miPhone

it'd be nice to be able to write a bit about my phone without making reference to the fruity one, but the fact is that, rightly or wrongly, the iPhone has become the standard by which all smartphones are mentioned. admittedly i got a bit caught up in the hype when the 3G arrived, and if it wasn't for the fact i as mid-contract i would have jumped in and signed up for one. but, once the fanfares died down a bit and you stepped back and had another look the iPhone spec began to look a little bit average, and missing out on some no-brainer essentials. so, eventually instead of jumping on the apple bandwagon, when my contract did come up for renewal i turned to the dark side and opted for windows mobile based htc touch hd. and despite yesterday's tweak of the iPhone OS i have no regrets.

the touch hd has a bit of a deceitful name because it's lovely 3.8" touchscreen isn't really HD, but then it does have the best resolution of any smartphone out there, 2.5 times bigger than that iphone. it looks lush and means that, as well as being able to view higher-res images and top quality videos, surfing the web is easy. you can easily read the bbc news homepage at full width without having to zoom in. which is nice. the nice big screen also makes it easy to take snaps with the nice 5-megapixel autofocus camera (which also has touch-to-focus). i can then fire it off as an MMS or email. if a snapshot's not going to be enough, i can switch to video and record happily away.

it's also easy to upgrade. headphones have a 3.5mm socket, so anything goes. the battery is easily changeable, and if you need extra juice, you can find longer-lasting ones all over t'internet. and top of the list of things to upgrade is the storage. the storage capacity of limited only by the biggest microSD card you can get. 32GB due in the next couple of months and 64GB early next year with any luck. so the phone keep growing.

so, what else to mention on the hardware front? obviously there's A-GPS built-in and an accelerometer, 3G and WiFi for fast data on the go and fully-functional bluetooth to hook up to headsets, transfer files or whatever else takes your fancy. contrary to popular belief, you don't need to use the stylus and it's perfectly finger-friendly without, but it's there for when you want to be a bit more precise.

i don't really think that anyone can complain about the hardware spec on the touch hd, particularly up against apple's 'game changer'. so if the technical spec measures up, the it must be down to the software which, it has to be said, is usually where microsoft lose out. so next time, i'll write a bit about Windows Mobile and, more importantly, TouchFLO 3D, htc's own front-end for WM6.1. then, once we've dealt with the OS, i'll write a bit about some lovely windows mobile applications.

embracing the inner geek

with the virtually inevitable announcement of a nice spangly new iPhone due in the next week or so, i thought i'd do my little bit to redress the ludicrous amount of coverage that'd be getting by blogging a bit about my nice little windows mobile phone. maybe the new 3rd generation iPhone will raise the bar a little, and the 3.0 software upgrade will certainly help, but, on paper at least, i reckon my touch hd stacks up quite nicely. i might also fancy writing a little something about my other little piece of micrsoft gadgetry, the media centre extender, if i can keep it working for long enough. of course, there's also the possibility that i won't write anything more than this and you'll be eagerly awaiting a post that never comes. 

so this is christmas

once again, i've been appalling at keeping this thing up to date. it's not even as if there's not been anything worth writing about for the last couple of months. having lost and job and found another one. having a little trip to the sun last month (gratuitous pictures of which are on the photos site - which I've just noticed there isn't a link for on here). but it's xmas now. work's as quiet as a morgue (no, that's not what the new job is) - which probably explains why i'm actually blogging something for a change. the halls are decked. the tree is up. the shopping is more or less finished. the turkey's in the fridge. i'm having a crack at xmas dinner this year - which should be fine. after all, it's really just a roast dinner with the added pressure of ruining everyone's xmas is you fuck up. so the giggle of redundancy lasted about a month in total and i managed to find a job who were nice enough to let me take the holiday we'd booked. which was fantastic. lots of lazing around. a nice accomodation upgrade. a few too many german nudists but you can't have it all i suppose. maybe a new years resolution, not that i really believe in then, could be to post more frequently on here. but we all know that's not going to happen. perhaps a quality not quantity system could be applied like on the moblog, but that'd probably mean posts would dry up completely. ho ho ho hum. see you in 2009 

while you're away, my heart comes undone

inside me a lunatic sings

if yesterday was a beautiful day i'm not sure what we can describe today as. glorious maybe? i'm laying in the sun listening to the fantastic new sigur ros album my sis got me for my birthday. it's perfect. lazing on a sunny afternoon. in spite of the stress and the nonsense, thank god i'm not at work.

