Evan Agee: Live from Richmond Indiana

I personally haven’t had any problems with scratching on my 5th generation black iPod video, but I know that others claim to be plagued with gouges and scratches so I thought I’d pass this interesting fix along to you iPod owners.

Todd Dailey has written a wonderful guide (with photos) called “Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso” to show you how to make your iPod look like new for the cost of a can of Brasso ($4 currently). His pictures make it very clear that this is indeed a great second chance for those of you who decided not to opt for a protective case for your investment.

If you’re at all familiar with the world of online music or the music revolution that is the iTunes music store you’ve heard about the latest craze, podcasting. What is it? It’s rather simple really. Podcasts are simply audio files (usually mp3) that the producers make available to listeners on a (usually) regular schedule. It’s sort of like delayed radio, but much better. iTunes has a built-in podcast manager that automatically gets the newest issues of all of your subscribed podcasts. But, this post isn’t about what podcasts are, it’s about what some of my favorites are. All of these links go to iTunes, which is a free download from Apple. (more…)

With lots of unusual things going on this week has started out to be pretty interesting. Kristen and I are planning to purchase a new printer since our current one has bitten the dust, which has allowed me to update my printer knowledge and do a little research. What did I find? Well, the Canon Pixma MP450 seems to be one of the highest rated all-in-one units available for around $150 so that’s what we’ll be purchasing. It’s also compatible with our upcoming Mac purchase, which is also good.

Kristen and I had a fairly adventurous/exploratory weekend. We took a trip to the local library for some cookbooks and a then took a subsequent trip to the grocery store to get some items for preparing a couple of Cajun dishes we found. She spent most of the day yesterday cooking up two gumbos, one seafood (for me) and a chicken for her. They were really good, however a Morracan bread recipe that she tried wasn’t as popular.

One other purchase that we made at the grocery store were some small pots and some herb seeds. We’re going to start an herb garden! It has been something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but we just haven’t ever taken the time. We got them started last night in our kitchen. As part of that purchase we also decided to get a food dehydrator so we can dry any herbs that we can’t use/give away. I’ve been wanting one for a quite some time since watching the Ronco food dehydrator infomercials of yesteryear, so I was pretty excited to pick one out. However, after reviewing some feedback on Amazon.com I found that there was a Ronco competitor that apparently had a better product that, among other features, could dry the food in about half the time of the Ronco machine.

So, now we know that next weekend will be filled with making dried fruit and probably any other item that we can dry and store away will also visit the machine.

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve introduced myself into the constantly growing world of iPod owners. I’ve been considering an iPod for years but I’ve never had an incentive that was strong enough to push me over the edge… or at least I never had until the newest iPods came out. With the larger screen and the addition of video playback capability I was smitten from the start.

I don’t have the kind of cash on hand to just go out and buy a $400 gadget usually, but I received money from several people for Christmas and ended up having enough that I could afford it. You know how it is though, as soon as you have the cash you think of a million other things that you would like to spend it on… I went on a shopping trip to Indy with my dad and my brother, our target being Best Buy. I had all but put the iPod out of my mind, deciding that I didn’t want to spend all of my money on one item. After spending an hour or longer looking around Best Buy and not really finding much that i wanted I decided it was time to bite the bullet. I asked my dad if we could go over to the Apple store, which was a few miles away and we were off (not before waiting in a huge day-after-Christmas-is-return-day line at Best Buy.

When we arrived at the Apple store, which is situated in an upscale shopping mall in northern Indy, and I headed in while dad and Austin tried to find a parking spot in the overly-crowded parking lot. Once I got into the store what I saw was complete chaos, the small store was filled to the gills with people all I wanted to find out was whether or not they had any black, iPods in stock so I could get one and leave. They have small areas setup for people looking to purchase an item with a credit card and have no discounts or coupons to claim, but I wanted to use my student discount so I couldn’t use those stations… I had to wait in the long line. I waited, and waited for around 15 minutes and finally got the front of the line. I felt like Ralphy and his Brother on A Christmas Story when they wait in line forever to see Santa and his evil elves, I was so excited. I stepped up “Do you have any black 60Gb iPods in stock? Okay, how much would that be with a student discount? Great!” The total for the purchase (with tax) ended up being around $391, about $30 cheaper than the full price with tax. I was happy.

The ride home I stared at the bright screen wishing that I already have some music on it so I could test out the headphones. When we finally arrived home it was time to begin ripping all of my cds and putting them onto the iPod (a process that took the better part of two days). Once I was done with my music I wanted to try some video, so I purchased an episode of Lost from the iTunes Music Store. Pure bliss. The image quality of the screen is even better than I hoped for with a resolution of 320×240.

I’ve been getting more use out of my iPod than I expected. Not only do I use it at the gym and in my car while I’m driving, but I’ve even consolidated all of my music from home and work and have therefore saved a total of around 15Gb of space between the two computers. Now I take my iPod to work everyday, plug it into my computer and play music directly off the iPod! It’s so great!