On-the-Mountain Entertainment
Until today the definite plan was to pick up an iPod Touch (32GB) and load it full of movies. What better way to spend day after day, stuck in a tent, enduring a storm? I could easily fit a few dozen movies and still have room for a decent supply of music. The only reason I hadn't made the purchase yet was the faint hope that a new version would be released by late April that included a GPS.
However, Amazon released the Kindle 2 today, and that's complicated things. I do value having a physical book, but I'm willing to get over that. Some might argue that reading good books might be a better way to spend my mountain-down-time than watching movies. I'd be willing to concede that. And the prices are roughly the same (between the Touch and the Kindle).
The truly complicating factor is that I don't really need an iPod Touch. I have an iPhone (which is largely the same), but I'm not willing to take it on the mountain because: 1) it doesn't have enough storage space (8GB) to be useful enough to justify its added weight, and 2) I'm not willing to risk the life of my precious cell phone. The Kindle on the other hand would serve a distinct purpose beyond the immediate mountain-entertainment thing.
Furthermore, it should be evident to everyone (eventually) that some Kindle-like device is the way of the future. We still have a long ways to go (ie, Apple hasn't released such a product yet), but Star Trek (TNG) had it right with their little tablet computer things.
Speaking of Star Trek ... that movie is going to be insanely great (trailer). And I'm moderately annoyed that it'll be released in theaters just a couple days after I fly onto the mountain ... meaning that it'll be in theaters for nearly a month by the time I'm back in civilization and able to see it. Talk about bad timing.
Also, as a brief retort to something I read where it was lamented that no part was given to William Shatner: I feel compelled to say that the William Shatner who was...
...no longer exists. These people need to move on; get over all of the sentimental nostalgia crap.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you go from talking about movies on an iPod Touch to showing fat pictures of William Shatner.