I picked up an iPod Touch a couple of weeks ago. My old iPod bit it, hard drive died (2nd time). I realized I probably need a flash-based MP3 player. I’d seen the Touch around, but hadn’t paid it much attention. So needing a new MP3 player, I took a more serious look at it. And realized it had wifi. Sweet! That was almost enough to sell me by itself. I played around with one at the Apple store and was hooked. But the 8GB was $300… ouch.

I heard there could be price cuts coming with the SDK announcement in late February, so I impatiently waited. Not so much. But then they finally put some refurbs out on the Apple Store online. $229, but without the January update (another $20). I bought it anyway. And, to my surprise, it came with the January update.

So I’ve been playing around with it for a little over 10 days now. Synched up with Outlook and loaded by email address with IMAP, worked great. Did some surfing, worked great. I’ve had some pretty good luck finding wifi signals in a lot of places. Even in my doctor’s office yesterday. They were changing my dressing and checking out my pinky and I was checking work email with my other hand.

Now, there’s always a downside. Or two. The one that seemed minor at first, since I don’t use my iPod for file storage, is that you don’t get disk access to the Touch. I figured, no biggie. But then I found out that’s how the iPod controller for my stereo in my truck controls the iPod: disk access. So the controller won’t control it. It’ll keep it plugged in so it’s not on battery power, so it’s not a total loss. But I have to use the touch controls on the Touch to change music. PITA. Can’t just stick the iPod in the glove compartment and control it through the stereo. Bummer.

The other downside is that sometimes the touch controls don’t feel as responsive as I’d like. Tougher when I’m trying to change things when I drive. The scroll wheel is a better way to control things like fast forwarding/rewinding through a song, or controlling volume.

Still, I’m happy I bought it. And may be even happier once I can get applications for it w/o having to jailbreak it. I love being in the middle of band practice, and when the guys start playing a song I don’t know, I can quickly google the lyrics. Or that I was able to use an iTunes plugin to download lyrics for a ton of the songs in my library, and then by touching the album cover while the song is playing, the lyrics appear on the screen.

so i broke and dislocated my left pinky. and tore the tendon. and i had surgery on it last week. took pictures when the doctor changed the dressing the first time (before she removed the drain and cleaned it up).

today i rediscovered a cool photoshop feature: zoomify.

so now you can see a zoomified picture of the button on my pinky holding the wire that’s holding the broken bone in place. lucky you! but you have to click this link cuz i’m too lame to understand how to embed zoomify in my blog.

zoomify my pinky

With new design, foam follows function

Build a better mousetrap, Emerson observed, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better beer glass, and first you’ll need a squadron of scientists, engineers, and other experts versed in such concepts as nucleation site , volume-to-surface ratio, foam retention, and profile-attribute analysis method. [more (via www.Boston.com)]

http://www.collemcvoy.com/findthe25designterms/

From Colle+McVoy, an interactive flash piece designed to test the knowledge of students and young designers. Kinda cool. Took me a while to find the last one (damn that #23!).

I bought some fonts on myfont.com last week. There were no "opt-in" or "opt-out" messages during my purchase. I always watch carefully for them.

Three days later, I get a marketing email from myfonts.com. Buried at the end of the email is this paragraph.

This is a one-time e-mail welcoming you to MyFonts. It was sent to <my email>. We have subscribed you to our free monthly Rising Stars newsletter, which we will e-mail you in about a week, and free quarterly In Your Face newsletter. To stop receiving our newsletters, simply go to: http://www.myfonts.com/MailingList?email=<my email>&dtask=unsubscribe.

Now, I have to admit, I was pissed. So I sent an email complaining about this method of adding me to their two email newsletters and forcing me to go to their site to unsubscribe.

"We have subscribed you to"?????

Quite presumptuous to have subscribed for me. I get far more spam than I need already. If you had given me the opportunity to opt in, i would not have. If you had given me the opportunity to opt out, I would have. Instead, you subscribed me to a monthly newsletter and forced me to go and unsubscribe.

I have to tell you, if I have a choice of buying at MyFonts.com or another site in the future, I will choose the other site. I consider spam to be a serious problem and your method of "subscribing" purchasers to a regular email newsletter without their permission is unacceptable.

I got this email in response:

Hello Greg,

I understand your frustration with stuff like this which is all too common online. Of course there’s a constant struggle between the marketing folks, who would prefer it if no one could unsubscribe, and the developers, who mostly think like regular internet users and would tend to not subscribe new users by default.

