Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2005/09/It should would be cool if this LiveJournal client were able to magically query my iPod for what I am listening to and put that in the “Music” tag. Even when I am at the computer, I tend to use the iPod for listening. This is partly because of resources, partly because of screen real estate, and partly because of usability. First — resources. Sometimes I am compiling some pretty hefty things. For instance, I regularly use the PPC-to-ARM GCC cross-compiler to build prototype Linux kernels (and the userland tools to go with them.) This means that it could be several seconds between when I hit “pause” and it actually happens — an minor annoyance, yes, but escalated by the CEO walking into your office (yes, I have a door; no, it is never closed) and wanting a quick chat. Screen real estate is another issue — even at 1400×900, things get tight when you have some editors open, some tree views open, and a terminal window or two. I don’t like to Cmd-Tab to see what I am listening to and the “always on top” mini window just gets in the way of something. Usability is another issue. It is excellent to have the tactile feedback of being able to hit an actual “pause” button on the iPod and I can use motor memory to know exactly where that button is. It never moves (relative to the iPod) and is easy to hit because of that. It takes a number of keystrokes and/or mouse movements to pause on the computer. I either have to Cmd-Tab some number of times (always different because of the number of open windows and where iTunes resides in that list), then hit space to pause. Alternately, I used to use a program called Synergy that lets you map that kind of thing to keys so that I could hit, say, Cmd-Esc to pause/unpause, which worked a bit better, but still suffers from the resource issue listed first (i.e. it can take several seconds to pause, during which time I am unsure if I hit the right key combination.)
So yes, I listen to an iPod. This is doubly so when out at a coffee shop because it evenly divides batteries–the laptop does not have to churn away at decoding songs, using up precious battery time. It is better suited for the iPod, which is optimized to do that task.
Anyway, this was not meant to be a rant on physical devices versus virtual devices, but a list of video links. Here they are:
The first minute of the season premiere of Lost. Warning: like crack
The Bill Gates / Napoleon Dynamite video Warning: camcorder quality
The three Napoleon Dynamite Utah State Fair videos, converted from crappyass Real Video to DiVX: one, two, and three
