I bought an ex-rental copy of Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube for $10. It loads the menu but when I try to play a game I get disc read errors. Poo. A working Gamecube game for $10… I knew it sounded too good to be true. Oh poo. Well at least the guy said I could return it if it didn’t work.
Archive for August, 2008
As an addendum to that last post I would like to express my emphatic agreement with the opinions of the wonderfully observant crew over at The Gruen Transfer. When they described Optus as “Telstra with a different name” they were bang on.
I just received my first bill from the lovely people at Optus. Oh what a joyous occasion.
- Expected bill: $49 + $7 (phone) + cost of special numbers and texts.
- Amount due: $104.70. O….K….
- I made $160.63 worth of calls. The plan includes $300 worth of calls/text.
- Instead the cap is listed as $149.56. Any way you look at it that number is not $300.
- Monthly Access fees of $68.97. What the?
- $6.97 worth of “Mobile Browsing Starter” fees. Riiiigght…
- $6.69 for 15 MB data is listed as “excluded from cap”. The plan includes 250 MB data… Obviously the word “include” has been erased from the dictionaries at Optus.
- Account period: 29 July to 21 August. My number was ported to Optus on 5th August. I’m not paying for any service before that date.
Now I finally understand the company slogan of “yes”.
“Yes! For your convenience, our billing system has been replaced with a giant random number generator.”
“Yes! Optus personally inspects every bill for mistakes and errors. This task is performed by our crack team of retarded zombie monkeys. We prefer to call them the Accounts department. It makes them feel like they’re an important part of our company.”
“Yes! Optus is an equal opportunity employer. That’s why our support phone number is answered by one of our many talented, yet hearing-impaired clones.”
I was going to ring up and abuse them tonight but I don’t have the energy right now for a good ear-bashing. They can wait a few days until I’m on holidays.
Bloody bastards.
I’ve had it for a while but only now got around to writing this. Despite the negative points below its still by far the best phone I have ever owned and I love it to bits.
The OMG!!!
- Flush headphone jack and dramatically improved audio quality! Summed up: it’s actually an iPod now. I can easily say this is the one feature that sold me on the new phone. On the old iPhone every preset I wanted to use caused serious distortion even at low volume, making it utterly useless as an iPod.
- The new case. I continually rejoice at the curved all-plastic back. The plastic has a much higher friction coefficient than the old aluminium back. In other words, the new back is way more “grippy”. The old phone would slip and slide around in my hand, leaving me anxious about dropping it. The result of this was that I actually used the front glass to hang on to the phone. Not ideal when this is the main control interface. The curved edges are nice too, doing away with that scary sounding thud when placing your phone on the table. Now you get a brief wobble which sounds way better for the phone.
- Aurora Feint. Freakin awesome puzzle/RPG game. Totally addictive and very immersive animation/interface/music/sfx. And Free! Unfortunately, it’s a total memory hog, and menus can sometimes lag. In most cases it requires a phone reboot prior to play. But its all worth it.
- The App Store. What an excellent idea. Makes the phone a true “platform” swinging the doors wide open for some extremely creative software. A shame Apple is so restrictive about some of their apps. Google “rejected from app store“.
The Good
- I complained to Optus staff that I didn’t want to be sans-phone while my number was ported over to Optus. So they gave me my new SIM early so when the port occurred, I could just chuck the SIM into my interim phone. Oh yeah, and the closest store is 1.5 hrs drive so they posted my phone, which was nice. Still had to visit the store to sign up which was to be expected.
- No in-store activation! As a consequence of the first point, I managed to completely avoid the rumoured in-store activation. When my iPhone arrived, I just chucked in the SIM and activated it myself through iTunes. Interesting side-note: The store trainee was the one who suggested iPhones could be activated by users at home. She said “the only reason we activate in-store is so that customers can walk away with a working phone”.
- The country code bug is gone. I won’t say “fixed” because it could have been a quirk of Virgin’s service. The bug was that texts came from number format +61418555555 whereas calls show up as 0418555555. The phone saw these as separate numbers, so you had to have both numbers stored in a contact which is just annoying.
