Will's birthday; New toy; Seminars, drinking, cigars; Half Nelson

2/27

So. About six months prior Will's green iPod mini got swiped out of his lab (he thinks by a scruffy looking college student that had a temporary position). I decided that nobody who has lived with an iPod should have to go back to living without one, so for his birthday I endeavored to gather a group of people to buy Will a new iPod.

After some exploratory fundraising, aided by Char, I settled on a 4 GB nano, the same size as his previous iPod, again in green. Which is what I was doing at Best Buy the previous saturday.

So I got everyone that contributed and could join us together at Woodrow's, and somebody made sure to get Will there. While we were waiting we let everybody sign a card.

Leroy had picked up a miniature Spider-Man lunch box which we were going to present to Will as his "present" with the iPod hidden inside.

In the end we managed to genuinely surprise him, and he was appropriately thankful. I was glad to have organized such a fun favor for a friend, and was excited about getting back to giving Will good music.

2/28

Will needed to fill up his iPod, so I hitched a ride with him. We decided to make an evening of it and started by hitting the comic store, then grabbing dinner (the traditional Double Dave's), and then back to my place to get that iPod filled up.

3/1

Somebody had been working on putting together a med center-wide happy hour for the students, but whoever planned them must not have been a grad student, because they didn't realize that to get grad students to come to things, you need cheap drinks and free food. The happy hour was held at the overly fancy Trevisio's on the top floor of a med center building, and featured the usual in lame appetizers (crackers, cheese, fruit tray, vegetable tray), and $4 beers. An assortment of people from the lab went, and I decided to go too, using the opportunity to sneak out of lab early to also catch the early bus home so that I could retrieve my new networked digital music player that had been delivered (see previous post about my bedroom system).

I had just enough time to get it up and running before Cindy and I went to meet Shawn and Sabrina at Spaghetti Western, where I'd been once before with Lauren. Three of us started with a round of margaritas (decent, though I might opt for the additional amaretto floater next time), while Shawn had a beer. We ordered some cheese bread for an appetizer, which is hard to mess up, but that's not to say it wasn't enjoyable. For my entree I selected the tombstone chicken, a grilled chicken breast held vertically by being wedged between two pieces of eggplant parmesan, topped with greens and sauced with marinara and their chipotle alfredo. Clever plating, and tasty. I think I talked Cindy into the Italian enchiladas; always good.

3/2

Drunk early, dinner, cigars
Will and I headed over to Rice for a physics talk. It was some interesting culture shock; everything was, dare I say, much more scientific than the usual biology talk. Of course I couldn't really keep up with the theory, but it was still an educational experience.

Afterwards I went to the usual Friday seminar while Will hung out at Valhalla, and then we started drinking the free after-seminar beer and chatted with Jeff and some professors. Will gave me a ride home, but we stopped off at the village for a beer... which became two... which became a trip across the street to Baker Street for more beer. Will went to retrieve his car from the garage while I walked over to the Briar Shoppe to pick up some cigars.

I got home and started sobering up, Cindy came over with some Chinese takeout, and after dinner we met up with Char and Angela for cigars and beer. It was a nice night, and we sat alone out on the other patio whose existence I was completely unaware of. All very pleasant.

3/3

Cindy and I decided to rent (or maybe borrow) a movie to watch, and ended up with Half Nelson. I guess it was competent enough, but it didn't leave much of an impression.

Happy iPod Day

Five years since the introduction of the iPod. I didn't quite get it at first, but after watching the demo on Apple's web site, I realized that they were doing two things: a player with the sotrage of a hard drive-based player but the size of a flash player, thanks to new 1.8" hard drive technology (had I considered the usefulness of PCMCIA-sized hard drives before then? maybe...); and the versatility and organizational prowess of the database-driven iTunes interface (music geeks really love organaziation; witness the monologue in High Fidelity on the subject).

A new control scheme, the scroll wheel, was introduced to make the most of the interface. As a plus, thanks to Apple's FireWire standard (USB 2.0 not yet available), there were quick file transfers. There were more subtle innovations, such as the use of a large RAM buffer which meant that the hard drive didn't have to run constantly and that battery life increased from the typical 3 hours for a HD player to 10 hours. There were what must have been fan-service touches, too: the use of the old MacOS system font Chicago for the iPod's interface, and the emphasis on a high-quality monochrome display (a selling point of the original Mac). There were some less-desirable touches reminiscent of the original Mac, too: the high price and "closed box" design.

It was six months before I saw one in the Apple Store in Dallas, and I had to quickly fight the impulse to pull out my credit card right then and there and pay what was then a very large amount of money for me. A clearance Rio 600 (then made by SonicBlue) tided me over, but within a year the price of the iPod had fallen, and combined with student discounts, it made a good Christmas present. It kept me supplied with music all throughout that spring semester at school and through grad school interviews.

It's good that I decided not to get it engraved, because within six months the third generation was released, slimmer and with those nifty touch-sensitive buttons. I talked Nick into buying my barely-used first generation model and traded on up. That one stayed with me through Europe, through lab rotations, long walks to and from Rice, bus rides, and trips to visit Rachal.

Then, a year later, I got a fourth generation model free with my laptop and passed the 3G model on to Lisa. That one got me through quals.

Six months later the Shuffle model was released and seemed like a nice (relatievly) cheap model for me to use in my car, and served well until the release of the Nano six months later, whose larger size, display, and full iPod interface were what I had really wanted all along. I passed the Shuffle on to an internet friend who is probably using it around Thailand and picked up a nano.

Then the new nano was introduced a few weeks ago and fixed a few things I didn't like about the one I had (small capacity and scratchability), so I found a buyer (Angela) and traded up once again to the more capacious and durable new model.

So, five years and six iPods later (yes, I do admit that I have a problem), it's hard to imagine being without one. I can't remember the last time I actually put a CD in my CD player (actually, probably when I had a rental car six months ago). The iPod is a great example of a small, modest technological advancement making life definitively better. Its slow ascent to it current huge popularity almost obscures the modesty of the device itself, but the technology is simple, it's just the execution that makes it worthwhile.

Thanks Steve, and Jonathan, and the rest of Apple for making something that makes a music lover love music even more.