5 of the mostly now

I've been a bit lax in posting any 5 of the now music recently, so some of these tracks are finely aged at this point. All still good though. A nice mix of some mainstream, and some really fine remixes.

1. Cage the Elephant - Ain't No Rest For The Wicked - Ain't No Rest For The Wicked
Good, solid rock. I thought for sure this was a hair metal track that I somehow missed, only to learn it was brand new. I've only heard this on KRNA on rare terrestrial radio listening occasions, so I don't know if it has gotten much airplay or not. I dig it.

2. Lateef & Z-Trip - Ahead of the Curve - Time (Freestyle)
Z-Trip is hands-down one of my favorite DJ's, and I've been a fan of Lateef's since his work with Lyrics Born. This track is the current favorite off of what is a great mixtape.

3. Rhianna - Umbrella (Travis Barker Remix)
Since becoming more interesting in drums, I've been even more amazed with what Travis can do. His work with DJ AM was incredible. This track is very much along those lines.

4. DJ Earworm - Heartless (In a Bottle). I first came across DJ Earworm after his "United State of Pop 2008 (Viva La Pop)" mashup of the top 25 pop songs of 2008. He has a number of other very smooth mashups, with this one being one of my favorites. The Fray doing Kanye + The Police + Black-Eyed Peas + others. Fabulous.

5. Toby Keith - American Ride - American Ride
Toby Keith is often hit or miss for me. This one nails it though.

Albums of 2009

For the past few years (initially started by Ryan, I believe) at the end of the year I have assembled a list of my favorite albums that I purchased during the year. These are not individual songs, instead they are whole albums that ended up getting lots of play during the year.

This year proved to be particularly challenging. First, in something that should be a sign to the ignorant record companies, I did not buy a single, silver, shiny disc this year. Not one. I didn't do this to purposely not buy CD's any longer. Instead, I have just found that price, convenience, and ease of use by me all lead to me buying nearly all of my music as Amazon MP3 downloads. Second, I also greatly loaded up on the amount of free music I was finding, and a healthy dose of Pandora. All of this lead to a rather small list of possible albums. However, out of that list, I was able to find 4 albums that had significantly more listening mileage than others.

These are in no particular order. They are simply 4 albums that I purchased this year and found to be the most interesting of 2009:

1. Kid Cudi - Man On The Moon: The End Of Day [Explicit]
I was first pulled in by "Day and Night", and the "Make Her Say" remix was far better than the original. Good stuff overall.

2. LMFAO - Party Rock (Amazon MP3 Exclusive Version) [Explicit]
Raw fun. That's really all you need to know. This stuff never gets old, it just perks up your day when you hear it. "I am not a whore" remains my favorite.

3. Shinedown - The Sound Of Madness
Yes, this album got a significant amount of standard radio airplay. Despite that, this is the real deal. These guys are how I want my rock to sound. The title track still kicks me in the rear when I need it.

4. Steinski - What Does It All Mean? - 1983-2006 Retrospective
If you dig people such as Girl Talk, DJ Shadow, etc., you need to give Steinski a listen. In my mind, he's the Grand Wizard Theodore of the mashup/sampling movement. He's the originator who almost nobody knows - he doesn't have the mainstream name. However, this stuff is top-notch. More info on Steinski is here.

5 for July

Billy Currington - People Are Crazy - Little Bit of Everything
I've been in the mood recently some simple, feel-good country music. This is a really light track, but I have yet to get tired of it. "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy." I can't disagree with that.

Rodney Atkins - It's America - It's America
More simple country goodness. Not really a good explanation on this one, but I enjoy it.

Primus - The Toys Go Winding Down - Frizzle Fry
"This isn't even AC/DC - it's just some techno band". Yeah - true that. Les Claypool and Primus have been beyond cool since I was in high school. Couple that with AC/DC, and I'm sold. I can't believe I didn't know about this until I got it as a free track somewhere. Free music FTW!

Ben Harper & Relentless7 - Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart) - White Lies for Dark Times
This is the BEST SONG EVER. That comes straight from my son's drum teacher. I don't disagree. The intro, the heavy metal yell, the drum, and the bad-ass guitar. Listen to it at high volume. Do not resist.

