Monday, August 09, 2004

This Drinking Will Kill Me

My iPod arrived on Friday while I was at work. As per usual, I went to Curlers then the QM straight after work with all the other poor shmoes working in the department this summer, so I didn't get to see the iPod til around 4am. I'm not sure what I did to it at that time, but all the menus were in Japanese by morning. Luckily Apple give instructions on how to change the language when you can't understand what you see (though these instructions were a little off, I could still follow them with a hellish hangover).

From what I remember of Friday night, I was quite merry from an early stage, even acting drunk when playing John at pool around 7pm. Despite this, I continued drinking into the wee hours (I think we stayed at the QM til 3am, thanks to their new license). I then proceeded to collect my bag from my office in Lilybank (which I was amazed to find today was not trashed - I had fears of a casual spiage (sp?) in the building somewhere).

I'm not sure if much happened that night, beyond the end of BB (a welcome addition of an extra free hour every night!), and me stotting about so much that it took quite some time for a taxi to take me on. I'm sure if I did anything of note, I'll be reminded at lunch.

So all of this pointed to the inevitable hangover on Saturday - and what a monster it was. My worst for a long time. I was out at Rev on Tuesday night, and headed back to Neil's flat afterwards. Gus was there, and spoke about how he'd given up drinking because the hangovers were too much for him. Maybe there's something in that. It's been a while since I last spewed my ringer, but if I did again in the near future I might head to partial wagon-riding. For one thing it might stop me making a tit of myself at the weekends (or at least thinking I did).

So now I have an iPod, something that frustrated me for much of Saturday until I realised my new Firewire card must be buggered. Thankfully one of my flatmates has a PC with USB 2.0, so I've been able to make speedy transfers of music. After copying all songs from my MP3 CDs, my laptop and a large bulk of my sister's CD collection (since my CDs are almost all in Aberdeen), I've managed to nearly reach half capacity (10 Gig).

Aside from my Firewire card (which only cost £13, when I was expecting to pay about £40) not working, it seems iTunes, while being just about the best media library program I've seen, likes to hang when you try to do a lot at once, or if it simply feels like it. And the hanging requires a total reboot of the PC and the iPod to let you back in. Also, the iPod almost always needs rebooting when I disconnect it from a PC. It seems that the reset only switches a few settings to default (like the clicker sound being diverted to speaker), but that's bad enough - if you can store some settings like the chosen equaliser permanently, why not store everything? It's not like they're tapped for space.

It would also be nice if the volume went low before muting. When out and about on Glasgow's noisy streets, having a high volume range is very useful. But when in a minaiture office, with dead air all around, the lowest volume setting is too loud!

All I have to do now is shell out on the headphone remote (taking the iPod out of your pocket every 30 seconds is just plain annoying, as is the size of the hold switch), and perhaps the carry case too. Serves me right for buying the latest model I guess - no extras with it. And finding the accessories in town will be tough since no one stocks it yet.

So other than getting tanked and copying music, I've had a really quiet weekend. I finished reading Quite Ugle One Morning again, and started A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away again, both by Christopher Brookmyre. I reread Quite Ugly because when I'd first read it, I thought it was a prime candidate for being adapted for the big screen, and had sketched out how I would rearrange the chapters for a screenplay - about as close as I've gotten to written creativity in many years. Anyway, after a second reading it seems less suited for film, mainly because the story is about character development and gore humour, both of which would reduce public interest in the film.

A far more suited candidate would be One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night, which I intended to read next, but it must be in Aberdeen, so I settled for a story set partially in (and very scathing of) Aberdeen instead.

Playlist: Absolutely everything!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Steve,

Matt here. Re ipod accessories, get them from the Apple Centre on Great Western Rd. Get off the tube at St. George's Cross (2 stops from Hillhead, 2 stops from Buchanan St the other way), walk out through the tunnel and right onto GWR, and go left. It's across the road within the first couple of blocks. They've got all the official Apple accessories, including the wired remote.

Alternatively, John Lewis in the Buchanan Galleries have some Apple stuff upstairs, though a lesser range. Go to whatever floor has computer stuff; maybe up 2 from the level with Game and Silverscreen, if I remember rightly.

2:28 pm  

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