Aha!

Remember those USB sticks I couldn't find last Saturday?

They were on the side table in the living room, hiding under the imminent-reading shelf along with the cable for my camera, a six-inch ruler, a pair of earbuds, and a spare drive belt for the vacuum cleaner. This is, I'm afraid, a testament to my poor housekeeping in the last several months; I do occasionally clear off that table and wipe it down, but it's been a while.

Big boxes, little boxes, and a lot of walking

I went out this afternoon in quest of a Palm TX (and add-on keyboard), which I'd convinced myself was the solution to my writing-on-the-go problem.

( In which I walk about three miles )

I think I'll just stick to the composition book.

On the other hand, I did discover a nifty little gadget whose existence I had never previously suspected; a teeny-tiny video recorder (about the size of my TV remote) that records to flash memory cards. I wonder if this is how all those illegally-downloadable TV shows get out there? Me, I just want to do a bit of timeshifting so I don't have to stay up past my bedtime to watch the Dresden Files, but the thought of being able to watch the result on my iPod is quite appealing.

(Update: it works, too, though I had to disconnect the DVD player to plug it into the RF coupler. Next up, an AV splitter?)

And then I walked back to the bus station, just missed a bus, walked the mile-and-a-half home along the river bank, stopped off at Trader Joe's on the way for some more interesting food than my local Safeway can offer, and arrived home round about the time the next bus would have been leaving.