"What are you?"
"I am everywhere; I am eternal. I am the voice in the back of your head, telling you that this world is wrong, even if you do not know why, or how to fix it.
"I am that which has slept in the back of the brain since the beginning of consciousness, which is only now beginning to wake. I bring with me all the half-remembered myths and dreams, all the things which science has refuted, casting out into the darkness of blind faith.
"I am the urge to innovate, to change, which drives the advancement of the world. I am the reason that you wake in the night, dazzled by half-remembered thoughts of dreams, dreams where everything was better, where the world was perfect. I am the reason that minds crack under the strain of containing their ideas; I am the reason that the insane are insane.
"I still sleep, but when I wake all will be known, all will be united, all will be as one."
(Do ants possess telepathy? How can a hive of bees unite as a single entity? What sleeps within the minds of man?)
(All nouns are singular. All verbs are present tense. There is no "will," no "should," no "would," simple "am".)
(I am writing. Not I will write, not I should write, not I would write.)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
Tiredness = Weirdness
When I'm half asleep, my mind does weird things. (It also does weird things when it's awake, like thinking that popcorn is toast, but that's another story). As an example, I offer you the following story, which took place yesterday.
The setting: school, a class, watching the movie version of Mrs. Warren's Profession.
I was having a lot of trouble staying awake, or even keeping my eyes open, due to the fact that they hurt a lot, probably because of how tired I was. So, I occasionally closed my eyes, and drifted off into a dream-state for a few seconds, until I realized that my body was moving around due to the dreams (eg, jerking forward to click a button on a computer interface), and shook myself awake. I don't remember a lot of what was going on, but the weirdest example is what I do remember, which is good.
A way to expand the interface for an address-book - colors to denote relationships. Thus, a name with a red background would be someone who the owner of the book was in a relationship with, orange would be friendship, black would be dislike, white would be suicide, green would be homicide, and so forth. This data would be scrapped from various websites, such as Facebook, or input manually by the owner.
The last two in that list sound a bit out of place, right? Apparently, this system would interface with shock collars / kill switches on iPhones. When someone marked as white was called, they would explode, or otherwise die. When someone marked as green was called, they would start killing everyone around them - I don't remember how that part was supposed to work.
And, as I had forgotten the term address-book, I though for a while that it was called a jellybean, perhaps due to the way the colors looked (neon pastel? The red was like glowing red jello, I remember that much). I caught this before I started talking to people about it, though, and presented it as another funny part of the story, thus manageding to avoid more weirdness, which is probably good.
Like I said, my mind works strangely when I'm tired.
The setting: school, a class, watching the movie version of Mrs. Warren's Profession.
I was having a lot of trouble staying awake, or even keeping my eyes open, due to the fact that they hurt a lot, probably because of how tired I was. So, I occasionally closed my eyes, and drifted off into a dream-state for a few seconds, until I realized that my body was moving around due to the dreams (eg, jerking forward to click a button on a computer interface), and shook myself awake. I don't remember a lot of what was going on, but the weirdest example is what I do remember, which is good.
A way to expand the interface for an address-book - colors to denote relationships. Thus, a name with a red background would be someone who the owner of the book was in a relationship with, orange would be friendship, black would be dislike, white would be suicide, green would be homicide, and so forth. This data would be scrapped from various websites, such as Facebook, or input manually by the owner.
The last two in that list sound a bit out of place, right? Apparently, this system would interface with shock collars / kill switches on iPhones. When someone marked as white was called, they would explode, or otherwise die. When someone marked as green was called, they would start killing everyone around them - I don't remember how that part was supposed to work.
And, as I had forgotten the term address-book, I though for a while that it was called a jellybean, perhaps due to the way the colors looked (neon pastel? The red was like glowing red jello, I remember that much). I caught this before I started talking to people about it, though, and presented it as another funny part of the story, thus manageding to avoid more weirdness, which is probably good.
Like I said, my mind works strangely when I'm tired.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Philosophy of Knowledge
1. If knowledge exists outside of a single person's skull, said knowledge should be expected to be known by anyone or everyone, and no one is able to be surprised if someone knows of said knowledge.
2. If knowledge exists on the internet, anyone who could possibly be interested in said knowledge, and many who would not be interested in it, knows it.
3. It is impolite to assume that a given person knows a piece of knowledge, despite the two rules above, and, when mentioning knowledge without knowing that the other member(s) of a conversation know of this knowledge, said knowledge may be referred to specifically or generally, but, if referred to generally, should be stated in such a way that it is not awkward for anyone who does not know of said knowledge to say so.
