Tech Eye: Two peas in an iPod
Impersonation is truly a forgotten art form. Rarely a day goes by when a nice bit of mimicry doesn't end up with some fresh change jingling its way gleefully into our pocket before we swiftly hand it over to the grubby clutches of the local moneylender, bartender or singles dating website moderator.
In our more delicate younger years, TechEye was caught trying to see if Mother's clothes would indeed fit our spindly frame. Father, however, surprised us all that day when he stumbled into the room just as we were putting the finishing touches to our eyeliner. Rather than thrash us to within an
inch of our pitiful existence before sending us off to Brother Carmichael of the Order of Wayward Boys for some of his patented
sexual-realignment classes, Father saw mercy (largely a drink-induced vision, we were later to find out). So he packed us off to the local village hostelry each Tuesday evening where we plied our trade and kept many a punter happy on those lonesome winter nights in our new guise as Sultry Singing Stella.
However, as age took its toll it appeared that the showbiz life of burlesque wasn't to be for us, so instead we took an interest in all things artistic. We began selling knock-off prints at various dubious auction houses around the county, and before we knew it we were rolling in the great green stuff, thanks to a limited run of 10,000 of some lithograph Warhol never actually did. It took years for the fuzz to catch up with us, and by then we had moved on to Picasso, so we shaved our head, spoke in ze ztrange French accent and that was enough to convince the local plod we were actually one of the 20th century's most innovative artists. The local fishwives didn't buy the same story, mind.
But enough procrastination. This week's gadget comes in the form of Microsoft's iPod impersonator, called the Zune. It's a 30GB MP3 player, with a three-inch screen and WiFi. Yours will cost around zł.1,125, which is considerably less than our Guernica, though not as pretty to look at.
