Sometimes lists can be really satisfying.

Todo:

• Fix sisters computer
• Fix dads computer
• Update this site
• Update doms’ site
• Create Zoe’s site
• Update melange site (NEARLY THERE!)
• Re-install XP
• Re-install firewall (this isn’t too necessary)
• Install xp+mdk on my old duron 700
• Re-decorate my room
• new lamps
• new bedside tables
• possible new cupboard
• Do my honours experiments
• Write (finish) at least one conference paper
• Look into the possibility of another conference paper
• Setup my home wireless network a bit more securely

*nb I’m going away next week, so after that i have a fortnight to accomplish most of that – whatcha think? Oh, and there will be plenty of working at fdf during that time too.

Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) – where do i start?
(This rant is inspired from Are PDAs Finished? and various conversations over the years with Mike, Ant and Daev)

My PDA history

I’ve been a long-time PDA user, well, what I consider to be fairly long-time – longest time of anyone I know. The number of people around me who have actively taken a step towards their own PDA-ness during this time has only increased by a number of one (1). *insert long break here as I search back through my lj trying to find some sign of when I first got the PDA* About 2 years now. I’ve had my Jornada PocketPC 2002 for about 2 to 2.5 years.

Their hype over that time has grown large, then disappeared, then re-appeared, then disappeared – I feel like it’s a never-ending cycle of pain and love for these poor helpless, confused devices. I remember back in the day when I first had conversations with Ant + Mike about these Pocket PCs (PPC) – from the word go; it always seemed like a device no one would actively purchase. God I?m such a spoilt-brat, I mean what kind of person gets a toy like this for nothing you know?

We argue

So anyway, jump back 2 (2.5) years to today, just last week in fact, when Daev and I had a conversation about PPC’s and Palm’s. The pair of us have this tendency to argue about most things technical, but it is always good to hear a different (even if incorrect *wink*) point of view. Even though I?m an older, and therefore wiser, pocket pc user – he is definitely the more pro-active. Pro-active entailing actually purchasing a device, spending a bit of money on a case, a lil extra dosh on a piece of software or two. So you can see where we come from, I?m the lazy – I have a device because I was given it and I believe it’s a nice glorified calendar/contact thingo ; while he’s the – I love these devices, I?m going to buy a new one soon, oo oo have u seen how small the new iPaq’s are etc etc.

We both look at each from the opposite side of the “yes, I have a portable computer – fence.” So what’s their point? Are they worth spending the money? Will you use it if you had it? Well I argue that, no, for their price – for someone like me (and yes daev, someone like you) they are NOT the most cost-effective way to do things. Obviously it’s nice to have a universal calendar that can theoretically last forever, but come on, how much really does a diary cost? Do diaries break if you drop them? No. Can you scribble shit all over a diary, and make it so much more interesting and personal? Yes. Would you spend $600AU on a diary? No. Sure – you can’t always fit a diary in your pocket, but that’s possibly a good and a bad thing.

My argument

My argument has always been based on the fact that without using Microsoft Outlook, my PDA would be useless. The whole point of the device, I feel, is to have all the information that you would use for a business point of view – with you at all times. Which is what my PDA does, and it’s great. I have all my contacts on my PDA, and I have all my contacts in my email client (outlook) – they synchronise automatically. I have my calendar on my outlook, and I have my calendar on my PDA. I have my to-do list on my PDA, and my to-do list synced to my outlook – I mean – my PDA basically is a roaming OUTLOOK. That’s all it really is – the only tiny benefits I get is the AvantGo method of syncing + storing web pages on the device so that I can read them later – which I only do when I?m sitting at the doctor’s office, or somewhere else boring – and occasionally to check movie times if I?m not near a computer. (same with the weather).