4. In a blog or any written record, anyone reading a single post should be assumed to have read all other posts - there is little or no point in restating things. However, it is polite to provide a link to the post explaining this knowledge, for the sake of new readers or those with bad memories.
5. Once knowledge exists on the internet, it cannot be removed from the internet. Attempts to do so are considered to be rude, and will be ineffective, or increase propagation of said knowledge. No matter how much one wishes for something to be secret, if it is on the internet, it will not be. Thus, one should exercise all due caution and consideration before placing knowledge on the internet, and should remember that there is no going back.
6. All users of the internet or other venues allowing anonymous communication, or in fact any communication, should develop a sense of humor, the ability to ignore things which they dislike, and the ability to recognize and deal with trolls and idiots.
7. Debate is good, but only when both sides consider what the other one has to say, and act upon this. Both sides should also take care not to fall into an attack upon the other party, and to present new arguments, or reinforce existing arguments, instead of saying the same thing over and over.
8. Due to the popular knowledge of Godwin's Law, I hereby replace the phrase Nazis with Geese, making it far more humorous, and less obvious. The new law follows:
10. These laws may be modified freely, as long as they always can be described in a x^3 format. Thus, Possible numbers of laws include 1, 8, 27, 64, etc. This law may be circumvented by pointing out that it is law number 10 of the original set (2^3 mark 1), and thus is not included in the actual ruleset. However, the rules are more fun if it is included, and therefor all are encouraged to consider it a valid law.
512. There may only be 512 laws, and any set including 512 laws is to be described as 2^3^3 mark x. After all, 512 should be enough for anyone! (Proposed maximums also include 134217728, or 2^3^3^3. If you need more than 134217728, you may safely be ignored by everyone).
2. If knowledge exists on the internet, anyone who could possibly be interested in said knowledge, and many who would not be interested in it, knows it.
3. It is impolite to assume that a given person knows a piece of knowledge, despite the two rules above, and, when mentioning knowledge without knowing that the other member(s) of a conversation know of this knowledge, said knowledge may be referred to specifically or generally, but, if referred to generally, should be stated in such a way that it is not awkward for anyone who does not know of said knowledge to say so.
4. In a blog or any written record, anyone reading a single post should be assumed to have read all other posts - there is little or no point in restating things. However, it is polite to provide a link to the post explaining this knowledge, for the sake of new readers or those with bad memories.
5. Once knowledge exists on the internet, it cannot be removed from the internet. Attempts to do so are considered to be rude, and will be ineffective, or increase propagation of said knowledge. No matter how much one wishes for something to be secret, if it is on the internet, it will not be. Thus, one should exercise all due caution and consideration before placing knowledge on the internet, and should remember that there is no going back.
6. All users of the internet or other venues allowing anonymous communication, or in fact any communication, should develop a sense of humor, the ability to ignore things which they dislike, and the ability to recognize and deal with trolls and idiots.
7. Debate is good, but only when both sides consider what the other one has to say, and act upon this. Both sides should also take care not to fall into an attack upon the other party, and to present new arguments, or reinforce existing arguments, instead of saying the same thing over and over.
8. Due to the popular knowledge of Godwin's Law, I hereby replace the phrase Nazis with Geese, making it far more humorous, and less obvious. The new law follows:
"As a discussion grows longer, the probability of Geese, Gooses, or Goslings being mentioned approaches one. At this point in the discussion, all relevant knowledge has been stated, and the discussion may be safely ignored. This does not apply to discussions about Geese, Waterfowl, Birds, Lakes, Oakland, or Canadian Things."9. All commentators should observe the 2^3 laws of the internet, and carry this knowledge across the internet, so that it may be acted upon by all. Rule 9 is not one of the 2^3 laws, but its inclusion is considered to be polite by the writer of these laws.
10. These laws may be modified freely, as long as they always can be described in a x^3 format. Thus, Possible numbers of laws include 1, 8, 27, 64, etc. This law may be circumvented by pointing out that it is law number 10 of the original set (2^3 mark 1), and thus is not included in the actual ruleset. However, the rules are more fun if it is included, and therefor all are encouraged to consider it a valid law.
512. There may only be 512 laws, and any set including 512 laws is to be described as 2^3^3 mark x. After all, 512 should be enough for anyone! (Proposed maximums also include 134217728, or 2^3^3^3. If you need more than 134217728, you may safely be ignored by everyone).
