Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The iPod Touch is awesome

Yes,i finally gave in and got my first iPod. First i must say, that although i still hate iPhones, when it comes it MP3 players this thing is awesome.

Messenging devices need keyboards.

For all intends and purposes this thing is basically a netbook/net tablet.

China (and my dissertation!) is only days away. All i'm lacking now is the camera. 

** UPDATE **
Never edited a blog post in my life, but there is first time for everything, and this perfectly illustrates my point.

This post was short for a reason. I wrote it on a ipod touch. I hate typing on touch screens, i like keyboards. Why you ask? Tactile feedback! A simple beep is great, but imagine, if you could actually press a key, and feel the response from it! Wouldn't that be awesome! RIMM thought the same thing, and created the Storm, sadly RIMM should have stolen a page from Palm, and took a handful of Apple engineers to create the UI. Cause the Storm sucks badly (plus no Wifi what year did you think it was!)

Virtual keyboards not only provide no tactile feedback, but they also take up screen real estate. Granted that in most situations you only need it for a couple of seconds to put in a web address or to send a tweet. If you are from the long form generation, and can see past the reality distortion field (no physical keyboard eliminates the need for multiple skus!! ), you will know that keyboards are just better. Thats why i'm clinging to my e61 with a death grip, it's huge, ugly, but it messages like no other (well until palm pre time!).

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

中國 is calling


I decided to blog from the park today. The primary reason behind this the 18 degree weather. You have to take advantage of this things when you have the chance.

In all the time i've had my beloved blackbook, i've never really used it outside. Quite frankly i don't know why. It looks quite cool(i think) to just sit here, with google reader watching the news and the world go by all at the same time.

At the moment there are two things dominating my mind, well actually three, but i'm only going to write about two.

China,
I'm getting so excited it's scary. Currently i'm waiting to see if the lovely folks in the chinese government will grant me entry to their beautiful county. I'm practicing my chinese often, and my tonal pronunciation is getting better.
I still haven't decided whether or not to bring my mac. I didn't want to, but i planned to have a palm pre in my possession by this time! But if i really want to podcast, and stay fairly connect, and considering that my e61's battery doesn't hold a charge like it used to it maybe that time. Plus i get to play FM for hours, oh the fun i'm gonna have! Just imagine a 22 year old man clapping to a screen at 40k feet!

My degree,
It's almost over i can taste the end, and it tastes sweet. Not quite 草莓 (Strawberry)but nice. There is still a fair bit of work left to do, but all things are possible, and i'm on target. Sadly i doubt i'm going to get a stunning degree, but at this point i just want to be free of academia. But at the time of writing there are only another 2 and bit weeks left, so bring it on. (remind me i said that).

With summer coming up, and hopefully more time on my hands i'll hopefully blog a bit more. It's not like i'm going to be doing loads now that i 'have' to hold down a job, but still if people can have 100k followers on twitter i surely must be able to blog once a week. Maybe i need to but some twiiter integration on this thing! Speaking of integration, The usual summer process of redsign should be happening soon, both the blog and the company site, i need to attempt to be serious, if only for a moment.

再見

Quote of the Day
"The greatest skill you can have as a man is being able to cook"

Mark Udall, One of my lectures

Friday, April 10, 2009

Couch DB as messaging queue

Never thought about it before, but the idea ran through my head while writing my dissertation. Thought i should save it for a rainy day. But it would make a very nice queue. 

Ah, Messaging queues so distinctly british!

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Beijing Bitches

It's booked i fly out on the May10th

My route is:

Beijing > Shanghai > Xi'an > Yichang > Three Gorges Dam > Yangshuo > Hong Kong

I've even started a podcast. The Only Negro In China Podcast. I recorded the first episode yesterday, expect to see it online soon.

Exciting times