About to upgrade this blog to WordPress 1.5.

11:40pm. Done. The main difference noticeable to readers will be that your comments automatically go to moderation if you’ve never left a comment before.

One thing notable to us authors is that the top of the admin pages looks a bit screwy in Firefox (but okay in IE). Not sure why that is, because WP1.5 doesn’t do that on my other blogs… something to look at when I have more time.

I am gradually building up the number of RSS feeds I keep track of, currently using Bloglines because it’s an online aggregator, so I can access the same content from both work and home and keep track of it in one place. It also allows for decent categorisation of feeds.

One of the FAQs on the Bloglines site is How Many News Feeds Do Most People Track?, which is answered:

The average Bloglines user tracks more than 20 news feeds. The most we’ve ever heard of is 1,400 news feeds. Not everybody has the stamina for that amount of information…

How many feeds are you actively tracking, and on what kinds of subjects? How often do you check for updated posts, or do you have new items ‘pinging’ on your desktop?

I am currently tracking 122 feeds, with categories including Animation, Business, Charities, Education, Environment, Ethics, Faith, Human Rights, IT, Media, Personal blogs, Science, Technology, Weird, and Writing. I also take advantage of Bloglines search feeds which match specific words and phrases to blogs ‘on the fly’. I tend to scan headlines every 1-2 hours during the day.

Well the response when plugging the iPod into my computer at work was the same as that at home: nothing. It appears something caused the battery to stop working.

So I rang up Apple support, and after they had me attempt resetting it again, put me on hold. When the guy came back he proclaimed it to be a battery problem, and said it would need servicing. Sigh. He then gave me the URL for requesting service. I clicked through to this, only to find their server down, returning a 500 error. Terrific, this gets better and better!

A couple of hours later it was working. It leads you through various disclaimers including having you read a long list of terms and conditions in a small font. (Why do they put it in a small font? It’s a web page fer chrissake – it doesn’t use any more paper or bytes to be in a normal-sized font.)

I tapped in all my details and ended up with a form to print and take with the iPod to the post office. There the bloke scanned off the form, and gave me a PostPak and bubblewrap to put it in, and sent it off, postage-free.

Unlike when you get a battery replacement, apparently they will actually fix your iPod, rather than sending you a replacement one. And the bloke said it may take up to 14 days… which is a helluva lot better than some repair places.

So now, I wait. Sigh.

I don’t smegging believe it. I’ve had the thing less than a day and it’s playing up.

Yesterday during a spare moment at work, I set up iTunes on my work PC. All okay, set up the iPod, copied a dozen songs onto it, all good.

Took it home and tried to set iTunes up on my home PC. When it came to plug the iPod in, it wouldn’t play ball. The small print says it needs a high-power USB2.0 port… which to be honest I’m not sure my computer has. I’ll be looking into that.

But anyway, at this point the iPod stopped working. It now only does anything if it’s plugged into the mains, through the dock or directly. The battery indicator says it’s charged, and it plays merrily, until it’s plugged in. I’ve tried resetting it a couple of times, which it’ll do if it’s plugged in, but otherwise, nothing, nada, zilch.

You smegging what?!?

Assuming it’ll respond to the work computer again, I’ll do a full factory restore on it, and/or try refreshing its software. If that doesn’t work, however, I’ll not be very bloody happy. (I’m not particularly ecstatic right now, to be honest.)