Within days of Steve Jobs’ announcement of a whole raft of new Apple products including the new iPod Shuffle (more on this shortly), I can announce that I am no longer an iPod user.

This has less to do with my reservations about iPods in general (see blog passim), and more to do with the fact that my father knocked my bag off a chair and smashed my iPod while I was visiting over the holidays. Although it only fell a few feet in a padded bag, the iPod broke the fall of my burly laptop (which thankfully survived the fall).

The LCD now only displays an abstract liquid crystal pattern, and there is a neat round dent in the metal casing (not dissimilar to how a bullet hole might look), where the full force of my falling laptop was transmitted to the iPod via an earbud headphone. Activating the device now results only in a sickening grinding noise from the hard drive, and a melancholy feeling that yet another expensive item of consumer electronic equipment has come to a premature demise in my possession.

So, unless my credit card company agrees to pay out under the product protection insurance (unlikely, since I claimed after the 90 day period had elapsed), I’m going back to Minidisc for the forseeable future.

Now, back to the iPod Shuffle, and the ever-growing Cult of Mac… Firstly, I have a lingering unease with the whole “shuffle” concept, whereby music is played in a random order. I didn’t mention it in my original iPod rant, and I confess that I’ve used the shuffle feature more than once on both my iPod and on my laptop with iTunes, but I always feel it’s kind of a cop-out that lessens the value of the music somehow; the fact that I can’t even be bothered to decide what to listen to highlights the increasingly ephemeral and disposable nature of music itself, a process that probably started with the demise of vinyl and has been hastened by the separation of music from physical media altogether.

Secondly, I’m starting to get really pissed off with the whole “Cult of Mac” thing, it’s getting really silly now. Mind you, this parody ad for Apple iProduct made me laugh (thanks to Jim M. for tipping me off to this one).

It’s been almost a month since I last posted anything here — I’ve been feeling strangely uncomfortable about resuming my normal inane day-to-day ramblings without first commenting on the tsunami that hit southeast Asia on Boxing Day, but the shocking magnitude of the calamity has rendered me inarticulate. Why does real life seem to be increasingly emulating bad disaster movies these days?

But, life goes on — at least, for those of us that weren’t washed away by a huge tidal wave anyway.

A few months ago I finally took the plunge and bought myself an iPod, after resisting the temptation for over a year, because I was accruing a large number of MP3 music files on my computer that I wanted to listen to on the subway and at the gym etc., and it was too tedious and time-consuming to keep loading them all onto Minidiscs.

I bought the “new version” Apple 40GB iPod from the Apple Store in Arlington, VA for $399 plus tax, and after living with it for about three or four months now, I like it, but I don’t love it; here’s why:

1. Battery Life

The battery life is still pretty poor, even though mine is the “new, improved” iPod that is supposed to have up to 12 hours battery life. I’ve never timed it, but it sure doesn’t feel like 12 hours — the thing ALWAYS seems to need recharging, and the battery meter drops to less than 100% within seconds of use immediately after charging. With an iPod, it seems, the battery is always less than half full!

2. Easily Scratched Screen

The LCD screen on my iPod is now so scratched up that it’s hard to read some of the text unless the backlight is on. If I had known the screen was so easy to scratch, I would have bought some kind of protective case for it, but why does the screen have to be made out of such easily-scratched material? My mobile phone also has an exposed LCD screen, and it’s survived for more than two years being much more thoroughly abused, bouncing around in pockets full of loose change without sustaining anywhere near the same level of scratches.

3. Gaps Between Songs

When listening to DJ-mixed albums, the iPod inserts an infuriating fraction-of-a-second gap between tracks that mix smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next on the CD, totally screwing up the beat and the mix. My Sony Minidisc didn’t do this, so why does my iPod?

4. iTunes Library Management

I bought my 40GB iPod before I really understood the iTunes Music Library model, whereby you build up a library of tunes and playlists etc. on your computer’s hard drive, then synchronize the contents of the iPod with the contents of the iTunes Library on the computer. However, my laptop only has a 40GB hard drive, and I need to use quite a lot of that for other stuff, such as my files, applications and an operating system. This means that I’ll never be able to use more than about 25% of my iPod’s capacity, unless I abandon the “automatically synchronized library” approach — which would be significantly more effort. It would be nice if iTunes offered a choice when importing music of EITHER importing to the iTunes Libary and synchronizing, OR copying directly to the iPod, on a tune by tune basis.