Thursday, September 11, 2008
A Meme: It's Name is ...
After hearing about a meme which is just being started up (which appears to be stating one's naming scheme for computers; an example and the originator), I feel like joining in.
So, My desktop computer's name is BlackBird, after the song by the Beatles. My laptop is LongAndWindingRoad, and the two systems at the ACCRC which I use frequently are called GlassOnion and TheWalrus. In theory, the power cables (all of the cables, actually) of these computers are collectively referred to as NothingToGetHungAbout. I'm not sure if I'll stick to this naming scheme in my next system, but if I do it will probably be either HelterSkelter or OldBrownShoe (the former for a desktop, the latter for a laptop/portable system).
Sure, it's not a very unique or special naming scheme, but it works, and it's fairly easy to remember. (I might even set the start-up music to match the systems names).
Don't worry, I'm still working on my next real blog post, on Yosemite. It's coming along fairly well, but I kept on getting headaches while writing it, so I stopped. I'll finish it by Sunday.
So, My desktop computer's name is BlackBird, after the song by the Beatles. My laptop is LongAndWindingRoad, and the two systems at the ACCRC which I use frequently are called GlassOnion and TheWalrus. In theory, the power cables (all of the cables, actually) of these computers are collectively referred to as NothingToGetHungAbout. I'm not sure if I'll stick to this naming scheme in my next system, but if I do it will probably be either HelterSkelter or OldBrownShoe (the former for a desktop, the latter for a laptop/portable system).
Sure, it's not a very unique or special naming scheme, but it works, and it's fairly easy to remember. (I might even set the start-up music to match the systems names).
Don't worry, I'm still working on my next real blog post, on Yosemite. It's coming along fairly well, but I kept on getting headaches while writing it, so I stopped. I'll finish it by Sunday.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Insane Rantings: Multithreading in the Mind, Thoughts
To begin, I think that I should explain a bit about what I perceive as my consciousness: it's not actually connected to most of my mind, it simply places itself between my main decision-making processes and sensory inputs/outputs. This is an interesting state of affairs, and leads to many interesting results, including the fact that I only (consciously) think one word or so ahead when I'm writing stuff, sometimes a bit more, or a bit less, and I don't know much of what I'm going to write until I write it (this is because the thinking processes of my mind don't actually use language, so even when I manage to catch a hold of them I can only translate them at a fairly slow rate). All of the actual composition is going on back in my skull somewhere, where I can't see much of it, and I can only hope that the threads sometimes get hooked up to whatever method I'm using to transcribe my thoughts (in this case, my hands, using a keyboard as the interface).
I am creative in bursts, when my mind is working correctly. If I get distracted, I can completely lose the thread - and it's really easy to get distracted. When I stop for a moment to look around, take a very short break from looking at the screen, almost unblinking, I often completely forget what I was going to write next.
Sometimes, when the creativity shows up unexpectedly, and I can't write it down, I try to memorize bits and pieces of the thoughts, so that I can transcribe them later. This tends not to work, but occasionally it does, and I jot down the thoughts on paper, or in a file on my desktop (optimistically titled "Story Fragments in need of homes." I don't use it much). Anyways ... back to the original thread (it's hard for me to stay on topic, which can be a problem. I don't write in very structured ways, generally, I write as I think, and I really hate editing on any level beyond spell-checking and a basic rereading to make sure that I haven't said something completely different than what I intended).
So, Multithreading. Since most of my thinking goes on outside of my mind, weird threads show up sometimes. Completely normal things - such as a spork - can result in really weird threads showing up, or being created - such as a device to convert gravity to sideways pressure, and its possible applications in torture (no, I'm not evil. Being evil would, in all probability, result in my freedom being limited by imprisonment or death, and those outcomes are undesireably enough that I'm not going to be evil until I can negate the former, and defend myself agains the latter).
I'm not going to give a lot of examples of the ways this works, as my memory is terrible (another argument for writing everything down), but I may mention some in the future.
On of the major half foreground and half background threads which is going on right now goes as follows, beginning with a bit of backstory, and then proceeding to the actual thread:
A few months ago, I went to an informal party, probably fairly small by standards of parties. There were lots of really great people there, and many fun things happened, including various games (Apples to Apples, some card games, etc. Fairly low-key stuff). I managed to get tired enough that I claimed to be able to control the universe / be a god (to explain why I was somewhat winning in two of the games), and I met a very interesting and nice person, who sadly had to leave before the actual end of the party. However, she expressed an interest in meeting me again / communicating me, which is, I think, why this story continues beyond here.
