🔗 Shine On, Ride On, Bill Walton
After Bill Walton passed away earlier this year, I read a few articles that touched on his adoration of bicycles and riding bicycles. I recently started riding as a low impact way to exercise. As strange as it sounds, my back feels better after a week on the bike.
Finished reading: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut 📚
Ashley’s suggestion. She’s a Vonnegut fan. I enjoyed it. That happiness is mine.
Finished reading: The Perfect Thing by Steven Levy 📚
Loved the nostalgia. My iPod Mini was my first Apple product and I still occasionally use it. It’s such a fun device and living through this time period was such a fun experience. I just wish I had kept my iPod 5th Gen.
Finished reading: California by Edan Lepucki 📚
Before moving into our current home, we hired an interior decorator to furnish and decorate our living and dining rooms. She purchased this book and put it on our book shelf as a decoration. That was six years ago. I just got around to reading it. I enjoyed it. Wasn’t sure how it was going to wrap up, but it was good.
Finished reading: The Beautiful and the Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald 📚
Why did I waste so much time with this one? Anthony Comstock Patch should have died poor and desolate.
🔗 The Last Kid in Ninth Grade Without an iPhone
An ongoing conversation I’ve had with Ashley is when to introduce certain technologies with the kids. It can be tough to balance.
🔗 8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story
Interesting article outlining those involved in the Transformer research paper that kicked off today’s AI craze.
via Kottke
📘 Make Something Wonderful | Steve Jobs
To me, Apple exists in the spirit of the people that work there, and the sort of philosophies and purpose by which they go about their business. So if Apple just becomes a place where computers are a commodity item and where the romance is gone, and where people forget that computers are the most incredible invention that man has ever invented, then I’ll feel I have lost Apple. But if I’m a million miles away and all those people still feel those things and they’re still working to make the next great personal computer, then I will feel that my genes are still in there.
🔗 Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
I love this post by Cabel Sasser about The Firehouse Five Plus Two. I especially love this reminder:
Also, a Cabel reminder to always buy the music you want to keep forever — these albums can, and will, disappear from streaming services at some point in the future.
I love the dedication to restoring such an important document. It’s a bit sad to think of what is lost due to progress and the lack of backwards compatibility.
Going back in time. Finished reading: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 📚
Max’s school was out of session and he was hanging out in my office when I started repairs on my iPod Mini. He seemed genuinely interested in the little device and asked if he could have one. I laughed it off at first, but after a bit of thinking I realized it wasn’t a terrible idea.
Max has started to develop his own musical taste and has asked to have a way to play music in his bedroom. Ashley and I have considered allowing him to have his iPad in there for playing music, but I do not like the idea of him having access to the internet in his room at the age of nine, potentially unsupervised. I could add internet filters to our home network, but that can be its own can of worms or whack-a-mole. We’ve also considered purchasing him his own HomePod for his bedroom. My initial concern was introducing a potentially always on microphone in his bedroom. Fortunately, it is possible to disable the “Hey Siri” functionality with its always on microphone. There is the risk of Siri misinterpreting the request and playing something completely wrong, which could include explicit content. Thankfully, there are settings to for the HomePod to enable or disable explicit content. My only other concern with a HomePod, would be the noise aspect. The speaker can only be used to play music for the room and not be routed through a headset or headphones. With an iPod, Max could listen to music quietly, without the need for the internet, and would only have access to a pre-approved music library. It honestly doesn’t seem that ridiculous.
As luck would have it, the website I found for purchasing replacement iPod Mini parts also sells refurbished iPods. Not only are there refurbished iPods, but there are custom build iPods, with novelty cases. I decided to give it a try and purchased an iPod Classic 5th generation for Max’s Christmas gift. I also purchased a pair of wired headphones that mimic the design aesthetic of the original iPod earbuds. I plan on buying a few albums and syncing them to the iPod as well so that he’ll be able to enjoy it as soon as he opens it. I like the idea of him also having the chance to explore music with an iPod. I also don’t hate the idea of staving off more internet access and screentime for a little while longer.