5. Truncated Names

There’s no way to scroll across long names (e.g. album names, artist names, track names etc.) that are truncated because they don’t fit on the display. I have a bunch of Global Underground CDs, for example, that (until I renamed them all by hand) all came up with completely indistinguishable abbreviated names.

6. White iPod, White Headphones and Headphone Socket

Although the iPod is undeniably an attractively designed object, why don’t full-size iPods come in different colours, like the iPod Mini? I’m not very fond of the white case, and would much prefer either black, dark grey or silver. Similarly I wasn’t very comfortable using the supplied telltale white headphones, not only because they are not very comfortable and sound mediochre at best, but also because I didn’t like advertising the fact that I was an iPod user (and I’m not alone in wanting to remain discreet, as a recent Wired article, IPod Users Go Into the Closet, amply demonstrates). No problem, I thought, I’ll just use my Sony Fontopia earbuds, which are comfortable, sound great and come in discreet black. However, this is when I discovered that the Apple minijack socket on the iPod (and the jack on the Apple heaphones) is a few micrometers greater in diameter than normal, such that the minijack on my Sony earbuds is a loose fit and regularly gets accidentally unplugged from my iPod.

Mind you,

having said all that, it is of course nice to have a huge library of music at your fingertips, the user interface is pretty damn great, the ability to use it as an ultraportable hard drive is very cool, and it meets what is probably my biggest “PDA” requirement: I can quickly export my contacts list from Lotus Organizer on my laptop as a vCard file and store it as a browsable list on the iPod, giving me quick easy access to all my contact information without having to lug around and boot up a laptop.

So I guess I’ll continue using it for the time being!

Right now I’m sitting with my laptop at a communications centre at Schipol Airport in Holland, using an expensive wifi internet connection and procrastinating about finishing my talk for the University of Bergen on monday.

Over the last week I have had several fun and messy nights out in London, attended my grandmother’s cremation, caught up with lots of old friends that I hadn’t seen for years, stayed on a farm in the Fens and had a few job-search related “networking” meetings.

I also had to abandon my friend Phil with nothing but my mobile phone, a extra shirt and couple of quid, after he locked himself out of his (very secure) Brixton flat as I was leaving for the airport!

Soon I am going to be taking a KLM flight to Bergen in Norway, where I have been invited to do this talk at the University (which I haven’t finished yet, incidentally). I am also going to do the “Norway in a Nutshell” tour tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to.

Then it’s back to the U.S. on Tuesday.

It seems that there is a growing acknowledgement that there were some serious voting irregularities in key swing states in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election. The following from a recent e-mail from MoveOn.org, who have started a petition to demand that Congress investigate these allgeations:

We’re all hearing the stories and wondering what’s true and what isn’t. But at least two cases of serious problems are accepted beyond doubt:

• In Broward County, Florida, electronic voting machines counted backwards: as more people voted, the official vote count went down.[source]
  

• In one Columbus, Ohio suburb, election officials have acknowledged that electronic voting machines credited Bush with winning 4,258 votes, even though only 638 people voted there. [source]
  

Also according to MoveOn.org, six (Democratic, of course!) members of Congress have called on the General Accounting Office to:

“..immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered, and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration. [source PDF]”

Curiouser and curiouser! And let’s not forget that Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, threatened with impeachment as a result of the Watergate scandal, resigned less than two years after winning a landslide election victory.

So, go sign the petititon: Call me a hopeless optimist, but perhaps there’s still a slim hope for regime change in the United States before 2008…

I watched the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader classic Taxi Driver again the other day, and it’s still just as fresh, dark and brilliant as it was when I last saw it — which was probably on a rented Betamax video some time in the early eighties.

The soundtrack (the last piece of work by Bernard Hermann before he died) is also incredibly atmospheric; a dark, brooding complement to the movie.

