Year 2005 ended with a bang for me. One of the temporary retaining walls I designed moved quite a bit during excavation. And it happened on 30 Dec, 2 days to the New Year! Needless to say I had to be at the site on New Year's Eve. I suspect the wall penetration wasn't deep enough. Anyway after the recent collapse cases (not mine! someone else's), any kind of wall movements, big or small, will send clients into hysterics. So my clients got very worried and emails were shooting all over, demanding for explanations & rectifications. Since it was my job, I have to deal with them. Oh well.

Let's talk about something more pleasant. Guess what? I bought the 5th gen ipod! The ipod that plays video!


Got mine just before Christmas and I love it! My U2 ipod was solely for music. But with this new ipod, I'm carrying around my family photos, videos I've yet to watch and lyrics to all my fav songs. (There's this nice little widget, Singtune, that will search for the lyrics to the songs I'm playing, stores them into itunes and then into the ipod when I plug it to my computer.)

Music is great, of course. And I was really impressed with the video quality. I've plugged it to the TV. Quality is good but I did notice some banding in the darker areas. Battery life is alright. I was able to get about 2.5~3 hours of video. I read somewhere I should get longer hours by using a lower bitrate for the videos.

My U2 ipod is still sitting in my drawer. Thought of selling it but doubt I'm able to get a good price for it. I might just give it to my kids. In fact my daughter is eyeing my old ipod.

Labels: Ramblings