I'm Graduating!
We have our graduation ceremony on Thursday this week. I'm really excited, but also nervous. I know it's just a formality, we stand around in silly capes and get handed a piece of paper that could have been mailed to us. Still, I like the idea of making an occasion of it. I want to dress up in a gown and have my photo taken, and put it on my wall. Silly, but why else would they have it? Clearly I'm not the only one.
Excitements
Well, I think they're excitements anyway. I am finding it hard to find many others who are as excited as me, but that's fine.
What am I talking about? I bought two items from my wish list...
I got an iPod!! Woot! A black Nano. It's very pretty. The colour looks like gunmetal grey. It's also really awesome, aside from the list of apple annoyances of course. The best bits are...
- Having all my music with me so that when I think of a song I can play it in seconds.
- Looking at the cover art while the music is playing, because artists are not always medium specific. Musical artists always have some visual art to accompany their music, whether or not they made it. They at least commissioned or chose it. It adds to the experience.
- Podcasts and audio books are a lot easier to find and use, the iTunes store has all this stuff built in and presented in a really nice way. Of course podcasts are usually free, so I can use the store to collect things, without spending money.
- The feel of using the iPod adds to the aural and visual, the circular wheel that you touch, the weight of the buttons, the size and shape, and when no cover is on, the cool matte of the metal (or the soft sqeeziness of the silicone cover).
The worst bits I feel obliged to note, so as not to pretend I've been blinded by the marketing:
- iTunes Store REQUIRES a credit card number even if you haven't tried to buy anything yet. iTunes provides much more than selling things, and I don't intend to buy anything from the store (the hundreds I spent on the player and accessories is quite enough, thank you!). So it made me uncomfortable to enter my credit card number at this stage. I use a debit card for online purchases, so at least I can easily check my balance and I will notice if anything odd is happening. I doubt iTunes would take my money without me telling it to, but I am paranoid about these things.
- How can you ignore the non-standard cabling? No, I can't use the many USB cables I have lying around to charge it. No, I can't use a standard A/V cable to connect the device to my TV. Thankfully, the audio port is standard so yes, I can use my chosen headphones or speakers. I mean come-on! Is it really THAT important to sell all those adaptors and official accessories?
- Slight annoyance that I have to use one computer to manage my music, unless I continually update multiple libraries on different computers. It's OK, but I'd rather be sharing and caring between my various computers, family computer and boyfriend's computer.
The other excitement is that I got a hair straightener a few weeks ago. Didn't go for the GHD because my hair style is not $300 important to me. Instead I went for a lovely red Kodo Oasis for less than half the price, which has a strange fault of smudging the logo when it gets hot.... not something I would have expected from a high temperature product! It only happens when using the iron to curl, when the hot hair is being pulled along the outside of the tongs, over the printed logo. I took one back and they happily exchanged it, but the second one is doing it now and I CBF to be honest. The thing does its job very well, so I'm not that particular about the logo looking right. I am still quite baffled that they could make it this way though. I'm told it's the new brand and product from the people who used to make Muster straigteners, if anyone remembers those...
So there, I have shared the excitement of my new toys which I proudly bought myself. I hope that if you weren't interested you didn't read the post! That's the beauty of blogs. :-)
What am I talking about? I bought two items from my wish list...
I got an iPod!! Woot! A black Nano. It's very pretty. The colour looks like gunmetal grey. It's also really awesome, aside from the list of apple annoyances of course. The best bits are...
- Having all my music with me so that when I think of a song I can play it in seconds.
- Looking at the cover art while the music is playing, because artists are not always medium specific. Musical artists always have some visual art to accompany their music, whether or not they made it. They at least commissioned or chose it. It adds to the experience.
- Podcasts and audio books are a lot easier to find and use, the iTunes store has all this stuff built in and presented in a really nice way. Of course podcasts are usually free, so I can use the store to collect things, without spending money.
- The feel of using the iPod adds to the aural and visual, the circular wheel that you touch, the weight of the buttons, the size and shape, and when no cover is on, the cool matte of the metal (or the soft sqeeziness of the silicone cover).
The worst bits I feel obliged to note, so as not to pretend I've been blinded by the marketing:
- iTunes Store REQUIRES a credit card number even if you haven't tried to buy anything yet. iTunes provides much more than selling things, and I don't intend to buy anything from the store (the hundreds I spent on the player and accessories is quite enough, thank you!). So it made me uncomfortable to enter my credit card number at this stage. I use a debit card for online purchases, so at least I can easily check my balance and I will notice if anything odd is happening. I doubt iTunes would take my money without me telling it to, but I am paranoid about these things.
- How can you ignore the non-standard cabling? No, I can't use the many USB cables I have lying around to charge it. No, I can't use a standard A/V cable to connect the device to my TV. Thankfully, the audio port is standard so yes, I can use my chosen headphones or speakers. I mean come-on! Is it really THAT important to sell all those adaptors and official accessories?
- Slight annoyance that I have to use one computer to manage my music, unless I continually update multiple libraries on different computers. It's OK, but I'd rather be sharing and caring between my various computers, family computer and boyfriend's computer.
The other excitement is that I got a hair straightener a few weeks ago. Didn't go for the GHD because my hair style is not $300 important to me. Instead I went for a lovely red Kodo Oasis for less than half the price, which has a strange fault of smudging the logo when it gets hot.... not something I would have expected from a high temperature product! It only happens when using the iron to curl, when the hot hair is being pulled along the outside of the tongs, over the printed logo. I took one back and they happily exchanged it, but the second one is doing it now and I CBF to be honest. The thing does its job very well, so I'm not that particular about the logo looking right. I am still quite baffled that they could make it this way though. I'm told it's the new brand and product from the people who used to make Muster straigteners, if anyone remembers those...
So there, I have shared the excitement of my new toys which I proudly bought myself. I hope that if you weren't interested you didn't read the post! That's the beauty of blogs. :-)