Behind Infinity

It was time.

My trusty 3rd-generation iPod, (yes, the old-fashioned kind with the monochrome screen!) has given up the ghost. After three years of being toted around in my purse, backpack, pocket, running top, and beach bag, it’s pretty much toasted. The battery is finicky. It refuses to play some songs and randomly skips in the middle of others. The last straw came a couple of nights ago when the hold switch refused to respond, therefore rendering it inoperable. I was in the middle of a 4-mile run, and I had no way to skip the track or turn down the volume on a poorly-recorded Earl Scruggs rendition of “Cripple Creek” that would have caused me permanent hearing loss, if I continued listening to it at that volume. I was forced to continue running without aural stimulation.

So it was with a heavy heart that I decided it really was time to retire my scratched-up, dented ‘Pod from active duty (though I still may try and fix it, the next time I’m bored) and replace it with its inexpensive, trendier, younger sibling, the iPod Shuffle.

The Shuffle was an easy choice, mainly because of the price point. The last time I checked, a large percentage of my bank account was earmarked “HORSE MONEY, DO NOT SPEND, MORON!” and the rest, “SCHOOL MONEY, HANDS OFF!” So replacing my defunct iPod with a $299 30GB model really wasn’t an option. The 1GB Shuffle, on the other hand, was an almost-affordable $80, after my hott Apple Student Discount.

I am absolutely satisfied with my purchase. It was great to go running last night without my plastic-wrapped iPod tucked in the elastic on the back of my sports top, being all lumpy and jostling against my shoulder blades. (I mean, come on, that thing must weigh ounces! What a burden it was!) And when paired with my black sports top, my white iPod, hanging around my neck on its included lanyard, makes me the trendiest little runner in the county. Now that is definitely a selling point. Furthermore, I find the 240-song capacity to be just about perfect–last night I loaded it up with all the music I’ll want for running and listening to on the camping trip this weekend, and I still have almost half of the space left over. Yes, my old iPod was able to boast “over 2,600 songs in my pocket”, but I only ever listened to about 240 of them anyway, so why bother with the other 2,360 in the first place?

So, I consider the iPod Shuffle a worthy and adequate replacement for its predecessor, for my purposes (namely running, sometimes walking to class, and vacationing when a CD player isn’t readily available). I realize that it’s not perfect for everyone–by no means am I a music 24/7 person. But for a shoestring budget and intermittent usage, it’s a great buy.

However, here’s the real truth. I actually purchased the iPod Shuffle because I was influenced by Apple’s unbelievably amazing claims in its advertising campaign:

“The smallest iPod yet, iPod shuffle fits neatly in the palm of your hand and looks just plain neat around your neck. Prepare to make friends and influence people when you wear it biking, hiking, snowboarding, dog-walking and anywhere else that could use a great soundtrack.”

So there you have it, folks. You had better watch out. By shelling out a mere $80 for this sweet-looking plastic doohickey to hang around my neck, I have become one of the movers and shakers of this universe. Seriously? I can’t wait until I meet all of those new friends and influence all kinds of people, all on account of my darling little iPod Shuffle. Apparently world domination is within my reach, after all. Now that’s trendy.

Everyone in the tech world is abuzz about Boot Camp, the much-heralded piece of software which makes it possible for the new Intel Macs to run Windows XP.

Forget Boot Camp–Windows XP is overrated. Today I’m much more excited about having found DosBox, a sadly overlooked piece of software which makes it possible to emulate MS-DOS on a PowerPC Mac. Because of this nifty little emulator that someone spiffy conjured up and my extensive knowledge of where to find the best abandonware, I’m in procrastination heaven. Today, instead of working on my lousy paper, I’ve saved the galaxy with Commander Keen and rescued thousands of Lemmings from senseless death.

Figure 1a. Screenshot from 4:53 PM April 5, featuring an emulated session of Lemmings, the paper I ought to be working on, my Instant Messenger window, and my neatly-organized desktop folders which hold more files I should be working on.

Seriously–Lemmings is the best game ever. Back in the day, I could solve them all the way up to the ‘Extreme Carnage’ levels. I was pretty good at Commander Keen, too, but Tim was better. I remember when we were kids, we used to sit in the Tjapkes’ basement and play those all day long while our moms had coffee. Episode 5 was our favorite. It’s still my favorite.

I just spent the better part of 15 minutes coaxing my printer to produce a simple, black and white, single page assignment. Apparently, establishing a correct paper feed is a complicated, arduous process. So then. Isn’t it good to know that even a technology maven such as myself has trouble with her equipment sometimes?

I should have known there would be an IE bug–there’s always an IE bug. I should have known better than to launch an untested design at 1:50 AM.
Apparently IE 6 and lower versions don’t support the CSS position:fixed attribute.

So then, instead of seeing it display like this:

Those who use Internet Explorer will see the page displayed in this way:

I could just leave it that way and tell everyone they ought to get a better browser, but I love the 90% of my readership who uses IE, so a fix is forthcoming. Until then, you can expect more aberrant behavior (hit refresh to compensate).

–Edit–

Fixed, using a javascript provided by Doxdesk. I don’t particularly like the jerky movement of the bookmark graphic as it follows you down the page, but we’re going with it because it was the cleanest fix I could find–most required a lot of hacks to my CSS and extra DIVS to compensate for IE’s shortcomings.

–Another Edit–
Apparently the javascript causes the bookmark image to not render at all in Firefox. Looks like i’m hunting for another fix. But if I can’t find a satisfactory one, apparently the 0.1% of people out there using firefox get screwed even though they’re doing the right thing. Sorry, guys. Majority wins again!

Also, if you are still one of the odd holdouts who use MS Internet Explorer on the Macintosh, you deserved to be flogged with a cat’o'nine because that’s just dumb and nobody supports it anymore, not web designers, not Apple, not even MICROSOFT. This site, along with most XHTML compliant sites will look really crummy for you. For that I apologize but not very sincerely. Switch to Safari already.