The Dissapointing
- My biggest disappointment is that most developers, including those at Apple refuse to acknowledge the device’s superior usability when turned sideways. Not only is typing remarkably more efficient with a bigger keyboard and nice fat buttons, but most non-keyboard apps are more comfortable to use, especially Safari which I use exclusively sideways. Apps I would like to see with sideways support include SMS, Mail (composing), Maps, and basically anything where you type.
- The App Store interface needs some work. I read in a blog about the lack of a shopping cart. This becomes a big deal when you are scrolling through a list of 500 apps, you install one and it exits App Store. You go back into App Store and its at the summary screen of the App you just installed. You go back to the list of apps and you’ve lost your place in the list. This forces users to remember their place in the list and this is a serious usability flaw. A shopping cart would eliminate this by removing the “exit after install pressed” behaviour. It would also be useful as you could browse the store over EDGE/3G and wait until you had WiFi to “checkout” as it were.
- YouTube is inexplicably slow at buffering videos even over WiFi. I load the same movie in Firefox and there are no underruns, but on the iPhone, videos take minutes to buffer (longer than the length of the video in some cases). This just makes you ditch the phone and walk over to your computer! YouTube also lacks a proper cache, meaning that if you’ve just watched a video a minute ago and want to watch it again, the whole movie is downloaded again. There is so enough room on the flash for even a small cache of 50MB or so.
- No MMS. I didn’t actually realise this until I was sent a text saying “You have recieved an MMS. Visit this website to view it” Lame Apple. Just LAME. This omission of a technology that has been present in phones for several years simply lets down something calling itself a next generation device.
- Lack of proper Gtalk app. There is Palringo but it’s bloatware. I just want a slim Gtalk app with push message support. Thanks in advance Google.
- No 3G Optus coverage. I’m stuck with GPRS up here. There is “3G” coverage, but on the 900MHz band which conveniently is not supported by the iPhone. Not such a big deal. I’m over it.
- Still no Flash. Perhaps we can blame Adobe and licensing restrictions etc. for this. But why the lack of flash, Apple? Please explain.
- Shazam. You hold your iPhone up to the radio or some other music source. The app picks the artist and track name. It works, but the probabilty that a track is correctly identified is directly proportional to the popularity of the song. Not something I’ll lose sleep over, but disappointing nonetheless.
- No Dock. Last in the list because I wouldn’t use it anyway. But I didn’t get a dock with my iPhone. Meh.
The Downright Bad
- The Ringtones. No excuses! These are some of the worst ringtones I have ever seen in the history of the universe. Seriously, I would have Crazy Frog before I would have some of the included ringtones. At least you can (relatively) easily make your own. This customisation doesn’t extend to other sfx, most importantly the SMS alert. I shouldn’t have to jailbreak my phone Apple. But your sounds are SO CRAP I’ll do it in a blink once a suitably stable hack emerges.
- No Visual Voicemail! WTF? Excuse me while I rewatch the Keynote and observe this as one of the key features of the iPhone. I smell a class-action lawsuit, I do. Unfortunately, I doubt the ACCC could do much as I suspect Apple were very careful not to advertise this feature in Australia.
- iTunes Account problem. You can only authorise 5 computers to download apps to the iPhone. If you want to waste one of those auth slots, here’s how. Sign in with iTunes account. Authorise that computer when it prompts you. Change your email address on iTunes account. Attempt to download apps to iPhone. Get prompted again to authorise this computer. Lose one of your auth slots. Voila!
- The Optus support voice recognition lady. OMG she is such an idiot! Why can’t these things just say “Press 1 for mobile phones”, “Press 2 for landline”? I want to know who on earth decided that voice recognition in this context is more usable than the old number menus. She is kinda fun to mess with though. I was so frustrated one day at work I started shouting at her. Her response induced at least 30 minutes of uncontrollable laughter. Me: “Suck my balls!” Response: “I’m having trouble with that”. I guess you had to be there…
Pendulum are an Aussie drum & bass group from Perth best characterised by their catchy detuned saw leads and often grouchy synth basslines. Those who have heard either of their albums will know this is only one aspect of their style.
