peteg's blog 2006-11-29-Terminator.autumn

iPod Shuffle Gripes

OK, I've owned the damn thing for about a month, time to put the boot in. :-) What I like:

Unplugging the headphones makes it pause. Perhaps all iPods do this, but my iRiver didn't.
The control is much better designed than my old iRiver.

What I'd like:

Some audible warning that it's out of juice. The little all-purpose LED glows red, I think, and that's that.
A way to delete songs on the player itself, so I can fill it up with random crap and on-the-spot nuke the annoying stuff, rather than having to tediously go through it afterwards in iTunes at home.

What I don't like:

The dinky dock. My old iRiver had a standard mini-USB port, which happened to be the same as my Canon PowerShot A75. One cable was all I needed. Moreover I have no way to recharge it without having the iBook plugged in and running — there's no juice on the USB bus when it's suspended.

Ars Technica killed theirs by running a car over it. This program may yet liberate me from iTunes inanity.

Powering the iBook from the car.

I trudged all over Sydney CBD today looking for a new pair of Docs and something that would let me recharge the iBook from the car. It seems the old Docs shop on Pitt St Mall has folded, and the joint down George St that for years proudly advertised cut-price Docs has gone for the factory- (China-) direct brand instead. I'd forgotten what a hassle it is shopping on the street.

Anyway, to cut a long ramble short, I ended up buying a "Powertech Plus Cat. MP-3463 3.5 Amp Universal Step-up DC/DC Converter for Notebook Computer" from Jaycar on York St for <$40 />. The sealed-in cardboard says it was made in China and is distributed by Electus Distribution, and I can guarantee you that the cardboard was printed there too. I can't find it in either of their catalogues. There is also a 6 Amp version for those who have something hefty.

It works, with one small wrinkle: the iBook-sized plug adaptor is wired backwards! Fortunately the iBook is up to that game, simply ignoring a reverse-polarity 24 volts. The solution is to wedge the plug adaptor onto the cable backwards. For the curious these Italians have the details, or you can try to figure out what Apple is on about.

André pointed out Terminator to me, a cross-platform terminal emulator written in Java. It sounds promising; the only things tying me to X.org are XEmacs, a DVI viewer and xterm.

Easing into the 21st Century.

Met up with André in Newtown for a coffee and some lunch, and being the unpaid ambassador for Apple that he is, we ended up in the Apple store on Broadway and I parted with <$119 /> for an iPod Shuffle, a replacement for my venerable 256Mb iRiver iFP-390T I bought in Boston at the end of 2003. I can't see why it needs an on/off switch.