends, liked a few things, a couple of small comments for the week, but nothing substantial. I read things where I was tagged, that’s about it.
It’s just not my focus, since I get almost nothing out of it. I feel almost the same way about my blog at times. I wrote 50,000 words about previous jobs, and even though I know a bunch of people read the various posts (I have stats on the site), I received 3 comments in total across 17 posts.
I thought about killing my blog entirely and just saying “screw it”. Moving on to something where I get more pay-off for my time investment. Except here’s the thing.
I like writing the posts. Even if people don’t “like” the posts. Even if people don’t comment. Even if people don’t share. There’s a Pearls Before Swine comic strip about writing on the bathroom wall generating more eyeballs viewing it, and it’s true. But I’m going to keep writing. And I guess it comes down to a simple reality.
I’m writing for me. It is a creative outlet for me to say “this is how I see the world”. And when I get to the fiction stage, or bundling up my non-fiction for something into an actual book form, I’m keeping it all on this site.
Because this is who I am. I finally feel like I’ve found my persona for online, one that has been there all along.
Today is my birthday (yay me!), and I’m 49 years old!
I have a pretty good life, and so I don’t have any major sources of angst about roads not taken, even if I was a believer in regrets, which I’m not. But next year, I will turn 50, and I was wondering what to do to mark the occasion. Not a single event so much as smaller events over the next year. Think of it as a short-term mini-bucket list. My very own “50 things to do before I’m 50” list, which some people create when they’re in their 30s or early 40s, not usually when it is a single year away.
And with great tasks come great doubts, so I asked my friends and family for suggestions.
I put a couple of caveats on the list though…I was leaning towards things that can be done in and around Ottawa. And since I wasn’t looking to break the bank, probably things that individually wouldn’t go above $500. I also am not looking to risk my life doing stuff, since as I said, I kind of like my life. And, you know, living and stuff. I also know too that there are lots of natural caveats in there that are other personal limits. Like for example that my knees wouldn’t let me run a marathon anytime soon, if at all, even if I was in shape to do it. I’m also probably not going to perform brain surgery either. And flying a plane in a simulator made me sick, so that might be out. Yep, I’m a wuss. Mostly I’m looking for fun and interesting things to consider, not death-defying feats of derring-do.
I know, when you clicked on the link for the post, you probably thought this would be my ACTUAL list. It isn’t. Instead, I will tell you things people suggested, and some types of things that I found or thought of on my own, but I’m not going to share the official list in advance. I am however going to use it as a theme for a lot of blogging throughout the year. So you can see the journey as I go, not the planned destination all at once.
Here are the suggestions I got from asking on Facebook:
Liz: Edge walk at CN Tower;
Stephan: Golf, Keg for dinner (re-enactment of my bachelor party);
Lisa: explore the caves, rock climb outside, cupcake bar, eat snails, casino and blackjack, sing in public, go to a nude beach, get something pierced, get a tat, have a 3some, learn to paint, buy a pet, go to a retirement seminar, go to a time share, make your own ice cream, sail a boat, all day trail ride, hot air balloon, have a prof makeup artist make you up like one of your idols and get pics done, redecorate a room just the way YOU like it, eat something spicy, drink a wine from your birth year with your parents, do a couples swap, shave a pattern in your legs or head, (NOTE this is NOT my bucket list, I’m just sharing IDEAS!) eat frog’s legs, travel to Vegas or Nashville, re-enact a scene from your fav movie, but yourself a treat like jewellry/car/art, have your home prof cleaned and appraised then go to open houses, enter a contest, make a new friend, fire a poor friend, have a party with good friends, body paint, donation to a charity, park bench dedication, name a star, fly a drone, helicopter ride, white water rafting, hold a snake, east exotic meat, costume party
Martin: Fenway Park, write your congressman, discover new galaxy,
Andrea: Make a list, axe throwing, escape room, dye your hair (+hot shave?), boat cruis
Leanne: National park, national historic site
Aliza: Tourist in Ottawa; weekend getaway to Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Vermont; giant lego or Ikea ball room; travel; explore new hobby; health something or other; new job
Pete: Bungee jump, sky dive, scuba dive
Julie: Fan expo/comicon, $$ to charity, 50 different meals/drinks/dishes, reconnect with 50 people
Mike: Indoor go karts
Vivian: Canoe trip in Algonquin park
Diane: Fishing
Cori: 50 gifts to random people (compliment, help, something)
Zoe: Yoga classes
Linda: Walk for charity, volunteer at soup kitchen, donate blood
It’s a pretty good list, said Gerald McGrist, to misquote Dr. Seuss. There are definitely some items on that list that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own and some will definitely make the final single list.
