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Happy anniversary to The Hobbit, published on September 21, 1937. I think I've still got The Annotated Hobbit on my wish list...

Posted by jim at 8:24 AM | Permalink

After much toil, I've finally finished reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed after having it around at work for lunchtime reading. It's a good book, but hard to get into that heavy academic style during a 20-min lunch window.

What's next on the shelf? The first book is sort of a cheat. I've already read Guitar: An American Life, after reading about it online and ended up checking it out from the local library. The alternating chapters are about the author having a new acoustic guitar built for himself after his is damaged by a baggage handler, the others trace the history of guitar in modern America.

Posted by jim at 8:38 AM | Permalink

Been thinking about ordering an iPod Touch a lot recently. There's some great info over at iLounge, including some unboxing photos. Haven't seen one in person yet, although they're supposed to be arriving at stores now.

Two things are holding me back from buying one now: the price and the storage. $399 is a bit much, especially for 16 gb of memory. I currently have a 20 gb 4G iPod, which is about 3/4 full. Wouldn't be a problem to rip more of our 1000+ cds to fill it up even more. Ripping video (Futurama & NewsRadio episodes, for example) would fill a new iPod up even faster. Think I'll be waiting for the 32 gb version, which I figure will be the first revision some time early next year.

Oh, one other thing: Wouldn't have minded it it had the camera on it either. Maybe that'd make me go pay $399 for the 16 gb version.

Posted by jim at 8:27 AM | Permalink