A Perfect Circle - The Noose - Thirteenth Step
Possibly the smoothest song ever. Maynard has unparalleled vocals, and the production on this is amazing. One of my favorites for a long time. Here's looking at you, Cheney and Bush.

5 of the now

Wow - haven't touched the blog since February. Unfortunately (maybe), Twitter has mostly replaced blogging for me it appears. The 140 character bursts fit my available time better.

However, the blog still provides a great place for 5 of the now to land.

Charlie Robison - Good Times - Good Times
True Blood has one of the best mixes of music I have ever heard on a TV series. An eclectic mix of primarily swamp rock, country, and folk. Charlie Robison brings the perfect stoner band song to the mix. Mellow out and enjoy.

Lyrics Born - Funky Hit Records - As U Were
I already knew Lyrics Born was badass. This track just blew the lid off the place though. Just try listening to this and not nodding your head and rocking out. It's free to boot.

Shinedown - Sound of Madness - The Sound of Madness
Shinedown was on the last 5 of the now, and here they crank up the rock. This thing rocks out hard, and has a chorus that is beyond catchy. There is a hint of vintage Metallica running through the beginning, and then they make it their own. Definitely my favorite rock group of the moment.

I'm Just Raw (Remix) (feat. Del The Funky Homosapien & Pigeon John) - Lyrics Born - Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live!
Yes - a 2nd appearance by Lyrics Born. Until I saw him live in Iowa City, I actually didn't get this song. Now I do. One of the single best performances I have seen. This track isn't actually live, and you can now get it on his 3rd mixtape album, but Del puts this one over the top.

A Little Bit Of Riddim (featuring Cherine Anderson) - Michael Franti - All Rebel Rockers
Now for something completely different. Open up wide and enjoy some music that is different than anything you have been hearing. This entire album is great, but this is probably my favorite.

5 of the now

2NU - The Best of 2NU - Crossroads (Chaos)
Great flashback to the early 1990's (for me at least). I was a huge fan of 2NU and "This is Ponderous" back in the day, and one of few people to actually own their CD it turns out. This track came out on one of their later discs, but I find it very cool still. A bit of spoken-word mixed with odd humor, so not for everyone.

Shinedown - The Sound of Madness - Second Chance
This is one of the best songs I have heard in years. I really liked Shinedown's previous album with "45", and I picked up this album before this track really started getting a lot of airplay.

Team 9 vs. Stereogum - Stereogum & team9 Present... MySplice The Third - Lockdown Shelter
Team9 makes some of the best mashups I have heard this side of Z-Trip. Pairing Kanye with the Stones is an unusual and completely fantastic mix. This might be the best mashup I have heard to date. Plus it's free!

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burritos! The Flying Burrito Bros: Anthology 1969-1972 - Christine's Tune (A.K.A. Devil In Disguise)
This one was picked up by watching True Blood. This plays on the radio during the final episode of the 1st season. A catchy little number, especially if you have the show context behind it. Once I found out that Gram Parsons wrote it, I understood why I liked it so much.

Tom Morello The Nightwatchman - The Fabled City - The Iron Wheel
I admit - I got this track (and album) originally because Shooter Jennings is on this track with Tom. They go way back to when Tom actually produced albums for Stargunn. However, I enjoyed this particular track much more than expected. The Nightwatchman is Tom's folk/country alter-ego for those who don't know, or can't believe it.

Dominance

After doing some research of my own, I thought I would throw some fun facts out here about the Iowa Wrestling program - the definition of dominance.

I realized that one great measure of a program is how many members of that program end up coaching in the sport. Specifically, I wanted to see just how many Big Ten schools had coaches from Iowa. Here are the results:

Indiana - Duane Goldman (Iowa 1983-1986)
Mike Mena (Iowa 1994-1997)

Northwestern - Tim Cysewski (Iowa 1973-1976)

Penn State -
Mark Perry (Iowa 2005-2008)

Wisconsin - Barry Davis (Iowa 1981-1985)
Bart Chelesvig (Iowa 1988-1992)

Illinois - Mark Johnson (Iowa Coach 1980-1990)
Jim Heffernan (Iowa 1983-1987)

Ohio State - Tom Ryan (Iowa 1989-1992)

Iowa - Tom Brands (Iowa 1988-1992)
Terry Brands (Iowa 1988-1992)
Doug Schwab (Iowa 1998-2001)
Mike Zadick (Iowa 2000-2002)

Minnesota - J Robinson (Iowa Coach 1972-1984)


That makes 8 out of 11 schools with at least one former Iowa wrestler on the coaching staff. Pretty impressive.

