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July 16, 2004

Clean, Orderly, Refurbished (Updated)

iPod. Eeee!

In a first, the sales dude at the computer store recommended a refurbished unit instead of a new one, which was fine with me because I ended up getting a 10GB model for a few bucks less than a Mini would have cost me, and I've got some space to spare.

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes was pretty indispensable once I had everything synched up and realized there was a solid 400MB worth of crufty duplicate songs floating around from some lunacy in my past. The best hint for getting rid of them came from an article on MacOSXHints.com, which recommended using the finder to find everything named "*1.mp3" (that's how dups tend to get named in Macland) and making sure the ones listed weren't songs that actually had a "1" as the last character in the title. The Doug scripts came in when it came time to nuke the "!" songs from iTunes after a quick second sync to the iPod helped it figure out which tracks were dead in the face of my mass deletions.

The thing that makes it all worthwhile isn't so much the portable tunage, which womps my dead Iomega HipZip and its 40MB of storage all to hell, but the fact that VoodooPad works with it, right down to the nifty links between notes. Right now they're sort of hard to manage because every single page in the pad is at the top level of the list instead of the "internal" pages staying out of sight until followed through from the index. That's liveable if it means getting to carry Brain around with me at all times in relatively wikieized form. I suspect, in fact, it'll have me looking for more things to put in Brain, so my crushing despair will be complete the day meteor showers, The Tsunami, and a gigantic EMP come, wiping out every copy I've squirreled away anywhere.

But yeah: VoodooPad is the iPod's killer app.

Also chatted briefly with gl. about the utility of calendar/notes/address book in a 'pod, and firmed up my notion that the Palm has become obsolete for me. If the good lord had wanted us to use Graffiti out on the sidewalk, he'd have moved primitive humans to make the alphabet suck really bad to begin with. As it is, the alphabet's just fine, and the good lord gifted us with the fine products of Rite in the Rain ™, which allow us to use the alphabet he let us end up with in all sorts of weather. He also gave us three score and 12 years on this earth, which means the time spent typing an afternoon's worth of jots back into the computer once home, while adding up, probably won't keep whichever of us is meant to from brokering peace in the Middle East or writing the Great American Novel.

So there's a Palm Tungsten E on the market, lightly used, with a Palm aluminum case and a 128MB SD card to go with it. Offers being accepted until I get around to dusting it off enough to take a picture and toss it up on eBay.

Update: I hate the rumor sites. If Think Secret has this one right I might be trooping back down to the Mac Store on Monday morning (or some time within my 30 day return period). All the other rumor sites were convinced the new models would get a storage bump but stay within their price ranges. So I guess it'll take something like "a 10 gig mini for what a 4 gig mini goes for now" or "a 15 gig 3g for what I paid for my 10 gig" to get me to rouse myself enough to pinch the necessary pennies. Bastards.

On One Second's Further Reflection: Life is so hard. I totally can't decide which iPod is best for me. I thought the future was supposed to be simpler. Waaaah.

A day later: Everyone and their uncle now points to the discovered cover of Monday's edition of Newsweek, which shows Steve holding a new iPod and looking maniacal. No word on the specs.

Comments

Posted by: gl. at July 17, 2004 4:34 PM

Posted by: mph at July 17, 2004 4:56 PM