Some of them could be all encompassing on their own, like Julie’s idea of 50 meals to try…at one a week, that would be significant all on its own, but I’m not looking for 50 things to do 50 times. In those cases, I might combine them with something else like say 10 restaurants, 10 baking recipes, 10 wing sauces, etc. – i.e. combining a few things that might “add” up to 50, but not 50 all by themselves.
On my own list (I had 42 ideas before I started, mostly from internet searches and things), a few of them are quite, umm, boring. Administrative perhaps. Definitely blue activities like updating my will, or getting a physical. Not very “exciting” but things that should be done to make sure (insert solemn voice here) “my affairs are in order” (end solemn voice). Or to creepily quote Jeff Lindsay from his Dexter novels, to get myself “squared away”.
When I combine the two lists, there some items I will do alone, some with Jacob and Andrea, some with friends and family. A nice mix, even balanced perhaps.
And in the end, I’ll cheat a bit…probably more like 50 items with some sub-commitments that might mean almost 150 “things”, some of them quite small but as I said towards a larger commitment. And if I don’t get them done by 50, I might have to carry a few over, I’m going to be a slave to the list.
But at least I have a starting point…I made a list. Let the journey begin.
In the words of my 7-year-old son, I’m a weirdo pants. And if you look at the way I’m currently managing my career, that might be an appropriate characterization. I took a job 9 years ago in my current branch, and for the first year or so, I was the manager of performance measurement. Then I started a five-year process of “big scary projects” on top of my regular job, often as the sole branch rep involved in it, and the rest of my job kind of moved to the corner of my desk at times. I kept things going, but just based on time and intense focus, the projects were far more important to my work plan than my day-to-day files. Then we reorganized, my director left, I acted for a while, and then I took over as manager for our corporate planning team, subsuming my job as manager for performance measurement, and I’ve been doing that new combined job more or less for the last three years.
So three years ago, I thought, “six years is enough”, and planned to move on. Except I had a great boss and new files. So I stayed. Then two years ago, I thought, “Okay, time to move on”, except again, there was no real incentive. Good boss, good work/life balance, good files, and I stayed. Just over a year ago, I was like, “Okay, time to REALLY move on”, but I didn’t. Sure, I had to get my French renewed first, but even with that in hand, I haven’t been embracing the job hunt. And, honestly, why would I?
I report directly to an EX-03 who gives me a lot of autonomy. I interact regularly with all the DGs and ADMs, and they like my work. Nobody is telling me to fix what isn’t broken, I gained some new financial experience in the last year, I have a great team to work with, the work balance has been good, and I am both good at my job and enjoy it. So why leave? Because I threw my hat in the ring last year for a promotion to get a specific job, and when I updated my résumé, I had to add coverage for the last two years — and I only changed six words.
Never, in my entire career, has that happened. I have always had new files, new projects, new SOMETHING / ANYTHING that kept the renewal constant. But, here I was, now 9 years in the same “box”, and no real change in files or initiatives in the last 3 years. I could have invented stuff to talk about, or rather blew up a few things just to look different, but that’s not the point. It wasn’t how to spin it to look bigger, it was that it wasn’t ACTUALLY different. So I talked to my boss, we started a search for a replacement, and we even posted the job in March for applicants to pose their candidacy.
Why is that weird? Because I have no idea what job I am going to do next.
It’s true, I don’t know. And if the first question out of everyone’s mouth is, “Where are you going?”, the second that quickly follows is, “What do you mean, you don’t know?”. Because NOBODY does that. You find a new job, you quit your old one, they hire a replacement, maybe there’s a gap to cover. But I agreed that I would “train” my replacement although it is more about transfer over of some corporate knowledge than it is “training”. And my boss asked for a month, and that seemed fine. Plus I’m finishing my french.
