Finally

Well thank heavens that wasn’t a colossal pain in the arse, by which of course I mean that it was. Getting your house wired up to the internet seems to be as difficult as everything else in this country. It has taken me more than a month from buying the connection and the kit to get things working properly. However the effort looks like it has been worth it and I now have an internet connection at home.

Let’s hope it lasts!

Defictionalisation...

...appears to be a particularly ugly neologism for the process of fictional things being produced in the real world. A few people I know used to have a Buddy Christ.

Leaving aside my horror that a more elegant word doesn't seem to have been found, some vague wonderings about artistic practice and theoretical embodiment, the feeling that reality is eating itself and the noise from the post-modernist philosophers "we told you we were right" party I have only one thing to say:

Where's my bloody lightsabre?!

Headphones

"You can bite my shiny metal iPod"

The doped masses, heads hanging, blank eyes badly hidden behind over-expensive sunglasses sit on the bus together, nodding to the invisible beat of the anaesthetic administered aurally via the white umbilicus.

"Yesterday, I swear I got to work and had no idea how I got there."

Every smart suit and pair of clicking heals living in denial of their symptoms. The brain-surgeon working on itself excising the horror of the daily commute asks only for a little music to cut by.

Digger

Diggers like beaches

The recent storms - in addition to killing 9 people and causing shipwrecks - spread most of Maroubra beach accross the road or plastered it against the concrete walls that border the sand. Earth moving equipment was brought in to re-level the beach after the storms and only today has it been silent

I must admit I had a temptation to joyride the thing in this photo. Sadly at time of taking it was mid-morning and I couldn't see the keys anywhere. Now it is late afternoon and I've had a few of Australia's finest I'm tempted to try again. Look out for news of my arrest.

Pets

"For pity's sake HELP ME!"

I grew up with pets; 2 cats and 2 dogs, the occasional fish, horses, my sister had a hamster that went very quiet one day and was found, toes in the air stiff as a board with no further use for his annoyingly squeaky wheel. I pleaded not guilty and was duly acquitted.

"I'll kill you all, when I get loose!"

As an adult I do not feel the urge to have pets particularly. I am on my own on this particular point; the threat "dog or baby" has been used on more than one occasion and is starting to sound like a bit more than an idle threat. However Dog has recently taken a back seat to Toyger. No I haven’t misspelt that dyslexia or no. She wants a Toyger.

Yes dear, very pretty.

A Toyger is a domestic cat specifically bred to look like a miniature tiger. Which sounds excellent apart from the fact that they are horrendously expensive at $1000 a go. Why would you need to breed a domestic moggy to look like a tiger anyway? They all believe they’re tigers, why bolster the fantasy?

"I'm thinkin about eatin you..."

I have said no to a Toyger on the grounds that they too expensive, too steal-able and we go on far too many holidays to have a pet. I have been receiving these pictures of Toyger kittens by email. Stupidly I made the mistake of showing them to my colleagues (all women). I am not getting much support. Sadly things have since escalated and Toyger quickly gave way to Kinkajou and Sugar Glider. Heaven help me.

Shotcode

dataphage:shotcode

Sometimes technology moves more quickly than you really like to think about. The picture to the left is a shotcode. With the aid of a download to your phone from the shotcode website you can then take a picture of these graphics and the phone will automatically direct its browser to the site that it represents. The one to the left is for here.

Personally I find that a little creepy but I'm going to have fun leaving these all over the place, though I might not go this far.

Apple announces iCandy

Steve jobs today unveiled the latest in Apple's suite of digital technology, a sweet, or rather a sweet dispenser. Apple is bravely stepping into a market arena long dominated by PEZ and seen by many as one that is ripe for a serious hardware manufacturer to bring high-end functionality into. The announcement brings to a denouement months of speculation in the confectionary press that Apple were about to make inroads into their market – famously there were even mock-ups of what iCandy might have looked like published in Chocolatier Today.

According to Mr Jobs this won't just be any sweet dispenser but the one sweet dispenser anyone will need or want. “iCandy is a total confectionary solution in a single, desirable and easy to use device for grown-ups that does away with ugly and cumbersome front-end,” said Jobs. “iCandy combines the functionality of other sweet dispensers with the ability to pre-select the flavour and texture of the item dispensed as well as order new sweets online through the iSweets software that comes with it.”

It seems that whilst iCandy will dispense many other forms of previously available sweets, sweets that are purchased via iSweets will come in a sealed container that can only be opened by placing it in the iCandy device. Speculation has started that this will mean that the previously much vaunted business model of partnering with manufacturers such as Haribo to produce a significant new channel will not gain the market share predicted. “People won’t really bother with the iSweets store outside of the occasional curiosity purchase,” says Richard Laybrook of Toffee and Butterscotch News, “probably preferring to put sweets from packets they already have into the device”.

