Recent Obsession - December 2010

Since I have withdrawn from my full-time job, I am now working on my own terms, "Buying back my own time", this is how I like to call it. To pave way starting my own business, I have done quite a few things that I am rather proud with, such as renting a nice apartment which is capable for some SOHO lifestyle, taking enough rest by sleeping REALLY early (I mean 10pm here) and going for exercises almost once every two days.

I must admit I am not spending 100% of my time on work besides doing all the stuff mentioned above, and that goes to my different kinds of obsessions. Well, according to George Carlin (Legendary standup comedian. If you don't know who he is, link here): "Hobbies costs money but interests are free", but for obsession, I think it costs more than money - like your precious time and energy which might not lead to anything useful in life. There are many obsessions since I was born, playing lego for instances, has lasted for many years. Some might lasted as short as only a few days but why I still call it an obsession because during that period I am totally submerged in it.

So... recently I am obsessed with cleaning up my itunes music library.

which includes:

Cleaning up all the gibberish caused by different language encodings;

Search for the album arts for almost ALL of my songs (!!);

In order to do that meaning I also have the accurate artist names and album names, then I try to find the album year by wikipedia as well.

YES. I know some might say I have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) but honestly I think it is the other name of perfectionism which I am feel rather happy to be labeled this way which make me a little more like to the great designers, artists or musicians.

In fact is is a very rewarding experience when I relook at most of my music collection and dig out relative information - "Oh that song was on billboard top 100 for many weeks!" "Oh this song was inspired by that!".. I am happy that I have done all these.

Also one bonus thing that really pleased me is that for the longest period of time (since my harddisk crashed and ipod stolen back in 2005) I was very displeased that my most listened music in the library was "冬令時間" By Twins.. I have to admit I think it is a nice song but I really don't know how to face my friends with his.. haha...

"There should be tons of other songs that should rank higher!" I told myself, and until now I know it was because there were duplicates in the library! The ranking now make much better sense now with some of my favorites appearing back in the top ten: