I won’t be liveblogging MacWorld this time, but it looks like AppleMatters is all over it already. So far, XServe G5s and a bunch of software updates.

A reader, Hartley Odwak, found my iPod Surgery photo album and reported that he found the same problem with his unit. He wrote:

My ipod charges, but neither of my macs will recognize it. I am certain that it is the port; hence why i dismantled mine!

What I see where my Firewire port attached to the logic board are (1) four larger connections at each corner of the port, all of which are loose (are these supposed to be soldered to the board?) and (2) Six very thin pins running parallel, and down from the port, conecting the port to the circuit board. Some of these are loose.

Should I make sure all 10 connections are soldered tight to the board? The thin ones may be too hard for me to solder, as I have never worked on such tiny connections, and as such may take it to a shop to have them do it.

His solution, which I would recommend to anyone over my experience, was to take the unit to a local independent Mac shop to get the soldering repairs done. It cost about $40 and the unit works again (unlike mine), so well worth the $.

Some notes on my new 10GB iPod to round out the story:

• The backlight is very cool.
• The solid state, no moving parts controls took virtually no time to get used to. I like the solid state wheel a lot better than the original moving one.
• I did have to get used to the new button placement; having everything around the wheel was a little easier, I think.
• One gripe: the new unit doesn’t work with the old remote control, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

Overall a slick little unit.

Everyone’s favorite local independent software development house, Ranchero Software (otherwise known as Brent and Sheila Simmons), won a MacWorld Editor’s Choice Award for their NetNewsWire product. NetNewsWire is my favorite RSS aggregator on any platform, and I can write blog posts in it too!

Congrats to Brent and Sheila, who are truly living the dream.

I go through periods of being addicted to computer games. My shame (if that’s the right word) is that instead of being addicted to the “cool” games like EverQuest or Final Fantasy, I find these random games that no one else is playing to get hooked on.

The latest is Solace, from Freeverse, a small developer who specializes in entertaining, clever versions of card and board games (and who also became infamous for their Jared, the Butcher of Song). Solace starts out a lot like Risk or Axis and Allies, with six powers facing off across several continents and a lot of territory to conquer. Then it adds some quirks like sea battles, amphibious assaults, artillery defense, and cavalry shock troops. You have to be able to master sea combat if you want to win; there are no other ways to grow your territory, and it’s a lot easier to defend your country from sea attack if you head them off in the open ocean.

Criticisms? The game crashed once when I left it running unattended for a while, and the computer turns are quite slow. But overall I’m hooked. And at least it means I’m not playing Burning Monkey Solitaire.

(Incidentally, I categorized this under Mac, but both Solace and BMS are cross platform. As is Jared.)

Hysterical article in the Wesleyan Argus, pointed to by Wired, about how sharing one’s iTunes playlists sometimes reveals more about oneself than one intends—and can either lead others to idolize or ostracize you. It’s called playlistism. And it’s almost certainly for real.

At work, I had to change the default name on my iTunes shared music (the name defaults to your computer name, which defaults to my email address) because I was getting too much grief about even using iTunes—this on the first day it was out, when one could be forgiven for experimenting. So I changed the name to “The Boney King of Nowhere.” Now I find I have random people tuned in from time to time. Have I become a recipient of reverse playlistism? Am I now some kind of pirate radio station?