New Gadgets, New Doctors

And so another week passes without an update. Is it my sleeping till 2pm or my blatant disregard to give any details on what I'm doing? No, it's quite simply that I forget to update and my updates are normally very long and take me a long time to write thanks to the worsening condition of my hands. Anyway, some updates this week, some good some bad, so I'll start with the geeky stuff and my impressions!

I'll start with Apple's September 1 "media" keynote. Well, I love when September comes round because it means new iPods and we get to see what those magicians down at 1 Infinite Loop have been up to. I was both excited and disappointed by this keynote for several reasons. First, the iPod Classic is stagnating, it's been the same way now for a couple of years, but it looks like Apple don't want to kill it off. Everyone knows that the iPod touch is "where it's at" now, because lets be honest, most people either have small media libraries, or aren't really bothered about carrying all their music about. My music library weighs in at just under 10gb at the moment, because I tend to rotate things and have alternating favourite songs. This generally means that any iPod over 8gb is fine for me.

Anyway, the new releases!

iPod Shuffle: What the 3rd generation should've been, none of this buttonless crap with the controls in the headphones. However, with the 4th generation shuffle, the device now has a slight flaw. It has a clip like gen 2 and gen 3 have, but with the gen 4 you have to be very careful not to press the buttons when opening the clip! A slight oversight, but I can't really see Apple going back to the gen 2 design and neither can Apple, it seems. The best thing Apple could do, is bring back the gen 2 with upgraded parts, give it kinetic recharging, million hours battery life, etc, but that to me is logical. Of course people would complain that the design was stagnating, which is what happened with the Macbook Pro.

iPod Nano: What is this, I don't even... Everyone in my family including me has owned an iPod nano, they are quintessentially the backbone of the iPod line up, the one everyone owns, the one that's priced to such a point that it's perfect for anyone. Now what, it's 10% bigger than the shuffle and has a touchscreen? It's like a watch without a strap, using some impossible technology. How have they managed to fit all that stuff inside there?! Anyway, the touch controls seem to be quite fiddly and you can't use the screen and read it at the same time! At least I couldn't, my fingers would take up the entire screen! They've also removed a lot of features from it too, it can't play video or take video or voice memos, it's almost like a stopgap between the shuffle and the touch.

iPod touch: The best of the iPod releases this time round, but still with heavy flaws. It's thinner, which isn't necessarily a good thing because they've added a camera. The cameras (as there's one on the front too) aren't great, the rear 'main' still/video camera is 0.7 megapixel, that's 960x720 resolution, which is fine for video, but abysmal for still images. Anyway, ignoring the camera, the tech inside is basically everything from the iPhone 4, high density display, Apple's 800mhz "A4" chip (rather than the 1ghz beast from the iPad) as well as the controversial 512mb of ram. I say controversial because the iPad only shipped with 256mb and in some cases really needs that little bit more, but I'll get to that.

iTunes 10: Nothing new here really, except adding of a social networking thingy called Ping, a new icon, screwing around with traffic light buttons (on the Mac anyway) and a lovely new 'hybrid' view which I adore. The icon seems vulgar at first (every design particle in me went "ohgodwhatthefuckisthat" when I saw it on the keynote) but it does, rather unfavourably, grow on you. One thing I've noticed, is that once I put the buttons back to where they should be the speed almost doubled! Don't get me wrong though, iTunes 10 is fast, very fast, but if you put the buttons back to horizontal it doubles in speed. Madness. Anyway, I like iTunes 10, it does it's job with little input from me.

AppleTV: Here we go. I've wanted an AppleTV since they were first announced, being able to have access to my entire house's iTunes libraries from my TV and being able to rent movies on the fly sounds awesome. Now this new model can only stream and rent, but to be honest, that's all I'd use it for anyway. Why would I want to sync it when it's just a 'bridge' to watch stuff I have on my Mac on my TV? Anyway, it was announced at $99 and I nearly had a heart attack, as it means that (according to normal Apple rules) it'd be about £59-69 in the UK. I eagerly waited for the store to come back up so I could preorder one. Then, when the store came back up, it was £99. What? What, £99? That can't be right. Oh, but it was, nearly twice the price, £30-40 above what I was expecting. My excitement died pretty damn fast I can tell you.

