STREAMING RELEASE SOON

you've been awake all night so why should you crash out at dawn?

i don't know what to think. we all know what's happened. charlie kirk died over a week ago and now we're basically getting rid of freedom of speech. the trump administration is pressuring networks and owners of stations to cut off jimmy kimmel because of something he said about maga. it's weird. living in a time when i'm fucking worried about the speech of the mainstream media. it's weird.

it also cuts into any narrative that it's all controlled because the us government is doing that right now. they're taking programs off the air because they're saying things about trump they don't like. it's fucking despicable. it's terrifying.

i don't know what to believe anymore. i don't know if there's any pragmatic path we can go down to fix this. i think charlie kirk was a despicable being and i can't cry for his death yet other than making a few people momentarily happy it's just giving the trump admin cause célèbre to do whatever they want to do. i am glad he isn't around to spew hate. but ive fucking lost hope in all of this. i've lost hope.

i fucking hate conservatives. it is an inherently evil ideology. what the fuck do we realistically do about it. what do we do? because i keep seeing things about how trump's approval rating is in the toilet. yeah okay. that doesn't matter anymore. the world has changed now. the us is the country of project 2025, palantir and the heritage foundation. they aren't going to let go.

song download.

so i managed to do it. i got my 1st gen ipod classic (with a nonborked scroll wheel now, yay) on its original firmware, version 1.0 from 2001. why? i don't know. i wanted to. it feels special. there's something different about using an ipod 1st gen with the firmware it came with, with the hardware it was meant to be used with. it just feels right.

oh, and the hardware i used it with is a power mac g4 dual 1.25ghz MDD model i just picked up, it's gorgeous. still need to get it cleaned off though, it's a bit dirty.

but yeah – i added a new tab for files at the top of this site that i would like to preserve. if you are in the minority of people who have a 1st gen ipod and want to restore it to the original firmware, you're in luck if somehow the archive.org preserved version of that zip goes away. thanks to emma smith from reddit for preserving this and writing a tutorial on how to restore back to the 1.0 firmware, even though you probably won't even know this is posted.

have you seen a 1st gen ipod with the wheel taken off? you have now.

the ipod has been a thing basically all my life. i can't really remember a time where they haven't existed, whether when they were at their peak and everyone had one, or as some weird nostalgia item people either scoff at or mark up for much more than they're probably worth on ebay. i don't know. i guess as someone who a) loves music and b) loves vintage technology they're kind of at that intersection. they're just a neat thing to mess around with. i use a modded 7th gen classic that i put a 512gb microsd card and a 3800 mAh extended battery in, mostly because it works far better with my vehicle than to use my phone via bluetooth for whatever reason. i honestly don't want to go back.

but a few weeks ago, i found something pretty wild.

someone put up a 1st gen ipod from 2001 – the original with the actual physically moving scroll wheel and a 5 gigabyte hard drive – on facebook marketplace for $75. i offered $50. he took it.

and the thing still works. and it works WELL.

my mom bought a 3rd gen classic back in 2003 when they were new, and i remember as a little kid just marveling at it. then the battery basically went bad after just a few years. and then eventually the hard drive went out. my first gen is a freak of nature. the battery still not only works, but holds an actually good charge. enough to actually legitimately listen to music with it. and it's the ORIGINAL battery. i do not how this happens. i don't know what kind of fucking witchcraft they used to make that battery. but i am kind of legitimately amazed.

oh, and the original 5gb toshiba hard drive works fine too.

you may notice in this photo that i managed to somehow chip the scroll wheel in my few weeks of ownership, though. which made me really sad. but i ordered a replacement. so it shall be fixed. it shall be PRISTINE.

yeah i love my 1st gen ipod, even though i've basically resorted to syncing it with a 2008 imac that works with firewire because the ipod can only sync with firewire. i've fit 635 songs on the ipod with the 256 kbps AACs that i've synced to it, which is fine because it's not really my primary music listening device. plus, i don't even really mind that. i have my favorite music on it. so who cares?

there's just this magic that still rests in the 1st gen that even my later ipods can't match. somehow, apple got it right the first time. it's so simple. it's such a marvel of technology. even in 2025, it is still absolutely brilliant.

i just love spinning the wheel!!!