Japan and the Zaurus

Departing for Japan tomorrow evening. I'm certainly excited, finding it difficult to concentrate at work. Right now I'm also feeling somewhat drained. I need music, but I'm looking at a very limited supply that I can take with me.

The problem is that my portable CD player is worn out. That means my only CD players are the computers and the DVD player - not very portable.

My current solution is to use my Zaurus PDA. Unfortunately, audio recordings take up a lot of memory. I have already filled up a 128MB compact flash card with 2 soundtracks worth of Ogg Vorbis encoded music. Another 64MB flash could hold another CD's worth (but I feel like listening to a 2 CD set!). However, I'm probably going to want to use the flash cards to use in the digital camera. They also take up the slot I use for wireless networking.

No choice but to get a big SD memory card, which would allow download stuff I download over the wireless network connection. Don't have enough room for them in internal memory. Pity that the few shops that sell SD cards are expensive.

Anyway, the Zaurus won't let me listen to the purchases I hope to make at Tower Records in Tokyo. That place sounds like my worst nightmare for spending money. I will need all my willpower not to blow our budget there.

Just have to hope that Tan Dun's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hero soundtracks are enough to remember Japan by (holidays always go better with music).

Finally got WaJEi working on the Zaurus. It's a Java English-Japanese dictionary. The Monash University ftp server was refusing connections over the past fortnight. It's come good just in time to let me download the dictionary files. Seems like a pretty nice program if you already have some hiragana and other Japanese knowledge. Bit slow at times, but otherwise looks good.

I had better get the sleep in tonight. Don't sleep well on transport, including planes. Hope that it's not going to be a turbulent journey, but I fear otherwise. I hate that dropping feeling. Guess I'll never be an astronaut.

Comments

Zaurus Music Player

(17-10-2003 02:38)

Hiya,

Well, you have posted on my blog several times in the last week. Now, I have a chance to post back ;)

I have a Zaurus 5500. I have two 128MB SD disks which can hold 4 to 8 albums depending on compression rate. I use Open Zaurus, which I like much more than the vanilla setup that came with the device. I use the CF for sharing with my digital camera and for wireless networking.

I use a 60GB USB harddrive and my laptop as a repository for music. At the moment I have about 40GB of sound that I'm lugging around with me... It's great to be able to listen to such a variety of music... Although I often get hooked on one or two albums for as long as a month at a time ;)

I have heard that there are USB CF cards out there and drivers for OZ. Seems like a reasonable way to lug around a heck of a lot of music... I have had my eyes open for one of these CF cards, but have not found one yet.

The trick with CDs (if you don't want to lug a laptop with you) is to goto Internet cafes that have a CD drive and a USB port. Then rip the CD to the USB hard drive and throw out the media (or give it to a friend ;)

All the best,

-- Bindu