Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I bought a new iPod

One of my first-ever posts here was about my original iPod (and all my troubles getting it to work right).

Well, four years on it kinda died a little bit, at least to the point that I had to finagle some stuff every time I wanted to charge or sync it. So I bought a new one. It's an iPod "Classic" - love that name, as if it's an antique - which they only produce in 120GB capacity and black or silver. Obviously not Apple's favorite iPod model right now, but it's the only model I'd consider. Mine's black - it looks kind of silver in the photo above, but that's just a trick of the light bouncing off the Griffin iClear case I bought for it.

I'm highly enjoying watching video on it, even though the screen's sort of tiny and sometimes I have to squint to read subtitles (catching up on my Nana and Cowboy Bebop!). But I wanted the Classic over the wide-screen Touch (or the iPhone) because I need storage space and I hate hate HATE touch screens. I'll never buy a touch screen. You hear me, Apple? This will be my last iPod if you go exclusively touch-screen (or exclusively flash memory).

I'm a little annoyed at one change they've made to the interface since my 4G iPod, which is that the screen switches to a clock after 20 seconds or so while playing music. I use shuffle mode a lot and honestly, I don't know half the songs in my collection (or I can't identify them immediately) so I've gotten in the habit of just glancing down at the iPod to see what I'm hearing. I still instinctively do that and it is highly annoying to see that clock staring back at me instead of the song title. On the plus side, I always seem to know what time it is.

Well, whatever. The pros outweigh the cons, and that's all that matters.

Before anyone asks, no, I did not want a Zune or a Zen or whatever else. I actually like the iPod and iTunes - my problems of four years ago were temporary. Everything's got pluses and minuses, but at least the iPod doesn't brick itself on random days.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:35 AM

    Jeff, i'm sorry to bother about old times, but could you tell is there any way to aquire more information about GTA 3 creation history? Maybe you can share some, or maybe Rockstar employees you still have contact with? One of the most interesting things is who worked on screenshot selection for posting in magazines and websites. Maybe those people still have some information in their hands, or even some interesting materials. Could you please comment this anyhow?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh! Just wrote a reply and Blogger lost it. I'll rewrite, I guess...

    Anyway I didn't work on GTA3 for the PS2, so I don't have any first-hand knowledge of that. I do know all about the screenshot process for it but I don't think it would really be a good idea identifying who took the screenshots to strangers. (In my original post that you obviously read, I would have given them fake names.) If you want to email me (link is at left), maybe I can answer any specific questions you might have - though I'm not going to say anything I'd worry would make the papers later.

    And re. that post and why I've been silent about it since then, since it seems like you're wondering, this is just my random personal blog about stuff I do and my opinions on various things. It's not meant to be a "whistleblower" blog or a collection of sensationalist rants, both of which were things that some people called that post. And it actually made the news, including mainstream news like the Wall Street Journal. So I've learned my lesson, which is "don't talk about Rockstar in public", even though it was like five years ago and I felt like the post was actually pretty balanced in terms of positive and negative. It was just my experience.

    What finally prompted me to take the post down was all the traffic I was still getting from *within* Rockstar like six months later. Some of it was probably just random people interested in reading a former employee's perspective, but it seemed like someone there was obsessed with it. I was still getting about 50 hits per *day* from within Rockstar. And they only have about that many people working there. I don't know who it was, though, and that kind of freaked me out. So I took the post down and don't really have any desire to revisit the subject in public.

    ReplyDelete

About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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