A few days after the party, we began a rather long correspondence via Facebook, which continued until the 19th of August (at least, that is the last message which I received). In that message, there was a mention of possibly meeting up that weekend, which ended up not happening. I have not received any more messages - which is a bit weird, even considering the previous gaps between messages (which led me, at one point, to compare the correspondence to the old-fashioned snail-mail correspondence), and has led me to, amoung other things, reread my messages quite a few times to see if there's anything in them which could have possibly caused this (paranoia is fun, although, in this case, it seems to be completely unjustified, unless I'm completely missing something, or the Fnords have gotten into my message).
One of the other main effects is that I've become somewhat used to putting a number of my thoughts into the computer and sending it off once or twice a week. This is, I think, one of the reasons that I've updated this blog much more frequently lately, combined with boredom. It's a good excercise in writing, and in thinking.
However, currently, I don't actually put what I'm doing onto this blog - that's the realm of my Identi.ca feed, which works quite well for the purpose: it's a combination of what I'm doing, my thoughts, and my opinions. The fact that it's microblogging, though, prevents me from saying a lot, even if I don't say a lot quite frequently. Thus, I'm considering, every few days, or at least once a week, writing up a summary of what I've been doing - as if I were writing a letter - and picking out the best bits for the actual letters, if the correspondence starts up again.
The problem with this, however, is that I write - and speak - best when I'm responding to something. I prefer listening to speaking, and I don't especially like speaking about what I do, simply because I do so few things which I consider especially interesting. There is a fair danger that, if/when I attempt this, it will quickly devolve to rants about various classes, descriptions of what I did that weekend at the ACCRC and Westfinder, interspersed with my more strange thoughts (methods of torture, for example), before I get too stressed to continue the writing, as school and life begin to overwhelm me. Then this blog drops back into death for a while, I remember that I have a blog sometime around the winter holidays, and throw up a filler post / post containing any additional drawings which I've done / post explaining that I completely forgot about this blog.
Of course, having written this much about it, I'm going to have to try it. During the days, I'll try to jot down (and timestamp) any especially interesting thoughts I have, or any especially interesting events, and every few weekends (whenever my homework load is low enough that I'm able to go to both the ACCRC and Westfinder, probably), I'll put it all together and try to get it to make a bit more sense.
If all goes well, the first post in this new series will be between the 10th and the 14th, after I get back from Yosemite, but before classes start (yeah, the schedule is weird). If it doesn't go up in that time period ... well, anyone who's interested in reading my thoughts is encouraged to bother me about it, beginning on the weekend of the 20th, or at least no earlier than the 13th.
Finally, I would like to assure anyone who's read this far (congradulations on managing that, by the way) that I intend to do all I can to keep this blog fairly high quality, and to keep rants about school out of it.I try to keep it fairly intelligent, albeit unstructured and sanity-optional.
Feedback, as always, via the comments section (comments will be moderated before being displayed, so I'll read everything, even if I don't respond to it), Identi.ca, Facebook, email, or Meatspace (the latter three are reserved for people who know me in Meatspace, or whom I happen to trust).
Cheers!
Editness: Later is not the same as Latter. I intended to write latter, but I wrote later. This has been fixed. Nothing else has been changed. Nothing, I tell you!
I am creative in bursts, when my mind is working correctly. If I get distracted, I can completely lose the thread - and it's really easy to get distracted. When I stop for a moment to look around, take a very short break from looking at the screen, almost unblinking, I often completely forget what I was going to write next.
Sometimes, when the creativity shows up unexpectedly, and I can't write it down, I try to memorize bits and pieces of the thoughts, so that I can transcribe them later. This tends not to work, but occasionally it does, and I jot down the thoughts on paper, or in a file on my desktop (optimistically titled "Story Fragments in need of homes." I don't use it much). Anyways ... back to the original thread (it's hard for me to stay on topic, which can be a problem. I don't write in very structured ways, generally, I write as I think, and I really hate editing on any level beyond spell-checking and a basic rereading to make sure that I haven't said something completely different than what I intended).
So, Multithreading. Since most of my thinking goes on outside of my mind, weird threads show up sometimes. Completely normal things - such as a spork - can result in really weird threads showing up, or being created - such as a device to convert gravity to sideways pressure, and its possible applications in torture (no, I'm not evil. Being evil would, in all probability, result in my freedom being limited by imprisonment or death, and those outcomes are undesireably enough that I'm not going to be evil until I can negate the former, and defend myself agains the latter).
