I bought two gadgets recently that I love & use everyday. That’s why I am sharing them with you, which is basically me when I read this later.

1. 
   iRiver Clix 2gb
   This is a fantastic little mp3 player. I guess I am a bit of an iRiver fanboy – I really enjoy their design and UI – this is the 4 iRiver mp3 player I’ve purchased. I am a big fan of the look of this player, a simple small rectangle with no visible buttons on the surface. In fact, each side is a button, so you navigate by pressing the sides of the surface. The UI itself is simple and quick. I really enjoy its ability to display album art with mp3s. I rarely buy albums anymore, so it is great to see the cd covers with the music. I am trying to encode all my mp3z with album art from iTune through the geeky process described here. The clix gets bonus points for it’s ability to display photos and movies, both look great. One downer is that it only supports Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey. Also, you have to plug it into a computer to recharge unless you buy their special charging cable.
2. 
   Samsung SyncMaster 205BWThis precious baby I purchased a month ago. I decided to get rid of the mammoth 22″ Dell CRT monitor I had and to purchase a nice LCD widescreen monitor. This monitor was one of the cheaper models of this scale. I never used a widescreen monitor before, so I was pleasantly suprised to discover how much real estate it gives, it’s native resolution is 1680×1050 – very nice.
   The biggest bummer I experienced with the monitor was that one blue pixel was stuck. With a white or complex background, it is impossible to see, but if the area is black, a bright blue pixel sticks out. I thought that was a dead pixel and just sucked it up, one out of 1,764,000 is not bad but it irked me from time to time. Today, I discovered through my readings that it was actually a stuck pixel, and a simple free java program called JScreenFix could, by rapidly alternating the pixel colors. Sounds like snake oil, but after letting it run for 30 seconds, my pixek is cured! Praise the Lord!!!