Speckled Green

I’ve just had a realisation about how I treat smartphones these days. If I can’t afford the top-of-the-line phone, I ignore all the others in the middle and look at the ‘budget’ end phones (e.g. Nokia C6-01 or Nokia 700). It’s like I think to myself “If I can’t get the best, don’t bother settling for the next best thing. Stick with simple and let your iPod or PC handle the fancier functions.” So, somewhere in my mind, I’ve already decided that it’s the Samsung Galaxy S II or the Nokia 700. Not even going to consider the Samsung Galaxy S, or the HTC Aria, or whatever middle range phones there are. Read more »

I really should get around to removing all the non-backup duplicates of files I have on the computer. Such as the 2 extra copies of the photos of our New Zealand holiday in 2001 (or was it 2000? I cannot remember. Maybe it was 2002…). Or the 3 copies of my phone’s memory card. I’m sure that there’s not too many things of value on each copy that was different. I suppose after the HSC (probably around Christmas time, when I’m not partying, or on holidays, or watching movie marathons, or practising piano/flute/clarinet/guitar… can’t be practising piccolo any more by then because I’d have returned it to the school =[  Unless I buy my own) I can just go through the… (at this point I paused in my writing to find out how many files I have in my “Documents” Library) …54,093 files contained within 4,550 folders, taking up 39.9GB… Read more »

I really don’t know what to expect in the future. I remember thinking in Yr 5 that I would be a scientist, White lab coat and all. I guess that’s still possible, but I need to remember that not all scientists wear white lab coats (btw, Apple Inc. is rather ‘racist’, it keeps on capitalising White on my iPod, but not black. I just wanted to remind you all =P Although that probably stems from ‘White House’ more than anything… Stupid US centric ‘UK English’ dictionary), especially if I don’t plan on doing a chemistry or biology related course (i.e. a physics related course). But now I’m looking at Computer Engineering, which is an Engineering degree (engineers all claim that an engineering degree is awesome, as opposed to ‘science’ or ‘IT’ or others) as my choice for Uni. I was considering computer science for a while, but the heavy emphasis on team leadership training kinda made me dislike it. I’d rather be lead in a workplace than leading it. Less responsibility means that I can concentrate more on my work (although, if my job is a leadership role, then it would probably help to have leadership skill), for example with my web-design efforts. I work as a 1 man team for my website, and I only have myself to be responsible for and to. Also why I don’t get much done during school term, and all the web work ends up happening during he holidays, although that kinda shows I actually focus on my school work more during the term… Read more »

Oh, how I would love to have an Andriod phone, even if it were only to sit along side my Symbian/Nokia S60 phone and iPod Touch running iOS 4.2.1 (can’t be bothered upgrading to 4.3.1 yet). And a Windows Phone 7 (yeah, it may be inferior to the other OSs I just mentioned there, with the exception of perhaps S60 because that’s one old system, but it’s still a viable phone OS) along with that (would love to see what Nokia is going to create for the future of their phones. The mock-up images they released looked awesome).

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Recently, Nokia announced their newest flagship phone, the Nokia N8. That was a few months ago. Even more recently, they’ve announced the next 3 Symbian^3 devices in the world: Nokia E7, Nokia C6-01 & Nokia C7. Interestingly (almost obviously with how Symbian^3 looks) they all seem rather similar, in both features & shape.

The E7, a successor to the Nokia E71 & Nokia E75, is rather similar to the Nokia N8. Whilst it may not have the 12MP camera with Xenon flash, or as many fancy colours or the fancy ‘N’ in front of the number, or ability to use memory cards, it does have a 4″ screen (.5″ larger than the N8), a hefty 8MP Dual-LED flash camera, and a slide-out qwerty keyboard. About the only differences you’ll notice between the two devices besides their names. That and the fact that the E7 is slightly larger & heavier.

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Why do my comments spanning over several months, include 5 different IP addresses that I’ve noticed?? I would assume the DET portal IP address stays the same, so, why would my home internet keep changing IP?? Is it something to do with the ADSL2+ router I have, or is it something to do with Telstra’s DSLAM server-thingy? Anyone have any clues? Just wondering.

Anyways, next week is exams, and the new iPods official release today in the US, so I wonder how long before they start turning up in Australia. I’d expect the Apple store in Sydney or Castle Towers to have them first (BTW, the Apple store in Castle Towers was selling the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and iPod Touch at discounted prices… I noticed the iPod Touch 32GB (3rd Gen) was priced at $339 (that’s $60 off the RRP. Funny how people only sell the Apple products a few dollars below the RRP, where-as they seem to sell everything else at least 5% lower than the RRP)… I wonder what the catch was =/ Anyhows, I look forward to the new iPod Touch turning up. I want to buy it. I seem to be following a pattern of buying a new iPod every two years at the moment. Except that I don’t plan on replacing my current iPod Nano, just supplementing it with the iPod Touch (iPod Nano for music, iPod Touch for videos & apps!! I just wonder how I’d do the syncing two iPods from the same iTunes. Yes, I’m gonna use iTunes, because I’m not bothered using anything else, and the iPod Touch works best with iTunes). Wow, so many iProducts mentioned there. It’s like Apple never realised the iRevolution fad kinda died out… well, they are brand names, so maybe that explains it.