I'm not going to give a lot of examples of the ways this works, as my memory is terrible (another argument for writing everything down), but I may mention some in the future.
On of the major half foreground and half background threads which is going on right now goes as follows, beginning with a bit of backstory, and then proceeding to the actual thread:
A few months ago, I went to an informal party, probably fairly small by standards of parties. There were lots of really great people there, and many fun things happened, including various games (Apples to Apples, some card games, etc. Fairly low-key stuff). I managed to get tired enough that I claimed to be able to control the universe / be a god (to explain why I was somewhat winning in two of the games), and I met a very interesting and nice person, who sadly had to leave before the actual end of the party. However, she expressed an interest in meeting me again / communicating me, which is, I think, why this story continues beyond here.
A few days after the party, we began a rather long correspondence via Facebook, which continued until the 19th of August (at least, that is the last message which I received). In that message, there was a mention of possibly meeting up that weekend, which ended up not happening. I have not received any more messages - which is a bit weird, even considering the previous gaps between messages (which led me, at one point, to compare the correspondence to the old-fashioned snail-mail correspondence), and has led me to, amoung other things, reread my messages quite a few times to see if there's anything in them which could have possibly caused this (paranoia is fun, although, in this case, it seems to be completely unjustified, unless I'm completely missing something, or the Fnords have gotten into my message).
One of the other main effects is that I've become somewhat used to putting a number of my thoughts into the computer and sending it off once or twice a week. This is, I think, one of the reasons that I've updated this blog much more frequently lately, combined with boredom. It's a good excercise in writing, and in thinking.
However, currently, I don't actually put what I'm doing onto this blog - that's the realm of my Identi.ca feed, which works quite well for the purpose: it's a combination of what I'm doing, my thoughts, and my opinions. The fact that it's microblogging, though, prevents me from saying a lot, even if I don't say a lot quite frequently. Thus, I'm considering, every few days, or at least once a week, writing up a summary of what I've been doing - as if I were writing a letter - and picking out the best bits for the actual letters, if the correspondence starts up again.
The problem with this, however, is that I write - and speak - best when I'm responding to something. I prefer listening to speaking, and I don't especially like speaking about what I do, simply because I do so few things which I consider especially interesting. There is a fair danger that, if/when I attempt this, it will quickly devolve to rants about various classes, descriptions of what I did that weekend at the ACCRC and Westfinder, interspersed with my more strange thoughts (methods of torture, for example), before I get too stressed to continue the writing, as school and life begin to overwhelm me. Then this blog drops back into death for a while, I remember that I have a blog sometime around the winter holidays, and throw up a filler post / post containing any additional drawings which I've done / post explaining that I completely forgot about this blog.
Of course, having written this much about it, I'm going to have to try it. During the days, I'll try to jot down (and timestamp) any especially interesting thoughts I have, or any especially interesting events, and every few weekends (whenever my homework load is low enough that I'm able to go to both the ACCRC and Westfinder, probably), I'll put it all together and try to get it to make a bit more sense.
If all goes well, the first post in this new series will be between the 10th and the 14th, after I get back from Yosemite, but before classes start (yeah, the schedule is weird). If it doesn't go up in that time period ... well, anyone who's interested in reading my thoughts is encouraged to bother me about it, beginning on the weekend of the 20th, or at least no earlier than the 13th.
Finally, I would like to assure anyone who's read this far (congradulations on managing that, by the way) that I intend to do all I can to keep this blog fairly high quality, and to keep rants about school out of it.I try to keep it fairly intelligent, albeit unstructured and sanity-optional.
Feedback, as always, via the comments section (comments will be moderated before being displayed, so I'll read everything, even if I don't respond to it), Identi.ca, Facebook, email, or Meatspace (the latter three are reserved for people who know me in Meatspace, or whom I happen to trust).
Cheers!
Editness: Later is not the same as Latter. I intended to write latter, but I wrote later. This has been fixed. Nothing else has been changed. Nothing, I tell you!
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Some Pictures of Drawings
Today, as I can't think of anything better, high-rez (by my standards - 5 megapixels, which is what my camera supports, and about twice as wide and high as my monitor) pictures of some of my drawings. I've taken these with my camera, a Panasonic DMZ-LZ2 (which turned off as I typed its name), as I don't have a working scanner, and I don't feel like fighting with the possibly-working scanner to get it to talk to Linux, and visa versa - might try that later, though.
