My money's not good enough...

I tried to buy QuickTime Pro the other day, but Apple wouldn't couldn't sell it to me. Their on–line store was broken and they didn't answer the telephone when I tried that alternative. I live in the U.S. and have a camcorder that records prevailing North American standards. My parents live in Britain and their television and DVD player can't play home movies of their granddaughter unless they are first converted to British formats. I would prefer portable open–source software for a variety of reasons, not least that it doesn't tie me to a single computer or operating system. I've had no luck building video software from source so I resigned myself to buying QuickTime Pro. When Apple seemed to have "nobody home", I took an alternative route: I'm sending my parents an American portable DVD player.

Sansa Stuffed...

I really like my SanDisk Sansa m250, or perhaps I should say that "I really liked it". For some reason it will power up, but just sits there at the Sansa splash screen and refuses to progress any further. Now I have to contact SanDisk to see whether I can return it to them for repair or replacement.

I have an Apple iPod mini that I don't use much because it depends on special software (either iTunes or gtkpod) to "bless" any MP3 files that I put on it. My friend Nigel took an alternative tack, installing Rockbox on the iPod itself. Although I have yet to find mention of it in the Rockbox manual, or on the Web site, people on IRC tell me that it can also play Ogg/Vorbis files, which would be a definite plus.