Asymptomatic

The blogathon 2005 site is active. I hope I can get it together enough this year to pull off my plan.

Youths in Britain are crazy. They go around slapping strangers on camera phones.

Glass from space has some weird properties.

This is going to be the first of a few posts centered around gadgets. I should provide a little background before I begin.

I’m not sure when my love of gadgets started. Probably back even before I was touring HAM radio fests with my dad, looking for good deals on electronic throw-offs. I remember the piles of Macintosh and Commodore computers at the fests - ah, the good old days.

I loaded a couple of audio books into Berta’s iPod for our Johnstown trip this past weekend. I’ve learned a couple of important things regarding audiobook playback - and playback in general - on the iPod.

First, I really dislike that you can’t safely feel the interface on the iPod. It makes it virtually impossible to control the device while you are trying to drive. For those that aren’t aware, the iPod controls are touch-sensitive, not pressure sensitive. It’s hard to describe how it works if you’re not familiar with it, but it works exactly like the touchpad now integrated into notebook computers instead of a mouse, and somewhat like those lamps that you can touch to turn on. Since the mere touch of a button activates it, you can’t search for buttons with your fingers without actually pressing the buttons as you go.

I find it’s reasonably safe to locate the device visually in the car, but not being able to feel the buttons without activating them is a real hindrance. Most times I just wanted to pause the playback or restart it so I could converse with the passengers without missing the story. This was a real pain and something I would consider a design flaw.

The iPod also doesn’t store the last paused location for an audio file. This is of particular interest in audio books. If you leave the book and try to come back to it later, you have no idea where you left off unless you remember the time code. I did remember the time code of the book from when I switched playback, but I ran into another problem that I suppose is mostly user error.