Last weekend I impulse-bought an iPod nano. This is actually the first thing made by Apple I ever bought. I've had a portable MP3 player of some kind before the word (?) iPod was invented, harking back to a 6Gb Creative DAP that was as big as a CD player. I did have one coat that it would fit in the pocket of, but it wasn't exactly portable. The Creative Zen I replaced it with three years ago was the tinyest thing you'd eveer seen at the time. It's about three times the size of a standard iPod now, let alone making the nano look like like an ickle tiny baby.
My move to the white side has been on the cards for some time, but amazingly I've shown enough discipline to actually wait until the new 8Gb version came out. I didn't quite have the discipline to go through with my plan of actually getting something useful with my PokerStars FPPs though. I just checked this, and they do have it in stock, and I actually do have enough points, dammit. Hey if anyone wants to buy an iPod let me know :) Otherwise I guess I could order a few dozen stress stars...
So of course now I have to use iTunes to get my CD collection back onto the thing. Which is pretty nifty - I particularly like that it will find album artwork automatically (When Claire got her iPod last year this wasn't a feature and she spent days downloading pictures...!). And I'm impressed at just how much of my music finds a match straight away. With the exception of Radiohead (who are clearly too good to be downloaded) and a few early Saint Etienne albums, I think it's all there.
I knew getting everything I wanted into 8Gb would be a squeeze but I hadn't quite prepared myself for how long it would take to rip all this stuff again. After a marathon session last night (after dumping out of the Poker Dome satellite in unspectacular fashion, and trying to clear $750 in stacked up bonuses on PokerRoom.com) which it had to tell me resulted in 1006 tracks being transferred, I twice thought I'd cracked all my regular CDs leaving only some dodgy MP3 downloads and whatever compilations I want to chuck on there. Apparently not, and I've still found yet more.
Maybe I'm going overboard - it tells me I already have about five days worth of music to listen to already (why tell me that?!) But it's not over yet. Must ... keep ... ripping.