it's a beautiful day (and no-one's gonna stop me now)

so the search goes on... have been ups and down as far as positivity goes in the last couple of days, but today's ending on a reasonable up - in spite of the fact that somewhere i interviewed at yesterday were due to be emailing me some homework to do and they haven't. which really isn't the end of the world. i think maybe we both reached the conclusion that it was the wrong candidate for the wrong role at the wrong place. something just didn't click with it. i came away less than enthused and i'm not going to be losing much sleep over that one. but had a couple of meetings today with agencies who were enthused and optimistic and that's been kind of infectious. tomorrow i'll give myself the day off from searching, being my burfdy and all. it's been a beautiful day today which always helps. one of the agencys was up in the west end and i was running a bit early so got off the tube and did one of my favourite walks, over the hungerford bridge and up towards trafalgar. stopped for a bit of sushi by the river for lunch. i wish i'd have the camera with me. i was obviously so relaxed i ended up slipping a huge cup of water all over the table when i got the agency, but i don't think they have a 'clumsy' column to mark against on their paperwork. been listening to the secret machines album again while writing this. it's weird. i like it. hope they come over here to tour soon and that i've got a bit of money for a ticket or can finally find something worthy of my ticketmaster vouchers.

the walls are starting to crack

hello adoring public. once again, i'm been neglecting my audience and no written in here for ages. not that anyone's noticed so there ya go. turns out, just for a change, i have something to write about. last week, i got made redundant. which sucks. it's the first time in (what i loosely refer to as) my career that i've not been the one making the decision about when it's the right time to move on. which, granted is debatable whether i've always made the right decisions in the past. but that's pretty irrelevant. so here i am, gainfully unemployed. job hunting's a full time job, you know. the panic's not setting in quite yet, i have a months notice before the well runs dry, so am not applying to pizza hut quite yet. give it a few weeks tho and i might be a bit more worried. in the meantime, have been busy tarting up my 'business' website and portfolio and firing off cvs and things. one meeting with a recruitment agent on thursday and waiting on a return call about one position tomorrow. i should keep an up to date record of how it all goes. but i guess i should be busy with more proactive things instead of that. i have been to the gym every day this week so far, so if i can keep that up i'll be a) in good shape for the holiday we booked before the buggers made me redundant (assuming i actually get to go!) and b) more likely to make money whoring myself on a street corner if all else fails. everyone's a winner. in other news, the new secret machines album has leaked and it sounds rather good so far. all the worries when brother thingy left haven't amounted to a huge let down. in fact, it's sounding a lot more meandering than the last one. which is a good thing.

who wants to be a millionaire?

what a nice way to start the week. the first email in my inbox on a monday morning is from the national lottery with the very exciting subject line: congratulations, you've won £1,200,000. if it wasn't for the fact that i do the lottery online and love sending u emails about things, i would have dismissed it as spam straght away. but there were a few seconds between reading the subject line and getting as far as the address to reply to which, somewhat unlikely, was @msn.com where i was quite a bit better off than i was when i woke up this morning. sadly, that bubble didn't last too long. we live in hope though...

try not to worry about what's been missed

i've not written on here for ages, so i should make amends for that. i had posted a nice little video clip a while back, but that wasn't very sunny apparently. so, i've been in hospital and had my appendix out which was exciting. i've got a nice scar now, there's a picture of it on the moblog if you're interested. it all happened very quickly, i was going into surgery within about 12 hours of first going to the doctors. the only thing problems was just as i was going under the anaesthetic i got a look at the surgeon, who looked a lot like a part-time john mccririck look alike wearing a bandana. the one little detail that didn't set my mind at ease as he was pressing against my throat just before going unconscious was that each of his eyes was going in a completely different direction. tho, to be fair, he can't have been bad, assuming of course that it was my appendix they removed after all. that'll do for now. i've cut my finger and typing without it is proving to be a pain in the arse. i'll post something else soom probably. maybe.

about today