Goodbye, Mr. Wright.

I was wondering why they were playing a lot of Pink Floyd songs today on the (ahem ahem) Mighty Q tonight. Then I read the news. You, like Syd, left us too young. But you will not be forgotten.

Wow Apple, I'm Impressed!

Chairman Jobs got up and told the world about his new iPods, his new iTunes update, and his new iPhone/iPod Touch firmware update. While I may not have got the entire gist of it, seeing as my computer has spent the past hour or so downloading said updates and installing them, this one feature impresses me a lot. Looks like you can now see what podcasts you've partially listened to, the lengths of them, and how much time's left on the one's you've partially listened to right from the podcast directory. No more actually having to play them! HURRAY!!! Haven't dove into the rest of what the new firmware delivers (heard something about copy/paste but that seems like utmost b.s., and this genius thing, well, I dunno, seems like Apple's way of trying to get you to buy more music off iTunes IMHO) but methinks firmware 2.1 is a winner. Now it's time for the dev team to jailbreak it. I'm guessing we'll see that by Thursday. Let us hope. %]

Everybody Wants To Be My Neighbour

I happen to come home from work today, and as I usually do, get my trusty little iPod touch to connect to my Wifi network (will not do this anywhere else; too scared about unsecured wifi no matter what) and find a rather interesting email today posted from "Rogers Wireless":

It seems Mr. Rogers thinks I'm a valuable customer, and feels I must buy one of his iPhones from him.  (I blocked out the number to call, because, who knows, that number could well be exclusive to my falling for the bait.)  Wow, I'll be rush-delivered this new prized technology from Cupertino, as long as I act before Tuesday.  I should feel so honoured.  Until, of course, I read the end of said "exclusive offer."  Get a load of this!

MINIMUM TWO IPHONES?!?!  WTF?!?!   It's bad enough how much ONE of these things cost through Mr. Robbers' Neighbourhood (quick primer: $200/$300 for the phone depending on storage size, 3 year contract that's at a MINIMUM of $80/month for the cheapest voice and data plan, and trust me, you'll eat up that data within a day or two.) There is NO unlimited data plan with Mr. Rogers, and of course you'll be subject to a whole multitude of sneaky fees (my favourite is the $6.95 "system access fee." which of course is not stated up front and you'll only find that out squinting through the fine print, or scratching your head what this charge is on your phone bill.) BUT TO HAVE TO BUY AT LEAST TWO OF THEM??? Don't even ask how much caller ID costs, and I don't even dare want to know what visual voicemail will set you back with these rat bastards.

Aren't you glad Rogers is the only GSM network in Canada, and therefore the only ones that can offer you Mr. Control Freak's object of technolust?  Me neither.

Update: Twinkle Didn't Crash!

I actually got to post that last tweet! Hurray for little miracles. Thanks for reading.

I Tweet, You Tweet, We All Tweet...

I'll admit it. I'm addicted to Twitter. Ever since I first heard about it on many a tech podcast, and wondered "why bother?", the Lure of the Temptress got to me, and signed up a few months back. Hell, if you're completely disturbed, you can follow me by clicking on that link on that right pane over there, or perhaps clicking here.

But that's not just the point of this blog post. I'm also here to talk about a couple of apps that have made the Twittering experience a bit more jovial - for those times I've sat outside stealing Wifi from elsewhere to my reliable iPod. Without further adieu...
First off is Twitterific (link to app store). Makes me want to actually tweet something when I'm not in front of my computer. I have many kudos for this app, except the fact that if you like it to not display ads or nag you when you want to change settings, you have to shell out $15. While this is a fine app for what it does, I don't think it's worth that kinda money for just doing what I could have simply done with twitter on the browser. Sure, the addition of letting you add geo tags to your tweets is nice, but then again, there's something that does a better job...
But then along came Twinkle (link to App store). And yes, I really, truly, truly want to love this app. It uses geolocation in a sweet way - to find others near you. It also lets you attach photos stored in your photo library on the phone/pod (or whatever else you decided to snap whilst browsing). And you can't complain about the price (exactly zero dollars, pounds, euro, yen, or whatever currency you currently use.) But alas, this thing is chock-full of bugs! I barely had enough time to snap that screen before the thing crashed on me. I don't know, I really like this app, but it's not all that useful if it keeps crashing on you!

