All Our Tomorrows
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Poki" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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04:53 pm
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I think, therefore I rhyme
I finished my book on the train before arriving at my home stop, this afternoon. My brain started idling ... in rhyme.
It started with "moon, June, cocoon", and turned into this:
in a cocoon the middle of June feels like a womb Packed sardine-tight Missing the light we must look a fright Climb the moving stairs to the fresh air and the light there The sky a bright blue You feel it too? the cry of "Big Issue!" I have no aspirations to be a poet, and little aptitude for it, but ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) discodoris suggested that I post it here for criticism, and to show how my brain happened to be working today. Current Mood:  amused
Tags: poetry, underground
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04:33 pm
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Forgotten Songs and Bodyparts
Three posts in one:
Listening to the radio on the way home this evening, I was singing-along to Stepping Stone by The Monkees, and I'd forgotten how much I like that song. With just that song as a hint, what other long-forgotten songs do you think I might like?
Stepping Stone (ok, The Monkees song is actually titled "(I'm not your) Steppin' Stone" was a completely different song recorded by Jimi Hendrix. "The Power Of Love" is another title that has been used for multiple songs (Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Huey Lewis & The News, and Jennifer Rush), as is "Things Can Only Get Better" (Howard Jones and D:Ream). What other songs are there with identical (or very nearly identical) titles? I can't think of any others.
On the same radio show as played Stepping Stone, they asked the question "which bodyparts of three letters can you touch?". I came-up with 9. The radio show managed to count to 11. How many can you get?
Current Mood:  curious
Current Music: Stepping Stone
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01:25 pm
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The Big Bang Theory
There aren't many TV programmes that can make me guffaw. Not Boosh, rarely Red Dwarf (although there's about to be some new episodes of that, over Easter), never Little Britain.
But there is one - I watched a new (to me) episode last night, of The Big Bang Theory.
Those in the UK can catch-up on 4oD here. I presume it's available on catch-up in the US somewhere too.
Oh - did I slip that past you too quickly? Red Dwarf is back! A trilogy of 24-minute episodes, being shown over Easter. The build-up has been happening for a while, using the intarwebs as well as subliminal adverts on the Dave channel.
Current Location: work
Current Mood: amused
Tags: red dwarf, the big bang theory, tv
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09:07 pm
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Inevitibilities
"The only things certain in life are death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin "I plan on living forever. So far, so good" - Danny Baker That leaves taxes.
I am a PAYE (Pay As You Earn) taxpayer, but I do a tax return every year (although I got a letter from the tax office last month, saying that I don't need to submit a self-assessment tax return any longer). When I completed my tax return in January, it responded with "You owe £3404 unpaid tax. You need to pay £0.00 on January 31, and £0.00 on July 31".
Although I thought it was strange, for me to owe tax at the end of the year, I naturally assumed that it would be taken at source.
A letter from the Inland Revenue was waiting for me on my return from Egypt. "Self Assessment: Final Demand - you missed the 31st January payment deadline, and are now incurring interest on this outstanding amount".
Bastards!
I phoned them. Instead of apologising for sending-out a final demand (and incurring interest), the chap I spoke with demanded to know why I thought the tax would be taken at source when I complete a tax return.
Wtf?
I asked what was happening, and he said that he couldn't answer questions, only take money and how was I going to pay the outstanding amount?
I tried to pay the outstanding amount on my credit card. The transaction was declined by my bank.
I set-up a direct debit. £1000 now, £1000 next month and £1428 the following month (to clear the interest as well as the outstanding amount).
Fuck.
He wouldn't answer any questions, just giving me the phone number of my "local office processing department" and telling me that no-one would be available on that number outside office hours.
Cunt.
Ok, I phoned that new number just in case, and there was a lady at the end of it, who was happy to answer questions.
We went through my tax return, to see if there were any glaring errors. We couldn't see any.
This tax return was the first one where I haven't claimed fuel. During the 2007-2008 tax year, I worked for HP and IBM, and both companies have policies of dealing with fuel tax concessions with the Inland Revenue. They also have intranet expenses forms, so it's impossible for employees to determine their miles travelled for work after the expenses are submitted. Them dealing with fuel tax concessions is the least they could do for their employees.
You'd think.