Lately, I’ve been listening to and really enjoying Pendulum’s second LP, In Silico. When I first heard their singles Granite and Propane Nightmares on the radio, I was worried they’d changed their sound to “Hardcore Drum & Bass Ultimate Heavy to the Max!” After listening to the whole album, this is true to some extent but it seems confined to individual tracks which is a relief. I like a bit of heavy, but it just wouldn’t be Pendulum if the whole album was like that. Don’t be put off by the heavier sounding singles. Overall, this sequel to their debut album Hold Your Colour has a good balance between heavy drum & bass and chillout breakbeat. It’s classic Pendulum and that’s why I love ‘em.
I first heard Pendulum a few years ago on Triple J when Hold Your Colour was a feature album. Their single Fasten Your Seatbelt was the first I heard and I was immediately intrigued by a sound seemed unfamiliar to me. I’ve always been sucker for power synth, and had recently become an avid fan of breakbeat through bands like Hybrid. Then Pendulum appeared out of the blue, serving up a unique combination of these two styles. I dug a little deeper into the Pendulum universe and it was a revelation. Some years later I listened to a drum & bass station on streaming radio and realised this sound was not so unique to Pendulum. I listened sporadically for about a week but none of the music I heard could come close to being as good as Pendulum. So their unique sound could be summed up as being “Drum & bass that doesn’t suck”.
For over 12 months Hold Your Colour was easily my favourite album. The title track really blew me away with its pure, emotive vocals and impossibly complex chorus. The vocoded lyrics as best as I can discern are “Push in the knive, gauge open your eye.” The album art also alludes to this. Another stand-out track is Girl in the Fire with its acoustic core and catchy bass riff topped off with a good helping of formant shift. In my opinion it’s the first song I’ve heard to use formant shift effectively but with restraint as to avoid becoming abusive. You imagine the song without it and it just wouldn’t be the same. Slam is another favourite and is the most “Pendulumy” song on the album. It’s one of a few tracks which create an atmosphere that I can only describe as “Fun House Sound”, conjuring up images of scary clowns, silly mirrors, haunted houses and other cliches. With the most memorable lead melody, Slam is a perfectly structured song in the way it builds and releases tension. The first full-length track after the introductory Prelude, it’s a great way to open the album. Still Grey, Streamline and Plasticworld are all excellent but much lighter “chillout” tracks, and these are what gives the album its perfect balance between heavy and light. I must admit I prefer the lighter tracks as I find listening to them really quite relaxing.
In Silico maintains this balance if veering slightly toward the heavy side. This is not due to there being more heavy tracks, but rather that the heavier tracks really are quite heavy compared to their earlier stuff. Some could be mistaken for alternative rock. When I first listened to the album, I was a little disappointed by the heavier tracks. But then I had a reality check and realised “Hang on a second. You like alternative rock. You can like these songs because they succeed at being really great alternative rock.” After listening to the whole album I realised that In Silico had the same perfect balance that was present in Hold Your Colour, and like its predecessor it became an instant favourite.
With most albums by my favourite artists, I usually don’t have to think very hard to pick a favourite track. Normally, one stands out from all others after the first run through, and this case was no exception. I can easily say 9000 Miles is one of the best songs I have ever heard. The song, with its limited lyrics is still able to conjure up vivid imagery of one separated from his lover by a vast distance. The electronic nature of the music leads me to imagine the distance has something to do with space. It could be the distance between two ships in space, but more probable (9000 miles is not very far if you have a decent spaceship) is the distance between Earth and an orbiting satellite. I have, like, already filmed the music video in my head. It’s not often that music evokes such imagery, so when it does I’m always impressed.
Another awesome track is Midnight Runner, whose title is an obvious reference to the stimulant Dextroamphetamine either as a recreational drug, or as the pill given to U.S. Air Force pilots to combat fatigue (either seems appropriate given the futuristic theme of the album). I notice that there is a Cut Copy song with the same title, so maybe all these musicians are just rampant pill-poppers!
I’ve run out of things to say, so I’ll sum up by saying that Pendulum still rock out and if you liked their first album you should check out their latest one. Oh and here’s a video. It’s a pretty cool video and I think it redeems the song from the autotune abuse.
