Well, I found out today that the Nano’s battery life is definitely more than 10 hours. I started listening to it on my way into work at 7:30am. When I got into my car at 5:30pm to go home, I discovered that I’d forgotten to pause it when I got to work, and it had been playing all day. It still had enough battery life in it to work on my trip home. Cool.
computer stuff
In case anyone’s interested, here are all the parts I ordered from Newegg:
According to their order status page, everything shipped today, so I should see it all at some point next week. After I get the thing put together, maybe I’ll post some notes on how everything worked out.
Code Complete
I bought Steve McConnell’s Code Complete about 10 years ago. I never quite finished reading it, but I dusted it off at some point last year, and I’ve been reading a chapter every once in a while, when I get the chance. I just finished chapter 18, on code layout. Most of the stuff he’s writing about is stuff I know from experience at this stage in my career, but it’s still worthwhile to reinforce good habits occasionally. And, sometimes, he points out something that hadn’t occured to me, or brings up something I’m not familiar with. There’s a second edition out now that’s probably worth getting, but I think I’ll just try and finish the first edition before I worry about that.
New computer guts
I went ahead and ordered a bunch of new parts for my computer from Newegg today. I’m getting a new motherboard, processor, video card, DVD burner, power supply, memory, and hard drive. Hopefully, good enough to hold me for the next three years. (The last time I did this was in late 2002.) I should be OK for Vista, too, whenever that comes out. (I checked the compatibility list for video cards, and I’ve got one that should work with all the new fancy Vista graphics stuff.) Let’s hope all the parts play well with each other, and I don’t break anything trying to put it all together.
ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer’s Notebook
I made my way through chapter 2 of ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer’s Notebook today. I’ve really been putting off learning .NET 2.0 and VS.NET 2005, but I’m starting to get motivated now. Partially, I guess it’s the whole “New Year’s resolution” thing. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Dot Net Rocks lately, so that’s helping out on the motivation front. After I get through this book, I’ve got another ASP.NET 2.0 book, a SQL Server 2005 book, Expert C# Business Objects, and a couple of other random programming books to read.
Setting the Default Browser for Debugging in VS 2005
I’ve only just started playing around with VS.NET 2005. This thread answered one nagging question I couldn’t quite figure out on my own.
Spurl and del.icio.us
I exported all my Spurl bookmarks to del.icio.us today, and set it up so new Spurls will go to del.icio.us automatically. The bookmarks are at del.icio.us/andyhuey if anyone’s curious. I went through and added tags to all the bookmarks in del.icio.us. I’m wondering now if there’s any way to pull them back into Spurl.
More Nano cases
I don’t suppose I have any reasonable excuse for continuing to look at Nano cases. I really should have just bought one by now. Nevertheless, here are three more:
Nano cases
These DLO Cases for the Nano are nice too. I looked at a few other things reviewed at iLounge, but I didn’t see much else I liked.
The Nano itself worked fine in the car on the way to work and back today. The old iPod used to hiccup in the middle of podcasts occasionally, but the Nano doesn’t. I’m sure this has something to do with the limited size of cache memory on the old iPod vs. the relative speed of pulling stuff from the hard drive. The Nano doesn’t have a hard drive, so that’s not a problem.
iPod Nano
The battery in my old 1st gen 5GB iPod has been giving me trouble lately. Today, it got to the point where it seems to hold a charge for only about 10 minutes. I decided to give up on it, and trade it in for a 4GB Nano. I brought it in to the Apple Store in Bridgewater. They give you a 10% discount off a new iPod when you turn in an old one for recycling, so I got $25 off the $250 Nano. Not a bad deal. The salesperson thought I could have gotten more if I’d sold it on eBay, but I don’t think a 5GB 1st gen iPod with a dead battery would bring in more than $20, really, and I’d have to go through the trouble of listing it, shipping it, and all that fun stuff.
The Nano looks nice, and will hopefully be usable for listening to podcasts in the car, which is all I was really doing with the old iPod. My car charger for the old iPod won’t work with the Nano, but theoretically, I shouldn’t need one. The Nano’s supposed to have up to 14 hours of battery life. I’m thinking of getting either a Chums or Acme Made case for it.