It's been a long day and I'm really tired so here's a really quick summary of the first day of my 36th year…
– woken up at 8:30am by Pace bringing me in a gift bag. Turns out to be Beatles pyjama pants and a Beatles t-shirt. Sweet! (Although realizing that getting woken up at 8:30am on a Saturday that's your birthday is “sleeping in” is quite disheartening.)
– went up to the hospital to visit Shea's aunt who just had surgery. Talk to her uncle who's heavily involved with the provincial NDP. Always interesting to hear the perspective of someone who's been around the party for a long time and how that compares with my impressions as a newbie.
– Grab some groceries then go for a walk in the Cathedral neighbourhood with Shea, her mom and Pace.
– they drop me at the library and I break my “don't work on my birthday” policy by doing a couple small things while killing time until the MetaFilter 10th Anniversary meetup – Regina version at the Cathedral Village Free House.
– walk over to the Free House and happy to see a couple people show up since it was a Rider game this afternoon and I knew people would be focused on that. Fun to chat with tech-savvy folks who come from other worlds (er, not literally). Tellingly, we all have iPhones and I think I made the right choice! No one can pull in a radio stream of the game (EvilColonel had the great idea to try the Montreal station's feed but it was in French!) so we all keep hitting reload on The Score channel's app instead.
– get a lift home, turn around twice then off for supper with Shea at Teppanyaki, a local Japanese restaurant where they cook at your table. It's been around for ages but was one of the few Regina restaurants we'd never tried. Great although I think it'd be even better with a big group.
– end the day with a quick ice cream then home to help Grandma put Pace to bed since he's really mastering the terrible twos – especially at bedtime!
Here's a few samples… – ham and peanut butter – cheese and brown sugar – lemonade with salt and pepper (popular in India apparently) – lemonade with iced tea – half grapefruit, sprinkled with cinnamon and briefly microwaved – garlic and orange juice
The one main lesson? Apparently peanut butter goes with anything!
I don't know if I have any personal ones – Shea's a big fan of french fries and ice cream (and that reminds me of a friend who would layer his french fries on his hamburger rather than eating them on the side). I always eat my pork chops with Vietnamese hot sauce rather than apple sauce. Someone in the thread posts that they get weird reactions eating grilled cheese with ketchup but I definitely do that. Going back to the peanut butter theme, my father-in-law eats peanut butter & onion sandwiches. My own dad talks of eating ketchup sandwiches growing up (I'm never sure if that's a “we were so poor” thing or if it's a “I was a really strange kid” thing! )
I'd hoped to have this ready a bit earlier (the one month anniversary of the convention vote was one day I flirted with and would've been perfect as it was also a Music Monday!). But it took me longer than I expected – mostly because I was teaching myself to use a different program so I could mix both still images and video in this slideshow – so I didn't have it ready then.
Anyhow, I recently had occasion to chat with some of the people involved with the Meili campaign so that made me think that today is as good of time as any to post this.
As I say in the video's comments, someone asked me what I learned from volunteering for Ryan's campaign and my best answer was “Even if you don't get the outcome you want, politics can be a lot of fun!” I hope this video helps convey some of that joy and excitement that Ryan's campaign brought to me and countless others over the past few months.
Well, it's been five days with the iPhone and I'd say that it's a tie between the camera and the Apps for what I'm enjoying the most on the new gizmo. I've downloaded a whackload of apps in the last few days – even paid for a couple!
Here are the ones I currently have installed, roughly categorized by type:
Apps I Actually Use on a Daily Basis Cribbage – paid $0.99 for this one and it's a great, quick time waster. I hadn't played for a long time but the strategies came back to me. I do miss a “hint” option when I'm too lazy to do the math on which cards I should toss in the crib. Bloom – Brian Eno's ambient music generator. Paid a whopping $3.99 for this and worth every penny. Pace loves it too. NewsCanada – news headlines from major and local newspapers Remote – allows you to use your iPhone as a remote control for your laptop's iTunes library
Camera B&W – allows you to take B&W photos
Flickr Sendr – basic Flickr uploader
Fun BubbleWrap – you know how you can spend hours popping bubble wrap from packaging? The virtual version lacks the tactile sensation but is still kinda fun for awhile. CowbellFever – “More Cowbell!” comes to the iPhone DrumKit Lite – see a theme developing here with my “Fun” apps? I like noisy ones! Google Earth – probably one of the coolest apps I've seen just to look at – you literally can hold the world in the palm of your hand! iBrate – turns your iPhone into a vibrating massager. (I had a joke about vibrators here – took it out – then stuck this explanation afterwards since I know everybody was thinking it anyhow! ) iGlowStick – Turns your iPhone into a glow stick (you literally “break” the stick with your fingers then shake the iPhone to make it glow!) Koi Pond – the fish pond app – feed the fish then chase them away with a poke of your finger. Another $0.99 purchase that was worth it. MyPaintFree – a paint program mostly for Pace to fool around with
PhotoKast Lite – allows you to upload photos and vote on those uploaded by others. Every vote sends the photo further away from the original sender so you can see how far your photos go over time on a Google map mash-up. Shazam – point your iPhone at any playing music – on TV, on the radio, etc – and have it determine very accurately what song it is you're hearing.
