Mind Space

A tale of two iPods

Three weeks ago my iPod bit the dust. It was a 4th generation 60gb colour screen model that was 18 months old. Holding it up to my ear as I switched it on, I could hear a whimpering sound as the hard disk tried unsuccessfully to spin up. After a few seconds, it gave up and an unhappy face appeared on the screen. Taking it into the Apple store in London, the 'genius' told me that I could pay £160 to exchange it for a refurbished model with a 90-day guarantee, or pay £100 more for a shiny new 5th generation video iPod. I decided to buy a new iPod from Amazon.co.uk for rather less than the Apple store charged.

Then I began looking into the possibilities of repairing it myself. There's an excellent website ipodhowtovideo.com full of videos showing you how to open up an iPod and replace the parts. Spending £10 on a non-marking pry tool from Radius, I got the case open, and took the iPod apart. I inadvertently started the disk spinning up while applying pressure to the case of the disk. It made a horrible grinding sound until I removed the pressure, then it booted up as normal, and has worked fine ever since. It gets a bit hot, so I'm sure the disk is on its way out. I've located a source of replacement disks on eBay for £69. So now I've got an iPod that lives permanently in my home stereo, as well as the one I carry round.

Actually, I'm amazed my first iPod lasted as long as it did. It got a shaken to bits in the back of a trailer driving around the Australian outback on holiday last year. I was convinced I'd killed it then.

Technorati tags: ipod, repair, disk, dismantle

Windows Vista

I spent part of today playing around with Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, which was available as a free download for a limited time from the MS website (RC1 is still available).

The new Aero glass window interface is sleek and elegant, and there are plenty of useful new features, including Media Center, which was only available in an OEM version of XP.

The OS installed easily, and found drivers for almost all my hardware without intervention from me. The process took around 40 minutes for a clean install, though I've heard that upgrading XP can take considerably longer, and the results can be less stable. I always do a clean install of a new OS; it's a good opportunity to clear out the dross on my system.

I particularly like the new photo application, Windows Photo Gallery. It  shows photos by folder, by date, or by tag. It even picked up the tags I've created in Photoshop Elements 3. In fact, this is how the organiser component of Elements should be; fast, easy to use, and great for getting a quick view of your photos. For the purposes of organising my photos I'll go on using Elements for its extra flexibility, but I'll probably use Photo Gallery for casual browsing.

I'm typing this blog entry from within Vista, but I'll boot back into XP tomorrow; RC2 seems stable enough for day to day use, but it doesn't support all my software yet, and I wouldn't trust my precious data to prerelease software. But I'm impressed enough to buy an upgrade when the software is released at the end of January.

Flickr gets a Facelift

The most excellent photo-sharing website Flickr has had a facelift, and moved from beta to gamma status. The new interface is clean, sleek, and slightly bewildering after the comfortable-armchair familiarity of the old. I'm sure it's a change for the better; improved use of menus hides many of the options, and the Organizr is improved beyond recognition.

If you haven't used Flickr before, now is a good time to set up an account and share some photos with the world.

Link: FlickrBlog.

A nasty little advertising tactic

I had a comment posted to my blog that got me really irritated. Some guy called Brett Poulson from the Dunalley Cafe in Tasmania left a comment on my travel entry about the Tasman Peninsula which was no more than an advert for his cafe. It linked to his blog, which is also nothing more than cheap advertising.

I remember the day I received my first piece of spam email. I'd read rumours that such junk emails were beginning to circulate, and felt, like lots of others in the scientific community I was part of in the days before the world wide web took off, that advertising emails were the beginning of the end of the internet. Well, the internet is still here, and is both a remarkable vehicle for free speech in ways that I couldn't imagine back then, and also a tool for people who just want to flog stuff in the great enterprise we call the free market.

I'm sure Brett isn't a bad guy, but I hope he learns some more approriate advertising tactics in future. I've resisted the temptation just to delete his comment. It's here, so you can decide for yourselves whether to patronise his establishment if you are ever in the area. Is this a taste of things to come?

PocketMod

Eamon has blogged about a natty little web gadget that allows you to create a simple, disposable paper PDA. Such things were once known as diaries, I believe. (Look the word up in a dictionary). Here's what the site says;

The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.

It looks great, and I'll definitely try it when I get back from my hols.
Link: PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer.