OK, so I went ahead and bought the iPod video two weeks ago. My apologies for not having blogged about this sooner – I’ve been off in Skye for work last week, and I was withholding judgement of the iPod until I’d had a little try of it.

I was just ELATED when I bought it, my new shiny iPod Video 60GB, sleek and black and shiny with it’s ultra wide screen and crystal clear colour. I got it home and plugged it in, and began the transfer of all my music onto my delightful new machine. 24 hours later though, and it was STILL transferring. Granted, I only have a USB1.0 port, and I did have 35 gig of music, but I have to say, at this point, the purchase began to tarnish a little. But only a little.

I transfer my first video onto it, a newly converted copy of the Farscape Peacekeeper Wars (John Crighton, *swoon*). All goes well, despite the massive difficulty I have converting anything else – I figure, this is the fault of my patchwork computer, not the iPod. A certain other person also managed to procure me a copy of Serenity for iPod Video, and that played fine too.

This was a week and a half ago.

Since then, there has been nothing, and I mean NOTHING but trouble with this little bugger. It crashes. It freezes. It spontaneously self-resets. I had to do a complete firmware re-install, which meant that I lost all the data that I had on it, and now if I want all my music back on it, I’ll have to wait another 24 hours.

It’s just not on, and I won’t stand for it. I’m taking it back, and getting a refund (how glad am I now, that I bought it from John Lewis, the UK equivalent of Myers, who have a no-quibbles return policy).

I thank you all for your contributions to the iPod fund, and I promise you that your generous donations will not be spent much longer on this piece of crap equipment. I used to be a disciple of Apple when it came to music playing, but now I’m firmly disillusioned.

I considered getting a Nano instead, but from what I read, it has the same freezing problems as the Video, and not only that, but somehow the sound quality is poorer, ceteris paribus. My old baby was never this unstable, and words cannot describe how disappointed I am.

Therefore I am now taking suggestions for alternative music players. Must have minimum of 5GB of space (I’ve decided I can live with the essentials, and have an external drive for the bulk information transporting), and must have a semi decent user interface. Must be relatively small for gym use, and must have nice sound.

10/1/06 – Update: We’re now over the £100 mark! After a vivid dream and much thought, I think that I’ll get more long term (I PROMISE I won’t throw it away again!) benefit out of an iPod Video 60 GB, currently retailing at £288. If you like what you’ve read here over the years, Pound/Dollar/Renminbi or two will not go astray!

7/1/06 Update: We’re now at £95! Thanks folks! You lot RAWK!

6/1/06: Update: The running total for donations now comes to £85!!! Thankyou so very much to all who have donated, I’m quite overwhelmed! You know who you are! I have decided to get an iPod Nano 4Gb which I’ve seen in various places for as low as £140, so that’s our target – more than halfway there!

The Proposal

So after days of wailing and self flagellation, Matthew suggested a wild idea yesterday. So wild that I laughed at it. And told other people, cause I thought it to be such a great joke, and not to be taken too seriously.

He suggested that since I’ve told you, my lovely readership, of my Tale of iPoddy Woe, perhaps I should invite you to contribute something back to my years of blogging, and open a little PayPal account for you to deposit a small token, a few dollars or pounds, to my cause – the worthy cause of Buying A New IPod Which I Promise Not To Throw Away.

Those who I’ve told, they say, “Yes, It Is Not A Bad Idea, I Will Donate!”

At this point, I stop, and think that perhaps Matthew is right. Perhaps it is a good idea, and perhaps I should give it a burl, and see who takes me seriously. After all, more than a thousand individuals stopped by here last month! Even if a quarter of those people each gave 50p, then that’s half an iPod right there! Therefore, my friends, my readers, I present to you my first foray into Paypal, the Make A Donation button:

If my tale of woe has touched your heart, and if you have a bob or two to spare, why not spare a thought as well, for poor music-less me? Me who has faithfully (if somewhat erratically) blogged since leaving Australia 2.5 years ago, who has brought you tales of the Orient, of the Highlands, of Star Studded Movie Premieres and empty windswept isles, and who shall bring you many more tales in years to come. You could take pity and lend me your charity.

Or you could just tell me to stop dreaming, and to get over it. *grin*

Either way works.

Would you like to hear a story? A tale which begins in joy, but which becomes a tale of sadness and woe, but also of sheer butt-headedness… A tale which ends with a little (tongue in) cheek, but an ending which you may take seriously if your heart desires.

Last week I spent a wonderful week in Essex for Christmas with The Ubiquitous Jessie (who you might remember her from such blog entries as The Beijing Trip and from the The First Glimpse of Edinburgh) and her boyfriend Tom, and his Fabulous Family. Much quality vino was had, much snow was played in, much laughter was heard. The country villages in England are quite a bit more twee and quaint than those of Scotland – the villages here seem a little more rugged in comparison. We drank hearty ales, saw a REAL pantomime on Boxing Day (“OH YES WE DID!!”), saw Real Live Morris Dancing in a Real Live Country Village ™.

I saw many different ways of navigating traffic round intersections (roundabouts upon roundabouts, like a Mandlebrot Set in action) – apparently Colchester is a national test area for new methods of traffic coordinating.

The flurry of the week ended all too soon, and one snowy morning, at around 3.30am, we left the charming wee house in the charming wee village in Essex, to navigate the roads which had charmingly been covered in a thick layer of snow. Would have been more charming if it had chosen to fall a few days earlier, giving Jessie the White Christmas that she’s been gunning for for so many years. But I digress. The point is, it was an early morning flight for me back to Scotland, and hence an early morning start. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not really much of an early morning person, as a general rule. Tends to make me foggy. I think you know where this story is going.

I make it to Glasgow Prestwick airport, where I FINALLY find a replacement USB sync cable which I lost months ago, and I think with glee about all the fun music I’ve acquired since the loss of that cable, which I can now transfer onto my iPod. My darling iPod, my pride and joy, which is currently sitting in a plastic bag with other odds and sods, cause my small handbag is too small.

I get on a train from Glasgow, bound for Kings Cross London, via Edinburgh. The train pulls into Edinburgh, and I gather my belongings. I put my rubbish into a plastic bag that I happen to have with me (I think you see, dear reader, all too well, where this is going), and I put the plastic bag in the bin, on the train.

It’s not till I get home, as I’m climbing the stairs to my apartment and thinking about finally connecting up my iPod, that I realise the fatal mistake that I suspect you have already guessed.

My iPod was in the plastic bag. The plastic bag that I threw out. I threw away my iPod.

The world is ending, the sky is falling, my iPod is no more. Silence the birds, stop the bells, turn off the music. For I alas have no more music but that of my own making.

Fruitless phonecalls to various cleaning companies who all say that someone ELSE empties the bins on the train, bear (as you might imagine) no fruit.

And now I have no music. Nothing. Not unless I want to carry around my hulking big PC and snotty little speakers, or play my fiddle down the street, or open my throat in song. Not the most popular answers to the personal music question.

Wow, what a cool flurry of a week! The Mark Saul Band once again converged on Scotland (minus, alas, one drummer – Shannon had already told us well before the Summer tour that he’d not be staying on in the band beyond the tour). The event – only possibly the biggest New Years Eve celebration in the UK – the Edinburgh Hogmanay!

This event is big. So big, in fact, that you need to book tickets for the street party which is held in the New Town, because after having died down since the Festival, the town’s population once again swells to near unmanageable levels, and ticketing is the only way they’ve found to keep things within reasonable limits! But we’re talking hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people in the streets for New Years Eve, and close to that amount on “The Night ‘Afore”. Which, as luck would have it, was when we were scheduled to play.

When I first heard that we weren’t playing on the 31st, I thought to myself, it’s not really NYE, therefore, not gonna be a massively huge gig. The stage is set up in the street, and I had this idea in my head that I’d have to convince friends to come to fill out numbers, that it would be like any other street performance that I’d done – fun, free for the punters, but relatively low key.

Big mistake.

Biggest mistake.

Because oh my god, it was the BIGGEST crowd I’ve ever played to! I don’t know if you know Edinburgh very well, but the stage was set up on George Street, just near Hanover Street, set up in the MIDDLE of the street, so that performers could see along the length of George Street. Being in the “New Town”, George Street was designed to be wide enough to turn a horse carriage. It’s about as wide as Swanston Street in Melbourne. Which is to say, quite wide. The distance between Hanover Street and the next street along (Frederick Street), is maybe half as big again as a Melbourne city block. They’re long, thin blocks in the New Town. During the set up (massively delayed, due to the stage being terribly late – Jamie even said that they’d nearly cancelled the gig due to lateness of stage!), it was raining, and I was thinking to myself, with this weather, noone’s gonna show up, and the size of the audience area’s gonna make the crowd look even smaller.

Then the Portobello Ceilidh Band started up in the slot before us, and lo and behold, a crowd appeared! Still not a thick one, except at the sides where people were trying to get past, but an enthusiastically dancing one, dancing all of the set dances as someone in the band called the steps. Everyone was happy and laughing, and lets face it, on a freezing cold night like that (I’m sure it was below zero), dancing would have to be the best way to keep warm!

Once the Portobello Celidh Band finished, and it was our turn, I walked on stage to set up our gear, and looked out and saw a SEA of people out in the street. I can’t really describe it, just a big, happy crowd:

Halfway through the gig, Mark held out the camera and said something like “say hi to Australia!” and this sea of arms arose from the crowd…

See if you can spot the Australians. There were heaps out there, this is Edinburgh after all, the next Mecca for Aussies after London.

Once we finished our first tune, the noise from the crowd was loud. Once we finished our last tune, the noise from the crowd was deafening. I could hear it loud and clear despite the ear pieces that I was wearing, and when I took them out… Wow.

So thanks to all you folk who came along and listened that night, and came along afterwards to have a chat. It was ace to see some old faces in the crowd from past gigs (Imogen the Fire Dancer from the Skye Festival!), and I think Mark made some new groupies… I mean Friends. I’m surprised he wasn’t signing chests, he had that many enthusiastic new… Friends.

Love to you all!

Charlotte