Now, just to bask in the glow for a bit, here's a shotgun listing of some stats that range from bad ass to completely mind-blowing:


Record at Carver Hawkeye Arena - 164-18 (90%)
16 undefeated seasons

National collegiate dual meet attendance record - 15,955 (2008-12-06)

101 Big Ten Champions
182 Big Ten Championships
32 Big Ten Titles

49 NCAA Champions
76 NCAA Championships
21 National Titles

9 consecutive NCAA Championships (1978-1986)
11 of 12 (1975-1986), and 20 of 26 (1975-2000)


There's a reason this program was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the top sports dynasties of the 20th century. Looking forward to wiping the floor with other programs again at the Big Ten and NCAA championships this year.

...And I start to complain that there's no rain

Google recently announced they are shutting down some of their service offerings. This move is at least partially driven by reducing costs and focusing engineering efforts on more popular services.

I found this all interesting for a few reasons. First, while at least one of those services, Google Notebook, was flagged as unpopular, I personally knew someone who used it quite a bit. Second, it brought to light something which was always dangling out there with these new "Cloud Computing" services.

It's all the rage right now to utilize these services, and move as much as possible to the "cloud" model. Applications as services, delivered through the web, is one of the current flavors of the month. In many ways it's very appealing, and I admit, I drink from the faucet freely. I have signed up for countless numbers of these sites and services, and many from Google in particular are now indispensable in my daily routine. They are easily accessible from any computer and possibly more important - consistent. They can be updated immediately and everyone simultaneously receives the new upgrade.

However, that last point is exactly the looming underbelly of all of this. When a vendor no longer finds it worthwhile or profitable to maintain a service, it disappears. It doesn't just go end of life, it doesn't just stop receiving technical support, it ceases to exist entirely. {Note - in this case it appears that the service won't disappear entirely immediately. There are plans to leave it simply unmaintained for a while. I'd guess eventually it will cease completely though.}

This is a substantial change from nearly any paradigm of the past. If you bought (or received for free) a service or product, you continued to have it. Unless it was a consumable, even if the company no longer made the product or stopped supporting it, you could continue using it as it was. Not so any longer.

Cloud computing on the web isn't the first to have this issue, other "connected" services had this type of potential gotcha as well. Certain Satellite dish receivers and other boxes that receive television guide data have bumped into this issue in the past also. It is just becoming much more prevalent and open to a larger potential user base now via the web.

With most of these services of course, this basically falls under the "get what you pay for" category. However, I would use this as a reason to be very wary of cloud computing services that want to start charging for service. It should also serve as a reminder to keep all data backed up in an offline format as well - unless of course you want to be the next JournalSpace.

As for Google Notebook, it appears some services are stepping up to try to switch existing users. Hopefully more will follow suit. Lifehacker has offered several suggestions for those feeling abandoned by this service being discontinued.

Get the Lead Out

Why does it seem whenever the US Government tries to "look out for our well-being", it nearly always ends up doing the opposite? I'd like to think I'm making too generalized of a statement, but it really does seem to be the case.

The current incarnation of this is a law that will go into effect on February 10th of this year regulating the amount of lead in products for children. "How can limiting lead be a bad thing," one might ask. It seems recently that every toy shipped here from China has later been recalled due to lead, so this seems like a good plan. It's "for the good of the children" after all.

Except there were already lead restrictions on kids toys in place BEFORE these crappy items started rolling in from China. Based on that, I argue it will do nothing to change what type of products are cheaply made with potentially dangerous chemicals overseas, by large companies looking to "protect shareholder value."