We eventually settled on a compromise, which is to do the subscription and mention that up front in the Welcome message; but not actually send out the newsletter for a week or so to give you the chance to unsubscribe before you actually get any.

I get spam from several of the other big font sites and I’ve never even bought anything from them! If it makes you feel any better (and I know it won’t!) people do seem to like our spam better than most. You can see the back issues here: http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/

Let us know if you have any other questions. Thanks for using MyFonts!

*sigh*

So… they called it a "compromise" between not wanting to allow you to unsubscribe and having a more traditional "opt-in" or "opt-out" solution. Hmmm… sounds more like the marketing department won the battle, since most people who don’t want the email also don’t want to read through the spam they get to notice that they’ve also been subscribed to two other recurring email newsletters. Oh, and then added, essentially, "but hey! I get spam from our competitors and I didn’t even buy anything!", as if the fact that their competitors utilize spam justifies their use.

I really wish companies would start to understand the ill-will spam generates for legitimate customers. I’m a graphic designer. I buy fonts. But I’m unlikely to buy from myfonts.com now, unless I have no other option.

So I was shopping at Target last weekend and I saw an employee wearing this Target shirt I hadn’t seen before. Apologies in advance for the poor quality photo, but I just snapped a quick photo while trying not to make it obvious I was taking this poor clueless employee’s picture. But I think the quality’s high enough for you to see what she’s wearing.

I have to imagine that at least a few people at Target knew exactly what they were doing with this shirt and they have to be laughing their asses off at everyone that didn’t get the joke.

I should have known something was coming. I felt kinda blah on my way to my 10pm Friday night soccer game. Just didn’t have much energy and had a feeling it wouldn’t be a good game.

And it wasn’t.

I played poorly. The team played poorly. We got beaten. But not before I took an odd bounce on a shot on goal. Right in the eye. Dead on. Thankfully my eye closed in time. But it scared the crap out of me, having had laser eye surgery five months ago. And realizing that for about 5-10 seconds I couldn’t see out of that eye.

But my vision came back and it was clear.

Except in the periphery. Things were fuzzy there.

Went to the eye doctor the next day. No real damage. I said, “so, essentially it’s bruised?” She said, “basically.” Thankfully it doesn’t hurt any more. That was gone by Saturday night. But I still have a little peripheral blurriness looking down when there’s not much light.

6-7 years of playing goalie indoors and that was a first. I wonder how uncomfortable and distracting goggles really are?

You know that feeling of sleeping in your own bed after you’ve been out of town for a while? Well, having your own bathroom back after not having any bathroom at all isn’t much different. No more camp toilet. No more showering at the indoor soccer facility after games (in cold water, none-the-less). No more “guest passes” to the gym so you can scrub off the stank.

It wasn’t cheap. But we were only out of commission for 9 days and it turned out great. Couple of little things to finish up (sand/paint the door frame, buy a new door knob, plane the bottom of the door so it won’t catch on the rug), but it’s basically done. I’ve popped a few photos up online.

Ok, we had a toilet for a few of those days (thanks to the contractor resetting it at night when he could, thanks Mr. Lu!). But they tore out everything on a Thursday and it was most of the way rebuilt on the following Friday (i.e., two days ago).

Still waiting on the new window (to replace the board that’s over the opening for now) and the medicine cabinet (to cover up the big hole in the wall), but the rest is done. New tub, new sink, new tiled walls/floor, a fan (never had one before), new lights, new towel racks, new fixtures, some nice metal racks in the shower area, new everything but the toilet (nothing wrong with the old one). Oh, and we bought really nice new towels, too.

Of course, that put a huge dent in our wallets. *sigh*

The first night was hell for about two hours until my valium kicked in and I passed out. My eyes were irritated as hell and watering so much my sleeping goggles were full of tears. It was unbelievably hard not to rub my eyes, which of course I wasn’t (and still shouldn’t be) allowed to do. I was so light sensitive that the clock radio in the dark room hurt my eyes.

But after a night’s sleep, all was good. And by the end of the next day, I was pretty much settled in. The light sensitivity was very mild 24 hours later. And I spent the next week split between the beach (OBX) and the lake (Smith Mountain). Even did a little jet skiing with no problems.

Really glad I did this, despite the cost. And bought myself a nice pair of rayban wayfarers to celebrate.