| Two Hours With iPhone |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|10:05 pm] |
For the last month, I've been raving about the iPod Touch, but now that I finally own the real thing, the iPod is now banished, unworthy to be in the same room as the mighty iPhone.
Last night people were camping out in front of the Regent Street Apple store in London waiting for a chance to get the new phone as soon as it was released. Things in Edinburgh were much calmer. Four people outside the O2 store tried to attract people to the store. Another half a dozen or so inside helped the two or three customers there. Bottled water and muffins were handed out to customers interested in checking out the phone.
Purchasing the iPhone was remarkably smooth. The horror stories of experiences in the AT&T stores back in the States were not repeated here. All the store did was sell the physical device--activation was left completely to iTunes at home. The hardest part was getting a UK iTunes account since my .Mac account is based in the US. My UK credit has improved significantly in the last year as I instantly passed the credit check.
After syncing some songs, I headed out for a stroll, listening to music as I took photographs of the castle and emailed them to Flickr.
I'm still so energized by this newest gadget that I can't sit still. Eventually, however, the crash will come, and I'm sure I will crash hard. As it is, I'm operating with only three hours of sleep last night after climbing the 460 meters to the top of Ben A'an, feasting at a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant, and hanging out a club mostly not dancing to the classic 80s tunes until after 2:30 in the morning when we were finally kicked out. |
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| iPhone |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|07:28 pm] |
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Who am I kidding? OF COURSE I bought an iPhone within the first hour of its European release. Which makes my iPod Touch the fasted piece of electronics to hit the recycling bin.... |
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| Even better than the real thing |
[Oct. 31st, 2007|07:16 pm] |
As I came home from work today, I set down a bag with a sandwich and can of Coke Zero. As I took off my coat, I brushed against the side of the can, which was enough to send it rolling over the edge. A few seconds later, my brain finally registers a high pitched hiss which I slowly begin to realize is the Coke spraying out from a puncture in the can. I pick it up as fast as I can and throw it into the nearby bathroom shower. Totally lame. I'm very thirsty and now I have nothing to drink.
On the plus side, I also arrived home to find my pre-release copy of Maktub's new CD that my Mom was nice enough to mail off to me (as it was originally shipped to my parents' address). Another excellent album. Get your copy when it comes out next Tuesday.
I guess this is my Halloween trick *and* treat. |
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| Hifi High Five |
[Jul. 5th, 2007|12:23 am] |
It's 12:30 and I can just now pry myself away from my new stereo system and get to bed. My living room has once again descended into a mess of ripped up papers and empty boxes. The speakers are badly positioned in the too small room. My televesion stand doesn't really have enough space for all the components, leaving a disconnect PS3 temporarily tossed to a corner of the room. The AV receiver sits on the floor, with the first dozen cables connected to it.
Speakers sound better on spikes, apparently, but I just can't stand the thought of sharp-pointed metal poking through the floor, so I had to carefully remove the spikes from all of the floor pads.
The hifi shop gave me some speaker cables with nicely colored plugs attached to the ends, but after staring at my equipment I couldn't figure out a way to make the connections. I luckily discovered an old Radio Shack telephone jack crimping tool left over from some long forgotten telephony experiment that did a decent enough job of cutting and stripping the wires. With a little effort of some painful maneuvering around the furniture, I managed to thread 30 meters of cable around the room to six separate speakers. The remains of 30 pounds worth of plugs and now strewn across the floor.
I couldn't get to sleep without knowing that all this hard work was actually successful. So I pulled the S-Video cable from the freeview set top box and wired it through the receiver. This knocked the unit out of its precariously balanced position and so I lost most of the channels, but at least some video came through.
With an onscreen display now available, I was able to run the receiver's built in audio setup tool. The setup was able to detect and configure all of the speakers. There are still no audio inputs, but at least I was able to hear the shrill sonic pulse fired from each of the speakers. I guess that means the wiring was successful. I just hope I got left and right sorted out properly, because that will be a real pain fix if I got them mixed up. |
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| Life plans |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|11:03 pm] |
I recently received the end of year statement for my pension plan. It contained an estimate of the benefits I would receive on retirement if I continue to pay into the plan. According to the plan, when I retire I will be married to a woman who is three years younger than me and she will receive half of the pension on my death.
So, if you are a single woman somewhere in the age of 30 to 32 and are interested in picking up a little extra cash in, oh, forty years time, give me a call. We should talk. My number is +44 (0)7983 981 169.
Or if you're just bored and want to hang out and chat or whatever. My contract gives me more airtime than I can possibly use each month.... |
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| Identity |
[Jun. 15th, 2007|07:13 pm] |
For the last two weeks I've been stranded in the UK without a passport. I needed to send it in to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency as proof of identity when applying for a provisional driving license. It was a strange feeling being stuck in the country. Especially during this increasingly cold and wet *cough* Summer, as my coworkers are taking off for warmer places.