Now - here's why I'm angry about this. The new law says that all children's products (toys, jewelry, etc.) must contain 600 ppm or less of lead. In August, that will drop to 300 ppm. If this fact can't be certified, these products are not allowed to be sold.

That certification part is the rub. Certification costs about $150, and must be done for each unique item. That's cost-prohibitive for many small, local businesses making handmade products in the U.S. [Note - the article linked mentions that second-hand stores will be hurt, there is now in-fact an exemption for them].

This of course is where it hits home for me. My wife has a line of jewelry that she designs, makes, and sells. One of her lines is children's jewelry. After Feb. 10th, she would have to get certification for each and every one of those items at $150 apiece. Not going to happen. Instead, that line will cease to be sellable on her website. Poof. Gone.

So - what will be the net effect. Fewer small businesses in the U.S. making handmade jewelry (and other products), and likely then even more of it being made in large factories in China instead. Does anyone think that is a good trade off? Were we worried the mom's working at home on a side income were killing off the kids of this country with lead poisoning? Were we wanting to run to China to keep our products safe?

I sure as hell am not. A few good places to go do more about this are http://cpsia-central.ning.com/, and http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/RepealCPSIA/. The usual letter writing, phone calls, and emails to elected officials are worthwhile as well.

Quick and to the point

This is sports-related, and it's going to be extremely short.

Now that Florida has won the BCS "championship game", many people are going to be calling them the national champions for college football. I beg to differ. The BCS can go suck it.

Here is a fantastic article that I found on ESPN that sums up my feelings for this bowl season better than I possibly could.

Screw it - I just want to watch the Hawks pummel the Cocks again.

Albums of 2008

Ryan nudged me to say that it was time to post my favorite albums of the last year. I actually had this done in time for the New Year, but never posted. So here it is now. As with him, I bought almost no physical CD's in the past year. In fact, the ACDC (no other choice) and Waylon CD's on this list are the only ones I bought all year. Amazon is now my drink of choice over iTunes, but they are both where I get 99% of my purchased music.

Also of interest - this year my free vs. purchased ratio was far in favor of free. I think that is the first year for that.

These are in no particular order, they were simply the 5 albums that I own and found to be the most interesting of 2008.

1. AC/DC - Black Ice
Surprisingly, as AC/DC is one of my absolute favorite bands of all time (XM channel 53 is really the only XM channel I need), I didn't buy this CD right away. Partially because I could only get it at WalMart or ACDC.com (yeah - I got it from the latter). Partially because I wasn't sure how good it would be given their last effort. I'm now mad at myself for waiting. This is the best stuff since Razor's Edge, if not Back in Black. As good of hard rock and blues as there has ever been.

2. Waylon Jennings & The 357's - Waylon Forever (The Final Recordings)
Waylon sends us some tunes from the great beyond, courtesy of Shooter. This was an effort of Shooter's nearly 10 years in the making. In the end, we get an eerie reminder of Waylon's greatness as he re-imagines stripped-down versions of some of his great songs. A fantastic original collaboration with Shooter is included as well.

3. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
I don't think this needs any more accolades, although it deserves them all. There's a reason this is overlapped with Ryan's list. I know I said these weren't in a particular order, but this album takes #1 for this year hands down. The most original and incredible work I have come across in years - possibly ever.

4. Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song
I originally got a sampler song from this for free, and then my wife told me about another on the radio. I bought the whole album, and was amazed at how good it was in its entirety, especially for a freshman effort. A great new country voice I hope to hear continue.

5. Various Artists - Music from the Motion Picture 21
This CD got a ton of play this year. It has an assortment of great songs and acts. The LCD Soundsystem track was good, as always. More importantly, this album introduced me to MGMT, who I had somehow managed to not stumble upon. Correcting that mistake makes this album worthwhile by itself.

iTunes Store Gripe

I could expound on this to include bad metadata that has plagued digital music from the beginning. I won't - I'll keep this succinct for now.

iTunes (Apple) - why the hell do you feel it necessary to change the name of the album for your free songs each week? You have the song, you list the correct album it is from, but then you tack on " - single of the week" and label it as track 1 of 1. NO!