So is this functionality worth the price-tag? You be the judge. I mean personally, I was using paper diaries/journals for a while pre-PPC. You can keep your calendar, to-do, and contacts in this thing as well. AND, if I were to get a big job and had to keep track of hundred-million things at once, I?d probably have to go back to keeping a paper diary. If you’ve seen the way (even the modestly good) the PPC Calendar works, you’d know that any serious business man wouldn’t be able to keep track of a busy day with this device – I must thank Couchman’s dad for this actually, for I myself was quite naive to the fact, believing that I could keep track of a busy day using a PPC, the poor dude pulled out his calendar .. jeez. You’d open up your PPC calendar, and all you would see would be hundreds of tiny lil boxes, all overlapping and crossing, squishing each other into malformed shapes, the text getting truncated and uglified – it just wouldn’t work.

Where this stuff might work

So where would I actively pursue the use of a mobile device?

Firstly where i would NOT. If you need remote internet – to check your email – to access corporate databases while flying around the world – you would have a laptop. Trying to view and visualise a lot of information on a small platform just is not feasible.

Okay, places where I believe PDA’s are viable. Where the person has to roam, and make changes to some sort of inventory or stocklist, like a delivery person, or a warehouse clerk. Jobs where there isn’t too much dirt, but you might need access to resources located remotely, but can’t be tied down to a laptop (I?m thinking on-site engineers for mining companies – maybe). A lot of people say hospitals are great for PDA’s, but I would disagree. Tiny tech is a fad, u know. When doctors want to access records, they want the paper and clipboard – it’s not easy to quickly scan a lot of information on a small screen, even if you can be bothered to set it to horizontal mode, then change the way you?re holding the device etc.
But the gold prize (I feel) goes to form creation! – This goes back to the days of working IT in real estate. Those guys write a shitload of forms, which in turn get processed by someone else into a readable usable format. Property appraisals, property inspections, damage assessments, rental inspections. Most of these guys would have a preset form which they’d scribble all the shit into, meaning that with the time + effort, this process could be digitised onto a PDA-based format. Reduce the paper, reduce the processing time. Drop the PDA into the cradle and it automatically fills out the large-version of the form to be printed out.

I dunno – it’s a very confusing subject. As you can probably tell by now, this rant doesn’t have a lot of structure – but I had to get some of this stuff out.

*nb: I apologise for any boredom caused ;P

Hot Hot Heat – Make Up The Breakdown

URL : http://www.hothotheat.com

Tracks:
1. Naked In The City Again
2. No, Not Now
3. Get in or Get out
4. Bandages
5. Oh, Godamnit
6. Aveda
7. This Town
8. Talk to me, Dance with me
9. Save us S.O.S.
10. In Cairo

Why:
Well, quite a while back “talk to me dance with me” was quite a popular lil vid on the weekend morning video clips show. Everytime i saw the clip i was just astounded with how cool it was and i must admit i don’t really recall ever hearing any of these tracks on the radio .. but knew i had to get my hands on the album. Talk to me Dance with me (more on the vid than the track – i think) reminded me a lot of At The Drive-In, the guys voice was just phenomenal – add to that the damn sexy groove – and catchy main-riff.

Thoughts:
Well, this album has had many surprises. It is the first album in a long time that’s really had my singing and bopping along – and i mean in a loooong time. I can’t remember ever hearing music that just made me want to sing along, it’s addictive as crack. Unfortunately, for as good as it is catchy it does have a few downfalls.

Firstly it’s short, for a 10 album LP, the record only goes 32ish mins. I mean, this isn’t too bad and in many cases it’s actually quite good (ie: in heavy traffic, i can hear the entire album whilst driving to work) – but never the less, slightly disappointing.

Secondly, most of the tracks sound identical. I do admit this might be from only having the CD for 1 to 2 days – but so far each track sounds fairly similar. It could just be the drummer(tist?) in me picking apart the fact that most of the rhythmical grooves are quite similar (4/4 beat with snare on every 2 & 4 – with the bassdrum on almost every beat) – and being a slow melodical person i haven’t yet attached myself to the actual tunes themselves too much (cept bandages + talk to me).

