April 2006 – daveg

Recent Acquisitions Part 2 – Samsung YP-U2 MP3 Flash Player

Samsung YP-U2X So after umming and ahhing over getting an MP3 for absolutely ages, I took the plunge and bought one last week. I guess I took my time trying to find an MP3 player mainly because I don’t really get the oppurtunity to use one often (I drive to work) and also I had to be sure that it worked easily with Linux. I didn’t want to get stuck with some MP3 player (*cough* ipod) that only worked with special software (yeah, I know they work with Linux now, but I really didn’t want any fussing around at all).

So quite a while ago, I identified that Samsung’s players were compatible with Linux. They basically just plug into a computer, it comes up as a USB flash disk and you just drag and drop the MP3 files (or OGG or WMA which this player supports) onto the disk.

The model that I ended up with was the Samsung YP-U2X which has a 1Gb capacity. It should be enough to keep me going as I have more interest in listening to podcasts from Triple J and ABC Radio National more than storing stacks of music files on it.

I guess what ended up being the catalyst for getting one was wanting to listen to something while I went for runs. Running was also the reason why I went for a flash player and not a hard disk based player. Another nice thing about this MP3 player also was that it has an FM tuner in it, which I didn’t even realise it had when I bought it. Bonus!

All in all, its a really nice player and a good buy at AU$179.

Recent Acquisitions Part 1 – NES Elite

David Braben and Ian Bell‘s seminal 80’s classic game Elite is probably my favourite game of all time. There’s been numerous versions of it on computers and consoles such as the C64, Amiga, BBC Spectrum, PC and Acorn Archimedes. There’s even some ports to OpenGL and Gameboy Advance ports of it and a recreation of it called oolite for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Recently a NES version of it popped up on eBay and I was lucky enough to nab it (for $42…). Definitely a nice piece to have in my small NES cart collection, as its apparently quite rare having only been released in PAL territories. According to the UK NES Rarity list, it rates an A-; “These Will Require A Lot Of Looking“.

Would have been nice if it came with a box though, although that would no doubt have jacked up the price even more.

WordPress upgraded

Finally got around to upgrading wordpress to 2.0.2. Due to some security issues, its definitely worth moving to (along with the very funky post editor…nice).

Since I’m on holidays at the moment, I guess I’ll try and spend some time when I can to change to something else besides this default template. Ditto for Rozie’s site.