Games BatterUp Lite – home run derby game BlackJack – it's Vegas, baby! FS5 Hockey – air hockey simulator iShoot Lite – very similar to a game I played all the time a million years ago in undergrad, Scorched Earth. Pick your weapon type, your angle and your shot strength then fire away against computer opponents in randomized mountain terrain.
Reference AllRecipes – recipe site with fun “spinner” options which allows you to chooose random meal based on ingredient, cooking time and cuisine type. You can “lock” any combination of these three options to narrow your choices. Breastfeed – two guesses who downloaded this reference work? Concerts – display upcoming local concerts Dictionary Google for Mobile MobileAtheist – $0.99 for an e-book of atheism quotes? Sure, why not. Oblique Strategies – who would've known that Brian Eno would play such a a big role in my little iPhone? ScoreMobile – sports scores from Canadian sports network (eg. has CFL scores) Stanza – e-book reader – it'll be interested to try to read the new Cory Doctorow on it. UrbanSpoon – restaurant guide which works like AllRecipes above except “spinner” options are cuisine/price point/city. Wikipanion – simplies use of Wikipedia on a iPhone
YP.ca – Canadian yellow pages
Social Networking Facebook iReddit Free – simplifies surfing of popular site TweetDeck & TwitterFon – I hardly ever use Twitter and I have two apps for it – huh?
Tools (Literal) HandyLevel
Tools (Virtual) Assistant – helps track various online accounts
Bonus: Two Cool Sounding Apps I Can't Use By Virtue of Being Canadian Both Pandora Streaming Customized Radio and Loopt, which allows you to find other nearby mobile phone holders aren't available in Canada yet.
You can read the report then the MetaFilter commentary to get an idea of why this report garnered such a reaction – positive, negative and just in terms of provoking conversation.
The biggest thing to catch my eye? In a report which has sections dedicated to discussing how young people use Radio, Television, Newspapers, Gaming, Internet, Directories (eg. Yellow Pages), Viral/Outdoor Marketing, Music, Cinema and Mobile Devices, there is not a single mention of books (not even graphic novels which is what many of us think as what “the kids” are reading these days). There's also only one mention of libraries and that in the context of a place where young people can get work done since you wouldn't want to do that on your home Internet connection.
“Home use is mainly used for fun (such as social networking) whilst school (or library) use is for work.”
Morgan Stanley, the company that released this report stress that this is the opinion of one single teenager. And it's written from a UK perspective so there are some major differences with North American culture.
(Oh, and a funny story about “whilst”. When I was in England on exchange, one of the American exchange students didn't have time to do one of his assignments. So instead, he paid one of the UK students to write it for him. He might've got away with it too – except he didn't bother to even read the paper before handing it in so all the “whilst's” sprinkled throughout were a pretty big tip-off to the prof that something was up. I mean, we all absorbed a bit of English culture and custom on that trip but changing a person's entire writing style was probably a bit much! )
After contemplating it for…well, pretty much ever since the first iPhone came out…I finally broke down and bought one of the 32GB 3GS models today. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have done it even now except I heard it through the Shea-vine that her folks wanted to put some money towards a phone for me for my birthday present so knowing that, how could I resist? (Now if I can just find someone to pay those humongous monthly bills – one of the main reasons I've held off so long.)
So after a day's pretty much non-stop use, what do I think so far? – why'd I wait so long??? This thing is great! Very intuitive, robust and lots of fun!
