Before my reboot of this blog, I had a posting where I waxed nostalgic about the progress of mobile storage, in the form of USB thumbdrives. Essentially I had a “I remember when I was young…” kind of thing. I also had a photo of my then current crop of USB thumbdrives. Here it is again, in case you forgot it:

From left to right: 128MB that I got as a christmas present back in ‘04, then two 512MB units, the grey one is a 1GB unit and the black farthest to the right is a 4GB unit which at the time was bought dirt-cheap.

That was almost a year ago, and just a few minutes ago I felt an update was needed so I whipped out some memory and took a photo of it.

From left to right: A 1GB Micro-SD that I have very little use for. It used to be in my R4DS but I replaced that with a 2GB unit instead. The 16MB Nikon Compact Flash is just for laughs. Then there’s the 128MB PNY-stick and the two 512MB units. The 1GB is missing since I gave it to a friend. Then the black 4GB Kingston, a 4GB SanDisk and finally a whopping 16GB Kingston which is my newest addition.

Fun fact: The neckstrap attached to the 4GB Kingston Datatraveller is the same strap that I got with the 128MB PNY. It’s even labeled PNY but has survived numerous sticks.

One of my favorite things to do when relaxing is to occasionally pour myself a nice single malt. Generally I prefer it “neat” i.e. without anything in it, but occasionally I like to throw something in to cool it down. I prefer my scotch non-watered and thus I’m a bit annoyed when the ice melts.

In fact, this goes for quite a lot of drinks with ice in them. Even when drinking a plain old Fanta or Coke I get annoyed when the ice melts and waters it down. Another annoyance is that ice floats.

So, when I saw the Whisky Stones over on ThinkGeek I knew I had to have something like that. So after a brief education on the subject I found a set of eight stones in a local shop. They work the same way. The stones are made out of soapstone, a soft mineral that holds cold (and heat) very well, as well as not damaging the glass it’s in. Added bonus is that they don’t float.

They also look kinda cool when photographed in close-up.