iShuffle

I came home last night to a box at my snow-covered doorstep; my iShuffle had arrived. 512M, tiny, $100. My recent "music fascinationg thing", or whatever I called it in a previous blog entry, is now about to get more fascinated or obsessed or [insert whatever word here]. This allows me to space out of the mundane sound machine of the train or the subway or the dickbag on the train trying to explain to his coworkers on his cell phone how to spell kat.

This morning was the first ride with my new toy and it was as I expected it to be, which is excellent. I alternately read (Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore) and listened to music (Genesis - Selling England by the Pound) while staring out the window. I'll need to work on the wiring, which is currently hanging from my neck or ears. It opens up too many opportunites for catching on buttons or hands or homeless people to be a consistent setup. But these are details. We'll get there.

One downside is that the stupid USB port on the front of my brand new Dell computer isn't powerful enough to accomodate the easy access intended by the placement of the USB connection. This means I will either have to drag the machine out every time I need to sync or I'll have to buy yet another Apple product to extend the rear USB to the front of the machine, for easier access. This is a huge complaint I have with Apple, they are accessory whores.

Some people don't like the idea of not being able to see the song title and/or artist, but for me this isn't an issue. I know exactly what I'm listening to and I don't have the need to be able to see that information. Also, I don't use the shuffle feature as I'm not a shuffle guy. I like playing albums in order. Maybe this isn't a comprehensive use of the product's abilities but it works for me. Of course, we're only at 9:11 AM on day 1.

Trebuchet

A trebuchet is not a catapult. But it's close. If the trebuchet were a black box, and the catapult were a black box, the results of the 2 would generally be the same. In essence, they fling stuff. A catapult is like a piece of wood that is bent back, and the energy in the bent wood flings something as far as you can make it go. The trebuchet is like a seesaw with one side cut down and a real heavy weight dropped on the short side so the long side flies up really fast and flings something. I think you can find more on trebuchet.com. These are very minimalist descriptions.

Woody, Cliffy, and I built a trebuchet this past weekend. It's what we do when we get together, stuff like this. We got it to essentially fling a snowball as far as we could if we were to throw it. The trial and error phase was fun, and finally we got it to perform consistently the next day when we made adjustments to the way the string is released. In fact, we let the whole string go with the projectile. Thankfully, it did not sail 100 yards, thus we didn't need to chase it that far. In a warfare setting, it wouldn't really work all that well.

I recommend it, very fun. But better with more than 1 person.