– I joked to Shea that it might actually save us money. That's a bit tongue-in-cheek but really, I wanted to have a compass/temperature unit in our van since it didn't come with one and I find those extras very useful in vehicles that do have them. But when I checked, it would've been $800 to have this type of unit installed in our van after-the-fact. But now, our iPhone has both a compass and a weather option. Or we could've spent a couple hundred bucks on a GPS unit but the iPhone also has that (although not as straight-forward and accurate as the dedicated GPS units I've seen.) Er, and no jokes about why you'd need GPS in Saskatchewan – it can be handy if you're going to an address you're not familiar with – even in Regina!
– it took me a bit of time to figure out how to transfer over some music but the web is pretty amazing – you type “how to transfer music from iTunes to iPhone” and you're quickly up and running with the instructions some site has taken the time to provide.
– the camera's okay but not as good as I hoped.
– typing on the touch keypad was my biggest worry about whether I'd like the iPhone (and if I was smart, I'd have spent some time at the Rogers kiosk playing around with this to see how I liked it.) But instead, I just kinda said “oh, if other people can get used to it, I can too.” And luckily, that seems to have been the case so far.
– I read somewhere that the extra screen real estate made available by having a full touchscreen rather than a smaller screen with a permanent keyboard below it makes a huge difference. I haven't used a Blackberry or other smartphone with regular keyboards but that made sense to me.
– for some reason, I had it in my head that you couldn't watch YouTube videos on an iPhone. That's definitely not the case and the ones I watched looked really crisp (the smaller screen actually means things are a lot less pixelated than on a regular sized laptop or desktop screen.)
– Apps are definitely a lot of fun – I've probably downloaded a dozen so far – everything from a blackjack game to the Facebook app to a carpenter's level. Those were all free but I did blow $0.99 for Koi Pond – worth every penny! (Oh, and if you have an iPhone or iTouch, send me a message to let me know which Apps you can't live without! Hmm, I put that as an e-mail link. How 1997. I should put my phone number so people can text me – er, is there any danger in doing that?)
– Rogers' coverage in Saskatchewan isn't great and that was another thing holding me back. But there's good coverage in the bigger cities, along major highways and supposedly where my family cottage is and where Shea's parents camp for the summer so that should have me covered for most of what I need. And if we go off the beaten path for camping or whatever, I'm sure I can live for a couple days without checking Reddit and MetaFilter!
– One of the best features will be having what is basically a full-featured computer/camera/etc. unit in my hand at all times. For example, tonight we went to a park north of the city. Pre-iPhone, I'd have had to take our digital camera with us, snap some photos, bring them home, download them to my laptop then upload them from there. Now, with the iPhone, I can do all that from one unit right at the time and place that I take the photos (or video or whatever.) I didn't actually do that out at Evraz Place and just uploaded this photo from my iPhone now (having quickly downloaded and installed a free Flickr uploader App) but the point is that I could have done this two miles north of the city in a goose-poop covered family park that's attached to a steel mill!
– there's probably a few other things I still have to figure out (and things I haven't even realised that I *have* to figure out) but as I said before, I'm very impressed with how easy-to-use and intuitive it is. Oh, funny story – I didn't realise you could use two-finger touches to zoom. Pace got ahold of the iPhone for a brief moment and immediately started doing that! (I read a post by someone on a mesage board where they observed that their three year old was better on the iPhone than they were. I don't doubt that! I joked at the kiosk that when Pace was ready for a smartphone in a few years, it'd probably be an implant directly into his head. I only wish I was joking when I said that! )
This article talks about a new auction site called Swoopo.com which is apparently super-addictive. The gimmick is that the site is sort of like a cross between an auction, a lottery and those “you only pay $0.25/call to vote for your American Idol. Er, vote as many times as you'd like!” deals.
Every item up for bid starts at one penny and every bid increases the final price of the item by one penny. Sounds good except you pay sixty cents for each bid that you make. So when they have a MacBook go for $35.00 that actually means they've had 3500 bids and the site has netted over two grand. Plus each auction doesn't expire until no one else is willing to bid one more time so the auctions could go on forever. Then, at the end, only one person gets a wicked deal but lots of people blew a whackload of cash trying to win the auction, sixty cents at a time. (The article gets a bit into the psychology of why this works – quite similar to slot machines in many respects.)
Anyhow, check it out if you're curious – but don't say I didn't warn you!
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