It was with shame last night that I noticed myself scouring the reports from WWDC ‘10 for news of a next generation iPod Touch (there was none, incidentally).

It all began a couple of years ago, someone brought one in to work. I was on the lookout for a new MP3 player, having used one of these since 2001…

Yeah, I got all the ladies.

It was a PDA, to help me organise my busy jet-setting lifestyle, which involved cycling to work, doing menial IT tasks for teachers in an age where floppy disks were still the primary medium of data transfer, and then cycling home again.

It cost me £500, so I made damn sure I used the hell out of it, which mainly involved to-do lists, solitaire, birthday reminders, reading books (yes, I read books on it) and listening to MP3s.

Strangely, by 2008, it didn’t seem all that much of an antique. PDAs still did pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same hardware and software. Then I saw an iPod Touch and realised that someone had made a PDA that wasn’t clunky to use. It did all the same stuff as my PDA, except it was lighter, had a battery that lasted for days, had a better screen, and made me look like less of an epic geek. And cost half as much.

So, I immediately bought one, and realised afterward that I had finally entered the House of Apple. Two weeks ago I took delivery of an iPad. Last night I was thinking about my next iPod Touch.

You got me, Apple. Using your computers feels like driving a car using only the pedals and gearstick, while wearing a Michelin Man suit. Your little iDevices, though, are exactly what I wanted mobile devices to be like in the 21st Century.

It was silly of me, I know now. When I buy a PC game I expect it to function like the console games I have become so used to in the past 5 years. I got a game off Steam at the weekend to try with a friend, since it was half price. I made sure the game had downloaded, so I’d be ready to go. I had an hour to spare, so I thought I’d give it a shot tonight. It is now half an hour later. The game has gone through a five-part initialisation, and then told me I needed to log in with my XBox LIVE account to play this Windows LIVE game. Okay. No problem. Then it told me that LIVE needed to be updated. Okay, do it.

Then the game restarted after a short delay, and I was prompted to sign into LIVE again. Coulda sword I checked the “just automatically sign me in” box, but okay. I signed in again. Another patch was needed. A bigger one. Then, it restarted and asked me to sign in again.

Through gritted teeth, I did so. “downloading your profile…”, accompanied by a very slow progress bar. It is just finishing now as I type this, 40 minutes after I sat down to play.

These kinds of delays were okay when I was 20 year old geek, but I don’t really have the time to waste now that I’m a 32 year old geek and have accumulated responsibilities. No wonder no one plays games on these things anymore.

I wanted to make a new forum avatar consisting of some of my CG spaceships exploding. Sadly, couldn’t quite get it small enough in file size for anyting but Newtek’s forum. Yes, it does need all the explosions.

Normally, I hate it when people take stuff from one thing, and mash some audio over it from something else, and then put it on YouTube and say “HAY LOOK WHAT I MADE!”. However, I was watching an episode of Deep Space Nine the other day, because I’m a nerd, and because it’s brilliant, and because I’ve never really rewatched it. Aside from the fact that the last two seasons really kicked it up a notch, Foundation Imaging were at the top of their game after being ditched by Babylon 5, and produced some great effects sequences. Combined with Angry Sisko, it was pretty compelling stuff.

I was tootling around YouTube, and came across a video that fits my Rage Criteria above. Except, this one actually sort of works. Particularly the bit at 2m54s, which should be where the above video starts. The look on Sisko’s face says it all.

I really ought to get the BSG soundtracks.