Let's Go Digital

After receiving my bonus from my employer earlier this week, I went up to the Apple store in Towson and bought myself an ipod mini, with the intention of making my long commute more bearable. First impression: the mini will perform more than admirably as my commuting sidekick. It's small enough to fit into a regular-sized pants or shirt pocket, looks fantastic (I bought the lime green model, in case you were curious), and sounds much better than something this small has any business sounding. The frequency response is incredible, and this is with the uncomfortable earbuds that come packaged with the mini. It pumps out plenty of bass for my tastes, and the sound may be as clear as on my home stereo. In a word, impressive.

Thanks to Apple, my transformation from analog to digital yuppie is almost complete.

I can also understand how Apple is banking on ipods being the gateway device for more people to purchase Apple computers. I was playing with one in their store, and it is a beautiful and elegant machine. Still overpriced when compared to the equivalent PC, and I'm not sure what Apple is thinking offering 256MB as the base RAM on most models (maybe their non-Windows OS is less of a memory-hog?), but if I were in the market for a new PC I'd certainly take a look. They're not quite as pricey as a few years ago, and their most notable feature may be what they lack; a Microsoft OS.

Sin City opens tomorrow, and as you could tell from a previous post I'm really looking forward to it. An article on wired.com about director Robert Rodriguez is a good read; it describes how the maverick director makes his movies by shooting exclusively in digital, reveals some Sin City production tricks, and even compares him to a young George Lucas. He'll use non-union crews when it suits him, and lost a directing job for a big-budget sci-fi movie when he quit the Director's Guild over a dispute about Frank Miller's directing credit. And if you've never seen El Mariachi, his $7,000 first film, check it out. It's just as exhilarating, if not quite as flashy, as its big-star sequel Desperado, but it's basically just more fun.