Anyway, here are the “filthy lucre” Amazon referral commission links, in the unlikely event that I’ve persuaded you to purchase either of them (I’ve ordered the soundtrack, and am gonna ask Santa for a copy of the DVD).

Was the U.S. Presidential Election rigged again?

Rumours are starting to circulate that the unusually large discrepancies between the actual election results and the exit polls in key swing states such as Florida and Ohio this year can be suspiciously correlated with the use of electronic vote-counting machines from private corporations that openly support the Republican Party.

• “The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy” Thom Hartmann, 4 November 2004
  

• “Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes” Netscape Network News with CNN, 5 November 2004
  

• Black Box Voting Where you can download and test your very own copy of Diebold’s GEM vote counting software!
  

• Votefraud
  

• “Diebold’s Political Machine” Mother Jones, 5 March 2004
  

Scandalous election rigging, or liberal sour grapes? You’ll have to decide for yourself, but after the 2000 election, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the current administration to cheat. Thanks to Meg N. (via Scyld) for compiling these links.

On a lighter note, Scyld also found a very entertaining ad on Craig’s List (Austin) today:

Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight – m4m

I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.

1913 – 2004

Beloved great grandmother, grandmother, mother, wife and sister, joins her cherished husband Keith Pressland in death today.

The last of my grandparents died in hospital in the U.K. today at the age of 91, after suffering a massive stroke about 10 days ago. She was a constant loving force throughout my childhood from my earliest memories onwards. She used to bring us sweets (candies in American) when she visited several times a week, and I can’t remember a family Christmas at which she wasn’t present.

In my early memories, Nanny was still married to my mother’s father, Stan Minnis, but lived (“in sin,” as she used to joke) with her boyfriend Keith Pressland out of wedlock: It was still a pretty big deal in those days, but even as a child I always admired her bravery in leaving a loveless marriage to be with a truly wonderful man that she loved deeply, and who loved her equally deeply in return. Years later, as an awkward adolescent, I went to their wedding.

Keith, who we fondly called “Uncle” (and shown below in a 1987 photo), died in 1996 at age 73, and Nanny was heartbroken. Many in the family suspected that she would follow him shortly afterwards; she used to talk about dying so that she could be with Keith (she was not a devout Christian, but did believe that she would be reunited with her husband after death).

Nanny spent her last year at a managed living facility, where she retained her independence and dignity by living in her own space, but where there was also plenty of help nearby, and an active social scene with some of her old friends. I believe she was very happy there — the picture above was taken just four months ago in the communal gardens at her new home.

Goodbye Nanny, we’ll miss you very much. I’ll drink a glass of Bailey’s at Christmas in your memory.

So like many of the millions, no, billions of people around the World that are absolutely gutted that George Dubya Bush has been elected (for real this time!) for another 4 years, I’ve been seeking solace from the various serious and not so serious post-election commentaries online. Here are some of my favourites:

Klamtroob: What Happened

Analysis of a tragedy, by an informed and eloquent American. Thanks to Amy for pointing me to her friend’s blog a while ago.

How Soccer is Eating America

The best long-term hope for a more globally-aware America? Thanks to Scyld for finding this one.

Marry an American

Those good, good people to the North have started a website to help liberal Americans migrate to Canada through marriage. Thanks to Ricky for this one.

Dear Limey Assholes

The Guardian newspaper in the UK launched an initiative to help readers in Britain contact undecided voters in Clark County, Ohio. This page details some of the hilarious responses.

Daily Mirror front page, 4 Nov 2004

The headline of this low-brow left-wing Brit tabloid reads: “Doh! 4 More Years of Dubya! How can 59,054,087 People be so Dumb?” Thanks to George for sending this first, although I also got it from Scyld.

God Help America

More polemic from the Daily Mirror. Not elegantly written, but satisfyingly scathing.

More links as they (inevitably) arrive…

Canada is looking increasingly tempting since yesterday’s election, but the problem is that I now have a lot of friends in the U.S. — here’s a potential solution to all manner of problems:

Wait… Didn’t something a bit like like this happen in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest?

(Thanks for finding this H!)