The blog of a Leslie Wong
Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis turned 46 today. I have a faint recollection of complimenting him on his set outside Sweet Basil, (or was it Joanna’s) in the early 80’s. That’s a lot of water under the bridge.
Currently, my favorite work of his is Doin’ (Y)Our Thing, on his album, From The Plantation To The Penitentiary.
I first saw this story on digg.com.
The guys (H3X, bounci.rabbit.123, vettefan, saXas, matthew98, supernatural, and xxDriveNxx) over at iPodwizard.net have re-written the 5G (fifth generation iPod) iPod’s firmware, so it looks like the new iPod Classic’s.
The new iPod Nano and iPod Classic have a new interface. While navigating through the menus, half of the screen is taken up by a floating image of album artwork.
One thing that’s missing on the 5G version of iPodWizard’s hack that the iPod Classic has is Coverflow. Also the images don’t float, like they do on the new iPods, but iPodWizard’s work is very cool, nonetheless.
When I first used the iPod Classic to iPod Video firmware hack, I had the problem of my iPod going into a “Boot Loop” – after the firmware was written, during the reboot, the Apple logo would disappear while the drive clicked and then cycled again.
Putting the iPod into the disk mode by holding select and play allowed me to do a restore to the original (Apple) firmware. Then I downloaded a version of the firmware “without the boot loops.”
From Blue Note Records: “Wynton Marsalis’ moving new album From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, offers a clear-eyed and uncompromising look at the cracks in America’s facade of prosperity and happiness.”
I just downloaded Doin’ (Y)Our Thing, the third track on this album, from Amazon’s new MP3 store. It is very compelling music.
The file format is 256kbps VBR MP3, but I guess because it’s a long track (8:36), it cost $1.94. This track was not offered singly on iTunes, so I’m happy there’s more competition and another source for DRM-free music.
Hank Jones is 89 years old today.