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Various Updates

Hey, everyone. It's been a couple months since I last posted, so I felt that it could be neat to share what's been going on lately. So, here are various updates from my life since my last post, listed in no particular order:

Rebbling Again

Around this time last year, I discovered my love for Pebble smartwatches. However, as I experienced hardware failure firsthand, I lost interest in these geeky gadgets. A normal person may have called it quits at this point, but I found myself missing the Pebble experience. Long story short, I regained interest and now I have three new Pebbles. Long live Rebble!

Pictured: Pebble Steel, Pebble Time, and Pebble

CDs, Cassettes, and Vinyl

Ever since I wrote my post about repairing a vintage portable CD player, I've been revisiting physical audio formats. Thus, I've also bought some releases on CD and vinyl, as well as purchased a Sony CFD-S70 boombox to play cassettes. As for said boombox, I have a few thoughts to share. No, the cassette mechanism and speakers are not great, but it's a pretty good player for only $50 new. CD and tape playback are fine, recording is surprisingly good considering the use of a permanent erase magnet, and if you're a casual cassette and/or CD user, it's not a bad deal. Anyway, I've gone ahead and attached a photo of the CFD below as well as some of my new CDs.

CDs: Technique by New Order, The Tipping Point by Tears For Fears, I Like Fun and Book by They Might Be Giants

Finally, there's vinyl to discuss. While I'm still very new to this format, I really like the big album artwork and collectibility surrounding it. It can definitely be an expensive hobby, so I've not bought too many records yet, but here are some of the highlights from my collection at this point:

Records: Black Celebration by Depeche Mode, Brotherhood and Republic by New Order

Free iPod Video

Before I move on from music, I thought it could be cool to share a recent acquisition of mine. I found this iPod lying around my grandparents' house, and they let me have it! Some of you may recall that I had written a post about modding an iPod Video previously, so this is by no means my first experience with one of these devices. However, this one is in great condition, has its original 60-gigabyte hard drive, and it even holds a decent charge! Overall, I'd say this was a pretty awesome find.

The new iPod docked to my Philips BTM630 micro hi-fi system

Website Updates

These days, I've not been doing much coding. Part of me feels sad about this, as I do miss working on my projects at points, but I've also found that I've been a lot less stressed and busy since I stepped back from my programming projects.

That being said, I haven't entirely stopped! Earlier this month, I built a new website from scratch, taking the best elements of my older sites while also introducing some awesome new stuff. There's still plenty to do, but I'm very proud of how it has turned out.

Final Thoughts

These last few months, I have been very busy, and the next few months aren't looking to be any different. As a result, I may not be blogging much for a while. This is difficult for me since it's becoming clear that the "good old days" where I blogged all the time and was constantly making something new and exciting are behind me. I guess that's the price of growing up, but I'm still determined to keep posting, albeit less frequently. So, stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for reading!

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