Actually, it's worse than that in some cases. Sometimes the real name of the album instead becomes "song title - single of the week". But, it's not an actual single, and the album art will still of course be for the full album.

This came from a real album, with a real title, and it had a specific track number. STOP CHANGING IT!

Some Interesting BBall

Tonight, as I have done regularly for about the past 23 years, I attended a Hawkeye basketball game. It happened to be the Iowa State game which always adds a bit of excitement, the crowd was the best I have seen in a few years, and Iowa happened to play a great game and pretty much had their way with the 'clones. Follow that up with the traditional playing of "In Heaven There is No Beer" and all in all - a most excellent experience.

It turns out I also got a nice little celebrity sighting out of the deal. Ashton Kutcher, being an Iowa native and former U of I attendee (I actually had 2 Engineering classes with him the sole year he was there as an engineering student), came back to the state to do some benefit work to provide money for flood recovery. Both he and Shawn Johnson (Olympic gold and silver medalist from Des Moines for those not paying attention) had events throughout the week to help raise money, which I think is very cool of both of them.

Ashton and his wife, Demi Moore, both sat at the scorers table about 10 rows in front of our seats along with Shawn Johnson. I was impressed that along with the good they were doing this week, they did not simply show up for the game, make their appearance, and then duck out. They all stayed well past the final buzzer, and generally seemed to be into the game and all of the events. My craptastic cell phone pictures aren't worth posting, or I would add them here.

There was a screening for Ashton's new movie, Personal Effects, at the Englert theatre in Iowa City tonight as well. I'm not so sure about the movie - it may have had a bit too much pandering to the Iowa fans for even me to stomach, but I'll probably check it out as a rental at some point.

OCD

"3 posts in one day - he must be sick, or deranged."

I recently picked up a TON of great Aesop Rock singles and bootlegs, and many of them are incredible. However, since I don't happen to live near somewhere where you can easily find a lot of the stuff Def Jux put out on 12" easily, I tend to resort to a little bit of ARRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I pay for my regular music - I feel that bootlegs and such are the spoils for those able to find them on the Internet.

The only trouble with obtaining this music in this fashion, is that it messes with my OCD-like need to get my iTunes library to be pristine and complete. I usually turn to my good friend, wiki, but this stuff is a bit too obscure for even wiki to be of help.

I now have a new friend in this battle. google site:rateyourmusic.com ALBUM_NAME ARTIST

At least in the case of Aesop Rock, I found every one of his obscure singles and common boots out there. Fantastic.

Multidock

On a less tyrannical road than my previous post, I received in the mail today a new point and shoot camera to replace our ailing one which has finally died after about 5 years of good use. This camera gets used daily in my wife's business, so it definitely has gotten a workout (being dropped in Key West, Florida did nothing to prolong its life though...).

I found a great deal on a Canon SD1100 and I was very impressed. Very similar to my old S400 ELPH, but smaller, quicker, MUCH larger view screen, and several other niceties. I would recommend it highly to anyone needing a good point and shoot.

Now, to the one nitpick on Canon. We now own 4 Canon digital cameras, so I don't think you can say I'm not a fan of theirs. We have the S400, the SD1100, our 400D SLR, and a ZR50 mini-DV camcorder. All 4 use very nice, rechargeable Li-Ion battery packs which all have awesome runtime.

Now - guess how many of those battery packs allow charging inside the device over USB? None. A bit annoying, especially if you forget to turn off the camera after dumping pictures onto the computer. So, since I can't use USB for charging, I have to use a battery cradle instead.

Okay - guess how many of these 4 cameras use the same cradle? Yeah, the answer would be none. Amazing - they really couldn't come up with a common charger? The chargers aren't exactly small to begin with, so taking a little extra space to be more flexible really wouldn't be an issue.

Guess I can't be too hard on my company for not having a universal dock yet. Why is this such a hard thing for companies to achieve?

Delusional Ramblings

First, can we finally now admit that the FCC has no idea what they are doing? I hope the fact that most of these articles point out that this is the "outgoing" FCC chairman indicates that someone with more intelligence will be coming in. We can't just print money, and I'm really tired of the federal government thinking it (it being the taxpayers of this country) needs to finance everything for everyone. Free Wi-Fi has failed in metropolitan cities - this would just fail in a more spectacular fashion, and that's not even considering their ridiculous "porn-free" clause. *Sigh*.

