Random Musings

I’ve been home for a couple of months now. It’s all good, especially the fact that I have lots of time to get stuff fixed. I’m getting the car fixed, the computer fixed, and pretty much everything else fixed. I even bought TuneUp and cleaned my music collection, all 15,000+ songs.

TuneUP is quite fantastic. It’s not free, but at $16 (it’s $20, but I found a coupon), for a years subscription, it won’t break the bank either. And it works very well—just drag a bunch of songs over to the interface, and watch as it magically gets all the info.

TuneUp cleans up messy media.

It’s not all great—sometimes, it just seems to inexplicably hang, and I have to restart iTunes to get it to work. It works only with iTunes, not as a stand-alone program, so if you prefer another music player, you’re going to have to install iTunes, use TuneUp to clean the media, and then import those songs into the other player. Still, these are fairly minor issues, and I just got an update that seems to have fixed the hanging issue. If you have a lot of songs labeled Track 01.mp3, give TuneUp a go. They have a free version, which has some limitations, but it’s enough to let you know if you need to pay for the full version.

It took me about a week to clean up my collection, but it was worth it. Now I have neatly categorized songs, with proper album art and genres, and this makes it a lot easier to pick songs that I like to listen to.

Djokovic retired. I’m sad. But he is a player I will be rooting for when ever he plays. He’s got great spirit, and I love the way he applauds his opponent for a good shot.

Go DJOKOVIC!

I’m a fan of this chap now. He’s a good player, and he’s got lots of style. Let’s hope he does well.

Djokovic all the WAY!

Today I watched the US open final. For the third time in a row, Roger Federer won. And he did not just win, he contemptuosly swatted aside his oppenent, a certain Andy Roddick, and made him look like a babe in the woods.

I first watched Federer play in the 2004 US Open Final, when he reduced Aussie Leyton Hewitt to a smouldering pile of ashes. The year after that, he tamed an aging Agassi, and this year, he produced one of his finest performances to take the fight out of Roddick.

It started with everything going Federer’s way. The first set saw him at his usual high standard, while Roddick was uncharacteristically nervous. 6-2 was the score.

The second set started, and Roddick surprised Federer by playing some fine attacking tennis. He broke Federer’s serve in the first game and did not look back. Andy’s service was booming, and Federer was making some uncharacteristic errors. The second set went to Roddick, and suddenly, the All-American crowd woke up and started cheering for their man. Some dared to dream that this might the final where Federer was tamed, and proved to be human after all.

The third set was a cracker of a set. Both players survied close calls; Federer saving four break points in one game, and Roddick saving five. The set seemed certain to go into a tie breaker. Certain, did I say? Only the whole world thought so, but a lone Swiss had other ideas. With Roddick serving at 5-6, Roger Federer showed us all why he is not just the best player in the game today, but possible the best player EVER to play the game. He pulled off a few amazing shots, and suddenly, out of nowhere, Roddick was a set point down. Federer won the set, and with that, quite simply the game was over.

The fourth set resembled a tennis lesson, with Federer showing Roddick how to hit cross-court backhands, forehands, drop shots, aces, and his entire repertoire of tennis shots. You could sense that Roddick had already bowed before the inevitable. He clawed back some pride by winning one game, but the final score of 6-1 showed us all once again why Roger Federer can no longer be measured against his peers, but only against himself.

What a match it was. I have a feeling that I’ll be telling my kids that I watched the greatest tennis player of all time play..