I don't think either of the companies have done their part. I think the £3400+ would be entirely offset (and more) by the tax I could claim for the miles I've travelled on work business. Now I have to try to work my way through the corporate molasses of both HP and IBM to try to get them to send me my submitted expenses so I can try to work-out how on earth to determine how many miles I drove for them. I don't even know whether I would need to contact the expenses department, HR, accounts payable, or another department, in England, Scotlan, Romania, or Czech Republic!
Bollocks!
Of course, the way that the Inland Revenue works is that you have to pay what they think you might owe them, before they will determine whether you actually owe less. The only time I got them to bypass this policy was when they then said "Instead, we will investigate your tax affairs, looking for evidence of tax evasion".
This is going to take a while. Until I can sort it, I'm going to have an overdraft.
BUGGER!
Current Mood:  annoyed
Tags: tax
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12:16 pm
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On LJ & Twitter
My previous post was analysis from a Twitter-post. The Tweet said:
- Singing along to "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" in the car this morning, I realised that I'm a fiend for great disco tunes. LJ Analysis.
(yes, it's a Twoosh)
The point of this post is to outline where I see differences between Twitter and LJ.
I get rather irritated with people who cross-post Twitter to LJ, instead of writing LJ posts.
If I want to read what someone tweets, I'll add them on Twitter.
If I want to know how they think, how they analyse, what's happening in their life, I'll add them on LJ.
If their LJ entries are simply cross-posts from Twitter, and they don't give me a reason to keep them on LJ, then I see no value in having them as LJ friends and I'm going to defriend them.
Using Twitter to quickly post updates is fine.
Using LJ to expand on tweets is great.
This is how I'm combining the two services.
If you see a tweet that you want more information about, let me know and I'll expand on the subject in LJ.
Current Mood: irritated
Tags: lj, twitter
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02:30 pm
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Define "Victorian"
I was listening to Radio-4 this morning, on my way to work. They were talking about the Brothers Grimm tales, and one of the academics said that there was no mention of middle classes in the stories because there was little chance of that class of person in Victorian times being able to affect their station, until one of the brothers was able to run for election to the local parliament.
This got me to thinking; I've heard Americans use the term "Victorian" when talking about houses built in the latter part of the 19th Century. If "Victorian" is also used in what is now Germany, what does that term mean to people outside the British commonwealth?
What does "Victorian" mean to you, if you're not in a nation that was subject to the rule of Victoria? Was the British Empire so ubiquitous that all nations refer to the time period of 1837 - 1901 in terms of what Britain was doing at the time? I know how central England was to the Industrial Revolution, but other nations defining themselves in English terms? Curious.
And yes - I'm using "England" to refer to the whole of the British Isles. In those times (and through until after WW2) the term "England" was commonly used to mean "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". According to QI, anyway ;)
Current Mood: curious
Tags: victorian
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05:14 pm
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Geeky Keep Fit Games
I have an HTC Touch Diamond smartphone. It came with Vodafone Satnav, which I've used a couple of times (when I've forgotten to take my PDA with me, which has Tomtom on it). Vodafone SatNav uses the built-in GPS facilities on my phone. I also have an "unlimited" dataplan from Vodafone, because it costs only £5 extra per month, and I'd use more than that by mistake, if I didn't have the plan.
So, I have GPS and data facilities.
I was watching The Gadget Show the other night, and they played with a geek-game called Tourality, which uses mobile phones with GPS and data plans to provide a virtual gaming platform in the real world - you run between co-ordinates shown on a map on your phone, against friends. The server knows where you are, and where all your friends are, and knows who reaches every waypoint first. So it's like online geocacheing.
Unfortunately, it doesn't currently support my phone, so I thought I'd look elsewhere ...
GPS Mission supports my phone, along with many other smartphones. I will download and try that.
Mediascape supports my phone (and other Windows Mobile devices) so I'll try that, too
Virtualpunk looks interesting, being a fantasy-based MMORPG using co-ordinates relative to your current location, but it costs for gaming against your friends, so I will give that a miss for now.
There are others, but I'll start with these two, and see whether the technology is working well-enough to make it a possibility for playing at meets.
