Chazography

Unbeknownst to me, a course that I registered for this semester was designated an iPod Course. I initially signed up for it because it sounded interesting, didn’t seem terribly hard, and would fit into my otherwise already full course schedule. On the first day of class, I found out that we’d be getting iPods for the course which tacked on yet another reason for taking the course. However, those who know me are probably aware that over 90% of my music is compressed using the Open Source Vorbis music codec, and unfortunately, Apple’s iPod has never added support for this format. In fact, I don’t think they ever will. Afterall, they don’t really want you to rip your own music. They’d rather you just buy it from the iTunes Music Store, and if you must rip it, they’d like you to rip AAC files using iTunes. That business model doesn’t really relate well to someone like myself who can’t stand iTunes and who refuses to buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. My reasons for that are quite simple. I don’t like being forced to use Digital Rights Management (DRM), and I don’t like the idea of buying lossy music at roughly the same price as a CD. Thus, the iPod has never been my player of choice, but I have always been attracted by its simple elegance. Well, not only do I now have one, but I have the 5th generation Video iPod which is pretty cool even if it is rather useless for me.

In an effort to fix the problem with Voribs, I thought I might be able to install iPodLinux which adds support for numerous other formats as well. However, it’s not yet ready for the Video iPod so in the box my brand new 30GB Video iPod must stay. Only time will tell what I end up doing with it, but I imagine that if I haven’t found any use for it by the end of the semester I will probably sell it on eBay. On that note, let me leave you with a few pictures of the latest gadget that I’m adding to my arsenal of electronics.