Despite having very little desire to leave the warm comforts of bed, I managed to open my eyes, get cleaned up, put the laundry on, and head downstairs and begin making breakfast. Next experiment was definitely a success: bacon, egg, cheese, spring onion, and steamed sweet potatoes wrapped up in a burrito. As an experiment, I opted to try a friend’s method of wrapping around the strip of bacon and skip crumbling it into the scramble; and enjoyed the extra slices on the side.
Of course, I wasn’t smart enough to put the coffee on between the bacon and eggs, but alas it means more coffee for right now! Plus as I sit down to coffee, the dryer is now loaded and it will certainly be time for another cup by the time I have to fold laundry.
For me, it’s kind of a rare morning. I almost never buy bacon, so it’s not something that I consume a lot of, but at 105mg a slice the lower sodium stuff was too tempting to pass up. Between the blood pressure of late, and the age old problem of using it all before it goes to waste, I don’t think I’ve actually bought bacon in several years, but it was worth it 😋 even if I shouldn’t make a habit of it.
A profuse amount of profanity aside, we finally have an answer to a question that has been on my mind for several weeks now: who will surrender first, me or the iPod. And that answer is? The iPod gave up first!
Phase I was largely a head scratching affair, never having owned one. Nor in fact an Apple anything until my iPad Pro 2018. After much waiting on shipping however, I found the device to be a progressively hackwittery filled experiment.
First, the dandy screen that iPods apparently give when the battery is so dead that it has to charge before you can actually do anything at all with the iPod. But hey, that’s not so obscure that you can’t STFW to learn about it, so sure. Later, I would also learn that this screen occurs if you power up an iPod without the battery connected, but that’s getting ahead of my tale.
Secondly, while the device did eventually power itself up there was no stability. Attempting to connect to any machine including an equally old PowerPC system was met with failure, and PCs declaring that it failed to enumerate. That was a pain, but of course the damn thing would boot loop for about 10 to 20 minutes whenever turned on until eventually getting to the menu. Getting into the diagnostics mode to check hard drive info would only spew gibberish! Even when left running with the handful of songs it came with running, I would come back later to find it boot loopy in the morning.
An iFixIt tool kit, a torn up halberd, and a new love for plastic guitar picks and my pocket knife later, I managed to get the device open. But unfortunately the read the instructions first instructions for the SD card adapter it came with actually have fuck all info, and I had expected the board’s ribbon connector to be a pop top like most ribbons connectors I’ve ever seen in electronics (and apparently the original iPod hard drives as well). So I ended up damaging the connector on the board.
Several days and a new iFlash Solo in the mail later, I finally was able to try again only to get nothing, even after reseating the ribbon cable which was original and glued down at the motherboard end. A week of waiting for that in the mail aside, and still gibberish reading from the SD card adapter board. It only showed 96 GB and random stuff, along with locking the device so hard that a power pull of the battery connector was required. Well, at that point it’s either got to be the board or the card, so let’s reach for the collection of SD cards.
Sure enough the moment I replace the SanDisk 128GB card it came with, I can read hard drive data from diagnostics mode! It read the Transcend 64 GB card from my old Samsung tablets just fine and dandy. For shits and giggles, I used the 1G PNY card that was like the first or second SD card that I ever bought almost 15 years ago–worked just fine! Reaching for the various Samsung cards (2GB, 64GB, 512GB) in the spare cards bin, the only one it wouldn’t read was the 512. Okay, so either the board doesn’t handle larger SDXC cards or the motherboard is a model that uses wonky LBA addressing.
Big whoop there because I can probably melt the device’s database before a 64 GB card is filled up, and part of the point to this experiment is the lack of storage capacity left on my phone 😗. Key the next problem: nothing will actually recognize the phracking thing! I tried a bunch of different things with the SD card, trying to format it APM/HFS similar to the card it came with and trying dd recovery with MBR images still widely available, but nope. Ironically, when I dd’d a mounted disk utility image of the old card to the new card over /dev/rdiskN it booted perfectly despite the 128G image -> 64G card lobotomy, but still nothing would recognize it. The most that I could get with various dd and disk utility fun times was for the iPod to boot to the recovery screen or the ready to disconnect screen.
If I could just get it recovered, I knew it would be a win at that point.
I can’t say that I expected my M2 MacBook Air or the new Apple Devices app on Windows 11 to recognize the device, which they do after solving the problem. But I had expected that my iBook G4 running Tiger would work, especially after rolling it up to iTunes 9. Nope, nope, nada and the horse I rode in on. That was the point where I figured the only things left to putz with were the generic iPod sync and charge cable the device came with, and replacing the motherboard. Replacing the motherboard or something else to try the cable with would mean acquiring another, and opening this 5th gen made me glad that I didn’t buy one of the metal ones!
Queue the final count down: use an Apple branded 30-pin iPod cable, and everything works. Even more concerning than the amount of time and effort sunk into this project is that Apple still sells these cables. Another two days and a delivery later–the moment I plug it in, guess what? It’s recognized. SMH, greedy fruit companies and their MFI cables I suppose.
