Category Archives: mobile

Taking it easy

As of 40 minutes ago, I have decided not to let the Reds affect my mood the way they have done for the past half a dozen years or so. That is not to say that I will be supporting them with any less fervour, but I will try to curb the win-and-I-love-life and the draw-or-worse-and-I-hate-myself (until the next game, when the cycle repeats) pattern that my life revolves around. Of course, how successful I will be remains to be seen (to be honest, I don’t think I have a chance with this “hands-off” style of support, that just isn’t me), but let’s give this a shot. No more obsessive checking of Newsnow every 5 minutes (on non-match days also), no more RAWK, no more thinking about formations during tea breaks.

Aside from the Reds’ away form in the premiership (there I go again!), I have had little to complaint off late. Things been pretty hectic at work (up to 6 days a week now), bordering on the unmanageable as far as deadlines and pressure are concerned, but when I contrast that with the times I longed for meaningful work a couple of years back, you won’t hear me complaining too loud. Thankfully, there’s a break round the corner and I am looking forward to enjoying the nice Delhi weather at this time of the year with some good Vodka as well as catching up with friends and family.

All that should explain the lack of action around here – and whatever little time I have had, I have blown away in a newly discovered fetish – pumping iron et al, which of course sucks out whatever little is left in the tank at the end of the day. Thankfully, it hasn’t yet turned into an obsession (and something tells me it never will) so I allow myself off days like today which in turn allows you to read meaningless drivel like this!

Amongst other things, I completed 1 year with my current employer a couple of days back – a big, big thing in my part of the world. As an anniversary gift to myself (okay, I decide to masquerade it as a gift as an afterthought), I got myself a shiny new iPod video 80 GB (yes, it’s black) – hey, the price was too good to refuse! I was out shopping for a M2 card for my phone to allow me to listen to music while travelling/ gym-ing, but those chips don’t look like settling at a decent price anytime soon – so I bought something that costs 6 times instead! Genius! I thought of getting a 30 GB video iPod as the music “warehouse” AND :p a 2 GB Nano for the gym, but settled on the biggest, meanest iPod out there instead. Zune what? Still need to solve the gym music problem though.

Some more feedback on the phone like I promised. The M600i has been by and large nice – especially since I upgraded the firmware. I can actually view the messages with the email client now! And I don’t recall any “out of memory” messages since the upgrade either. There have been a few lockups while using IMAP mail that have required me to reinsert the battery (force reboot), especially when the connection quality has been dodgy, but hey nothing’s perfect, right? Also, I am still looking for a decent (preferably free) Yahoo! Messenger client. I have tried IM+ and it does okay for most part, but surely there’s something better out there (no, Elite Messenger doesn’t cut it either). BTW why don’t Yahoo! and others have official IM clients for the mobile platforms yet?!! Crazy.

[tags]iPod, M600i, UIQ 3, M2, Yahoo Messenger, YM, IM+[/tags]

A quickish update

Ah, the joys of having tea at 12:45 in the night! (I don’t like to call it morning just because it’s the next day/ date).

The six day Id vacation is over n done with and I’m back at work. Was more than a bit under the weather towards the latter part of the “break”, but almost back to perfect health now. Slept close to 12 hours straight last night, which is huuuuuuuge by my standards, but then if you consider I didn’t sleep for a second the night before, it comes close to evening itself out. Got meself a new phone after much deliberation – a M600i, first recommended by Kashyap. Mayank commented on how I had now gone for a “convergent” device (or a PDA + phone hybrid in any case), after having been in favour of specialist devices, but the truth is I still am in the “individual devices” camp and I’d even considered going down the Palm TX + cheap-bluetooth-EDGE phone, but I faced the same problem as last time i.e. there’s no such freakin’ thing as a “cheap-bluetooth-EDGE phone”, now that the 6021 has been discontinued.

I was having a tough time deciding when I thought, what the heck, let’s go for the M600i and we’ll see how things turn out – it’s a matter of 450 odd US dollars in any case (when you consider the phone and the 1 gig memory card) – tongue firmly in cheek. Not that I thought it’s a bad phone – anything but. It’s just the M2 that was the stumbling block for me – I don’t like proprietary formats and this new-format-a-month thing that Sony seems to be doing isn’t winning me over.

Anyways, my initial impressions of the phone have been mostly positive – especially the keyboard and the copy (from) anywhere-paste (to) anywhere thing that it has going. I must say thought that I haven’t had a chance to “play” with it as much as I would like or normally do with my “toys”. It doesn’t seem to be as responsive as I’d like it to be, but maybe that’s just me and my first time with a touch screen etc. I loved the “landscape” mode in the browser, though the fact I had to horizontal scroll a blogger.com page was a bummer – maybe I should use the zoom option to try and fit more of that page at a readable level next time. Haven’t even upgraded the firmware yet or downloaded any custom applications – will try and post more of my impressions of the phone in due time. I think upgrading the browser (it’s Opera, right?) to the latest version might fix that horizontal scroll “problem” as well.

Received a bunch of books I’d ordered from Amazon and I am more than halfway through reading iWoz, the story of one of the smartest persons the world has ever seen, in (more or less) the words of the great man himself. That man knew what a diode is (was?) at the age of four – four! And boy did he make use of that brain of his – no use having a great mind if you are a lazy git (i’m looking at you, person in the mirror) – there’s a weird combination of pomposity and good old-fashioned self deprecation in one sentence for you right there.

Have also received the Hillegass and Kochan books – so now I have absolutely no excuse not to write that Cocoa application I keep designing in my head.

Now if only they developed a cure for procrastination, things would be pretty darn perfect.

[tags]M600i, M2, Amazon, Cocoa, iWoz[/tags]