Hey Sticky! Does this fix your RSS feed complaint?? Turns out all I had to do was update the plugin, and there was an option to exclude it from the feeds. I’m not actually sure if it works the ways its supposed to though, which is why this posts exists =]

Ahh… having to listen to their stupid debates, horrendeous and overly negative ads which don’t tell you anything and lie straight in your face (way to misquote Labour!! You’re worse than the media! Sadly, it’s working…)… I could go on for ages, except I’m starting to grow tired of thinking of this aspect…

I just feel annoyed currently at the Communication’s policies of both parties. I say “YAY for NBN!”, but I also say “You have a good point there” to the Liberals. Whilst installing an independent FTTH system for a National Broadband system is most certainly the best idea there is, the cost of it, and the way it’s being managed (by bureaucrats, the 2nd worse type of managers) probably (and most likely) isn’t. $43 billion??? You sure it’s gonna cost us this much?? How much of it was spent on ‘consultancy’?? about 20%? Because that seems to be all Kevin Rudd ever did.

However, the Liberal’s proposal, spending $6.3 billion to ‘encourage’ the private sector to expand, upgrade and install new services, is the most dismal, lazy and stupid idea I’ve ever heard. Especially as they don’t actually have any plans on how to ‘encourage’ the private sector beyond grants as incentives for rolling out something. They want competition to encourage the rollout of faster and better internet in Australia. What competition?? We only have 22 million people. See what we currently have with competition? Now, tell me what I should expect in 8 years time on the Liberal’s plan. I don’t hear Telstra, Optus or any other telco planning on giving my area Cable or Fiber internet in the next 20 years. Bella Vista has cable internet, and they’re only 600m East of where I live!! Kings Langley has cable internet, and they’re only 400m South West!!!! So what makes you think a few incentives to the tune of a few million each will encourage the only two telcos with the size to do any cable laying are going to give me FTTH for my internet, phone, TV and gaming needs??

Yeah, well I’m done on that. I’m getting bored about yelling about it to the internet. Personally, I’d like to see an amalgamation of all the parties to be in power: the best ideas of all of them, with the worst ones thrown out the window. Unfortunately, that in itself is impossible. So, all I can do is keep on dreaming…

On something completely not related to politics, I would like to invent/develop/create/purchase a collapsible, capacitive multi-touch (4+ points of touch), 19″ OLED widescreen. The technology is available, it’s just stupidly expensive, and no vendor would even consider producing it, so it would have to be a custom order/design. The hardest part would be getting the flexible capacitive OLED screen, especially a 19″ one. Never mind building it, or making sure the thing doesn’t break with the slightest shake. I can forsee many problems with my idea besides those above, but I’d still like to have it. Imagine a 2nd screen you can keep in your bag, multi-touch input, low power, compact and portable. I suppose the bulkiest part would be where you keep the ports and where everything folds into.

EDIT: more raging. When the Liberals suggested increasing the use of wireless internet to cover broadband (woah, wait, you want me to pay $100 a month for 4GB a month?! I can get better on ADSL2+ from Telstra, let alone TPG), they were asked what spectrum they were going to use to deploy it on (people doing Physics will remember that the window for wireless technologies is getting smaller and more crowded). Mr Smith (the Liberal) said they could use the old Analogue TV radio spectrum. Immediately, flags start popping up exclaiming that this guy has no idea what he’s talking about (that, and the fact the this policy was only announced at 11am this very same day, and the press conference this debate was at was at 1pm the same day…)… *FACEPALM*

Anyways, I’d done now. Time to get back to studying =]

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

Is that how it’s spelt?? Disoriented? I can’t tell, I’m too lazy too look up a dictionary, but the spell check says it’s correct! Anyways, that’s how I feel. The two weeks of holidays, and then pupil free day before returning to school on a Tuesday instead of a Monday, and then spending most of the day out driving around with my dad or at the Band comp today… it’s just got my mind all muddled up. That and I feel sad at finishing two stories this weekend. I finally finished reading Cardcaptor Sakura (yes, the manga, not the anime. And yes, I know it’s a kid’s one, but hey, I’m allowed to relieve parts of my young childhood aren’t I? Besides, I wanted to know what the story was. When I was a small kid and tried watching the anime series, I missed too many episodes and didn’t understand it. That and the fact that the anime changed many things from the manga). And today I watched the final episode of Monk (season 8) on Channel Ten. Yes, I know, as Kai pointed out to me, that it finished last year (actually the last episode was filmed in 2008), and it’s just taken forever to be aired in Australia, but still, it’s finally finished. After growing up with it, it’s sad to see it ending. I don’t seem to be able to believe that it’s over…

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So, here I am at Sean’s house, using my mum’s laptop, and we’re working on our SDD project. Sean and Ben are busy coding, while I’m trying to workout a splash and layout for the GUI to our silly ATM project. More later.