Sitting on the bus waiting to get home after a hard day’s work, listening to Belle and Sebastian on my iPod mini (thank you dd!!!). It’s almost enough to make me forget all the work i’ve still to do tonight on the animation i’m working on with my friend Patrick.

Nearly home.

well it’s been a tough week at work and i’ve just not got around to posting recently. Hopefuly i’ll post pics of my latest toy, an iPod mini! Oh and btw i made this post via my T610 phone. Amazing!

My boss recently went on a trip to New York to do some filming for work. While has was there he had the chance of visiting an Apple Store. By all accounts they are impressive stores indeed, but by far the most impressive thing? The prices. Now I know that the prices for Apple products here in the UK are higher, but until really looking into it I didn’t realise how much higher they are. It’s horrible. It’s horrible, frustrating, irritating, depressing and unfair. It’s… well, it’s just not on. To illustrate my point take a look at these comparisons taken from Apple’s Web Store…

(these prices use today’s exchange rate on the 5th March 2004 of $1.81 to £1)

	20gb iPod UK Price: £299.00 US Price: $399.00 US Price in GBP: £219.39 Difference: £79.61 ($144.80)
	15″ PowerBook (SuperDrive) UK Price: £1,999.00 US Price: $2,599.00 US Price in GBP: £1,428.95 Difference: £570.05 ($1,036.83)
	Dual 2GHz PowerMac G5 UK Price: £2,299.01 US Price: $2,999.00 US Price in GBP: £1,648.85 Difference: £650.16 ($1,182.47)

As you can see it’s pretty incredible, even after you think about UK VAT at 17.5%, it still looks like if you’re a European then the more you buy Apple, the worse you’re ripped off. I suppose in some sense it’s a testemant to how good the product is that I’m prepared to pay it, but if the prices were the same here, then I’d probably have a Dual 2GHz G5 by now. Oh and an iPod mini, but that’s a different story.

Well once again this story is just getting stranger and stranger. Last night Jaron Brass posted several comments linking to a QuickTime movie on his site. The movie purports to be a clip from his local channel NBC6, detailing the arrest of Jaron’s father due to accusations of Insurance fraud. Now this seems authentic, but I can’t find any more information about the arrest, either on the NBC6 site, or elsewhere. If you have any info about this bizarre development then please let us know!

Below is a link to a smaller re-compressed version of the video clip. The clip requires QuickTime 6.

Dr. Brass Fraud Arrest Video

The original larger file can be found on Jaron’s own server, quite why he’d want to publicise this if it is true is beyond me.

It’s now approaching one week since I published my original investigation into Jaron Brass, and the interest in this story has been both gratifying and disturbing. Through the efforts of many people, some duped by jaron, some not, we’ve managed to accumulate a massive amount of information, and the story’s just been growing and growing.

Well things have moved on, both myself and the site have received messages from Jaron claiming that he is remorseful and stating a desire to apologise and explain his behavior. Now thus far I’m skeptical about how truthful Jaron will be prepared to be, but in thinking that I realised quite how much he’s going to have to cover to satisfy everyone. Still Jaron has promised to work on something throughout this week.

So in anticipation of this statement I thought it would useful for Jaron and for us to know exactly what it is that needs answering. Although there was much in common, lots of people were also told different tales, so what truths do you most want to know? what things must Jaron explain for you to feel satisfied?

Personally I’m particularly interested to hear an explanation about the Social Security Number irregularities, to find out how many people Jaron has duped over the last couple of years that he’s been doing this, and what he really hoped to gain from it all?

So what do you want to know most? What can Jaron say to begin to explain things to your satisfaction?

UPDATE!
Jaron has posted his apology and explanation online, it’s in PDF format and is quite lengthy.

http://www.jaronbrass.com/apology.pdf

To be quite honest I’m still digesting it, and I’m not yet sure what I think, and I’ve no idea whether it will be enough for everybody, although he clearly does apologise. One thing is for certain, if anyone manages to sniff out any verifiable lies in this document then there’ll be no way back for Jaron L. Brass.