On bolds and zunes

I've had my blackberry bold for a month now and I have to say that I'm loving it for the most part. The email + web is great, videos are decent and the screen & keyboard are awesome. The only thing about it that sucks is how much the thing crashes. Sometimes its a couple of times a day and sometimes it's every few days. Clearly this thing isn't quite perfect. On top of that, I'll have to be really careful with this one because my old phones took tons of abuse and lasted me years, the bold looks kind of fragile and reboots when it takes a big bump. I dread the day when I drop it on concrete.

Regarding the Zune, I have to say that the Zune Software V3 blows iTunes right out of the water and the Zune itself is still my preference over the iPods. I really don't like the touch and before you get your panties in a bunch, I do actually have one and use them both side by side. I don't use an iPhone but I get the general idea and understand why some people like them. I also noticed that the new iPod touch finally has a physical volume button but I still wouldn't get one if I had a choice. I am however using my 1st gen touch to play spore when I'm bored. Which brings me to another gripe - I bought spore on the iTunes store for 6 bucks and only after I downloaded it did I realize that it didn't work on my touch - fucking store and itunes didn't even warn me. I didn't read the fine print. I had to then buy the 10 buck touch version with no chance of a refund for my mistake.

At the end of the day, I still think that iFans are a closed minded group that don't really realize to what degree they've been been short-changed and won't figure it out until Apple becomes un-trendy. After all, Apple aren't really the underdog anymore and it's hard to be an individualist when everybody in your subway car has the exact same gear as you right? Are you really a counter culture individualist who uses the same gadgets as George Bush? Does listening to JJohnson & Feist somehow make up for it?

Apple used to run an advert about 1984 and big brother, these days I think that they're the second biggest brother on the planet with the first being Google.

Gina

How cool is this?

Two weeks with a blackberry bold

Week 1 went great, roaming around the east coast of Canada. No problems whatsoever switching between 3G/Edge/GSM. However when I got into NY state last friday, it started crashing regularly. Spent 4 days in NY/NJ upstate, midstate and bottom including coastal NJ and it crashed every 6 hrs. Zipped over to Boston for the past couple of days and now its rock solid. Seems like there are still some roaming issues with ATT USA and that's probably what's causing the launch delay.

My advice to RIM is to hold on until its rock solid because clearly it's going to be a disaster if released in the US in this state. In Canada however, rock solid and a joy to use. I get lots of Americans down here eyeing my device and asking me about it so clearly it's lustworth.

Oddly enough, at a software conference it seems like most of the programmer types use iPhones and the founder/owner types use crackberries.

It's been a while

I'm sitting here at the Seaport in Boston for the Business of Software conference and I have come to realize how great it is to get so much insight from people who have been through a lot more than I have. I've met loads of people who came from all over the world and spent some fairly significant money to be here. Since Boston isn't too far from me it wasn't such a big commitment but after being here this year I think I'll follow this conference wherever it goes next year even if that means going to the UK or wherever it is next.

I also realized that I have a lot of knowledge to share with others as I have been through 3 bootstrap companies, 2 IPOs, 2 mergers and 3 fiascos. That's a lot of startups! A fellow with a show on the BBC will be interviewing me about my experiences with VCs, that should be interesting.

So all that to say that I'll be contributing to this blog regularly again soon but probably more with a slant of what I've learnt over the years and what's driving me.

Adios from Boston!

Smug bastards

Every time I see a smug Apple advert it makes me want to puke. How about this, recently the biggest and most dangerous hacking hole since 1997 had been discovered, patched and closed by all of the major vendors together in a cooperative effort with no BS. This includes Microsoft, Cisco, CERT and all of the Linux/GPL community.

Everybody pitched in, coordinated and fixed their systems but the smuggest bastard of the lot (Apple) were not only late with a patch, failed to tell their customers about it but they also fucked up their patch and now Macs and OSX servers everywhere are vulnerable. Notice how the press hasn't jumped on their heads like they would for any other company? Good thing there's so few of them out there that nobody really gives a shit.

Test your connection here.

The Rotten Apple

It's no secret that I don't care too much for Apple and their products so take this post with a pinch of salt. Here's how the summer went with Apple;

1) Released a pretty phone with crappy reception
2) Came out first in the IBM most vulnerable software list
3) Filled my computer with junk and keeps asking me to download 70mb of new junk every month
4) Released a crappy mobile web email app that doesn't work too well
5) Launched a mobile app store that keeps going out of service

All of that isn't a big deal if they weren't so fucking smug. Lets face it, if you pretend to be flawless you'd better be ready for a shitstorm when you show some warts.

Funny thing is that the shitstorm hasn't started yet despite all of the problems. I'm curious to see how long Google & Apple will keep being immune to public scorn for crappy products and elitist attitudes.

Cool

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The answer to the secret

There's this book and video called 'The Secret' that purports to let anybody in on the secret of success. I hate the book and think that it's a load of crap and actually destructive in a sense. It lets losers justify their lethargic underachieving lives so that they can continue to sit on the couch watching their bellybuttons waiting for gold to pop out if they believe it enough because some mystical force is going to deliver it to them. I think you have a better chance of U2 playing live in your rectum than being successful just by wishing it to be.

And so...

