The greeting banner on my cell phone announces its name as “Vavatch Hub”.  This is a reference to Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas, which is only one of the greatest SF works of our time.  I also have a download of this image of Galaxy M104.  Looks like an Orbital to me, if I squint right.  One day I brought that image up on my desktop monitor, and then used the camera on my cell to snap a photo.  The ensuing result is blurry and looks as if it depicts the destruction of Vavatch Orbital by Culture gridfire.  Sort of.  To me.  Anyway, that’s the screen saver on my phone.

This may not be seemly behaviour in an adult, but it is what it is.  It is also by way of background to my current dilemma.  I am going to purchase a replacement iPod (the poorly named Classic).  The one I’m replacing has worked without a hitch for a couple of years, but when I purchased it I underestimated the amount of music I had in my collection (at that point very little had been ripped to my computer’s hard drive).  Now I am finally getting an iPod with enough memory to hold my entire library, plus plenty of space for future acquisitions.

So there is no controversy for me in contemplating the purchase.  However, when I bought the first iPod, I took advantage of Apple’s free engraving offer, and on the back the inscription reads: Chiark Hub/Audio Terminal.  Of course.  Another Banks/Culture reference.  The laptop at home containing the music library has its hard drive named Chiark Hub, so obviously the iPod is the terminal of the Hub.  Now, my first instinct is to have the same engraved on the new iPod.  But in reality it is not just an audio player, but also displays video.  I doubt I will use that feature much, but it would be misleading to have inscribed on the player’s body such a limiting description.  So I need to change it; this is too much cogitation spent on a trifle, but I thought the original inscription was really cool and am disappointed in the necessity of change.