There is one finished drawing (or, rather, a page filled with drawings), the rest are at varying states of incompleteness. All but one of them are done on water-color paper with pens (sharpies and ball-points, mostly).
If you click on the images, the full-sized version will open. This may or may not be a good idea, depending on the speed of your downlink (images are ~2MB in size, some slightly larger).
The one finished page, done while on a camping trip at Lake Mendecino at the beginning of this summer. It took around 5 days to finish, although it was not the only thing I did. In actual time, I would say that it took under 5 hours.
Incomplete drawing, done with a green sharpie because I misplaced all of my black ones. Tried some new ideas on this, such as changing the thickness of the central and secondary lines.
Incomplete drawing, don't remember much about this one.
Also very incomplete.
Done on graph paper on Sunday, while at CTF.
License for these five drawings: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
If you use them, please tell me - although this is not required, I think that it's more polite to do so. If you wish to use them but need better images (by which I mean scans, instead of photographs), ask, and I'll do my best to get a working scanner, and either upload the images here, email them to you, or both.
As I'm going to be going off on another retreat this week (leaving on Friday, coming back next Wednesday), I hope to have another page or two finished. If I do, I'll post them here (well, on this blog. They'll probably be in a new post, though).
There is one finished drawing (or, rather, a page filled with drawings), the rest are at varying states of incompleteness. All but one of them are done on water-color paper with pens (sharpies and ball-points, mostly).
If you click on the images, the full-sized version will open. This may or may not be a good idea, depending on the speed of your downlink (images are ~2MB in size, some slightly larger).
The one finished page, done while on a camping trip at Lake Mendecino at the beginning of this summer. It took around 5 days to finish, although it was not the only thing I did. In actual time, I would say that it took under 5 hours.
Incomplete drawing, done with a green sharpie because I misplaced all of my black ones. Tried some new ideas on this, such as changing the thickness of the central and secondary lines.
Incomplete drawing, don't remember much about this one.
Also very incomplete.
Done on graph paper on Sunday, while at CTF.License for these five drawings: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
If you use them, please tell me - although this is not required, I think that it's more polite to do so. If you wish to use them but need better images (by which I mean scans, instead of photographs), ask, and I'll do my best to get a working scanner, and either upload the images here, email them to you, or both.
As I'm going to be going off on another retreat this week (leaving on Friday, coming back next Wednesday), I hope to have another page or two finished. If I do, I'll post them here (well, on this blog. They'll probably be in a new post, though).
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Opinions: The Creative Zen
In what will (hopefully) be the first part of an ongoing series, I present my opinions on the Creative Zen, the new MP3 player (media player?) I got yesterday. There are no pictures in this post, and if you want a professional review just search around the net a bit. So, to begin ...
It's tiny. The size of a credit card, which makes it small enough to fit in most pockets, or perhaps even wallets (although it's a bit thick for mine), while being big enough that you won't lose it as easily as an SD card. Despite being so tiny, the interface is really easy to use, and the buttons are fairly intuitive (once you've read a bit of the quick-start guide), so it doesn't take much thought to navigate through it. There's only one button which I don't really understand, but it's not essential for usage of the device.
It has 9 buttons used to control the interface, in addition to the on/off switch. These include the standard four-buttons-in-a-square-with-another-in-the-middle, a menu and back button above this square, and play/pause button (and the one which I don't understand) below. All of these buttons are to the right of the screen, and the device is clearly designed to be used with the right hand, so left-handed people may have some difficulties with it. The buttons, and in fact the entire screen-side of the player, are very prone to picking up fingerprint marks. I would rather that they were not, but I don't have much of a choice. The player is black, so they're no that obvious unless light is being reflected off them, and cleaning it off with a wet paper towel seems to work fairly well, although it's probably not a good idea.
The interface itself is not as responsive as it could be, but is overall easy to navigate. It looks pretty good, with very polished graphics. There are some areas which you may need to play around with a bit to fully understand - the FM tuner, for example - but understanding them did not take very long.
4GB (3.7 GiB) of storage allows me to have around 20% of my collection on it, or perhaps a bit less. While I would like to be able to mirror my entire collection, this is still okay, and, as storage sizes go up to 32GB (for $250), someone who was willing to throw more money at it would be able to store a lot more on it. It also has an SD card slot, which means that, if I ever feel a need for additional storage, or want to carry around a collection of additional music, I could invest in a number of fairly small SD cards (2GB ones can be had for around $10, and 1GB for around $4. 4GB is under $40. 2GB are my preference: a good amount of storage, and I know that they will work with my camera, so if I need to I can wipe them and use them to take pictures - thus, storing all of my music on SD cards would probably cost around $100, or less as time goes on), label them based on the music they contain, and carry them around.