There's a follow up book by one of the contributors - a Canadian named John Assaraf that's actually pretty interesting. This book ('The Answer') is about taking action and getting your fat lazy ass off your filthy couch. Although it still refers back to the Chopra-esque inter connectivity of all things and quantum power wells, it does so just to tell you to get off your lard bags and start taking action. I'm not finished reading it but it seems to be quite accurate and rational and so far I'd say that it's a pretty good asset for those starting or running their own gigs.

Here it is on Amazon.

One Voice One Will

Mark Ronson

Mark Ronson seems to have the golden touch these days, here's his new it girls video - Candie Payne/I Wish.

Here's All I need to hear from CP, no video unfortunately;




And if you like that smokey soul sound, here's another one from Saint Etienne;



Thanks to Fred Perry/Subculture for getting me back on this stuff.

Subculture Radio

Fred Perry has some great radio stations under their subcultures brand. Here's one of them.

Siouxsie

I was reading an interview with Siouxsie from this past winter in which she goes on in detail about what a good time she had vacationing in Sri Lanka, scuba diving and hanging out with monkeys. I found that really striking because she was always portrayed as such a severe and serious character sometimes like a spinning ball of razorblades if you crossed her line. While I couldn't imagine her drinking mojitos and dancing to Andre 3000 around the Hilton pool, I understand where she was coming from and for the most part I'd much rather be hanging out with monkeys and manta rays than the urban monkeys I'm forced to hang out with most of the time.

Speaking of manta rays, I was in Costa Rica recently and saw a ray that was much larger than our 20 foot panga (boat), looked like a huge cloud passing underneath. It really gave me shivers and at the same time was breathtaking. I've never seen such a huge creature up close.

Oh yeah, by coincidence, Siouxsie's newest album was called Manta Ray, here's "Into a Swan" (2007):



And here's a really awesome live clip with Suede from 1993;

My Spring Vacation

Ubuntu 8 thumbs up

I just installed Ubuntu 8 on a laptop headed for Costa Rica. I'm figuring that if I put Windows on there I'd be asking for it because out in Mal Pais the bandwidth is crap so it wouldn't be updated and XP would be hacked in minutes without updates.

I didn't want a Mac because it's too pricey so I got an old hand me down Dell laptop and threw on Ubuntu 8.04.

All I can say is WOW is it ever cool, very fast, functional and so far in the past couple of hours it's been totally headache free.

If somebody can put an AOL-esque shell on it, it would save hundreds of millions of old computers from the trash. I think I'm in love, sweet.

Download it, run it from CD to try it out and then put it on some old hardware - you won't be sorry.

Find it here.

BMW X6

On my way out of a dental appointment yesterday I saw the first new BMW X6 on the back of the delivery truck being unloaded at the BMW dealer. Very sweet wheels. Looks like a 6 series with 19 inch wheels.

Off for a couple of weeks

I'm off to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks on a working vacation and then back in time for 10 more roadtrips in the next 3 months. Such is the price for that that I asked.

I haven't been updating this blog much probably because I haven't had a hell of a lot of inspiration outside of my work (which in itself has been hair-raising and exciting). I'm not sure if I'll continue this blog or just let it wither as it does from time to time.

I'm actually thinking about starting a cutting edge technical group blog related to my profession with a few other posters, lets see how that goes.

Maybe I'll just drink some tequila and go fishing for the next couple of weeks and say fuck it.

CNN T-Shirts

CNN have this strange but cool feature where you can order any one of their headlines as a T-Shirt. How cool is this?

One pint of piss and three shots of peroxide

I was having a couple of brews with some friends on Sat nite and one fellow who works in a health food store told me about some secret cure for almost every ailment known to mankind. He tells me that gargling, inhaling and drinking hydrogen peroxide will kill most germs and viruses in your mouth, lungs and gut and it's a proven fact that your immune system uses peroxide to kill bacteria and viruses.


Hold on a sec, last time I checked there was a poison label on peroxide bottles and it says clearly on the side "not for internal use".


So I called him a nutbag more or less and forgot about this story until yesterday. You see yesterday I had to go in for some dental surgery so I googled peroxide mouthwash and did some research on ozonated water and found something startling. First off, peroxide is regularly used as a mouthwash and can be found in all the off the shelf mouthwashes with opaque bottles including Crest super white. Just check the ingredients (I did). Second, the FDA approves the peroxide up to 3% (10 vol) as a mouthwash (not ingested). Third, the Time magazine product of the year for 2006 was the Lotus sanitizer which uses something similar in the form of ozonated water. And finally, the EPA approves peroxide as a sanitizer.

Here's what got me really curious, I found hidden in a report on the Tersano (lotus mfg) site that shows that 3% peroxide is seriously more effective than ozone-water or even Lysol!



So finally I go to see my dental surgeon and ask him what he thinks about peroxide mouthwash. He says its excellent and he recommends it for his periodontal patients but it's overkill for most people.

Seems like a pretty good treatment for throat, mouth and sinus infections when gargled but deadly when ingested in a concentrated form (i.e. over 10%). I've tried gargling it and it tastes and feels horrible but seems to work because my mouth is pretty fresh and my teeth are extra clean. I'm not going to use it regularly but I'll probably start buying the Crest mouthwash with peroxide.

Here's a relatively accurate article from truthorfiction.com.

As for the piss, some other people drink it for medicinal purposes. Personally, I'd probably be dying before I'd consider drinking pee.

Introducing Earl

This is my new roommate Earl the bearded dragon.