So she’s interviewing my replacements last week and this, and I haven’t even really looked too hard to find something. Some by laziness, some by agreement, but some of that was by intentional design. Most of the people I’m going to talk to are more senior, and I don’t want to waste their time. It’s a bit of an overstatement, but they do often think “What do I need someone to do RIGHT NOW?”, not two or three months from now. So I didn’t want to talk to them, have them go, “Perfect, start doing this”, and then have to say, “Wait a minute, I’m not free until two months from now.” To which some could conceivably say, “Two months? That’s a lifetime from now!”.
I confess, somewhat both arrogantly and humbly, that I have “options”. Lots of people have said, “Sooooo”, and want to have a chat. So I know I’ll find “something”, but will it be the right thing? If I’m going to do a proper search, and I should this time (although grasping something willy nilly last time worked out well for me!), then I need the time to do the real search, chatting people up, asking their advice.
So I officially started looking today. Reaching out, scheduling meetings. I had been waiting until after May, but someone I respect advised me that it wasn’t too early, particularly if I made it clear right up front that I was looking for something in late Spring, not now. It would slow the conversation pace, slow the urgency of meeting, and people have been saying yes to the meetings. I’ve set up three so far, and two others are pending scheduling. Very diverse groups, very different job possibilities. I have another four or five in mind, and the conversations with the first batch may generate more, or different ones, for the second round. Or they may lead to something that negates the second round. I had two already in the last six months, and one was great but not with the current management structure and one was good, but a bad fit for me on the real work. I could do it, but my heart wouldn’t be in it, even if I love the boss.
I have a good idea of what I’m looking for, partly as I know myself and my interests+skills pretty well, but also because I did a fairly methodical review of my past jobs and what I liked about them. That’ll be in the next post…
Is anybody else looking for a change in their job this year?
One of my goals for this year was to improve some of my digital setup. Some of that is for photography, some of it is for astronomy, a few other things here and there, but the three big “techno” areas for me this year are my laptop/writing setup, my TV subscriptions / antenna options, and my audio files. Namely, my music collection in digital form.
I’ve been delaying a deep dive into the world of MP3 management for some time, partly as I’ve been burned before. Several times, I thought that I had found a solution, everything seemed to be working, I was making some progress, and then BAM! The app stopped being supported. Or I had a crash and lost a bunch of work. Not the actual music files themselves, I’m pretty good at backing them up, but having a good file structure with a good management program and a player? Not so much.
I used to love programs like WinAmp. Simple interface, could handle the synch with my iPod well, heck it even would synch with a Sony Walkman (yes, they used the name for a small line of MP3 players at one point too, and because it is small, lightweight and functional, I still use it as my music player of choice when portability is the main factor). I almost never use my phone or tablet for music playback as it is just a license to suck battery life. I’ve struggled with ripping from time to time, finding a good setup, good parameters that didn’t produce overly large file sizes that I wouldn’t notice the benefit of cuz I have basic system for playback and no real discerning ability with my ears. I have an old boss that has more money tied up in high-end audio WIRING then I have in my entire stereo collection.
But I was determined to do it right. Now, just to be clear, I wasn’t looking for a perfect solution, nor even a solution to a “problem” per se, I was just wanting to update my approach, maybe find some baby steps that I could take. Wow, was I in for a surprise.
50,000 reasons to hate iTunes
While I was starting to figure out how I wanted to sort my library with as few “layers” as possible, I updated iTunes just to keep it up to date. It is after all a good store. I had pushed everything over there in my last go around about 18 months ago, and I had decided pretty much at the time to go all in on iTunes, right up until I noticed a couple of files seemed to “change” quality and size after I synched with iTunes. It seemed odd, so I started looking at it more closely. In addition, in one case, iTunes even changed the filenames of two files — assigning the song name for Track 7 to Track 8, and visa versa. Weirdness in naming and how did some of the files shrink? WTF?
