Ok, I get asked this a lot, well... I've been asked this at least once: "how do I get movies n' stuff on my 'Pod?" well, its simple really... If you're on a mac... yeah, I know, not real helpful for the other 95% of you out there, but I frankly don't know or care how you do anything on one of those monstrous "PeeCees" and I'd rather be subjected to 3 hours of yodeling (could that really be how I spell that?) than do anything on a PeeCee.

For the enlightened few out there on Macs, heres a few thoughts...

Support for the iPod in Tiger is everywhere, check quicktime for a handy "export to ipod" feature, and I think iTunes can handle some of that too... maybe even on Windoze too...

But If you want a tad more control over your video files, try some donation-ware I found called iSquint quite easily found at isquint.org

What if you don't have the video file? (what are you, nuts?) and all you've got is one of those old-fashioned DVDs (try googling HDDVD or Blu-ray sometime) and your on a mac... or maybe windoze... you're in luck! my pick for the best dvd ripper when it comes to the ipod is HandBrake, or for those of you less savy in such matters, HandBrake Lite. All found here. I think both varieties come for the PeeCee and Mac. Maybe even Linux too... you know... in case you're some paranoid hacker type in a bunker he built under his mom's house... or a vampire...

Now that you have that wonderful thing... or whatever on your iPod, its time to consider organization!

If you check on your iPod, you might notice that everything you put in there is in the movies sub-catagory of videos... thats a problem if its a TV show. Now, you might have tried changing the genre of the video file in iTunes, well... No dice. Apple assumes since you put the video on their yourself, it must be something you have completly legitamate rights to put in in there. Which basicly means videos of your summer vacation... or someones baby slowly crawling accross a floor... you know, something boring like that.

Now, say you for whatever reason have TV shows that you want to move out of "Movies" and into the "TV shows" sub-catagory, (seems fair enough) since iTunes won't let you do that there... its time to go all comando style and whip out the text-based interface! Nah, im just kidding with yah... Though that was in reference to the outstanding Meta data editor that is... AutomaticParsley. Now, AutomaticParsley is a screwy unix thing, right? and since theres no way in hell I'm walking you through that mess, I'll do you one better, I've found me a gem of a front end for it.. called... brace yourself... "Parsley is Automatically Delicious" (props to freemacware.com for the actual finding of the thing) You can find that over here: some crazy place. Now, that should be easy enough to figure out, but if you don't get it... I don't know... contact me or something.

So... now that we've gotten that out of the way... I'd like to cover one last thing. Some have pointed out, (and this is a valid point) that watching video off the ipod is not only a little silly, but also an inconvenience. And I tend to agree, watching video on the ipod can prove to be not only troublesome in the sense that you normally end up holding the thing in position for an hour strait, but that it can also put one hell of a kink in your neck while doing so.

Furthermore, for those who already have a 60GB 5th Gen (video) iPod in sexy black, (like me) and still want to one-up your friends (like me) that installed Linux and play Doom on theirs, (like me) and you don't see money as much of a problem... (like me) you could go and buy a fancy set of TV goggles (like me) such as the Myvu media viewer found over at myvu.com (like me)

All that said, and i still have so many more thoughts coming to mind... oh well, you'll just have to wait 'til next week, or whenever I do another of these...