So last Wednesday evening as I prepared to get horizontal, I noticed a small plastic bag in my spot in bed. Intrigued, I looked over at my spouse. She did her best 'deadpan' face routine, so I opened the bag and had a gander inside.
Well, nestled in the bag... was a brand new iPod Nano. You can't imagine my surprise! I mean, I had talked about getting something like that eventually, at some point, but this was right out of left field. She had even thought to include a leather case for it. Very nice!! Now I only found out afterwards that my better half had already gotten herself one, but still... I found it incredibly sweet that she would have picked me one up too. It's not like she should or would have felt obliged to.
So I started thinking about the advances in sound reproduction systems in the last few years. I can clearly remember strolling around Montreal or Halifax/Dartmouth in the '70s and '80s, with a cassette tape player clipped on my belt. Even the smallest ones were pretty dense and were guaranteed to leave a mark on you. And you'd always be clanging them against objects...
Then came the advent of CDs. Again, you were forced to walk or jog around with a device strapped to your body or clipped to your belt. They contained megabytes of data and could keep you in tunes for quite a while. These however were remarkably lighter and slimmer than their tape-playing counterparts and the quality of the sound was markedly improved. Then again, you still had to carry a supply of CDs, unless you really, really liked the one you had loaded in your CD player.
Now we're into the age of MP3 players and iPods. These units are so small and portable, you don't even realize you have them on you. And the data they can hold? We're talking gigabytes here! Unbelievable! Kind of makes you wonder what's waiting another 10 years down the road, don't it? This little gizmo might help break the tedium of the bus rides, once they start rolling again. But I'll keep it on low. You can't drown out your surroundings and still expect to maintain your situational awareness...
Well, nestled in the bag... was a brand new iPod Nano. You can't imagine my surprise! I mean, I had talked about getting something like that eventually, at some point, but this was right out of left field. She had even thought to include a leather case for it. Very nice!! Now I only found out afterwards that my better half had already gotten herself one, but still... I found it incredibly sweet that she would have picked me one up too. It's not like she should or would have felt obliged to.
So I started thinking about the advances in sound reproduction systems in the last few years. I can clearly remember strolling around Montreal or Halifax/Dartmouth in the '70s and '80s, with a cassette tape player clipped on my belt. Even the smallest ones were pretty dense and were guaranteed to leave a mark on you. And you'd always be clanging them against objects...
Then came the advent of CDs. Again, you were forced to walk or jog around with a device strapped to your body or clipped to your belt. They contained megabytes of data and could keep you in tunes for quite a while. These however were remarkably lighter and slimmer than their tape-playing counterparts and the quality of the sound was markedly improved. Then again, you still had to carry a supply of CDs, unless you really, really liked the one you had loaded in your CD player.
Now we're into the age of MP3 players and iPods. These units are so small and portable, you don't even realize you have them on you. And the data they can hold? We're talking gigabytes here! Unbelievable! Kind of makes you wonder what's waiting another 10 years down the road, don't it? This little gizmo might help break the tedium of the bus rides, once they start rolling again. But I'll keep it on low. You can't drown out your surroundings and still expect to maintain your situational awareness...
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