Tags: geocacheing, gps, mediascape, phone, tourality
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11:26 am
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Writing style
I read. Quite a lot. Now I'm regularly using an RSS feed reader, as well as LJ, Twitter, Facebook, various forums, and doing the same for work-related content, I'm reading more and more.
So, I'm an experienced reader.
When writing, however, I know that I don't conform to structured, measured writing methods. I know the theory behind journalistic writing (look at the first 4 paragraphs of a number of different newspaper articles, and you will see stunning similarities), I have constructed various technical White Papers, I've written requirements documents, and functional & technical specifications, but writing here, in this LJ account, is completely different.
I've never kept a diary - never saw the need for it, and would never have read anything I had previously written anyway. So my "creative writing" style is a combination of what I was taught at school, and what I have picked-up while reading other people's journals, mashed-up with a conscious effort to be conversational.
I think that's the point - I'm trying to be conversational. Therefore, I backtrack, I digress, I have overly-long sentences, I use paragraph markers for emphasis instead of separating thoughts.
In short, my writing style here is trying to be open and engaging. I don't know if it's working, though, and could do with some pointers. All constructive criticism taken constructively.
Current Mood: creative
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11:05 pm
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Which Office Suite to Use?
A quick personal history ...
I remember the release of Uniplex v6.01 with fondness, although I don't recall any of the feature improvements. It was the first office suite I enjoyed using, and provided a level of integrated use that I hadn't noticed before.
After that, when I moved from Unix to a PC, I used WordPerfect 5.0, then 5.1 (along with Lotus 1-2-3), and then Windows-3 was released. This was, I think, the biggest change, as multiple applications could be run "concurrently". However, WordPerfect for Windows was pants, whereas Word 2.0 was, at least, functional (if limited). Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows was also poor, with Lotus trying to push Improv and porting applications to OS/2. Yes yes, I know that X-Windows was operational by then (I had an X-terminal at work) and MacOS was usable (I also had a Mac sitting on my desk) but office applications on these never felt usable to me.
So I moved, somewhat reluctantly, to Microsoft Office 4.0. At this time, I was also using Windows-NT 3.1 for a project I was helping to architect (email for solicitors and conveyancers, to improve communication and collaboration in property conveyancing, using the newly-introduced ISDN for ISP connection, and flirting with ISP design, although I didn't know the term ISP in 1993, or even the term "worldwide web"), and there was a special version of Microsoft Office for NT, which was more stable in-use than the ballache of setting-up expanded & extended RAM in DOS and trying to get Windows-3 applications to utilise it properly without crashing.
Ever since then, I've been using versions of Microsoft Office. I have a set of MS-Office 2003 CDs, but my MSDN subscription has lapsed, so I don't want to install that on my new laptop. I'm after alternatives.
- MS Office 2007 is the obvious choice. However, it has a considerable pricetag, and I'm finding Microsoft products to be increasingly counter-intuitive as time passes (perhaps because of my historical baggage, alluded-to, I hope, in my history lesson above)
- StarOffice is an option, I suppose
- OpenOffice.org is an option, as it is suggested whenever I upgrade Java. Whenever I've installed it, though, I've had to remove it after a few days, due to it hogging all my resources and still running like a dog
- MS-Works is an option, as it was supplied with my laptop
- Lotus Symphony is an option, although as an ex-IBMer, I'm not sure I want to burden my laptop with their stuff by choice
- There are also cloud office options. I would like to save all my data to the cloud, but I'm not sure which of the many cloud options to use. Would I be happy giving Google my whole online identity, for example, rather than just my email?
I was just browsing for reviews of Lotus Symphony, and came across this:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31441
Perhaps not relevent, but it amused me.
I have other requirements, like appreciating a local email facility, wanting to synchronise contacts & calendar with my Windows Mobile devices, needing to write the occasional presentation (although I can use my work laptop for that, as most presentations I write are for work), etc. I've used Thunderbird (and Lightning) but reverted back to Outlook-2003 when their user models and mine diverged too far.
Right now, I'm happy asking myself "what am I writing this content for?" and then using whatever is appropriate for that task, whether it is VI, Notepad, a browser edit window, a calculator, etc.. But I think I'll need to make a choice, sometime soon, about a preferred word processor, which will guide me to a preferred spreadsheet and presentation tool of choice.
