I’m now using MarsEdit 1.0 for updating this site. Finally, I’ve found an application that works with WordPress! However, I had to make one little change to WordPress because my PHP configuration wasn’t automatically adding slashes to posted information and for some reason WordPress doesn’t check for magic quotes when processing posted data in its XML-RPC interface.

Part one of my research into falling asleep. I’ve often wondered about why my arms and legs sometimes jerk around when I’m falling asleep, so I did a bit of digging and found this:

You’re just about to drift off into a deep sleep when suddenly you feel like you’re falling or rolling downhill on a roller coaster. Then your body jerks suddenly and you’re awake. Weird! What’s going on?

This body movement, also known as a sleep start, is what doctors and scientists call a hypnic (say: hip-nik) or myoclonic (say: my-uh-klah-nik) jerk.

These jerks usually occur before you enter the deeper stages of sleep and are completely normal. Doctors and scientists aren’t really sure why they happen, but they have a few theories.

One theory is that your brain misunderstands the sensation of your muscles relaxing as you drift off to sleep. It’s normal for the muscles to relax, but the brain gets confused, and, for a minute, thinks you’re falling. In response, the brain causes your muscles to tense up so you “catch yourself” before you fall down.

These jerks can wake a person up, or the person might just keep on sleeping. They’re nothing to worry about, so if one of them wakes you up, snuggle back under your quilt, and try to catch some more ZZZs!

Thankfully I saw sense. Or rather, I did more digging about non-iPod players. Remember, all I need is something that has a balance control. My main contender was the IAudio M3. You can find some people’s experience on the official forums, but those set up by fans are more revealing:

• It doesn’t arrange its database via ID3 tags. This isn’t too much of a problem if you just play albums. But just think: I can spend time arranging my MP3s by Artists then Albums, but what happens if I fancy Compilations – where do they live? And collaborations? There are a lot of people in various forums asking and explaining how to best organise music. Is this why people buy MP3 players – to spend time organising their music? I’d rather spend time playing my music.

In fact few players use tags, and those that do can have longish start up times. The IAudio M3 (which as I mentioned doesn’t use tags) can take up to 20-40 seconds to ‘boot up’ depending on how much content has changed. The iPod just turns on. Instantly.

• Another curious feature is that if one selects a folder to play, the player has to parse each file in the folder before anything plays. This can take 5-10 seconds for a typical album.
• Playlists have to be created on the player or based on the current content of the player. The M3U format, common to most players, is essentially a list of file paths. There’s no concept of creating a playlist offline.
• The player has limits to the number of tracks, playlists and playlist size. Go over those limits and you’ll find things missing, but not know why.
• The iPod has a scrollwheel with 4 embedded buttons and one other button. You can control all functions with one thumb. For the IAudio there are two jog dials which can also be pressed in. In real world operation you need to use both wheels alternating between them and pushing / turning!
• You only get one scroll speed when browsing tracks or folders. Sure, Apple have the patent on their exceptional scrolling mechanism, so it’s a moot point.

On the plus side:

• The battery life is good.
• Firmware updates are released every few weeks, mind you, given the bugs in the earlier versions of the firmware it’s not surprising.
• An FM radio and voice recording is included. Not that I’d need either of these features.

My friend Mark pointed me to the Rio Karma as an MP3 player that comes closest to the iPod experience. It does use ID3 tags to arrange content, but has no balance control for the audio. There’s also the Rio Music Manager Lite which is a Java application to allow connection to the player via Ethernet. Only problem is, you need to have a Rio Karma in order to try it out, which is daft.

Squish – File Manager for MP3 Players

Ever since the hearing in my right ear went a bit funny six months back I’ve been looking for a decent MP3 player that has balance control. And works with iTunes. Apple’s iPod has no balance control and I suspect never will. Requests for it are no doubt few and far between, and probably fall on deaf ears

So, I’ve not found a Mac-compatible MP3 player with a desktop companion. Instead, one has to fiddle with folders and such, sticking track numbers in front of filenames etc. But this application has a nice interface which allows you to pick and choose albums to put on your MP3 player. It also keeps track of what’s on the player so you can move things off and on as required. It can also transcode on-the-fly to other bitrates (or indeed AAC -> MP3) via LAME, which is installed as part of Squish.

Now. if I can persuade my mate Mark to try it with his MP3 player, I might move away from iPods.