More curiously, both the Apple Devices app on W11 and my Mac running Sonoma offered to restore the iPod. I kind of hoped for the former, assumed the latter wasn’t likely, and expected to be reaching for my old iBook G4 again. Turns out that even on an M2 with Sonoma, you can restore an iPod classic from Finder…it’s just a buggy wreck.
Having to pull the cable, replug, and insert a hard shutdown to get the Mac to kill the hung iOS sync services later, I was able to trivially hook up and sync purchased and imported music through Finder. Long as I used the bloody Apple cable.
Once my music was synced, I decided that my choice of “Test” song was emotionally a good choice:
P!nk – So What
Totally forgot how appropriate the music video was, but in the name of more fun I’ll be enjoying the rest of the Funhouse album.
Upside of brewing two cups worth in the morning: coffee with breakfast, and coffee after grocery shopping / lunch. Yay for microwaves.
Upside of getting the grocery shopping in the morning: by noon, everything is squared away in the kitchen, had lunch and packed lunches for the week. Likewise, ingredients are readied for dinner plans and prep later this evening. If I’m smart, I’ll get laundry done and folded before it’s time to cook.
Downsides? Having to get out of bed and put on pants. Ya know, if there’s ever robots to take care of doing chores and errands, I hope someone makes an android with an integrated espresso machine…. lol
One of those times when I’m scrolling for something to watch and decide, “Eh, screw it,” and decide to watch–and end up very much pleased.
The film does pretty well at capturing a late ’80s vibe without making a big deal of its setting, and manages to be a weird and amusing spin on a tale old as time, or uh, graveyard love stories gone off the rails? Anyway, I was quite amused :).
One upside of sorting through old CDs, is the opportunity to restore files that kind of disappeared two or three laptops ago. Another, is content for a recent experiment but that’s still a work in progress :^o.
Something that I also find curious is how tastes have changed. Less so my taste in music, more so my taste in interfaces. The last time that I ripped and organized these CDs, I had my own fairly strong notions of how things should be organized–and it mostly pissed me off. It’s hard to have a very uniform, tightly organized music collection in my experience. And experience has shown that often one method is as good as another until you start to stress specific problems like the maximum number of files in a directory, so meh.
My archival structure is more or less based off Plex’s format with a relatively lax level of adherence, since it’s easier to just import things like a Steam soundtrack as is, and a stack of old CDs is too much effort to value to sit around writing scripts to munge into the desired filesystem structure.
Which kind of brings me to two things that surprise me. One is that Apple Music will happily import audio CDs despite the emphasis on streaming subscription, and it’s a pretty snappy decoder. MPEG-4 containers with AAC-LC is perfectly acceptable to me as a format today due to the level of openness and support, and the iTunes Plus profile of 256K is good as anything shy of giving me a FLAC file. The other thing is that I don’t hate how Apple Music munges my rips, so much as I don’t care how Apple Music munges my rips.
The last time that I really touched anything Apple and music ripping was probably iTunes 6 or 7, which at the time was ‘current’, and let’s just say that XP was still sexy back then. Most of my friends liked iTunes, and not to big a surprise since most had an iPod even if few had Macs. But I was very perturbed by how iTunes wanted to assert its own definition of how to organize my content instead of obeying my system. Combined with being more of an XMMS / Amarok / MPlayer kind of guy, suffice it to say that I was never a fan of iTunes as a media player nor a library manager.
Fast forward to today, and what’s the real big difference there? Well, honestly the way that Apple Music manages imported CDs seems about the same that I remember from almost 20 years ago. The difference? I don’t want to manage my music through a file system. It doesn’t do my life well to organize such things in terms of files and directories built around tracks, albums, and artists and any other hoopla–no, it’s about the data model not about fitting that model to the file system.
It’s actually a lot like my contemporary relationship to notes taking over the past decade, and Android/iOS software in general. I don’t really want a model built around files when a model built around data is more practical. The obvious consequence of course, is that means decent tools. If you can’t do better than find/grep and so on then don’t bother making a fucking interface!
If files are a natural model to a problem: good. At some level most things should be files because we have good tools for working with files and it’s a fundamental aspect of data storage. But raw files are bad at metadata, at search, at relationships, and a host of other things that are more database like or more structured in nature than a stream of bytes. Files are good at storing that information not expressing those concepts, even more so when portability is a consideration. So while I still don’t like the way Apple Music organizes content anymore than I did iTunes, I can appreciate that it provides a reasonable interface particularly for the import part.
And of course the archival path is still tossing the resulting files into my own structure, lol.
One of the periodic thoughts that I have is about how easily my brain comes up with random shit from its inputs that often is some kind of amusing. That tends to remind me that as a child, I was often bored and had to entertain myself for hours at a time. Recently, that train of thought made me recall one of my favorite past times from that stage in my childhood: designing Jedi traps!
It’s a great problem, it works like this: your goal is to kill the Jedi in the trap but they are a bloody space wizard with a laser sword, so they can do just about anything! Literally, you’re trying to stop someone who can do nigh anything.