So, finally, to the point of this post (tl;dr?); which office application(s) do you use, and why?
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Tags: choice, cloud, office, suite
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10:15 am
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Living By Numbers
I was just going through my morning routine of checking Facebook, LiveJournal & Twitter, before I make myself a cuppa, or perhaps get dressed (or at least out of bed), when the song "Living By Numbers" pops into my head for no discernable reason.
Specifically, I was scrolling-up my Twitter homepage. Right now, that page has Asym, kolupdates, helenroper, ZDnetblogs, Fnordius, Penelope Else, steamteam, nsurgnie, Albassoon, Stephen Fry, etc. - my usual eclectic mix of friends, notifications and wit.
So why are the lines "Living by numbers. Living by numbers now. They don't want your name, they don't want your name, just your number" earworming me? I've not listened to that song for many years. I might subscribe to a "sad indictment of the world in which we live today" theory, except that I remember the problems we were having in the UK when the song was released, so I know the lyrics have nothing to do with the Intarwebs.
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Living My Numbers - New Musik
Tags: earworm
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10:52 am
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Eco-friendly website hosting
I've been toying with the idea, for 15 years, of creating my own website. I once started, but the editors around at that time (about 1998) were too bloody awkward for me to bother with.
So I've happily not bothered, just using online services where appropriate, gradually increasing my use of these as I've become more socially outgoing. I now have LJ, Facebook, g-mail & Twitter open almost constantly, and other cloud services when I remember them. I've even recently bitten the bullet and started using a feed reader, so I don't need to search for news.
Because cloud services aren't guaranteed (especially when they are free) I've returned to wondering about setting-up my own website, trying to work-out whether markup editors are now of sufficient quality to not need me to understand the ins and outs of web pages, just to write a portal with attached blogspace, photo hosting, etc..
A new issue I have with having my own stuff hosted is the ecological one. I've stopped running server machines at home, trying to minimise my carbon footprint (and utility bills), but I'm aware that all of my online input has an effect on the carbon usage of others, specifically whoever is hosting my data. It doesn't worry me too much about my registrations onto online services, as the adidtional carbon I'm using is negligible in comparison with what else they have running, but if I have the choice (by selecting a webhosting company, if I'm going to write my own web homepage) then I want to ensure carbon usage is minimised.
So I'm interested that I get quite a few hits when I google-search (yes, I've read the article about how much carbon is released into the atmosphere for every Google search, but I can't agree with the findings there, as there's no real data to analyse) for "green hosting". I see that I can have webhosting starting at £5 per month from various companies who use wind or solar power instead of the national grid.
Ok, so if I'm going to do this, I'm after ideas:
1. Which green hosting companies have reputations for good Quality of Service as well as being carbon-positive?
2. Which software is good, these days, for writing websites? The answer to this is dependent, I suppose on the answer to the next question, which is:
3. What should I do with a web presence that I create? My initial ideas are bloghosting & photo-hosting, even though there are cloud services offering these.
... 1 hour later ...
I've been thinking about data storage on the cloud, that would allow streaming music as well as document storage, all transparent to the application on my laptops, PDA (Windows Mobile 2003) and phone (Windows Mobile 6.1).
There are various options for this, like ZumoDrive, Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, Wuala, etc.. None of them advertise green credentials, and I'm sure they would all cost a few hundreds of pounds per year for hosting of my files.
So, would it be better for me to buy carbon-neutral / positive web hosting space and store my files there, use one of these already-existing sync services, or reinstate one of my laptops as a sync-file server and store all my files on servers owned (and hosted) by me?
Current Mood: curious
Tags: webhosting green
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08:59 pm
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Is it time to move away from LiveJournal?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5124184/the-russian-bear-slashes-a-social-network
Assuming that article isn't a fake, does this mean that LiveJournal is ...
1. going through rough-enough times that it'll soon be shut-down?
2. needing to be migrated away-from?
3. nothing to worry about?
4. I need to back-up my journal (discodoris sent me this link http://hewgill.com/ljdump/ and I should be able to easily backup, assuming it works)?</lj>
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12:35 pm
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Awesome redefined?
I was casually surfing (as you do) when I came across this website:
http://www.awesomebadges.co.uk/
What could possibly be awesome about badges?
