Month: May 2001

New toy for Jane

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I had a nice long think about what I wanted. I decided that, with the hopeful move to Brighton, a portable MP3 player would be a really cool gift. So, we started researching them, and there are SO many to choose from. All with different features, some have radio, some have 64MB, some have 96MB, one has 128MB. I decided that I didn’t want one of the “burn MP3s to CD” versions, as they are quite large (a good idea for the car, but not for lugging around). Some of the other cool ones, mainly due to their size, were the Panasonic e-wear models and the Sony ones. Both of these, however, record the mp3s into their own format. So, despite them coming with a usb connector, it could still take 20 minutes to copy the songs across. I didn’t like the idea of storing songs in yet another format, and so looked around a bit more.

We ended up decided on a SoundsGood springboard module that fits into the handspring visor. The module itself it small, and fits snugly into the visor springboard port. It has 64MB onboard, uses a USB connector (just the standard cradle) and comes with a desktop application for putting music onto it. It seems to take about 5 minutes to transfer the 64MB across, which I think is pretty reasonable. It also comes with a registered version of musicmatch. We also got the EnergyClip battery pack. This is the bit that swung it for me really. This takes one AA battery and the module just slips into it. So, you can carry your music around without the visor. You don’t get an LCD display or anything particularly pretty but it’s functional and means that you don’t have to carry the visor with you to listen to music.

Because it only has 64MB, I’m busy converting some of my favourite tracks to a lower bps rate (96) working on the theory that whilst sitting on a tube or train, the loss of sound quality isn’t going to worry me so much. However, I’m looking for a better way to convert them as doing it one album at a time is going to get pretty boring.

A review will appear on the gadgets review page when I get around to it

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Update: 20 May 2001 The 2 reviews are now available – Sounds Good MP3 player and Energy Clip

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This weekend I purchased some helium from Balloon
works (Kew, UK) to inflate the Flying Saucer that the New Sci people gave me as a leaving gift (see blog#3307474).”

Under the balloon hangs the turbofan unit: two fans you power forward or back independently with a remote control. You add putty to the fan unit to give the saucer neutral buoyancy (or as close to it as you can get).

The first instinct is to go full throttle and send the saucer across the room as fast as possible, and then send it into a high speed spin. After that it’s more interesting… you use small bursts of fan power
and then watch how the saucer reacts, another small burst of power to adjust the saucer.. and so on… until it reaches some goal (buzzing the dog, trying to get the saucer round a slalom course, etc etc).

It’s fun. More pictures to follow.

Fingers crossed, we’re off to Brighton (coastal UK town),
so our flat in London is for sale.

I’ve put the full estate agent’s details on-line (direct from Word, so sorry for the layout).

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On Saturday evening there was a rainbow over Ealing. It looked really beautiful next to the blossoming tree. So, I took a photo of it. I wasn’t sure whereabouts on the site to display it, so I figured I’d just include it as a blog.