Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

So what do you get when the world’s of Joss Whedon and How I Met Your Mother once again collide? You get the one thing everyone’s talking about and I’m afraid I’m just going to have to join them. Written by Joss Whedon, obviously inspired by the Buffy Musical, starring Neil Patrick Harris (Barney, How I Met Your Mother) and co-starring Nathan Fillion (Mal Reynolds, Firefly)…

Dr Horrible!

Catch it quick folks, it disappears tomorrow, July 20th! It is must see entertainment!

The fact that I’m a petrolhead is well known, as is the fact that all cars when taken on the motorway will end the journey caked in mud, dirt and an army of flies scooped up on their way to saving the world…such a sad way to go.

So with both these facts known, I spent far longer than I normally would scrubbing away the dirt that has built up on my car since it’s last wash many moons ago. It took me well over an hour, certain particularly dirt-prone body panels received so much attention that I forgot I had the rest of the car to do and a new wheel spoke brush was brought in to solve the problem of how to get into the spokes on my alloys. It’s been such a problem in fact that the brush ended up stripping away dirt that has been there the car’s entire life.

The carpets have had a visit from the vacuum and come the morning I will set to work on the interior with a wash cloth and then I will fill up my In Car Entertainment System with music. In case you’re wondering, I’m still using the 1st Generation 1GB Nano that arrived in that entry, however with Christmas coming and the brand new Nano being so very affordable, I think it’ll be fairly practical to upgrade finally.

This popped through my door on Wednesday and I’ve been loving every minute of it. I understood that I was mostly just paying for the name of course however I can fully understand now why they have the popularity they do.

I buy my music legally and iTunes is perfect for that…individual tracks at cheap prices, the DRM doesn’t stop you from making CDs and I had no trouble when I had to re-download the songs after a hard drive failure. So with this the iPod is the perfect choice for an MP3 player…1GB is more than enough for my needs (I’ve not even filled it yet and I can see myself not running out of music on a journey) and the way iPod and iTunes work together is lovely. It automatically synchs up with my podcasts and I choose what else I want to add.

As for the player itself…it’s small yet this has turned out to be a huge plus point. Hiding it in a pocket is easy when it’s this small no matter how full the pocket is. I have noticed people’s criticisms of how easy it is to scratch are true, however I’ve yet to encounter a gadget which doesn’t scratch easily and despite this the tiny iPod feels pretty sturdy, certainly not fragile in any way.

The iPod style works just as well with black as it does with the standard white, though interestingly all the wires, cables and of course the headphones are still in white, as is the little storage sleeve that you get with it. Maybe a bit of cost-cutting there, it would have made sense for these to be black also.

I’m impressed, I’d definitely recommend one, though we’ll see how well it lasts over time.

Must go to the gym.

Oooh, must put some songs on my iPaq to listen to at the gym (in the absence of the iPod Nano I won’t buy until I have some ready cash put aside).

Must go to the gym.

I’m too sluggish for the gym.

It’s too cold outside for the gym (No…I don’t know how that works either, but it works for me).

Must do some chores.

Ooooh, I’ll spend some time correcting this pile of songs on iTunes with weird ID3 tags which ruin the organisation of my Library.

Must do some chores.

Doing chores is easier than going to the gym, I shall do chores.

It’s almost two o’clock. I have a brew at two o’clock. Must go and have a brew…half an hour early.

I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.

I wonder what I would need to connect my iPaq to my car stereo so that I can play more songs than I could normally fit on a CD.

I’ll go and search for that.