Erik showed me an article on how to modify the graphics on an iPod which is interesting, though the most it seems you can do is change the flashing “Do Not Disconnect” graphic. Doing so apparently voids the warranty, and considering that of the four other people I know who own iPods, half of them have had their iPod replaced under warranty, I’m not messing with anything. I fully expect, based on historical evidence, for my iPod to turn into anti-matter at some point, cancelling out all matter surrounding it in a flash of brilliant energy release, leaving me with nothing to listen to but the sound of myself vaporizing in the universe crushing event.

But today on slashdot.org I ran across a link to ipodlinux.org. They’ve developed a Linux distribution that should run on the iPod, and of course the first thing I think of is “Maybe I can get ColdFusion to run on my iPod!” Running ColdFusion on random devices has been a sort of hobby for me. I came very close to getting it to run on my Nokia 3650 Symbian phone, but gave up. I might have to try again sometime.

While browsing ipodlinux.org, I came across something that cast serious questions about the legitimacy of this project. Check out this image. Note that the iPod is not a fourth generation iPod (the arrangement of the buttons is the clear indicator, also, this distribution can’t run on 4G iPods). Now, note the color of the Penguin’s feet (fondly named Tux by Linux geeks). Do they look yellow to you? The only iPod capable of displaying the yellow feet of Tux in full color is the 4G iPod Photo.

So, a few conclusions: the image is photoshopped, (or more appropriately, as Erik put it, Gimp’d), it has something to do with the angle of the LCD screen to the camera, or the backlighting is messing with the camera. I think the first conclusion is the most probable. Something smells funny.