I then starting looking around online and found out that iTunes has a unique little feature. By default, when you synch, if it finds the file in its library, it doesn’t “upload” and save your copy. No, it just uses its copy (to save bandwidth and file size). No biggie, right? Except it then goes a step further in the synch and REPLACES your copy with the file from its database since it knows it is safe and sanitized. Which isn’t a huge deal if the files were the same…except they weren’t. I had ripped at a higher quality than the iTunes version, so my files were originally larger, and now they were “downgraded” to a lower quality and smaller size. Would I notice? Probably not when actually listening, I don’t have an audiophile’s ear nor the equipment. You can turn the setting off with a little tweaking, if you know to even look for it, but the default is to replace all existing files with the iTunes version. I found a few horror stories online where someone had some specific backups of old recordings that got replaced by iTunes with no warning or notification, and after a couple of subsequent backups not knowing there was anything wrong with the originals, their backups were now just the iTunes version. Bye bye sweet memories, hello commercial pablum. While these problems stood out, there were lots of other quirks people had found and posted online, and it made nervous enough to want to manage my music files myself without an auto-synch taking over. I manage my ebooks the same way — myself with my own software, not Amazon’s or Kobo’s or Nook’s, etc.
So my commitment to iTunes was done, and it slowed my music-organizing work in 2015. I tried Music Bee, but it wasn’t really jiving for me, and I eventually completed stalled. Until this past week, when I got back into it. I checked the iTunes install, and now it was REALLY weird. While I had some 3500 files stored in the iTunes media folders, only 35 were showing up in the actual iTunes app. I had them all in there before. I had done massive work to upload, sort, tweak the meta data, etc. Gone. So my hope of exporting and importing was gone. No biggie, it hadn’t been finished anyway, and I wasn’t sure what I was using now anyway.
Except then I noticed another problem. Those 3500 files. It seemed like a lot, well structured, but there were a few odd things missing. Like Jacob’s kids songs. I had four or five CDs ripped, and they weren’t there. Then I noticed some collections missing from the 1940s and 1950s. WTF? Where are the rest of my music files?
I had told iTunes back in the day that it could have permission to manage my music folders. Which meant it imported everything from another directory that was a bit chaotic. I never noticed at the time, too busy working within iTunes to notice that when it imported it into the directory, it DIDN’T actually complete the job. I knew it hadn’t uploaded everything, and in fact I hadn’t wanted it to until better organized, but I thought it had at least COPIED everything and that it was now all IN the directory. Nope. Not even close. I have another 40K files that just aren’t there. No, not another 40K songs, there’s a lot of chaff in that mix, with lots of duplicates, but probably another 10K active songs. I knew they weren’t in iTunes, like I said, but they should have been in the iTunes media folder. Nada.
Small panic. Maybe they’re elsewhere in the drive? Nope, I cleaned those up LONG ago. Cuz iTunes had them, no worries. Except it didn’t. So I checked my backups…of course, 18 months ago, my backups would have had those secondary directories. But now? I’ve completely rolled over 2 or 3 times since then. So my backup is JUST what iTunes has. Yikes. 50,000 down to 3500? That’s a big reason to hate iTunes a little, even if it isn’t entirely iTunes fault (I should have verified that it copied what I told it to copy!).
Digital packrat
I dug out two old backup drives, ones I’m loathe to just ditch even if they are not part of my regular backup routine now. I loaded them up and started working my way through them. One was relatively empty, easy to wipe and set aside for a future secondary or tertiary backup of some key files (it’s a 500GB drive but requires power, so not simple USB mobile device). The second is a 2TB workhorse. Killed tons of crap that I don’t need anymore, long since improved or reorganized, but then I found my old music files.
They’re relatively a disaster in terms of organization, no question about it. But the extra files are there. Some overlap with what I already have, but surprisingly not as much as I might have thought. What did I find? 3000 folders, 40K of files and 160GB of music related materials. Ah, so that’s why my Music backups didn’t take up as much time or size as I would have expected. I should have twigged to it earlier, but I trusted the wrong app.
Which means I have to copy all of those over, sort them, and figure out what I’m going to do with my new apps.
New apps
I mentioned that I had Music Bee for awhile but it just wasn’t “singing” to me. Then, with a cellphone plan that I have, I got Spotify for free for two years. Instant music, no need to organized, synch, or do anything else. It was just there. Or at least it is there for two years in total, another six months or so. I’m not totally comfortable with subscription based music consumption, partly as I don’t use it anywhere near enough to make it worth it, and at the end, you don’t own anything. It is just “temporary”. Why rent when I can buy?