That plan segways nicely into the next delusional rambling though. How do we find a way to eliminate all credit cards? Now. Seriously, if you don't have the money, you can't spend it. It's as simple as that. You can't have a horribly failing economy and then have the best Black Friday ever - not possible. I know more people who bought flatscreen TV's, Wiis, and computers this year than any year in the past. When did it become a guarantee that every family in America was entitled to a flatscreen TV? When did people start spending thousands of dollars at Christmastime? There is one way to fix the giant blob of crap that the country is languishing in right now. Get some self-control and willpower back in our lives. Stop buying crap that isn't a necessity. Don't buy anything that you can't cover with cash in the bank (yes - I know there can be exceptions like housing - quit nitpicking). Let's want better for ourselves, and put in a little bit of hard work and restraint to make it happen.

vimrc

Ryan just did a post asking to expose our VI settings to the world (wait, you all use VI, right?). I'm going to follow suit and throw mine out here. Surprisingly, for the amount of time I have spent in that editor, and how much I enjoy using it, my vimrc is rather sparse.

" Stop me from accidentally doing things when I click the stupid scroll-wheel
map
map <2-middlemouse>
map <3-middlemouse>
map <4-middlemouse>

" Prefer unix format
set fileformats=unix,dos
set fileformat=unix

" Use Vim settings, rather then Vi settings (much better!).
" This must be first, because it changes other options as a side effect.
set nocompatible

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set cindent shiftwidth=4
set history=50 " keep 50 lines of command line history
set ruler " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd " display incomplete commands
set incsearch " do incremental searching
set expandtab " Spaces, not tabs :-)
set autoindent
set smartindent
set nobackup " Live dangerously
set tags=$init\tags " Tags - the secret to life

Just Like Cash

So - if you're like me and spending money at Amazon is pretty much a certainty (especially now that nearly all of my digital music is bought there), this is a pretty slick deal.

Coinstar and Amazon teamed up a while back to let you turn in money at Coinstar machines, and avoid the transaction fee if you redeemed the coins for an Amazon gift certificate instead of cash.

Now, they have a special deal where if you turn in $40, you can mail in for an additional $10. So - I can drop by the bank, get $40 in quarters, and then drop them into the closest coinstar machine. After mailing in my receipt, I end up with $50 I can spend on Amazon. A nice little 25% gain on my money (or equal to a 20% off coupon, however you want to look at it).

Worst case if somehow the $10 deal goes wrong, I simply tied up $40 at Amazon that is guaranteed to be spent eventually (and often far too quickly).

Pump It

Although this blog largely ends up discussing technology-related topics (such is the nature of being immersed in a technical field), I enjoy nothing more than doing non-technical things at home.

This weekend, Sunday in particular, pumpkins were the name of the game. I decided to go for 4 carved pumpkins this year, and I must be improving my efficiency because I finished them all on Sunday night after we got back from some kids activities.

Here are some shots of the happy pumpkin family before and after. I need to get a tripod to make the night shots turn out better, but this will do for now.

HOWTO - Bootable Windows XP System on a USB Flash Drive

I really need to create (or bring back as it turns out) a website for tutorials on random computer-related topics. As it is, this is going on my blog for now, and I'll just crib it or link to it later if I get around to getting a website going again.

I recently had need to create a bootable Windows XP system on a 1 GB USB flash drive. Seemed like it would be pretty simple to me...turns out it isn't. Microsoft likes to mess with the USB driver on boot up which isn't a good thing when you are booting from a USB device.

After looking on the Internet for quite a while, I found a tutorial that helped me accomplish what I needed. The original tutorial I followed is at (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded/2005-10/msg00332.html). While I am very thankful to have found this, I thought I could possibly write a more succinct tutorial, and that's what follows here.

Final note - this most likely isn't the best way to do this, or the simplest. It worked for me and might be useful for others, so I think it is worth posting here. I did find another tutorial that might be a more correct way to do this at (http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8). I haven't tried it though, so YMMV.

