iPod Shuffle

My wife won a silver iPod shuffle last week and since I’d recently washed my old-school shuffle, she kindly donated it to my personal charity.

So what’s good about the 2G shuffle (can’t really call it new when it’s over two years old)? Well, to me the clip looked a little crap (over compensating macho side – thinking men don’t wear brooches) and it seems to make it about twice as thick… Where were we, ah yes, what’s good?

Today I actually got around to using this thing, specifically walking to and from work listening to some of the stackoverflow podcasts which I find quite witty (there’s a word you don’t hear enough these days). Back to the point, I picked up the shuffle and without further thought, started looking for something to clip it to.

After clipping on the shuffle, the best part was realising how short the included headphone cabling is. This makes a huge difference – instead of being the length of my 1.9 metre arm span, it’s closer to half that. Way less irritating time spent coiling and uncoiling.

Django desktop app

Q. Why build a desktop application as a prototype if ultimately you’re aiming for a web service?

A. If you need to get a couple of people in a corporate environment using your prototype ASAP. Thus you’ve got no time to play corporate politics, get a server from somewhere, get software licences, further budget to get IT support for the application…. all this just to try out a concept? Nightmare.

So we’re back to building a desktop application. Right…?

But I couldn’t face building a nice layout, program flow and functionality into a desktop application and then throwing it all away – or worse having to maintain two unrelated versions down the track. Instead I wanted to try out django, so I’d need a database, web server, python and the django libraries all rolled up into a single executable. Make it runnable on a locked-down corporate windows xp piece of shit and for extra difficulty without admin rights or other software dependencies.

Fun of the build ~ part one

As mentioned previously I was planning to put together a powerful new PC. Here’s the review of the process and the components used.

Part two for bizarre customer service and product reviews. ~ coming soon

Supplier selection

Since my decision to use Overclockers UK was based almost solely on the wide range they provide with regard to high performance (‘enthusiast’) parts ~ that is suckers like me. The hours I spent doing a rough price comparison of the various online suppliers was wasted.

There were some dramas with this supplier but I’ll get to that next time.

Putting the pieces together

I suggest, especially if you haven’t done this before, or don’t frequently build computers to a) RTFM, b) step through a system building guide (I’ve not tried Cosair’s system build guide one but apparently it’s good too).

If you can I’d highly recommend building in at least two stages. First build the motherboard, power supply, CPU, RAM and graphics card ~ attach a keyboard and screen and start. This will give you a chance to check (the basic function of) those 5 parts before you’ve screwed everything in the case, routed your power supply cables only to find that you have a faulty motherboard (stage two).