Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

My friend Jon has loaned me his old iPod, so I can see how I get on with it. I have to say it's the nicest MP3 player I've used. It's small, passes the "do I notice it in my pocket?" test, and the sound quality is pretty good. The design is typical 21st century Apple, all translucent polycarbonate and polished aluminium.

One problem is that I don't have a firewire Mac, so I can't use the iTunes software. However, one thing I do have is a nice new soundcard in the PC with two fully powered firewire ports. And there's a company called Mediafour, who are working on a piece of software called XPlay that integrates the iPod into Windows. I downloaded it this morning, installed it on Ogwen, and vavoom - instant iPod access as a Windows drive, just drag and drop music onto it and the iPod's own software catalogues it and it's ready to listen.

Found on Boing Boing (one of the great high weirdness magazines of the early 90s reborn as blog), this link to a backyard roller coaster. I'd seen garden monorails before, and have a sneaking ambition someday to do my own garden narrow gauge railway, but this took the biscuit...