With the prices dropping, and everyone jumping on the bandwagon, it seems the right time to upgrade from my dinky little 128 MB Intel Pocket Concert MP3 player to a new-to-me 20 GB iPod.

iPod Goodness

Which is fortunate, and fortuitous, because a quick glance at my ripped collection to date indicates that I have just over 22 GB stored on the MP3 server at home. And it’s not like I’ll need the entire 19-album Neon Genesis Evangelion Perfect Total Collection soundtrack on it, after all. I’m sure that a choice (but still staggeringly large) selection of tunes will suit me just fine.

Interestingly enough, I’ll be paying the exact same amount for the iPod now that I did for the Intel Pocket Concert three years ago, which is not bad considering that the Pocket Concert has about 1/200 the capacity of the iPod.

I know that the 20 GB model has been phased out in favour of the 15 and the 30, so this new toy has the extra added appeal of collectibility associated to it. Whoo! Seven days and counting…

UPDATE: Lots of interesting little arguments for and against the 20 G model. On one hand, it’s older, and has no nifty little docking station, nor USB 2.0 compatibility (no direct sync’ing with my linux box, I fear). And I’d have to go out of my way to get a firewire card for my PC.

On the other hand, with the exception of the docking station and direct linux compatibility issue, all these quibbles go a way when I actually get my Mac laptop. Damn you, Steve Jobs! You’ve one-up’ed drug dealers by actually making the barrier to entry expensive but so extremely desirable. First an iPod, then a TiBook — what next? An Apple X-Server? If it wasn’t for your not-yet-available-in-Canada Apple Online Music Store, the graphical sweetness and usability of iTunes and NetNewsWire and a million other aesthetically pleasing, yet surprisingy functional design and software options, I’d have nothing to do with your company.

Goddamn Steve Job’s Reality Distortion Field.

I like to think that I’m enjoying the fruits of over two decades worth of GUI advances and research (which, sadly, won’t really be fully true until I get my Mac). For most day-to-day purposes, the convenience of a good, clean GUI outweighs any technical reservations I may have.

For example, I’d rather use Kazaa (lite) than Overnet for simple searches, ’cause Overnet’s a hassle when it comes to finding hubs and pinging individual servers. (this is mostly the same argument I have for DC[++, and variants] over BitTorrent, because I have all the controls I need in one clean interface rather than a series of popup windows whose only option is, more or less, “cancel”). Which is not to say that I don’t use either Overnet or BitTorrent; it’s just that they and their ilk aren’t my first choice for those particular tasks.

But, when push comes to shove, I fall back into behaviours learned from the early ’90′s, when the Internet meant Unix shell access and command-line interface. I’m still reading my newsgroups with Tin (and I mean “reading”, as opposed to downloading binaries), and I prefer a good combination of Pine + procmail to Outlook (ugh) or Eudora. It’s just cleaner; I get more content, less form.

Or, maybe it’s because I’m a cantankerous ‘net geezer who remembers when you could actually hold a decent conversation on IRC, before mIRC and its clones were created, lowering the barrier to entry and allowing access to hordes of l33t kiddies.

I’m a bit of a gadget-hound, and seeing this pen from Belkin makes my heart glad. (via Gizmodo)

Quadra 4-in-1: ooh, shiny

I was quite pleased with the old Belkin stylus/red ballpoint/black ballpoint/pencil unit that I bought in October; I think it’s time for an upgrade to a new toy that can write to my PDA or to normal paper, illuminate the darkness, and functionally blind people at close ranges.

I had an interesting, and extremely geeky, conversation with Dave today (and this goes beyond our regularly scheduled geekiness and straight into sweeps-week ubergeekdom).

He pointed me out to an interesting bit from Twinking out with Red Mage, and I quote:

One more thing. I?ve been meaning to pass along this little recipe for a while now. Take one Bladed Gauntlet, add a helping of Keen, a dash of Improved Critical and top it all off with Vorpal and you have a weapon that?s criting on an 8 and beheading every time it crits! For more fun use two and take the feats Ambidexterity and Two Weapon Fighting.

Besides some weirdly fuzzy math — the Bladed Gauntlet’s threat range is 19-20; with Keen and Improved Critical, that’s two doubled ranges, which essentially is a triple (see the feat “Improved Critical”, page 83, 3rd Edition PHB first printing) resulting in a threat range from 15-20, not 8-20 — this particular combination of twinkage results in only one thing: Wolverine.

Wolverine, rules lawyer. Rules lawyer, Wolverine.

I think I’ll throw together a ranger or a monk with this set of skills and weaponry as an interesting NPC to challenge the party the next time we game. I think I’ll call him “Loh-Gahn”.

UPDATE: The fuzzy-mathness of the above-mentioned example apparently depends on which printing of Sword and Fist you own. In earlier printings, the threat range for a bladed gauntlet is 17-20 (damage x2); in newer printings (and also in this officially-releaed errata sheet), it’s 19-20.

Any slashing weapon with a threat range of 17-20 is most definately a twink’s pride and joy.

GAINAXING (to GAINAX): adj., referring to specific fanservice-y bouncing motions of certain female body parts in a manner that defies sense, as well as physics. (for reference, refer to the Misty May magical girl transformation sequence from Otaku No Video).

This is really only pertinent because I stumbled into the Gainax Japanese site, and found a rather funny Evangelion splash image:

The cast of Evangelion takes some direction

Wandering into the Evangelion-specific section, I made the mistake of clicking on what appeared to be their “GOODS” link. Since I read not a word of Japanese, what followed next was a rather eye-opening experience. Suffice it to say, I understand now why Gainax doesn’t have overseas shipping. Most of the links were fairly tame, and offered Eva-themed picture books and software, including what appeared to be a typing tutor-thing and a very kawaii Dance! Dance! Revolution! game featuring the three pilots.

Dance Dance Chibi Rei!

But the other links? Evangelion hentai galore. It’s rather strange to see Gainax litterally pimp their own products. That shouldn’t be so surprising, I guess, considering that a rather ecchi adjective is named after them.