---

Initial preparation

1. Make the intended target USB flash drive installable. See the following section for help with this.
2. Boot the newly installed XP install from the hard drive.
3. Disable the pagefile. This is done by opening the system control panel, choosing the advanced tab, clicking the top “settings” button, changing to the advanced tab, clicking the “change” button, and then choosing the “No paging file” option and clicking “Set”.
4. Insert the intended target USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP.
   
   

Registry modifications

1. Backup the HKLM\System registry key before starting (just to be safe).
2. Import or make the following modifications to 6 registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbehci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbhub]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbuhci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub]
"Service"="usbhub"
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub20]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbhub"

3. Create 2 registry keys based on the specific USB flash drive that will be used. Following are 2 examples – the key names will have to be customized for the Pid/Vid and hardware ID of the specific target flash device. The ClassGUID and Service keys should be entered verbatim.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USB#Vid_1058&Pid_0300]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbstor"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USBSTOR#DiskWDC_____WD1600BB-00FTA0_15.0]
"ClassGUID"="{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"
"Service"="disk"

The Pid/Vid for the target USB flash device can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB. Open the subkey for each item until you find the DriverDesc of USB Mass Storage Device, a Service of USBSTOR, and a LocationInformation that matches your specific flash drive.

The hardware ID can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR. In this example the chosen key would look like:

Disk&Ven_WDC&Produ_WD1600BB-00FTA0&Rev_15.0

Again, find the device that matches your specific flash drive.

The Hardware ID is created as Disk(8)(16)(4) where the values are:

8 digits (in this example WDC_____ ) as the vendor of device
16 digits (in this example WD1600BB-00FTA0_ ) for the device type and
4 digits (in this example 15.0 ) for a version number.

4. Delete key HKLM\System\MountedDevices.
5. Delete string value HKLM\System\Setup\SystemPartition
6. Change HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR\Start from 3 to 0.
   (THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT – YOU WILL GET A BLUE SCREEN IF THIS ISN’T CHANGED)
7. Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and change the permissions to deny full control to the “System” group.
   
   

Preparing the target flash device

This step likely has to be done from another PC, or while booted to a different drive. Otherwise, some files end up being in use.

1. Copy all files and folders from the completed hard drive to the USB target flash drive. Do not copy the recycled or system volume information folders.
2. Delete \windows\system32\config\*.sav, *.log, and *.evt.

Adding support for additional USB flash devices

To add additional USB flash drive support to the original hard drive image, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and remove the deny full control to the “System” group attributes that were set in step #7 in the registry section above.
2. Insert the additional targeted USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP as in step #4 of the initial preparation section above.
3. Follow steps 3-7 of the registry modification section above.

EDIT: It turns out there is more to this than what I have posted. This will be limited to a specific flash drive, not just a certain PID_VID. The image will need to be recreated with each additional flash part that will be used added to the registry for this to not blue screen when moved to a different flash drive. Suck.

Genius!

I really didn't think I would find much use for the new "Genius" feature in iTunes 8. It seemed like a gimmick, and primarily to push more stuff from the iTunes store in my mind.

However, after playing with it for less than a night I'm pretty happy with it now. I was a bit concerned when my iTunes memory usage climbed to 800 MB while it was first compiling my genius information (and if you still care about privacy of your data it will disturb you as well). After that completed though, it was pretty cool seeing it group together songs from my library based on a given song.

After playing with that for a bit, I decided to turn on the sidebar and let it show songs from the store as well. The related songs portion is only mildly interesting to me -- what I really liked was the list of other songs I might be missing from that same artist.

It was while browsing an artist I happen to have nearly everything ever made, that I noticed something else that I found amusing. It claimed there was a song I didn't have, and that it was on an album that I physically own and had ripped to my library. After being thoroughly stumped for a bit (keep in mind it's the wee hours of the morning, and I have all sound muted), I realized that it was actually a hidden track. It turns out that if you buy the album from iTunes, the last song is broken into 2 separate songs, rather than one long track. Interesting. Also cool - because I now know the title to what was previously an untitled hidden track to me.