Not many things make it into the blog, but these past 48 hours take the fucking biscuit - so here’s my story.

Wednesday, I’m on my way home in a cab from Manhattan, get dropped off at the corner of Washington and Fulton, grab some fried chicken from Crown Chicken and head home. I hit the sack and wake the next morning, excited that I can add yet another converted movie to my new iPod video - which I acquired 2 weeks prior. I couldn’t find it. Not in my bag. Not under my bed, where perhaps a book has slipped out of my hands before as I pay a visit to the land of nod. Nowhere. I turn my room upside down, hunting through the entire flat in search of my 2-week old iPod. Nothing. Pissed off would be like saying the Great Wall of China’s quite old. I go to work fuming, not knowing what the fuck happened to my new toy. Through the morning I try and think what I did the night before. Did I leave it in the cab? No, I didn’t remove it from my bag. Was I pickpocketed? Possibly. I remember someone brushing behind me while I was paying for my chicken. Mother fucker.

So, yesterday lunchtime I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’ve been robbed, and my $249 piece of heaven is in some skeevy fucker’s mitts, and in walks a coworker with a blood soaked compress on her head. As it transpired, she’d fallen in the bathroom at home, cracked her noggin on the bath tub, waited til the bleeding had stopped, then traipsed all the way into the office. And here she was, in need of obvious medical attention, due to the grand canyon sized gash in her turnip. I insisted we call for an ambulance, and they promptly responded within 10 minutes. So I’m sat in the back of a Lennox Hill ambulance at around 1pm, on my way to Cornell Medical Center on 68th and York, iPod-less and babysitting my blood encrusted office mate. You couldn’t make this shit up.

Five hours later, and 4 episodes of some forensic/cop show, we leave - she with 3 stitches in the back of her mellon, and a sore arse cheek from the mandatory tetanus shot. I see her to the nearest bus stop, and make my way to the Apple Store to buy another iPod. All’s well - I pick it up, take the N to the Q, get out at 7th Avenue in Prospect Heights, and take Vanderbilt to Fort Green - stopping at the Golden Arches for a Big Mac and Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Excited to transfer all my songs and movies to my new ‘Pod, I connect the little bugger, and start dragging and dropping. About half way through, iTunes decides to throw a spaz and tell me that it doesn’t recognize my iPod. For fuck’s sake, FUCK ME! I try restoring (which of course means I lose all the songs I just uploaded, but what the hell) and again, it freezes. My little black shit shuts down, and tries to reboot… and tries to reboot… and tries to reboot… you get the idea. My 2nd iPod was now about as useful to me as Christmas is to a Jew. At this point I’m all angered out, so I put everything back in the original packaging, planning on returning it to the Apple Store this morning…

…which is exactly what I did. Today seems to be dealing me a better hand, as I didn’t even have to ask for a replacement - they just took one look at the frozen iPod screen and gave me a spanking new 30GB video.

Anyway, happy Friday. May the next 48 hours have my blood pressure somewhere below 180.

Right now I am the happiest man alive… unless you’ve been dead for the last year, you would have heard about the dreadful scratching on the Nano, which almost caused (yet another) class action law suit against Apple.

Well, mine was no different - scratched to high heaven, and so much so, that it was sometimes hard to see what was on the screen in lighter conditions.

[did some surfing... as ya do]

I was amazed to find that your normal household Brasso and a piece of micro fiber cloth, some elbow grease and 20-30 minutes of “polishing” can bring your Nano back into the spotlight of gorgeousness

I didn’t have Brasso, but I did have a bottle of Silvo (same polish, only for silverware), the piece of microfiber cloth that came with my PSP, and 30 minutes to kill.

[copious amounts of rubbing, polishing and 30 mins later...]

ALL of my scratches are gone - GONE! It looks like the first time I took it out of the box. I even managed to do the same for the back metal surface too - it is spotless… the very mild abrasive qualities of both Brasso and Silvo gradually and gently smoothed away the surface scratches, and if polished long enough, even the deep ones. Now it’s about time I bought me one of those soft chamois cases.

If you have a Nano, and you don’t have a case, it must look like shit - try what I did above, but be patient - it took me a little over 30 minutes, and about 20 separate applications of Silvo.

Freaking schweet!

one of the very first things I encountered after joining the “iPod fraternity” was that I could certainly upload any music to my liking, but there wasn’t a method of transfering my music back from iPod to computer. Of course, Apple didn’t want you taking your iPod to your friend’s house and have your buddy transfer all your tunes to their own iPod for free (depending indeed if you’d actually bought your music - DISCLAIMER: which we all should be doing).

