Happy Easter 2008

I feel blessed to have a loving family to spend my Easter holiday with today. We gathered in Salem -- me, Leo, my sister, brother, their partners, my niece, and parents. We shared a delicious meal. We visited and played showed off new toys (my new iPod, my Dad's new iMac). We talked about life and family and art and being together. I played a little recital of an adagio from a Handel sonata and a couple of church hymns appropriate for the day.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Bunny Baby

Oh dear, my poor sister has a mutant child. I knew she never should have gotten mixed up with that guy she married...! ;-P

Tears and Rain

I enjoy James Blunt's music very much. I recently (March 2008) went back to iTunes to look for songs by him I didn't own yet, and decided to try out "Tears and Rain" from his first album, "Back to Bedlam." This isn't my favorite song, but it raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

I had posted here a video I'd found on YouTube, but it has since been marked private, so I can't share it with everyone now. So instead I'll share some brief reflections on the music and meaning I find in this song.

I love how the song opens with gentle acoustic guitar strumming. James' voice has a lovely, expressive quality. In this song he uses a tone that is very sorrowful, like weeping. How perfectly he sings this melancholy tune!

My favorite line is "How I wish I could walk through the door to my mind; / Hold memory close at hand, / Help me to understand the years." Memory and imagination are a great gift for turning over experience and learning from what has come before. How tempting it can be to feel like one could live there, inside an idea, inside an instant from the past! Perhaps it is well that we can't literally step through this door.

Allison Update

My baby niece, Allison Elinor, is now about 7 1/2 months old, teething, starting to stand and crawl and eat solid foods and so many exciting developments. I haven't seen her since Christmas, but will see her this Sunday for Easter. Here are links to some photos my family have taken of her and put online:

February Photos

My Allison Page

New iPod Shipping!

On Thursday night I tested out Leo's 1st generation iPod Nano on the PowerBook G4 with USB 1.1, and it recognized and synced with it fine. It didn't even care to reformat the iPod from PC to Mac. The song transfers took about 5 seconds per song, and about a minute for a longer MP3 of about 50 MB. This seems like an acceptable compromise. I can set up the iPod to sync while I'm doing something else, and I'm guessing it might take a couple of hours to fill an 8GB Nano.

So, Friday morning I took the plunge and ordered a new green iPod Nano from my business site. (Since I need it for my business and I can get sales credit for buying from my own business, this made the most sense to me.) The order just shipped yesterday and according to FedEx's tracking site it left Ohio early this morning, so I eagerly await it's arrival at my door in the next day or two. :)

(Not So) New iPod Shopping

My 5-year-old iPod 20GB died recently, and my 6-year-old iPod is getting creaky and unreliable, so I figure it's time for me to get a new iPod. Problem is, my iMac G4 and Powerbook G4 are old enough that neither has USB 2.0, which all the newer iPods for the past few years require in order to sync up your music and other media. I've done some research and it seems I have three options:

(1) Apple Service. According to Apple's support website I can send them my iPod and they will basically send me a replacement, for $249 plus a few dollars shipping fee. The plus side would be I could probably trust that the "new" iPod would work great. The minus side is it's a lot to pay for old technology.

(2) Buy a used or refurbished iPod with firewire. The last iPod Apple made that uses firewire (which my computers DO have) was the iPod Photo. I've searched on the web and can find a couple of sites selling 20GB iPods like mine that died, or a 40GB slightly nice iPod for a bit more. This option would cost me under $200, which seems reasonable enough. The downside is that my chance of getting a lemon that doesn't work seems a bit higher than going through Apple.

(3) Buy a new current generation iPod and put up with the syncing being very painful. My partner has an iPod Nano from a couple of years ago, so I'm going to try out syncing his iPod on my computer to see whether it works and how long it takes to fill it up to its 4GB capacity. If that seems good enough, I might just spring for a new iPod Nano or maybe a classic. The downside is that it may be painful, having to leave the thing running overnight to sync up, or it may not even work that well. The upside would be to have a nice new iPod and when I upgrade my computers in a year or two I'll still have a newish iPod rather than something out of the digital stone age.

All in all, I love my iPods, and I especially love that they've totally changed the way I listen to music. Music is much more a part of my life now, and that's exciting. I just don't have the money to upgrade my computers to USB 2.0. It is a shame to be getting stuck on something that seems so basic, but that is the way technology seems to work a lot of the time.