The unveiling of the actual iCandy device received astonished gasps from the audience who despite their journalistic objectivity couldn't get enough of the rounded corners and shiny effect on the interface. One of the questions from the audience focussed on the design culture at the company and whether this device had reinvigorated what had been seen as a stale and stagnant process at Apple. The criticism has been that new devices and new versions of devices are simply given more rounded corners, a shiny effect on the interface and released to market in a new colour. The iCandy with its shiny effect and rounded corners was clearly a huge departure for Apple available as it is in black, white and silver on the same device and will soon be available in nearly 4 colours but remained true to the Apple aesthetic. "Yes," quipped Jobs, "the strongest flavour of iCandy is Apple."

A technology blogger in the front row, who was clearly a week late, questioned Jobs on whether or not this was in fact anything new at all and wasn't he guilty of lumping together many technologies that were approaching obsolescence in a very thin, very shiny new case, giving it good packaging and sticking the letter i in front of a generic name to make it sound cool? Wasn’t this, he continued, a symptom of over-investment in product design, marketing and the miniaturisation of old technologies in favour of genuine innovation? Unfortunately Jobs reply was never heard as a several burly Apple PR execs reminded the blogger that he had an urgent appointment elsewhere that wouldn’t require his press credentials which he gladly surrendered to them after almost no struggle at all. Another question asked if Apple HQ was really the most appropriate place to release the product when the Confectioners Association of America was meeting only a two hour drive away, but everyone pretended they hadn’t heard the journalist and nothing more was said.

Further speculation as to Apple’s future direction was ignited this week as a company lawyer contacted the estate of Isaac Asimov to enquire as to the trademark status of the iRobot name.

iCandy will be available in America in July 2007 once it is fully feature complete and will be rolled out into Europe and the world by May 2008.



Don't know what I'm talking about? Read this, and this, and this and listen to the podcast below:

powered by ODEO

And so it begins in earnest!

Maroubra beach this morning I now have a camera phone, a 3.2 megapixel camera with a phone on the back. It's also got a radio, a music player etc. etc.

My new toy arrived on Friday afternoon and I have so many things I can do with it that I don't quite know where to begin. However let's start with the camera - the image quality is so good that you can actually see the dirt on the windows in the picture (click on pic for big)!

I am so impressed with the little thing that I had to try it out, unfortunately it's got so many technical features that its taking me a little while to get all the details working. For example there is a way that I can post to this page direct from the phone but for some reason I can't figure out how. I can now capture video and audio from my daily life and post it up here. In short, nothing is safe!

Being the geek I am I had to find a ringtone that wasn't completely hopeless and there are surprisingly few of these. I have an ongoing addiction to the TV series 24, which, I might add, is the only decent thing on TV out here. So what have I done but got the ringtone from the series and put it on the mobile. Not only that but you can click on the player below to hear what it sounds like, great! I can be a real sad act at times.

powered by ODEO

Phone

I need a new phone, or rather more accurately, I don't. I have a phone and it works well, but it just isn't what I want any more. What I want is a camera phone with a built in mp3 player that I can watch video on and send photographs directly to the internet from (optional Light saber attachment would also be a big plus.

Why do I want such a thing? I never carry a camera with me and I always regret it when I find something good to photograph. Mercifully for my bank account this isn't possible yet as Sony Ericsson need to hurry up and release the damn thing (maybe it's developing the light saber add-on that's holding it up). This gives me time to save up and be sensible, dammit.

I can't justify spending the money on just a camera and I have a phone with me permanently anyway. See how I am rationalising spending huge amounts of money on a gadget? Other people seem to live with a camera. Chris seems to sleep with one under his pillow and Ben seems to have just about given up on the blog and now lives on flickr.

The italian bloke behind me on the bus as was scribbling this in my notebook was listening to music at ear-bleed volume and taking numerous pictures with his phone. I was tempted to get up and punch him for reading over my shoulder then nick his phone. But I didn't.

Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just a poser?

I, like many, have iPod envy. I really want an iPod and far too many people I know now have one. The reason I haven't bought one is broadly the same reason I haven't bought a digital camera of my own. When I have money I don't have a computer to allow me to use it properly. Now that I have a computer I'm utterly boracic.

But it isn't just fiscal limitations that are stopping me from buying one. It's also the fact that owning an iPod also marks you out as the kind of person who owns an iPod i.e. an overgrown music obsessed adolescent who ought to stop spending all their money on CDs and grow up a fraction. This isn't simply jealousy talking or me attempting to cover up any lingering status anxiety I may have. When they first came out the status that an ipod conferred on its' owner could be likened to that of the mobile phone or a filofax. The kind of people that owned one either needed it as a business tool to back up their hard-drive or wanted to be the kind person who needed it and weren't (I shall call these people "Business" Tools).

The iPod seems to have gone through a kind of high speed version of the acceptance that both these functional accessories went through after years of being the mark of a complete prick, probably because of it's stunningly good design and an equally well conceived ad compaign. However, when Levis start making jeans with a remote control, docking station and headphones built in you know it really is going back to being the walkman for wankers. Probably the worst indication of the syndrome is the people that use the headphones that come with the iPod, the horrible little white ones. Proprietry headphones are