I decided to create an "iPod Touch" section on my site because of my recent obsession (a.k.a. addiction).  If it's going to eat up most of my free time, I thought I could at least share my experiences with it and maybe get some input from other Touch or iPhone owners out there.  At the very least maybe I can even talk a few "potential" Touch owners to get off the fence and take the leap.  So this is it, my first Touch article.  I'll figure out how to separate these articles from the main blog too, so us Touch Geeks can have our own separate lil area here.

I'm in the "app discovery" stage with my touch, but I'm quickly learning that this just may be a "permanent destination" rather than a stage.  The apps just keep coming and coming.  They said "over 140,000 apps" recently, which is amazing.  Granted, 95% of them are probably crap, but then the other 5% have got to be amazing, right?  And what's 5% of 140,000? Something like...7,000 apps! This makes me a little disappointed to find that I can only have 11 pages of apps on the Touch, 16 apps per page, or a maximum of 176 apps.  I still have a few pages left to fill, but every week I find a few more I just gotta have.  Many are free too, believe it or not, and even a few great ones are free.

Hans got me started on free radio by mentioning Radio Paradise.  Since then I've tried Last.fm, Pandora and a few others, some even streaming thousands of radio stations from Shoutcast and other popular Internet broadcasting formats.  Today I found Slacker Radio, another one I like a lot with some nice options.  And the other day I found Moodagent, which doesn't stream radio at all, it uses my own music collection on my iPod to generate instant playlists based on my mood.  It displays 5 color-coded slider bars--one each for Sensuality, Tenderness, Joy, Agressiveness, and Tempo.  I slide one or more bars up or down to provide More or less music containing that particular amount of that feature, and it instantly generates a playlist of songs on my iPod.  When a song I like a lot is playing, with one click I can also generate an instant playlist tweaked to the exact properties of that song itself.  Interesting.  It seems to work quite well, and it's fun to tinker with.

K, that's it for today's Touch update. p.s. - This week I realized that my iPod Touch has now become basically an "iPad Nano."

This is awesome.  I'm listening to Pandora Radio and it has ads that scroll up on the bottom third of the screen on my Touch.  Today it pops up with the familiar green H&R Block box and says "Launch Refund Radio" from H&R Block. I couldn't resist, so I clicked on it. The O'Jays "For the love of money", Bing Crosby's "Brother can you spare a dime", Pink Floyd's "Money", Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" and The Beatles' "Money Can't Buy Me Love" are just a few of the tunes playing.  Great idea.  Almost as amusing as the guy in the Statue of Liberty costume dancing the jig on the side of Sheridan Road in Waukegan to get everyone's attention, apparently advertising for "Liberty Tax Services" across the street.

I'm hooked.  Totally addicted.  I confess.  Since I purchased an iPod Touch, I have become one of the millions of "digital zombies" out there everywhere--head slumped forward, both hands clutching a small device, thumbs moving frantically over the device... you've seen 'em, they're everywhere.  Totally immersed in whataever they're doing.  I hear most of them are texting, but I'm not.  At least not yet.  I'm hooked on the games at the moment.  And the music.  And the police radio.  And e-mail.  And everything else, except texting.  I have neglected my website, my photo albums (I still have plenty of Arizona Trip photos to go through and post), and I'm getting behind on my chores at home.  The fish in the aquarium are starting to look at me funny, as if to say, "Hey, man, we're swimmin' in poop here, ya know! What's the deal?"

The game I've become the most addicted to, righty now at least, is called "Flight Control".  Simple game, and I remember playing another one exactly like it on one of my old Atari computers way back when.  It's an air traffic controller game.  You're viewing a map from above and you're the air traffic controller for the area.  You need to guide each plane and helicopter to their appropriate destinations as they enter and exit your area, hopefully avoiding an air disaster along the way.  This game also takes this a step further by adding an optional multiplayer mode.  If you play multiplayer, each person is in charge of their own adjacent air space, and each will have to direct aircraft to their own runways as well as passing them off to the other player's air space.  The game ends instantly when two aircraft collide.  Gee, I wonder why, it's only a small mistake... Anyway, I don't know if it's because I played it years ago and I'm thrilled to be reliving a part of my childhood, or what, I just gotta keep playing to try to get a little bit further and get a higher rank.

That aside though, I'm finding the overall usefulness of the Touch to be awesome.  I can see how the iPhone would be even that much MORE useful, since you have a connection pretty much everywhere instead of just wifi, and there's a bunch more you can do with it, but I just can't afford the extra monthly cost yet.  The Touch is a great compromise though, having many of the same features without the monthly commitment.  Maybe down the road a bit...like when my current cellular contract expires.

So there ya go.  A blog entry.  Took care of that problem, didn't I?  Now back to my airplanes...

I posted another batch of photos from my Arizona Trip.  Chronologically, this is the first batch--everything taken during my flight to Phoenix.  It was the first time I've flown too, so it was an interesting experience.  I had a window seat, so I took a lot of photos during the flight.  I didn't realize plane windows were so tiny though--it made it a little bit restrictive, but I think I managed to capture a few good ones.  The sunrise shots from above the clouds are my favorites from this set.  Click on the thumbnail image, or here, to view the set.

This is the video I took when we arrived back from Arizona to surprise Tyler.  Jay called Ty once we got into Kenosha after driving from Arizona and he told him on the phone to get on the PS3 in about 15 minutes so they can video chat. Ty had no idea his dad was actually in Kenosha. When we arrived, Jay came into the house behind me and was bundled up to cover his face. He even spoke a couple times before Ty finally realized who it was.

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And while we're talking about Ty, here's another video of him flying a tiny radio-controlled UFO that I picked up during our recent Arizona-to-Wisconsin road trip. We stopped in Roswell, New Mexico and I found this UFO in the gift shop at the UFO Museum. I thought it would be the perfect souvenir for Kevin, so I picked it up. This is one of Ty's more successful attempts at a perfect flight.

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