Except of course I need to rip a lot of stuff, and I want it in a good format so I only do it once. Plus I want to be able to upload it somewhere where I can access it via the web. Oh, and I want to be able to synch to my Walkman, play it on an old tablet connected to my stereo, and just for fun, synch the music to an old iPhone or two. Easy peasy, right? Let’s break it down in order.
For the streaming, it is relatively easy. While there are a number of apps and sites, the three biggest are Spotify, Google Play Music (GPM) and iTunes. I already ditched iTunes, and I already have Spotify but it isn’t doing everything I want nor does it have great options for my own music so much as just using their existing library. Which means those two are not high on my list.
Since I use Google for everything anyway, I started looking pretty heavily at GPM. I can upload up to 50K of my own songs. And then I can stream them. And it’s free. If I want to upgrade to the full streaming system, it is $10 and I can have up to 10 devices. Colour me sold. Why didn’t I do this LONG ago?
So that left me merely with finding a good music manager for my desktop. Most of the big ones would work fine, and most of the real differences between a lot of them are graphical user interface choices. I prefer a simple list layout, something relatively like Windows Explorer even. But the real kicker for me is to where I want to be able to transfer the music. I almost never listen on my PC itself, partly as it is in a shared office with my wife. Instead, I want to be able to transfer it to six separate devices:
My Sony Walkman — as I mentioned, it’s an MP3 player that Sony slapped the Walkman rubrique on for branding, but it is small without being like an Apple nano. Good size, works well, good battery life. I load it up with my music and then it sits on there until I get bored with it and want something else. Not very quick to be changed, I mean. But I want the app to recognize it;
My old iTouch — I have an old iTouch, and I want to be able to just dump a ton of stuff on to it and plug it into my bedside clock radio/stereo. I could stream off of Google Play through my network, but really I just want it to be a physical storage device with direct loading; and,
Andrea’s old iPhone — she has an old iPhone 4 or 5 that had a cracked screen, so I got it repaired with the intention of giving it to Jacob as a simple camera and portable app toy. The synching with iTunes for apps isn’t very functional though, with the software getting a little long in the tooth, so I’m looking at repurposing to be another portable music player. I’m also going to try using it as an underwater camera in one of those sealable pouches, and well, if it dies, no great loss;
The other three are a bit different though as they are three fully functional Android devices, which means I can either stream or synch with them direct.
My phone — I have a 32GB SD card in it, so I could just copy it over. Or I can run the Google Play Music app. It would be great though if I could synch wirelessly with my phone, the way I do to upload my photos when I want to transfer them to the PC;
My big tablet — My newer tablet is wireless, and like my phone, I can either synch the music and carry it with me on the SD card or I can just stream GPM. But either way, it would be great to synch wirelessly with the PC; and,
My old small tablet — I have an older slower Samsung tablet that is basically collecting dust in my office. It isn’t fast, it isn’t fancy, but it still runs everything on Google. So my plan is to copy everything over, either wirelessly or not, and / or install GPM on it, and hook it up to the computer in our family room. Instant stereo feed.
Now, with those six devices in mind, I fully expected I would not be able to do it with one app. I thought, “Okay, one app to synch with the first batch” and hopefully I could find another that would handle the second. Or I could just use GPM to stream it. Except as I was reading online of the top 10 music managers from 2016, I came across Media Monkey again.
Media Monkey
I had seen this app before, back in the day, and I ended up with Music Bee and iTunes. But as I went through a good review over on Tom’s Guide of music managers, I was dropping some of them fast. Won’t synch with iDevices? Gone. Trouble with other MP3 players? Pass.
Wait a second. It says Media Monkey will synch with regular MP3 players AND iDevices? Hold the phones — it will also synch with Android WIRELESSLY? Holy cow, that sounds like the perfect app.
Sure, it’s a bit of a pig for display, a little small here and there, without much opportunity to fix it. The skins are terrible (had to revert to Windows). But it does have a file tree-like view option. Text for the rest. Recognizes my Sony device. Synched wirelessly with my phone.
And if I rename a heading in the music view, it renames the actual folder in the hard drive. Outstanding.
This will bear some careful examination, but I think I’ve found my tool.
