Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

I suppose I need an iPod category. My iPod had a psychotic break last week, in which the 5 dots permanently replaced my track times and volume. I thought the dots were the chapters of audiobooks because I use my iPod to listen to audiobooks a lot and I’d only happened to see them during the audiobooks when I was clicking the middle wheel to get to the bookmarky thing–so I thought everything on my iPod had turned into an audiobook. (Note that I still haven’t read the manual to figure out what the bookmarky thing is called.)

In my defense, I’d like to say I had just done a bunch of stuff like updating iTunes and synching some wacky stuff through iCal onto my iPod, so I thought I’d caused the psychotic break somewhere in there. Plus, none of the buttons work right when you’re in 5-dot mode, except for the volume. They turn into jumpy, audiobookmarky things. Try it, you’ll see.

Veronica told me the five dots were the ratings system, which was reassuring, but I still couldn’t turn them off because I thought you had to hold down the middle button, which didn’t do squat. But I was reassured that I wasn’t the only totally clueless iPod user out there:
this guy had the same problem.

Maybe it’s time to read the manual.

My desktop manager demo at work (i.e., on Evil!Windows) finally expired, after several betas, new versions, a record 18 days of Windows uptime, and other tricks to keep it going. I considered paying the shareware fee, but I didn’t like the looks of the e-store, and it didn’t like the looks of my PayPal information. So I uninstalled and went looking for more.

I found zillions of them listed at TimelyWeb. I had to cut-and-paste to get to the product websites, to check whether they looked legit or like spyware. I decided on enable Virtual Desktop, which has the same functionality as my last desktop manager, more or less, a nice, if busy, preference pane interface, and a 30-day free trial. If I get addicted to it, I may even brave another e-store.

GeekPress linked a free filk: Singularitarian by Charlie Kam. There’s allegedly an mp3, but it’s actually in some nasty MicroSoft feed format.

Happy belated birthday to Seema!

As of this morning in California, Intel is officially inside the new macs. I don’t care for the name “MacBook Pro,” but I’m a New Englander so I was doomed to go on calling it a Powerbook for at least another five years–no harm done.

Get it while it’s up: Voltaire’s The Sexy Data Tango is available from Fugly. I doubt it’s a legal copy. You can buy the real thing from Projeck: darkwave.