Alas, what happens if through some disturbingly unfortunate event you lose all your music from your computer? The only storage of said tunes is laiden inside your iPod, and then by an equally disturbingly unfortunate event you lose your beloved “pod”, or you accidentally reformat it and lose everything?! you’re completely shafted.

My saving grace came in the form of i Lounge, where they cover “All things iPod.” They have a phenomenal selection of iPod utilities and tools for download (most of then free) and a superlative discussion forum which covers topics from iPods to accessories, and pretty much everything else you can possibly imagine. So, there I am a couple of weekends ago looking for a solution to my aforementioned dilemma. It didn’t take me long to find (in my opinion) THE best utility to render my fears, a mute point. They have a link to a site that has created a completely free utility called Senuti - “Everything in Reverse”. Senuti is of course “iTunes” spelled backwards… ingenius.

This amazing, and FREE (you can certainly donate to the author) utility does everything:

• it’s lightning fast
• allows a number of ways to search for songs
• transfers your exact playlists to your computer
• you can even have Senuti not only copy your music and playlists to your computer, but automatically tranfer them VERBATIM into iTunes
• it’s skinned to look like iTunes - so no ugly interface - it’s gorgeous

if you own an iPod (ANY model) go and download this potential lifesaver - always good to back up your iPod, should the hands of fate nudge you into oncoming traffic, resulting in certain sorrow and nights of sobbage.

I’ve been writing recently about Apple’s new iPod nano, and how so many have been incredibly disappointed with the product as a whole - front face and screen quality pertaining to its “scratchworthiness”, broken screens etcetera - and after a lengthy time researching and further homework into the nano, I decided to take another trip to the SoHo store and get one - yeah, I caught a sincere case of the fuck it bug.

Having been playing around with it for almost 12 hours now, I have to say it is THE most gorgeous piece of electronic hardware that I have laid my hands on (prior to that, it was the new G5 iMac earlier this year). I’d seen pictures of the nano online, but now I have one in my hands, I cannot believe how bloody tiny this thing truly is. IT… IS… SMALL! So small, that I handle it as if I would a new born child - without of course the floppy head.

I got the black model, instinctively I think to go with my PSP, but I guess I also wanted something different than the typical white that I see so often. I am a little miffed that the nano only has a USB slot, as uploading takes about twice as long as it did with my Mini and its firewire connection. Having said that though, I see why it comes with only USB - this thing is THIN! Too thin to have had a firewire slot, and the USB connector (that comes with the nano) is about as thick as the nano unit itself.

It is certainly delicate, having gently pressed on the front screen to test any “give” in that area, and there is some - so I need to be extra careful with that… remembering to take it out of my pocket when sitting. What I am pleased with is that the nano was built around flash memory, as opposed to a mini drive, as contained in the iPod and Mini (the Shuffle uses flash also). The music seems to start quicker upon pressing play, and I’m no aural expert, but the quality of the music seems to have a distinct improvement in clarity. I have a pair of Etymotic 6i Isolator Earphones (which are outstanding) and the bass response with the Mini was ’so so’, and I found myself switching the EQ to ‘loudness’ in an effort to produce even the slightest bass. But with the nano, and using the ‘loudness’ EQ setting, the bass is far richer - as rich as a dessert of triple chocolate pie with toffee syrup topping… followed by an encore of one of Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies.

I have noticed some miniscule scratching on the front, but nothing to be too alarmed about - only really seen when you hold it in such a way to the light, and look really hard.

I’m happy, I have made a good purchase (fingers crossed that I didn’t just frigging jinx myself), and if treated with care, I’m sure it will last me a long time.

Good job Stevo, the Mini was a pile of shat in comparison - battery life notwithstanding, comparatively speaking.

thanks go to chickpea for an article she presented to me on Sunday concerning the build quality, or indeed lack thereof, pertaining to the new iPod nano- it got my blood boiling, and my fever reaching pitch.

I did some further research into peoples’ claims that the screens, and indeed the whole front of the nano was susceptible to scratching, and with little effort - simply keeping it in an empty jeans pocket could have it scratched to an extent that you could even see your uploaded photos properly, and within a couple of days too! TO make matters even worse, there were dozens of reports that the actual screens were cracking, leaving them completely unusable. This link will take you to to Apple’s official website discussion forum and the topic surrounding these issues.