But don’t be fooled into believing this album is lifeless – ohhh no – for those 2 downfalls, the energy and different-ness (not if u compare him to robert smith) of the singer, Steve Bays, makes up for it with benefits. Every time he opens his mouth a shotgun of power bursts out and lathers me in this (semi) un-controllable urge to sing. This urge is so strong it counters my previously mentioned fear of singing in the car enough to allow me moments of singing loudly to myself, WHILST staring at people giving me weird looks. It’s just that good!

My favourite tracks so far are the 2 singles which i sort of recognised, bandages and talk to me dance with me, but i have a feeling this will change in time as i become acclimitised to the album.

argh – i think i got so happy last night it caused me to wake up with a headache. Last night was the first time in about a week that i had some time to spend with Em (god how i missed her) it’s all good though, she has one last essay to write and then she’s officially on holidays for 5 weeks. There’s even talk of going down south for a couple of nights, that is if we can find the deal that she said she saw in the saturday’s paper – 4 nights for under $300 – or something.

After dropping amy’s DVD’s back at the store i picked up a couple more – including American Splendor. Em reminded me that a while back whilst seeing Donnie Darko at the Luna we saw the preview for this movie, and it looked really interesting. Sometime between then and now i also saw a fairly weird write-up of the movie somewhere.

Anyway, the movie was great. Really, really entertaining, not necessarily a comedy (though there were funny bits) .. it was just really good. An interesting look at the history of one of (what i’m guessing/assuming to be) America’s longest running, underground comic. Besides that, all the switching back and forth between the actor playing Pekar (the Author of American Splendor), and the actual Pekar was just great. The scenes where Pekar (actual guy, not actor playing guy) was being interviewed on the late show with Letterman back in the 70’s/80’s was completely hysterical.

I’m curious as to whether these comics exist somewhere, more importantly, whether they exist somewhere in Perth – i’ll have to make a trip down to Quality Comics and make some enquiries.

So anyway, i need a glass of water and something to make this headache go away.

Today was more like a Friday, but that’s tomorrow – so what was today like then? Today was like a weird holiday. A holiday where study was still performed, and everyone was at work, tasks were still being performed and not too many people went away. It was a holiday in the sense i did something today (not even i know what) that relaxed me.

I spent. (but i don’t think that’s it). Made a trip¹ down to Mega Music to have a look at this 14×5″ Gretsch US Maple snare-drum. About a fortnight back i first layed my eyes on this drum and thought “wow, i do want this drum, i’m getting fairly tired of being pigeon-holed with the piccolo that i use .. this would be much more versatile, and it’s not *too* expensive” .. so i decided to buy it, but i’d layby it.. allowing me a bit of time to pay it off. You know, put $100 down this week, $100 next week, and so-on.

Segue to tonight, idly checking my bank balances, and notice my creditcard was WAY down – “oh shit” .. i seriously thought that maybe i’d been scammed, i was freaking out, checking my latest records (“please not weird purchases of swedish penis enlarges, truck-loads of viagra, or weird porn that involves ice-cubes and cuban cigars”) – then i look over at the layby bill and notice that the attached credit-card slip says that i paid the full amount on the snare drum! .. the invoice from them says i only paid a fifth, but the credit-card bit says the whole thing .. damn bastard. So somehow i accidently bought the drum in total, proceeded to leave it there.. and am now sitting at home with no drum, and less many monies.

I’m going to the doctor tomorrow, so i’ll head out to the music store after and try and a) get my money back or b) get my drum :P

..

(sudden momentum shift)
Watched The Butterfly Effect – Thoughts? Amazing! This movie was MUCH better than what i was expecting, i really really enjoyed it and am still surprised at how good a job ashton kutcher did at a lead role in a serious role! .. if u get the opportunity (and haven’t already) go see this movie. Oh, and I Know, it’s old now – but SHUTTUP .. Sometimes we’re a bit slow down here.

*¹ Read: 30mins