Let’s say you drop a Jedi through a trap door. Okay, let’s put shooters to storm him, a dozen blasters! Well, between a lightsaber and the force that won’t work for long. The Jedi could deflect the blaster bolts back at them, go melee with their saber, even knock them over with the force or fling lightning bolts until we run out of cannon fodder.
Okay, let’s make it turrets that are remote controlled! But the Jedi could deflect bolts, so let’s put shield generators to protect the turrets. But what if they rip the cameras off the walls with the force? Okay, if the shields can’t guard agains that then we make the turrets automated – blast anything and everything ahead of them.
But, what if the Jedi just keeps deflecting blaster bolts until the shield fails? We can make redundancies, we can make multiple turret systems. We can solve that!
Alright, damn it, the Jedi will just do some foolish shit like cut a hole through the floor and escape. Okay, let’s put spike traps on the lower level and when they force magic themselves out of that deadly drop, we put dart throwers or more turrets to plunge them back into another more deadly trap.
And on and on it goes from the prospective that yes, that darn space wizard with their laser sword, I mean, that really cool Jedi with a lightsaber, can basically cheat their way out of anything that you can think up, but if you make the trap large enough and keep the pressure up, eventually the Jedi either escapes or they are overwhelmed by exhaustion or they just happen to make a mistake and get unlucky. May the force be with them.
Yeah, as a kid I was often really bored and often had to wait around for stuff or be dragged around as an extra bump on a log. The kind of mechanical, orderly problem solving type of thinking that designing Jedi traps calls for can also be pleasant for passing the time. It also has a fair bit of room for creativity, unless you just assume the Jedi will have a force vision of your trap and decide to hide in your closet to whack you over the head with a rubber hose instead of letting you turn them into a rat in a maze.
It was probably a good thing that my mom bought me a GameBoy Color at the pawn shop, lol.
Various posts about the Google Anti-Trust ruckus and the question of whether the Big G is a monopoly occasionally provide nuggets of enjoyment. But I think my favorite is the quip that no price Microsoft could ever offer, because it’s pretty much true.
Having lived through the era that was MSN Search in the 1990s, I have a mostly negative inclination towards Microsoft as a search provider, although the times I’ve ended up using Bing (usually not willingly), I haven’t had any particular complaints about. Nor other major providers this side of millennium.
But I think it’s still a simple key fact that Google does dominate search. DuckDuckGo, for example, is rather successful. We even have several general search engines, and some (maybe even most) don’t suck. But there’s no chance in hell that most would ever stand a chance at unseating Google in monetary terms such as getting made the default engine. Nor, do I really anticipate them being unseated by simple technological advancement or their own ineptitude because unless Google Serious Fucks Up(tm) they will likely remain dominate.
So yeah, there may be more than one search engine, but good luck competing with that. Ya know, it’s billion with a B, right?
Encountering a nifty article on Robert Sawyer’s recent release of WordStar, I can’t help but think that by now, even the creators of WordStar would agree that it is abandonware.
Actually, just about any piece of software with its heritage in the CP/M era should probably be considered past its commercial viability. In the sense that if you’re still making a living off software that is over 40-years old, it may be time to encourage your customers to upgrade their software 😂. I’d be surprised to find many younger than myself who even know what the program is, never mind learning it today, because it’s been quite a freaking while since it was a popular program.
WordStar 7 at least is a version from a time where MS-DOS was mature, and still predates most of what people younger than me identify as a computer. Looks like Mr. Sawyer went full-tilt boogy with trying to make it a full release, if anyone is fond of old software, it’s probably worth a shot. As for myself, I’m more of a vi kind of guy once we start going down that hands on keyboard rabbit hole.
I’m reminded that one of the best parts about using a docked laptop rather than a desktop, is when the power goes out, your shit might disconnect but your main body of computing power just happens to have its own integrated power supply :D.
Reading a recent article on the 13th/14th Gen Debacle, I’m reminded of how problems with Intel typically roll:
There will be a microcode fix if people will shut and enough complain.
Haha, you think there’s really a fix for that!?
Please buy the next chips!
My mind kind of flashes back some years to the errata documents for various SoCs that I was working with, and deciding not only were there a scary amount of Won’t Fix and Even We Don’t Know What Will Happen items and other run-away-screaming level worrisome things mentioned, it made me rather start to wonder what does Intel ever actually resolve? Because quite frankly, my Latitude experienced similar issues to some of the errata items despite being 3 – 5 generations older than the SoCs that I was working with at the time.
Actually, that’s the main reason Zeta was built on an AMD platform. Having been an Intel brat since Tandy made computers (🤣), I’ve tend to prefer Intel processors over the years. Having to work more closely with hardware for part of my career, rather soured my relationship and goodwill towards Intel. What do I say that? Well, Zeta’s my first AMD machine in about 17 or 18 years….and that gives me the startling realization that it’s been almost two decades since my darling Dixie, my first laptop.
Experiences with Rimuru’s 10th generation processor and various motherboards, further exacerbate the feeling that it will either be my last conventional desktop PC, and that Intel Inside probably won’t be a boon when building or shopping for its replacement someday.