My passport finally came back today, so I can start to think about planning my next holiday. Unfortunately, along with the passport, I received a tax return form Revenue & Customs. I briefly flipped through the massive form and instructions that make the plain old American 1040 look trivial by comparison. Still, I guess this means that I'm finally starting to get closer to being recognized as a real person again.... |
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| Codex |
[Jun. 13th, 2007|07:46 pm] |
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On a whim, I imported my latest CD purchase into iTunes using the Apple Lossless codec instead of my usual mediocre quality AAC format. I think it sounds better, but I don't know if that's just my imagination trying to justify the 7x increase in file size. Do these files actually sound better? Should I spend the time to reimport my entire collection? Should I pick a different encoding? |
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| Next Morning |
[Apr. 6th, 2007|08:30 am] |
I feel like crawling into a corner and just waiting to die. After getting back to my flat at 1:00 a.m. last night after eating way too much curry, I fell into some sort of weird work-related dream where I was trying to accomplish some tedious task but nothing was happening--I was just frozen in place distinctly aware that time wasn't passing. After about an hour I woke up and never was able to make it back to sleep.
Maybe I should have just stayed home and spent the night installing Vista.... |
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| Vista!!! |
[Apr. 5th, 2007|06:44 pm] |
Nearly three months after I sent away for the "express" upgrade to Windows Vista, and more than three weeks after I had been notified that it had been dispatched (I was getting ready to complain that it had been lost in the mail), I came home to find my copy of the new operating system waiting for me.
If I weren't just about to head out for Andy's farewell dinner, I might be installing it right now. Then again, I might just have settled in for a night of Playstation 3 gaming.
Speaking of the Playstation, I just got confirmation from Sony that my free copy of Casino Royale on Blu-ray (given out to the first 500,000 people to sign up for the Playstation network) should arrive sometime in the next 45 days. Add this to the free copy of X-Men 3 that I got for preordering the console and I guess I have been firmly entrenched into the Blu-ray side of the high definition format wars. |
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| Twitter |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|04:55 am] |
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4:45 a.m. - It really is past waaaay past my bedtime. Time to get maybe two and a half hours of sleep before it's off to work again. There will be plenty of time for more Playstation this weekend.... |
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| Twitter |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|01:36 am] |
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1:35 a.m. - Playstation is now connected and downloading system updates. |
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| Twitter |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|12:40 am] |
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12:40 a.m. - Arrived home with new Playstation 3. Now try to get it installed. |
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| Wireless |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|11:46 pm] |
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My Windows laptop has a small sliding switch on the front that will disable wifi and bluetooth connectivity. Unfortunately, the switch is located close enough to the touch pad that it's easy enough to accidentally and unknowingly switch the network off while casually scrolling around the screen or when opening and closing the laptop. Other than the tiny indicator light on the front that switches from blue to red, there's no readily apparent sign that the network has been disabled. I spent most of the last day or two frustrated that I couldn't use the computer while in my room, thinking that the wifi signal was for some reason suddenly to weak to receive. |
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| French & Chips |
[Mar. 6th, 2007|12:15 am] |
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My whole belief that I was perhaps getting accustomed to living in this country was shattered again today. Okay, so they call French fries "chips" here. Fish & chips is a common enough meal that that much is obvious. That means, then, that regular chips must be called something else: crisps. Never mind that crisps are frequently not, well, crisp. If only things were this simple. But, oh, no, I find out today that there is also, in fact, such a thing as French fries. Apparently French fries are some sort of thin variety of chips? Apparently, as explained by my coworkers, they aren't very good. I tried reading the wikipedia article on the subject but left more confuse than before. |
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| Communications Breakdown |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|11:58 pm] |
Finally some success, I think. Maybe too much success.
After enabling NAT handling within Asterisk, I was able to to dial in from my mobile to the Asterisk server which then dialed out to my home phone. I put the mobile down in fron of the computer speaker and proceeded to walk around the flat listening to the music being piped 5,000 miles away and then back again.
The funny thing is that hanging up the phone did not disconnect the call. Once I picked the phone back up, the music resumed playing as if nothing had happened. I'm not sure I like the concept of hanging up not ending the call. I'm starting to worry about what my phone bill is going to look like next month since even local calling plans in the UK are metered.
Configuring the Asterisk server is a bit tricky and I'm not sure if I've gotten the parameters all right, or whether I specified too much or too general. The trial and error approach to tuning the configuration parameters is getting a bit tiring. I think I'll just declare success there.
There was also some strange behavior with the server that I don't quite understand which I think has something to do with the way BT has set up their proxy. Recently when I first fired up the server I would get SIP invitation paackets but the call wouldn't be picked up. Restarting the server seemed to get things working again. But as I restart more as I tune the configuration it seemed like I would get multiple connections from the incoming call (up to four simultaneous copies, each from a different IP address). This manifested itself with thick echoes as the sound was doubled or tripled up. Even stranger was when the server dialed out and I would simultaneous get a ringing and busy signal. Ah, UDP, you can't guarantee any type of consistency can you? |
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| Troubleshooting Tip #627 |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|07:33 pm] |
When testing to see if you can place an outgoing call to your telephone, it helps to have said phone actually plugged in. It seems that I've left my phone unplugged for the last week without noticing--just goes to show how much I actually need to use a telephone these days.