But I still preordered one.

Now on to doctors and music and other junk like that. I went to see my GP as my sick leave is about to 'run out' and he gave me an extension of 3 weeks. 3 weeks. My main issue with work is fatigue and physical injuries I get from working, but my GP seems to focus on the mental issues which have only recently come to light. Fine, I'm not quite straight in the head and if that was the only problem then yes, maybe working would be a benefit, but with my Ehlers-Danlos, it's really not. From not working, I've managed to lose 11lbs/5kg and I've been off just over 2 months now. I've done next to no exercise, but I've been learning to pace myself in other ways, but even that was just glossed over. Suffice to say, I'm seeing another GP next week, who is a little more understanding with this. I might ask her if she's willing to take me on as her patient, but at the same time I'm not sure, because I like my GP, he's a nice person.

I feel quite sad that through all the support he usually gives, when I need him the most (seeing as I start Balance for Life next week and have Stanmore coming up at the end of October) I can't be working and going to these medical treatments, I can barely cope with working on it's own! Since I haven't been working, I've had more of a social life, I've lived at my own pace and I've been trying as hard as possible to enjoy my life. The only problem I have now, is that I'm noticing every time I get excited (or 'manic') and I try with all my being to stop it and that's not good, I need help with it, so hopefully this other doctor will be more willing to help.

As I said, I'll be starting Balance for Life next week, which is basically a 12 week gym membership to help me with my core fitness and to get me into a routine of gentle exercise that I can manage and maintain on my own. Unfortunately, such as my condition is at the moment, I think all I'll be able to do is swim, but if I'm given somewhere I can do that under guidance then I'll thrive from it.

Epic Citadel indeed!

Now on to games and other stuff! At the Apple media keynote, they had the chairman of Epic Games doing a quick demo of something called "Project Sword" which is essentially going to be Oblivion, but on the iPhone/iPad and it looks insane. They also announced that a quick tech demo of it, called Epic Citadel, would be on the App Store. OMFG is all you can use to describe it, really. I've stuck a screenshot from my iPad to the side there, so you can see what I mean. It also has two built in control schemes, you can tap to move with finger panning to look about, or you can use the two joysticks as you would a normal iOS first-person shooter. Stunning.

I've also been getting into a lot of new music lately, thanks to Myriam retweeting a youtube video, I found out about the Vitamin String Quartet and I'm quite addicted to their covers of Lady Gaga songs, they're simply breathtaking to listen to. I've also been hitting up a lot of chiptune music (although I always seem to go back to Anamanaguchi) and oddly enough Metric and Beck. There seems to be a common theme with this music though, it's all related to Scott Pilgrim and I think through the comics and the film I've come to find out about and love quite a lot of things and I'm ever thankful for that. I still haven't managed to get Myriam to read the comics yet, but she will, eventually!

Some shout outs now, to Haz and Nik who both made an epic journey yesterday to Seattle so they could attend PAX Prime. I hope it's going ok guys and I hope you're having fun sharing that bed in the hotel room, haha! Most of my friends are abroad at the moment, Heather is in Tenerife, Myriam of course lives in America and as mentioned, Haz and Nik are also in America (although the other side of the country from M). Luckily I still have some friends here, but it just seems a bit lonely without my most important ones, you know? Plus I want to go and see Scott Pilgrim vs the World again, with Nicky, but he has a lot going on at the moment and it's understandable that he either doesn't want to or can't go. I wish I could've gone to PAX, but I'd have insisted on Myriam coming too.

Well, there's another update until the next one (whenever that'll be) but seeing as this one is quite long, it should give my 2/3 readers at least a couple of days reading...