I can understand when people are awestruck by the scale of something like the Grand Canyon, awe-inspired by seeing a cityscape for the first time, found 9/11 awful, but BADGES?
So I thought I'd do a quick google-search on some words:
216,000,000 for awesome
41,400,000 for awful
1,220,000 for awestruck
45,000 for "awe-inspired"
Hmm, am I seeing a redefinition of the word "awesome", meaning something more than:
Adjective- S: (adj) amazing, awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, awing (inspiring awe or admiration or wonder) "New York is an amazing city"; "the Grand Canyon is an awe-inspiring sight"; "the awesome complexity of the universe"; "this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath"- Melville; "Westminster Hall's awing majesty, so vast, so high, so silent"
Perhaps awesome is starting to become more encompassing, like the word "wonder" which has uses in decision-making as well as amazingness. Let's check that word:
208,000,000 for wonder
Bugger! "Awesome" is already more popular than "wonder"!
So, a new official definition of "awesome" is needed, possibly? Something like:
Awesome: Adjective- S: (adj) awesome, vaguely interesting, somewhat cute, possibly fun, a little surprising.
Current Mood: grumpy
Tags: awesome, definition, grumpy old man
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09:19 am
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Doctor Who and Steampunk
I'd love to convert / utilise Steampunk in my day-to-day life, but can't see that the added bulk & weight would fit with my lifestyle.
However, that's not the question. The question is ...
Did steampunk put a name to the type of science fiction that abounds in Doctor Who, or did Doctor Who copy steampunk style after it was already defined?
Current Mood: curious
Tags: doctor who, steampunk
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12:10 pm
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LJ Support Call logged
As-and-when I get a response, I'll edit this post with it.
Hi --
I can't find anywhere I can filter-out specific messages based on content. I would like to have the option of not seeing friends' Twitter microblog posts in my LJ friends page, but I can't see where to do this.
I would want to hide messages that have "shipped by LoudTwitter" in the final line of the message, or posts that have every line bullet-pointed, as these seem the ways that I can reliably identify those messages.
Thanks. |
Edit: 09 Oct 2008
A response!
FAQ REFERENCE: How do I buy a Paid Account?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=21&view=full
It is possible to filter posts based on the content, but that requires creating a custom theme layer to your style, which is a feature only available to paid accounts. The FAQ referenced above explains how to buy a paid account.
Once you have a paid account, please see this FAQ: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=176 which contains a link to a tutorial on "Using a theme layer". That tutorial explains how to create a theme layer, and how to replace functions from layout layers.
Finally, you will need to replace the function RecentPage::print_body(), and add some code there to create the filtering logic. There is not a tutorial for this specific customization, but there are tutorials for hiding entries based on the poster name and placing memes behind an lj-cut, and those tutorials may help you when writing your own filtering code. Those tutorials can be found by following the link in this FAQ: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=172&view=full to the s2howto community's memories, among which there is a group called "Hiding comments/entries".
Due to the high number of requests, support volunteers are unable to give one-one-one assistance on writing custom layers. If you need further help on this, please find a community specializing in styles assistance. The FAQ referenced below explains how to find a community. http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=85 |
hmm ... it's not quite the response I wanted. It seems to be saying:
1. Give us some money
2. Program it yourself
How is that a solution?
Perhaps I'll have to use Phyphor's workaround, pasted as a reply to each of my friends every time they crosspost from Twitter. What an inefficient way to get this sorted!
Tags: loudtwitter, twitter
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01:51 pm
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Twitter first impressions
Ok, I've done it - I'm on Twitter, as thisispoki. For a made-up name (and made-up over 20 years ago, now) it's surprising how many places already have the username "Poki" taken. Perhaps I should sign-up for every online service as soon as it's released, just to reserve my preferred name, regardless of whether I'd ever use it.