It works fine with Linux, although, since it's using a rather weird filesystem, or (I've heard) a database instead of a filesystem, I've had to use Amarok to talk to it (which isn't an issue, I just prefer normal filesystems). Works perfectly, if slowly. It has a mode where it functions as an SD card reader as well, allowing an SD card in it to be accessed through a normal filesystem.
The cable it comes with is very, very short, but, since it's a stanard interface, getting a longer cable would be easy if I felt like it. The earbuds it comes with have a much longer cable than my old iPod earbuds, which is really great, as it's long enough that I can keep it in my pocket. I also got a packet of screen protectors, little plastic sheets which can be pasted onto the screen, and they seem to be working, although I can't figure out how to get the first one off.
Audio playback is great, nice high-quality sound and all that. While I haven't been able to get it to play any of my videos (it wants lower resolution files, and I don't feel like figuring out how to reincode them. The software included with it has some issues under WINE, so video playback will have to wait for a while), it plays the included videos fairly well (which is to be expected). There's also a library of pre-installed music, including some audiobooks, which I promptly deleted to free up some space.
Eventually, I'll reincode some videos at whatever resolution it wants, and try playing them on it. Expect another post or an update when I do.
The claimed battery life - 30 hours for audio, 5 for video - is amazing, especially since the charge time was around 2 hours for the initial charge. I can't give any information on what I've observed the battery life to be, or subsequent charge times, but if I can get away with only recharging it once every one or two weeks (say, three to four hours of audio on week-days, probably a bit under once a week), I'll be happy - keep in mind that my other portable device, an Eee PC, needs to be recharged after around two hours of use, severly limiting it (and making me want to get an internet tablet, such as the N810, which is very, very shiny).
Hmm, what else ... The microphone! It works, it's good for recording thoughts and whatnot. Volume has to be turned up to hear it, though (I've found that a volume of around 4 (out of 25 or so) is perfect for most of my music, with a maximum of 6. Podcasts require higher volumes. There's an option for smart volume adjustment, which I think that I'll try, to see if it can even out everything so I don't have to tweak the volume all the time). It's theoretically very sensitive, but I haven't tested that very well. It would be nice if the device also had audio-in, so that I could use my own microphone, but it doesn't, which is fine. After all, how often would I use audio-in?
The radio works. It's pretty good, although KQED reception is a lot worse than KALW.
It comes with a SD card place-holder inserted into the SD card slot, which I prompty lost, and then found a few hours later, along with a pen.
The back of the device is more rubber-like, and resists finger-prints. It also feels a lot better than the plastic on the front, a lot smoother, lower-friction. This is good.
That's basically all I have to say about it.
Link - Creative Zen. $99.99 for the version I have (though they dropped the price by 10% right after I bought it, presumably for a promotion), price goes as high as $249.99 for 32GB, and as low as $79.99 for 2GB. There's also a more expensive version with WiFi (the 16GB or 32GB Zen X-Fi), and a more expensive version with built-in speakers (the 8GB Zen X-Fi), which you might want to know about if you have a lot of money to spend on an MP3 player.
(If you have any opinions, feedback, etc. about this post, please comment. Comments are moderated, however, so I'll have to approve them before they appear. Or, as most people reading this probably know who I am, you could contact me via AIM / GTalk / Reality.)
It's tiny. The size of a credit card, which makes it small enough to fit in most pockets, or perhaps even wallets (although it's a bit thick for mine), while being big enough that you won't lose it as easily as an SD card. Despite being so tiny, the interface is really easy to use, and the buttons are fairly intuitive (once you've read a bit of the quick-start guide), so it doesn't take much thought to navigate through it. There's only one button which I don't really understand, but it's not essential for usage of the device.
It has 9 buttons used to control the interface, in addition to the on/off switch. These include the standard four-buttons-in-a-square-with-another-in-the-middle, a menu and back button above this square, and play/pause button (and the one which I don't understand) below. All of these buttons are to the right of the screen, and the device is clearly designed to be used with the right hand, so left-handed people may have some difficulties with it. The buttons, and in fact the entire screen-side of the player, are very prone to picking up fingerprint marks. I would rather that they were not, but I don't have much of a choice. The player is black, so they're no that obvious unless light is being reflected off them, and cleaning it off with a wet paper towel seems to work fairly well, although it's probably not a good idea.