After further investigation again today for the latest on this issue, I came across this article outlining Apple’s response to the complaints.

So basically, Phil Schiller’s saying “tough shit, get a case”.

it was probably around 4:50pm yesterday whilst I was finishing up work for the week, and I decided to take a trip to the Apple Store in SoHo to pick me up a spankingly shiny new black iPod nano. Being the kind of perfectionist I am, I decided to call the store, just to make sure my journey would not prove futile… so I called, and asked some guy if they had any black 4GB nanos in stock, to which I was advised “yes, sir. we have plenty.” I made sure by asking pretty much the exact same, and he repeated his first reply.

in a blur, I shut down my POS windows work station and head out for the 6 train downtown to Spring Street. The 6 is amazing - always one flying down the tunnel, never have to wait… so I board and fight the excitement of holding my new girlfriend - black, sleek, sexy, great ass… < not that one.

I get to the store at 5:20pm, and the line is as expected… vast. I’m stood in line for about 15 minutes, and I’m gradually getting closer to holding my tiny new toy, and some guy comes out from behind the counter (funny, I actually remember him looking like Michael Buffer) and shouted, “those that are waiting to pick up a black 4GB iPod nano, please raise your hand.” There I was, flashback of Mr. Blackburn, my old math teacher from high school asking the class some algebra question, and I would always shoot my hand into the air as I knew the question… math was easy. My hand went up, and the Buffer look-a-like counted…

he turned to us all and said, “we only have 5 left…”, then motioned to the last two thirds of the line (which included me) with his hand and continued, “you guys from here onward probably won’t be able to get one today, but you’re welcome to stay in line just in case those in front of you don’t get one. Or you could go for the 2GB model.” Ok, two things:

1. those 5 lucky bastards that are in line for a guaranteed nano, would have to physically drop dead for them to not get their iPods

2. why would I settle for something I didn’t come here for?

[deep breath]

My shoulders slumped, and I sighed. Then I remembered my call to the store only 25 minutes earlier - “yes, sir - we have plenty.” Plenty, huh? Let’s look at some facts here for a second:

Typically, the average sale at the Apple Store can take anywhere from 3 minutes to closer to 5 - let’s go with 5 minutes, as it was a Friday night, and the place was packed, and there were new iMacs flying off the shelves and they try and cross sell you extra software, Airport cards, extended warranties etc.

The math:

25 minutes between my call and arriving at the store

/

5 minutes per customer

=

5 iPod nanos sold (if indeed all 5 customers actually bought an iPod nano

+

the 5 remaining iPod nanos I was told they had left

=

10 iPod nanos when I called from the office approximately

I ask you, when did 10 of anything become “plenty”, when it’s the hottest thing in the world right now, in a packed store, on a Friday night after work… IN NEW YORK FUCKING CITY???

I have a message to the jackass on the phone at the store who took my call, and gave me the good old ‘bait and switch’ maneuver… if I ever get my hands on you, you will have plenty of teeth left in your bullshit mouth.

Steve Jobs has gone and done it again… giving me a longing feeling that I belong, a sense of warmth and acceptance. what am I referring to? the new “iPod nano”, the newest recruit in apple’s mp3 arsenal. I’m amazed that microsoft haven’t attempted to glean a corner of this market - they’re getting a right royal spanking.

official specs below:

• Holds up to 1,000 songs and full-color album art
• Only 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches and 1.5 ounces
• Bright 1.5-inch color LCD display
• Up to 14 hours of battery life(1)
• Apple Click Wheel
• Charges and syncs via USB
• Accessory-compatible Dock connector
• Completely skip-free playback
• Works with Mac OS X or Windows 2000/XP
• Plays music, podcasts and audiobooks
• Holds up to 25,000 photos(2)
• Syncs contacts, calendars and to-do lists

I already own an iPod mini, which I have to say, I’m not that impressed with. I have the first generation mini, 4GB, 1,000 songs, 8 hour battery life… not that impressive. shortly after the release of the 4GB model, they decide to release their second generation - 6GB, 18 hours battery life blah etcetera. so you can imagine I was pissed off. and apparently this new iPod nano is replacing the mini… come on Steve, stop fucking around.

anyway, enough of the rambling…

iPod nano. gorgeous. as thin as a #2 pencil, color screen - it is utterly splendid. and the cool thing, it comes in black also - good, something to match my PSP. you can take a look at apple’s official site to check out more pictures and information.

great, something else for the thugs to rob you of on the F train [rolls eyes]