But I will continue to tweet. With my trusty iPod. Even if it means going back to the mobile page.

Update: They still don't want my portrait of Sir John A MacDonald

But at least they're kind enough to pop up this alert box after I feverishly continue clicking on that "Learn More" button. Haven't seen this yet. Maybe it was a secret push Apple did after a few gazillion clicks. Strange how it was relatively pain-free this morning to get the iTunes 7.7 update. But this is ridiculous.

Doesn't Apple Want My Ten Bucks?

No doubt enough of you have been clicking feverishly on that "Learn More" button today (those of you with iPod touches that is, yearning for that new 2.0 firmware update.) Only to return you to your iPod screen in iTunes. Hey Steve, ever think of allocating a few more servers to firmware updates on day one? Especially when you have the gall to charge us for them now? Or do I have to go arr ... arr ... arr'n for the leaked .ipsw file (which no doubt I'd get a lot faster, and save the ten bucks in doing so.)

C'mon, Steve Nazi, let me give you some more of my money. Or is my money not good enough for you?

Shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits

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Methinks iTunes is trying to tell us something...

When I got home today, I do what I usually do: turn on this stupid computer, get the iPod out of my pocket, and get it to charge/sync with iTunes. Anyone who owns one of said devices knows that when its syncing, the screen will show you if your firmware ("iPod software" as Apple will say) is up to date and will check again at a certain date. Of course, you could force it to check right now, and what usually happens when you do so if that if it doesn't find one, it will refresh the "I'll check myself" date for a week later.

So, without further aideu, I tried to force said update just now (Jun 08/08) to find that:


So what you may ask? The so what is that once I clicked OK and saw my iPod there again in iTunes I discover that something didn't change:





Sorry if this image above isn't clear - this is what I get for playing cut 'n paste with ALT-PrintScreen and Microsoft Paint. Maybe I should've used Live Writer to post this rather than the default editor in Blogger. Awell, methinks you see the point if you squint real good - or click on the image - that auto-update still reads 09/06/2008 (June 9 to anyone American who would think it'll check sometime in September.).

What are you saying here, Steve? A new firmware update tomorrow? Looks like your own software's just spilt the beans. Thank you.

I drank the Kool-aid. And it only made my wallet sick

I love this new toy of mine. Now all I gotta do is get around to jailbreaking it. Thank you, Control Freak Steve Jobs for making this a bit more complicated. And also thank you for steering me over to WorstBuy to buy it - seeing as your Taj Mahal outlet (link is the store I went to) wants to charge $50 more for the same bloody thing! What's the deal with that?

But I will admit one thing - it's the most fun I've had with something in my pocket.

"$ci€nto£og¥" - Do I Get A Cookie?

I thought someone on this planet must have done this depiction of the Registered Trademark of the evil cult before I did in my last blog post.

But Googling said word says otherwise.

Now I feel special. Though I did see said word on protest signs during the Feb. 10 demo.

Hope to see more March 15.

(Expletives Deleted)

DAMN IT! Why didn't I know about this sooner?

The two biggest nutjobs in Hollywood in town, and me not knowing about it? No, I'm not talking about Hillary's whore, nor that swish Elton. I'm talking about those two prime $ci€nto£og¥ members: Tommy and Johnny.

It would have been great if I have had known about this. To have been able to say "hi" to them as they walked into the dinner reception (which I did know was at the Westin Harbour Castle, but didn't know of all the celebrities showing up.) Maybe if I had the chance to meet them, I could have had a chance to ask them about Xenu, or Lisa McPherson, or Shawn Lonsdale. Of course, given the chance, they would have suck their $ci€nto£og¥ guards on me, but at least I would have had that shot.

Beware the Ides of March.