The iPod Nano-The best Just Got Smaller

I've been living with my Nano since my birthday, so here are some observations.

1. It's the bomb!
2. Battery life is much greater for the type of listening I do.
3. It's slower to download than Firewire.
4. The new color screen is much easier to see in different lighting conditions.
5. It's perfect for the gym.

The older hard drive versions were great but there was a problem for folks like me that listen to live jam music. The hard drives basically feed a memory buffer so for a regular four minute song, that is fine. The drive spins up, fills the buffer with digital music and then spins down. It doesn't spin up again until the buffer begins to empty and feeds it the next song. The problem is I might have a 45 minute "You Enjoy Myself" from a live Phish show or that killer 35 minute "Shakedown Street" from Merriweather in '85. My hard drive was constantly spinning and battery life was not the 10 hrs advertised. The new one is totally flash memory based, thus much longer battery life. Oh yeah, and it fits in an Orbits box.

Paw-Paw Cache at Dutch Gap

Ally McBeagle likes to find geocaches,too! 

Well, It's about damn time!

I've been pursuing a new sport for a while now called "geocaching". It combines tech with the outdoors. You have to be able to navigate, both the internet and the the outdoors using a GPS receiver. Here is how it works: People hide "caches" in interesting places and then mark their locations with a GPS and the post the coordinates on www.geocaching.com
They hide ammo boxes, tupperware containers, micros (very small containers that only have a piece of paper for a log) and virtuals (no container but you have to solve a puzzle to log the find).
So if you want to play, you log on, download the coordinates to your GPS and set out to find the caches. It is absolutely addicting. The containers have trinkets in them and the idea is you take one and leave one of your own. I like to leave gem stones, for example. Stickers, matchbox cars, CD's, batteries, glow-in-the-dark aliens, toys, coins, rubber snakes, etc. are all fair game. Kids love this stuff (of all ages, obviously).

I have finally, after finding 36 of other peoples caches, hidden one of my own. Where is it? Well now, if you want to know you will have to go to the geocaching web site and type in zip code 27842 to find out! Hope you find it, but be forewarned. You won't be able to wait to find your next one! BTW, if you click on the title of this post, it will take you directly to the info. That's it, no more hints!