Likes- It's just like text messaging to a group of people
Texting to groups has been something I've always wanted to do, but the cost and hassle of doing so has always stopped me
- I'm not getting updates about bowel movements
I was concerned that the minutiae of friends' lives really would be this granular
- There's a small measure of privacy, if you reply to a message
- It's informal
- It feels like constant responses to "How are you?" questions when you meet a friend
Dislikes- Affiliated services can blast your private messages to a public blog
- 140 characters sometimes isn't enough to be interesting
- 140 characters often is enough to be boring
I'm not referring to any of my friends' posts - just the backspacing of tweets that I haven't sent after reading through them, and deciding that my friends, with the best will in the World, REALLY don't want to know what I'm about to post
- They are called "Tweets". I mean, WTF?!
A better name would be "SBS" I reckon, standing for Short Blog Service (akin to SMS), which would be pronounced as "subs" (I don't know the linguistic name for this, pronouncing an acronym as a word), which could loosely mean "submissions"
Convergence
As I add Twitter to my list of online distractions of LJ, FaceBook, KoL, etc., I'm still looking for the panacaea of completely converged technology, where the boundaries aren't just blurred - they are completely invisible, or even removed altogether. I've just read this blog entry and it's resonating with me, being what he calls a Gen X'er, especially the following excerpt:
| Three generations of online community technology, reflecting distinct cultural values, exist today. The distinctly counter-cultural USENET is a Boomer technology (culturally). Though USENET was organized by content, its overarching architecture is driven by a community-consensus ontological process with its own dark side (the alt.* groups versus the ones created through RFC-RFP democratic processes). Gen X’ers, responsible for the anarchic proliferation of organized-by-content Web bulletin boards and the anti-communitarian construct of the individual blog, true to their data-driven pragmatism, made content (data) king. Finally, the Millenials created their generation of ideology-indifferent online communities around social networks where groups are not Good or Evil, but just are, and where people again are the focal point, over content. |
and I'm feeling that it is us Gen X'ers who will devise the glue to connect the disparate Millenial social grids to the Boomer structured services, providing the solution of social networking for all. I hope Twitter will be a part of that; I'm already certain that blogs are, which is really why I'm here in the first place.
Current Location: Work
Current Mood: undecided
Tags: social networking, twitter
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01:44 pm
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Twitter - what is it good for?
I've read the introduction to Twitter, and had a think as to whether it would be useful to me, but I can't see it.
I can see how, for some people it might be useful to have RSS-style updates to their phone, for journalists and the like, but for "normal" people? The website says:
| Why? Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely. | | Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know. | | Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful. | | Partying? Your friends may want to join you. |
These are all well-and-good, but does your mother want to know where you are partying, or whether you are late for work? Do your colleagues want to know that you are eating soup? How is being late reconciled against spending time writing that you're late, rather than phoning a colleague that you'll be with, while you're on the move to said meeting?
Additionally, what would be so urgent that I would need to tell people about it instantly (rather than blogging here, for example), but not urgent-enough to phone / IM people about it?
Also ...
"Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload."
I don't understand this statement. You're adding microblogging to your connected profile, knowing all the minutiae of your contacts' lives, and it's an ANTIDOTE to information overload?
Please, someone convince me that it's something I need to do, and tell me how it'll be good for me.
Current Mood: cynical
Tags: twitter
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09:22 pm
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MP3 Player
I've never been a one for an MP3 player. I never owned a personal cassette player, personal CD player or minidisk player, either.
I've had the ability to play MP3s since the format was devised, and I've gradually built-up my collection of songs over the years - firstly in MIDI format, then wav, MP3, Ogg, etc., and currently, I usually rip my CDs to MP3 format using CDex, and store them on my media centre, in case I want to listen to a specific track on my laptop.
When I was being driven to Philadephia airport, 18 months ago, the friend who drove me had an MP3 player, with a series of Naked Scientists podcasts, which he played for the whole three hours. It was really interesting content, and I thought it would be nice to have the ability to play downloaded podcasts for myself.
Recently, my tastes in the visual impact of technology have veered toward the look of piano black. For example, I love the design of Samsung LCD TVs. I am not an Apple fan, so you'll never see me with an iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iTouch, etc.. Although I can admire the form and function, there's something about being tied-in to Apple that leaves a bad taste in my mouth - they have managed to fix premium prices for consumer goods, and spent heavily on the marketing and advertising to protect this position, rather than provide a good deal for their customers.
