My Click Wheel 60GB iPod is starting to die. I bought this iPod around September 2005, I know this thanks to this post, I knew I had this blog for a reason. So I’ve had it for under 3 years, which is a little disappointing. Although I have thrown the thing around sigificantly. It’s scratched up, I’ve dropped it quite a few times. The more notable drops was once at the gym while running on a treadmill, it dropped out of my pocket, landed on the treadmill and shot back along the wood floor before slamming into the wall, and it didn’t blink an eyelid, still worked fine. Another time I dropped it I was a drunken mess getting out of a taxi, I did the old drop, fumble, inadvertently launched it another metre or so in the air, only to have it land on a very hard bluestone gutter, I woke up in the morning to find the white plastic and all of the insides had popped away from the metal casing, and I had to pop it back into place, again, it didn’t bat an eyelid.

But now it’s starting to cough and splutter, it boots up to the dreaded sad iPod picture with the apple support URL, I put my ear to the iPod and I can here that familiar click n spin sound that faulty hard drives like to do. I don’t quite know how I first found this out but if I give the thing a good whack, it actually works again, sometimes for a good month or so. It goes completely against anything you’re supposed to do with a faulty hard drive but I assure you it works. But I do find myself doing it more and more these days. So if you do have your iPod constantly going to the sad pod, and you have nothing to lose, give it a solid whack on it’s back with the base of your palm and see if it works. Definitely works for me.

So now the question is, what do I upgrade to. The obvious answer is a 80 or 160gb iPod classic. But the iPod touch is mildly enticing, but with only a max of 32gb it’s not quite as practical for me. The other thing I could dois wait for the iPhone to hit Australia, which I’m sincerely hoping is this year sometime, but there is yet to be any announcements about it. I’ll be scratching my chin about it for quite a while I think.

“The Federal Government says it is considering introducing an ‘R’ rating for video games, which would allow the sale of more explicit titles in Australia.”

Finally something is starting to happen. About damn time.

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“Just one of many abandoned Russian villages, scattered across huge Russia. People simply leave for cities where they can earn more, and thousands of Russian wooden architecture masterpieces, sometimes more than 200 years old, stay by their own.”

It’s stuff like this that makes me want to go to Russia.

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The link below is a great guide to deploying Windows using Sysprep and Symantec Ghost. Handy for first timers and good to glance at for veterans.

Ghost Sysprep Howto @ Hisham’s Blog Clicky Clicky

Martin Sargent has been doing video podcasts for a couple of years now. I first watched him in the 3 pilot episodes of Web Drifter (now a full series), I absolutely loved them. Take away production value and turn it into a.. I guess talk show, and you have Infected. Infected was a bit more of an aquired taste, it started off as an audio podcast with still images jumping across the screen and they eventually went to live action, he had a co-host called gator, a redneck moocher from Gainsville Tennessee and you have an incredibly weird show. The first episode I watched I was kinda cringing throughout the whole thing, for some reason, I kept watching them and I eventually became a fan. Segments such as Gator’s Galz, Stripper Pole Folleys and the odd episode where he actually had a decent guest on, it was actually a pretty good show. Eventually, it got cancelled, or so Martin says, hey it makes a good story. After a few months Internet Superstar was released, which… is essentially the same show, Martin Sargent as host, Gator is the co-host, but with more production value (Although Martin insists it’s his mother’s shed) and I’m guessing more guests. In the first episode his guest’s were some guy that likes to draw a fat version of Wonder Woman, and Tom Green, it will be interesting to see what other guests he can wrangle up over the weeks.

Anyway, go watch it.