With phone properly wired, I was actually able to get Asterisk to dial out to the phone--well sorta kinda. The phone did in fact start to ring, but it never connected. The connection was disconnected almost immediately following a flurry of SIP packets and a packet transmission errors. I'm not sure what the problem is. It might just be a problem configuring the authentication, or it might just be impossible to establish this type of connection
I suppose it doesn't matter too much. Most of the cool ideas I have only require the ability to dial in, although having the ability to let the computer call you back on a voice line at some random time is an interesting one. |
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| VOIP Hacking |
[Mar. 4th, 2007|04:41 pm] |
With a full three hours of sleep last night, I woke up this morning refreshed and headed to the computer room for a little more hacking.
This VOIP stuff is pretty cool, if completely incomprehensible. I wonder why I didn't try experimenting with this before. After some trial and error, I got an Asterisk server compiled on my local iMac and was able to see the SIP requests floating through the ether thanks to my trusty pal tcpdump. I would have used the much cooler Ethereal with its fancy graphical protocol crackers (which would have made this so much more pleasant), but I'm too lazy to work out all the dependencies to get it to compile on a Mac, and I still stubbornly refuse to install darwinports or fink.
A little sleuthing on Google revealed how to get the username and password for my BT Broadband Talk account and with a little more trial and error (and a long lunch break to clear my head) I was able to get my Asterisk server to authenticate against the BT SIP server and answer a call. The dial plan is pretty basic, just answer the phone, play a bit of an IVR demo (but none of the actual extensions are programmed in yet) and then hang up.
The quality of the call wasn't particularly good, however. I suspected that my Mac just wasn't able to keep up with the codecs (and this is one of the fancy dual core Intel chips), so I decided to try this experiment off of my linux server, which is hosted somewhere in Texas or something.
Funny thing is, the linux version works amazingly well. And so I am currently able to dial a local UK number here in Edinburgh--a number so local, in fact, that the phone in my other hand rings when I call--but have a computer 5,000 miles away answer the phone and start talking to me. |
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| Late Night Conversations With Myself |
[Mar. 4th, 2007|03:40 am] |
It's 3:30 am. I should be sleeping. I know that I'm tired, but can't seem to snap myself out of this strange state that I'm in. There's a kind of frustrated creativity flowing through me now. I have ideas, a thousand conflicting thoughts racing through my head, that will probably never get acted on.
I've just been playing with the VOIP service that came with my broadband service that I had just never gotten around to trying until now. Once I got the physical phone configured and able to send and receive calls on my second phone number I moved on to the computer-based soft phone. There's just something wrong about lying sprawled on the bed, making a call from my mobile to my computer, listening to the echo of my voice as it bounces from mouth to cell phone to computer speaker and back to phone, humming random fragments of songs as the minute by minute charges stack for both sides of this conversation with myself. I even sent a few text messages to myself for good measure. |
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| Vista |
[Feb. 1st, 2007|08:16 pm] |
I bought a new Windows laptop a few weeks ago. It came with Windows XP Media Center, but included a free upgrade to Vista when it released later in January. Sounded good to me. I get the instant gratification of taking home a new gadget and still get the new operating.
This was probably a mistake. As I wandered through the electronics store tonight (it's Thursday when most stores stay open a bit later so I can actually get some shopping done after coming home from work), I saw all the new computers available with Vista already installed and ready to go.
This reminded me that I hadn't sent in my upgrade coupon yet. I just went through the process of ordering. After suffering through a long a painful set of forms, I discover that I need to print out a copy of the email confirmation (I don't have a printer) and send it along with the original sales receipt (which I surprisingly still have) and then send it off to some processing center in The Netherlands.
And after all this, I still have to wait 6 to 8 weeks for them to ship the software. And then it will be shipped to my home address where there won't be anyone to receive it which will likely result in the package eventually being shipped back to the sender when I fail to find the delivery notification slip that will be careless tossed into the building's mail slot and trampled over by the neighbor's kids and their muddy feet when they return home from school.
Then again, it looks like the Vista equipped systems are quite a bit more expensive than the one I got, so things will even out when I end up paying the full retail price for a copy. |
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| Attention UK |
[Jan. 29th, 2007|08:22 pm] |
Now that Celebrity Big Brother is over can we finally get back to our lives? Yes, of course I'm glad that Shilpa, a true modern day Gandhi, stood up to the racist bullying of Jade (apparently not so) Goody to win the contest. The country has now been redeemed in the eyes of the world.
Move along, there's nothing to see here. |
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