So, I had a need to play music and podcasts, on a cool black device, that isn't made by Apple. I mentioned this need to discodoris, and we had a look around, finding that Samsung do a range of piano black MP3 players. She bought me one for my Birthday <3
The Samsung S5. Not only is it piano black, it has bluetooth, FM radio, MP4, and it also slides open, revealing stereo speakers. Stereo speakers, built-in to an MP3 player! How cool is that?!
Because it has Bluetooth, I bought a similarly-cool bluetooth stereo headset to go with it, also in gloss black. The headset pairs with my phone at the same time, pausing MP3 playback when a call is received. I'm delighted with my recent gadgets - Invisible integration, the blurring of discrete device functionality, so that everything just works, and makes my life easier!
I haven't got around to downloading podcasts to it, yet. It was very handy for our recent Majorca vacation, though, having music on-tap in the hotel room.
Current Mood: content
Tags: bluetooth, mp3, samsung
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09:01 am
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Phone Synchronisation
This post is ongoing from my one regarding Smartphone applications that I installed onto my HTC Touch Diamond.
HTC have released a new firmware, and Vodafone added their custom applications to it (like Vodafone SatNav - I really must investigate whether this can replace Tomtom, sometime) and when I updated it, it was set to factory defaults.
This did a couple of things. Firstly, it defaulted my on-screen keyboard back to Compact QWERTY, and it won't let me set it to Full QWERTY, so I'm having to pretend that it's a Blackberry Pearl for the purposes of writing text messages (grrr), and secondly, all my installed applications were wiped, so I had to install them all again.
During the reinstall process, I wondered if I could get email sync working as well as contacts & calendar, so I had a hunt around the Internet. I investigated Finch, but it's not geared toward emails, so I looked elsewhere.
THIS is what open-source software is supposed to be like! Forget operating systems and browsers - they simply allow know-nothings to spout "mine is better than yours" without understanding the ramifications. Free software, providing real solutions to problems that have been slowing the corporate world for years looks to me to be a killer FOSS justification!
Current Mood: delighted
Tags: foss, funambol, gmail, sync, thunderbird
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10:11 am
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Smartphone Tools
In a previous post, I said how sexy my new phone looks. Well, I've had a few days to play with it, and I thought I'd mention some of the tools that I've downloaded to it, what they do and how useful I think they are going to be:
fring
Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM® all from my phone (and supports voice chat over all of them except Yahoo! and AIM). It supports Windows Mobile 5 & 6, Symbian, iPhone, etc. No BlackBerry support, currently, which is a bit of a bugger, but I've already successfully text-chatted to sweet_sarniaover the G-Talk (Jabber, XMPP) protocol to her sexy new BlackBerry Pearl. It will roam and connect over wifi (and manage your wifi connections, if you have different WEP/WPA addresses for different WLANs), use your data plan (if you have one), use 3G, Edge, even.
WorldMate Live
This is a travel planner. It sorts your itinerary, syncs it, can notify you of flight delays, etc. It also features flight schedules, car rentals, maps, world clocks and a currency converter. Unfortunately, although it supports Windows Mobile 6 and BlackBerry, my new phone is Windows Mobile 6.1 with a higher resolution screen. I've emailed their support line, and they said that they can notify me when they've updated it for my phone. Perhaps, when I start my new job, I'll see if I can get a business subscription
Lightsaber
A bit of fun, and a port of an iPhone application. I've already booked a lightsaber fight with darkmoonat Con in September :P
FinchSync
All my previous PDAs have come with a full version of Outlook. It seems that, with Outlook-2007, the new Microsoft policy is to only provide a 60-day licence. I was annoyed-enough at this to download, install and use Mozilla Thunderbird on my personal laptop, which I also linked to my gmail account, so it can be my main email system. Obviously, Microsoft Activesync won't support synchronisation with a third-party email system, so I had to look elsewhere. I selected FinchSync, which does an admirable job. Along with Lightning (the calendaring extension to Thinderbird), it syncs my calendar and contacts very nicely. It took a few minutes to set-up, as you need to know things like the IP address of your PC to get it synchronised, but hey - synchronising over wifi is something that Microsoft disabled in ActiveSync a couple of years ago, and I'm delighted to have that facility back!
Are there any other Smartphone tools that I should be looking at?
Current Mood: amused
Tags: finch, fring, smartphone, windows mobile, worldmate
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