Our stinky problem

Two weeks ago, my alert wife, Beth, noticed a skunk in our back garden. So far we've seen birds, chipmunks, squirrels, ground hogs, bats, and one deer, but the skunk was really a surprise. If we can swing an elephant in the near future, we may well start charging admission.

Anyway, a week ago, the one skunk turned into two.

Last night, the two turned into...well...you can have a look (22mb video). The interview at the end is with my friend JG, and his girlfriend Anne, filmed a few nights before when we spotted a couple of the stinkers. That footage was very dark, though, so I only included the interview. Adroit viewers will notice that the footage was shot at two clearly different times.

settling in with the Clix

I've now had the IRiver Clix for a few weeks, and have taken it on a business trip. How does it stack up? Well, the precious OGG support is there, but just barely. It's definitely a second-class citizen.

With MP3's, the you can build playlists, sort by album, genre, ratings, all the good stuff we've come to expect from being able to read ID3 tags. Even though OGG contains this data, the Clix doesn't read it.

Just getting the OGGs onto the Clix requires you to deviate from the norm. Rather than syncing with Windows Media Player, you copy the files onto the device directly. I'm fine with that, but the resulting tracks don't show up in the Music section when you fire up the Clix! Instead, you have to go to Extras, Browse Device. It's pretty hokey.

It will play a series of files in the same directory, and you can make the directory structure as deep as you like, so at least there's that.

Enough grumbling! Other than that 2nd class OGG support, I'm very happy with the player. I particuarly like the ability to copy text files to the device and view them while you're on the road. I copied some directions to an event into a text file, dragged it to the Clix, then referred to them while driving.

The 2G storage is a bit limiting, I wish it had been 4G instead, but otherwise, I'm a happy camper. I contacted IRiver about adding fully blown support for ID3 tags on the OGGs, we'll see what happens.