They say there comes a point in time for every iPod where the battery doesn’t like to hold a charge any longer. That time came before Christmas for me. I headed onto Ebay.ca and picked up a new battery for my 4G 40 Gig iPod. It arrived and then it was the fun of trying to crack it open and install the new battery (since iPods don’t have any screws, this can be a little more “fun” then you might think!)

I found these great instructions - there is a PDF document and even a video to show you how it’s done. I followed it step-by-step and didn’t seem to have any problems.

However, shortly after changing the battery, my iPod started to act a little weird. It would just randomly crash and tell me that the battery was out when it wasn’t, etc. Not fun! So, after almost giving up and possibly shipping it back to Apple to see if they could fix it, I decided to do a complete “Restore to Factory Settings” - bascially it wipes out everything and you’re left with a fresh iPod as if you just bought it. I was skeptical about this working, but I would want to do this to ship it back anyways.

So far, (and I know it’s just one day), it seems to be behaving as it should. I know that’s not the ideal situation for others that are having problems with their iPod, but as a last resort, it seems to have done the trick! I’ll post an update if things change…

UPDATE: The replacement battery does not seem to be holding a charge for nearly as long as it should and my iPod has still been randomly crashing. The guy who sold me the battery on eBay is going to let me exchange it, so I’ll wait for that before giving up and sending the whole iPod back to Apple. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: I installed the replacement battery and the problems I was having seem to have gone away and I’m getting a good charge out of the new battery. I wanted to wait a while before posting the update since last time I said all was good, it all went bad again! All in all, besides the hiccup with what was likely a faulty battery, I’d recommend that anyone who’s iPod needs a bit of a boost check out getting a new battery.

I was going to write about my New Year’s Resolutions, but considering one of them would be to update this site more often, and seeing as it’s been nearly a month since my last post, it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.

Instead, I’ll just give a quick update on what’s been happening here in Calgary over the past couple weeks - in reality, not much! I’ve been busy with school and getting ready for another exam. We went skiing once more since we’ve been back - we hope to get out this weekend and the mountains have been getting a ton of snow. I will do everything I can to remember to bring my camera this time.

We also got a new TV (a 20″ Philips - steal of a deal from Costco) and
DVD Player. Unfortunately, we haven’t had that much time to actually test them out yet, but what we’ve seen so far is great. I know most people have a TV and DVD player, but I was using an old 13″ TV that I’ve had since grade 4 and did not have a DVD player. If you are in the market for a DVD Player and have lots of Divx or Xvid movies (if you don’t know what these are, then you probably don’t have any), then this is the player for you - it plays them all and they look pretty good!

Apple released a bunch of new products last week. I ordered the new iLife ‘06 which could have some great new tools and features to help with the recording of The Skinny on Sports. I’ll try and keep everyone posted on what I like and don’t like about it when it arrives and I start playing around with it.

I’ve discovered a new website that is quickly becoming something that I can’t live without. It’s called Pandora and it’s a streaming music recommendation service. Simply put, you go to their site, enter a song or artist that you like, and it plays you other songs that it thinks you will like based on 400 different criteria for each song. They rate each song in person and individually so it’s pretty accurate to your tastes. It gets even better at knowing what you like since you can tell it whether you like or don’t like each song - so it learns from you! You can set up multiple channels with different types of songs depending on your mood. After using it for a couple of weeks and rating some songs that it recommends, it has a pretty good idea of what I want to hear now. I just leave it on while working around the house or studying and I’m discovering a bunch of great new music. Everyone should definitely give it a try!

Alright… back to the books! I’ll try for the New Years Resolution I mentioned at the top - but no promises!