I recently had the urge to bring out my iPod Mini and take it with me to the coffee shop. This was going to be a very hipster move on my part. The iPod Mini turned on without issue. The last time I had booted it, I reminisced at the music that was stored on the drive. It was a digital music time capsule. This time though, there was no music. I thought this was odd, but perhaps I had erased the device before I stored it last time. Unfortunately, I was met with a sad iPod icon after trying to sync music to the device. The drive was failing, or rather had already failed.
After a bit of research, I determined that I could replace the original drive with a Compact Flash Card. Unfortunately, Compact Flash memory is rather expensive when compared with SD Cards. Fortunately, I found an SD Card to Compact Flash adapter that was well reviewed and seemed promising. I was able to purchase the adapter and a 128GB SD Card for the same price as a 32GB Compact Flash Card. I also figured it’d be worthwhile to replace the battery while I had the iPod apart, so I purchased a replacement battery as well.
Once the parts arrived, I set aside some time to begin my project. I was concerned about marring the top and bottom caps or the metal frame around those plastic caps. After a bit of research, I decided to try a method I found in a few different places: use hot glue to attach a piece of wood or pencil to the plastic caps and then pull the caps up enough to pry them off. This took a few tries, but worked surprisingly well. The hot glue peeled off easily and it avoided disfiguring the caps or the metal case.
The rest of the procedure was fairly uneventful. I switched out the drive and the battery, then pushed the internals back into the case and connected the click wheel ribbon cable. Before I sealed the iPod, I wanted to verify that everything was working. After connecting the iPod to my computer, I found my Mac was unable to recognize the iPod. I hadn’t bothered with formatting the SD Card and now my Mac didn’t understand what was going on.
As I disconnected the click wheel ribbon cable again, I heard an unfortunate popping noise. After formatting the SD Card and trying again, I discovered my click wheel was no longer functioning. That unfortunate popping noise was the connector on the ribbon cable snapping and the solder on the pin pads had cracked. I do not have the equipment at this time to repair that solder. I think this would require a scope or, at the very least, a strong magnifying glass and a very fine soldering iron head.
Fortunately, I was able to find a replacement click wheel until I can get the original repaired. After carefully reassembling everything, I finally have a functioning iPod Mini again. It’s difficult to call this iPod Mini my original iPod Mini. At a certain point, is it possible it’s now an iPod of Theseus? I’ve pondered this while listening to music on the device, thoughtfully reminiscing about how much this device has meant to me over the years, especially in the years after I had purchased it. This was my first Apple product of many. This iPod Mini was the gateway product that, quite possibly, shaped my career; it deserved a proper restoration and I’m thankful I was able to provide that.
“There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain a “there” that will look better to you than your present “here”.
Realization.
Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚I picked this up before my recent trip for work. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The pandemic portion hit a little close to home though.
Temperatures over 90°F paired with unhealthy air quality makes for a rough day in Nashville.
Stumbled across this blast from the past via Kottke. I definitely carry a soft spot in my heart for this time period of computing, even though I was only in middle school.
Google Reader may be the only Google product that I actually miss. I migrated to Fastmail a few years back and I rarely use Google Search these days.
Our flower garden produced a unique bloom on our Gerbera Daisies. I feel like there is a name for when this happens, but I’m failing to find one. It reminds me of meiosis.
Finished Ted Lasso last night. I hate to see it end, but I am quite content with how it wrapped up. The ending was tight, but left ample possibilities of a spinoff.
I watched Whisper of the Heart tonight with the family. I loved it. I can’t get over how much I have enjoyed each Studio Ghibli we have watched. The only negative with this movie is that I now have Take Me Home, Country Roads stuck in my head. I suppose there are worse things.
I am resting after spending a few hours in my backyard, attempting to clean up our flower bed. The plants there were ravaged by the extreme freeze we had in December. I feared all of the plants were dead. However, some seem to be coming back. I have begun pruning the dead limbs back.
I have tried to cut back on the amount of goods I purchase on Amazon. When I do purchase something, I choose the slowest delivery option because I am usually not in immediate need of the product. Amazon usually ships it much faster than the delivery option I choose though. Mildly irritating.
After a long hiatus, I resumed play of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild last night. I was on the fourth quest when I stopped playing previously. The timestamp on the safe file was March of 2022. Difficult to believe that it has been over a year since I last played it.
When you realize that you’re an adult and can just go buy cake anytime you want.