Boys and their Toys

Every once in a while, I tend to go completely off the deep end and buy myself a big toy. Selfish? Sure. But don't lie and pretend you don't do the same. Some buy expensive clothes, some nice food, some go on lavish trips - I just buy tech gear. The bounty this time? A 1GB iPod Shuffle and a PlayStation Portable [PSP].


My new toys. 

What do I think of them so far? Well, I'll start with the shuffle because I've had that longest.

The Shuffle is great. With only 240 songs on it, you really don't need a display. I simply have a playlist called "Shuffle This!" in iTunes, and from there determine what I want on my Shuffle. If I get tired of hearing the same stuff, I sometimes use the Autofill function, and tell iTunes to fill my iPod with nothing but 4 and 5-star rated songs. Battery life is incredible, the Shuffle weighs next to nothing, and it's rediculously portable. All in all, a great, great device. My only previous portable MP3 players have been MP3 CD players and a massive 40GB Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, and I have to say that since I bought the Shuffle, I haven't used the others with the exception of in the car on a long trip. The Shuffle was well worth the money, despite what other iPod users might say.

I've only had the PSP for about a week now, and I have to say I'm rediculously impressed by it. I had no desire to own a PSP until I saw one in action. So less than a week later, I had one - along with Tony Hawk's Underground 2: Remix and Wipeout Pure. Both games are quite pleasant suprises. THUG2 plays exactly the same as it does on my Xbox, though it looks a little less impressive graphically (as to be expected) and a lot of the voicework has been cut out of the game (no big deal). Wipeout plays a lot like F-Zero GX does on my Gamecube, and I'm really enjoying the racing action. I'd also like to pick up the puzzle game Lumines (made by the same guy who did Rez for the Dreamcast/PS2) and Twisted Metal. I think the real killer app for both the PSP and the DS is over-the-internet multiplayer. PSP has 5 games enabled as such, DS none yet. The future of portable gaming is wi-fi, and I can't wait to sit on my couch and play a game of Burnout against my friend living in another state. Speaking of Burnout, I wish Burnout 3 was on the PSP. I would've bought that in a millisecond.

Oh, and a slight bit of congratulations for my linux box, it hit 100 days of uptime a couple weeks back. Though that was all negated by this past week's nasty thundershowers and accompanying power outages (no, I don't own a UPS).


106 days of uptime! Hooray linux! 

Oh well. I'm in the process of making my old K6-3 233mHz 64mb-RAM machine into a DSL box. That's "Damn Small Linux" - it's currently an XP box. Just got to get the wireless working...