The interface itself is not as responsive as it could be, but is overall easy to navigate. It looks pretty good, with very polished graphics. There are some areas which you may need to play around with a bit to fully understand - the FM tuner, for example - but understanding them did not take very long.
4GB (3.7 GiB) of storage allows me to have around 20% of my collection on it, or perhaps a bit less. While I would like to be able to mirror my entire collection, this is still okay, and, as storage sizes go up to 32GB (for $250), someone who was willing to throw more money at it would be able to store a lot more on it. It also has an SD card slot, which means that, if I ever feel a need for additional storage, or want to carry around a collection of additional music, I could invest in a number of fairly small SD cards (2GB ones can be had for around $10, and 1GB for around $4. 4GB is under $40. 2GB are my preference: a good amount of storage, and I know that they will work with my camera, so if I need to I can wipe them and use them to take pictures - thus, storing all of my music on SD cards would probably cost around $100, or less as time goes on), label them based on the music they contain, and carry them around.
It works fine with Linux, although, since it's using a rather weird filesystem, or (I've heard) a database instead of a filesystem, I've had to use Amarok to talk to it (which isn't an issue, I just prefer normal filesystems). Works perfectly, if slowly. It has a mode where it functions as an SD card reader as well, allowing an SD card in it to be accessed through a normal filesystem.
The cable it comes with is very, very short, but, since it's a stanard interface, getting a longer cable would be easy if I felt like it. The earbuds it comes with have a much longer cable than my old iPod earbuds, which is really great, as it's long enough that I can keep it in my pocket. I also got a packet of screen protectors, little plastic sheets which can be pasted onto the screen, and they seem to be working, although I can't figure out how to get the first one off.
Audio playback is great, nice high-quality sound and all that. While I haven't been able to get it to play any of my videos (it wants lower resolution files, and I don't feel like figuring out how to reincode them. The software included with it has some issues under WINE, so video playback will have to wait for a while), it plays the included videos fairly well (which is to be expected). There's also a library of pre-installed music, including some audiobooks, which I promptly deleted to free up some space.
Eventually, I'll reincode some videos at whatever resolution it wants, and try playing them on it. Expect another post or an update when I do.
The claimed battery life - 30 hours for audio, 5 for video - is amazing, especially since the charge time was around 2 hours for the initial charge. I can't give any information on what I've observed the battery life to be, or subsequent charge times, but if I can get away with only recharging it once every one or two weeks (say, three to four hours of audio on week-days, probably a bit under once a week), I'll be happy - keep in mind that my other portable device, an Eee PC, needs to be recharged after around two hours of use, severly limiting it (and making me want to get an internet tablet, such as the N810, which is very, very shiny).
Hmm, what else ... The microphone! It works, it's good for recording thoughts and whatnot. Volume has to be turned up to hear it, though (I've found that a volume of around 4 (out of 25 or so) is perfect for most of my music, with a maximum of 6. Podcasts require higher volumes. There's an option for smart volume adjustment, which I think that I'll try, to see if it can even out everything so I don't have to tweak the volume all the time). It's theoretically very sensitive, but I haven't tested that very well. It would be nice if the device also had audio-in, so that I could use my own microphone, but it doesn't, which is fine. After all, how often would I use audio-in?
The radio works. It's pretty good, although KQED reception is a lot worse than KALW.
It comes with a SD card place-holder inserted into the SD card slot, which I prompty lost, and then found a few hours later, along with a pen.
The back of the device is more rubber-like, and resists finger-prints. It also feels a lot better than the plastic on the front, a lot smoother, lower-friction. This is good.
That's basically all I have to say about it.
Link - Creative Zen. $99.99 for the version I have (though they dropped the price by 10% right after I bought it, presumably for a promotion), price goes as high as $249.99 for 32GB, and as low as $79.99 for 2GB. There's also a more expensive version with WiFi (the 16GB or 32GB Zen X-Fi), and a more expensive version with built-in speakers (the 8GB Zen X-Fi), which you might want to know about if you have a lot of money to spend on an MP3 player.
(If you have any opinions, feedback, etc. about this post, please comment. Comments are moderated, however, so I'll have to approve them before they appear. Or, as most people reading this probably know who I am, you could contact me via AIM / GTalk / Reality.)