I’ve been a bit quiet for the past week or so for a number of reasons. London was cool, my sister’s new baby is very cute and the radio studios have finally cleared of last-minute-panicky students and the backlog of reading to get through has a significant dent in it.

And while I don’t have a great deal of time to blog extensively right at this moment, I have had a few emails from dialup readers of the Wireless asking for the podcast not to entirely replace the text so I thought I should get in a short missive.

And did want to draw your attention to a couple of things.

1: Boycott the Coldplay album (here’s why)

2. I am now officially entirely over Star Wars.
I have seen the new film, and while it looked great and did everything it was meant to do (except, perhaps, involve credible dialogue), it turns out that I am no longer 10 years old.

3: I’m in love with my iPod
iPod Agent has turned my iPod into the means by which I read blogs, newspapers and check what’s on at the movies – and it syncs to my Outlook contacts, calendar and tasks (but then so does my phone, which introduces redundancy).

It’s RSS friendly, and it’s set up to get the latest bunch of news and blogposts just before my alarm goes off in the morning. Once I’ve worked out the bugs, it’s probably going to be my podcatcher of choice too. I might also see if I can integrate it with the fabulous Replay Radio (highly recommended software).

I use iPodTV to check what’s on TV and radio and I’m using iPod Library to download, convert and read ebooks (not as eye-unfriendly as I’d anticipated). I’m a few chapters through Ulysses (further than I got last time I tried with the paperback version).

I suspect that a forthcoming version of iPod Agent will make these other two pieces of software surplus to requirements.

But what really caused the iPod to regain my affection was a long overdue process of file management. I went through my 160 gigabyte collection of music to find a good 50 gigabytes of music (my top 10,000 songs) that I can just leave on indefinite shuffle without ever striking a dud track.

I am now well and truly cured of owning CDs (though buying records will continue unabated).

To celebrate my new love, I determined to remove the unsightly surface scratches from the screen. A quick Google turned up the solution: a soft cloth, toothpaste, and lots and lots of patience.

My iPod is now both shiny AND minty fresh.