I’ve just installed a few WordPress plugins to customise the admin interface. You won’t see the changes as a reader so I’m gonna blab on about them.
Lighter Menus has given me back some of that wasted space that appeared in version 2.6. Compare these two screenshots before and after installing it. You can’t see it with a screenshot but mouseing over those menus at the top produces drop-down menus containing the child menu items. The layout is still far from optimal, but its a huge improvement. If I had the time (and patience) I’d write my own plugin to clean it up even more. Maybe one day. This plugin also reduces the number of clicks required to get to any section of the admin interface from 2 to 1.
Dashboard: Draft Posts lists your draft posts on the WP dashboard. Assuming you start from the dashboard page, this reduces the number of clicks needed to edit a draft from 3 to 1, which is significant especially when you consider loading time. As editing drafts is something I do quite regularly, this is an absolute godsend. However, the dashboard is still filled with much bloat which pushes the Draft Posts widget down the page, requiring scrolling.
Dashboard Widget Manager lets you easily add, remove and reorder the dashboard widgets. I got rid of everything except Draft Posts, Recent Comments and Incoming Links. The relentless WordPress propaganda, I do not need.
If you’re a regular WordPress user I highly recommend these plugins.
While we’re on the subject, if you’ve tried unsuccessfully to use the WordPress plugin auto update feature and get the error “Could not create temporary file” you need to set the permissions on your wp-content folder to 777. Not a very “best practice” solution, I know. But it beats the old tedium of downloading over FTP then uploading.
I noticed an unfamiliar icon in my Dashboard weather widget just now. Hovering over the icon produced no tooltip, so I went to the AccuWeather website to investigate. This is what I found.
Thanks for that prediction. Thunderstorms? *pokes head outside* Nope, no sign of them. *checks radar* Nope, not likely given the only rain is some light patches around Charlton and Bendigo.
Excuse me while I neglect to buy a pair of snow shoes and also neglect to trade in my Corolla for some Huskies and a sled………
A recent article in The Age worries me.
The Australian entertainment industry wants internet service providers to act as file-sharing police and caution people who download illegal copies of films, TV shows and music via peer-to-peer networks.
If this went mainstream I would seriously consider moving countries. It’s not like I download movies or anything… It’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing. This would just be the first step to Australia becoming China v2.0 with our own Great Firewall (Dividing Range?). For starters, push ups hurt. And then there’s the whole privacy issue. Maybe I could just install TOR and be done with it. Actually, if it does happen, I bet it won’t be long before someone invents the next Bittorrent, except this time with native traffic encryption.
Forgetting all that for a minute, the best argument against such filtering/monitoring is being put forward by the Internet Industry Association:
… the proposal is asking [ISPs] to become law enforcers. Executive director Peter Coroneos says it is akin to holding Australia Post liable for what people send in the mail.
And this is a valid comparison. What is the mail except a relatively slow and predominately non-digital conduit through which information is sent? Why is the Internet as a medium being targeted? Is it because flicking a couple of switches inside ISPs is more convenient than physically inspecting everyone’s mail? Or is it because of the sheer volume of illegal file sharing that is occurring?
To end, I will just say this: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Post-Pak full of DVDs.”
I started watching Breakfast At Tiffany’s the other night for no reason than upon flicking over I was astonished at the extraordinary visual quality. This is an old film. We’re talking 1961 here. That’s three years before Mary Poppins and four years before The Sound of Music; those two films being the only benchmark I have, as I’ve seen them on DVD. But watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s on standard def digital TV you’d be forgiven for thinking they filmed in digital back then! None of those artefacts like fibers or dust that you normally get with old films. I continued to watch in sheer amazement, just hoping, praying that I’d see that little speck of something pop up for a couple of frames. But nothing. Then I grinned at Audrey Hepburn’s character as she was chatting away at a million miles an hour. I couldn’t help thinking of my sister, bless her :-) And after that I forgot all about the specks of dust and just started watching it. I had no preconceived notions of what to expect, apart from a niggling curiosity to see whether or not I would be annoyed by yet another “old movie”.
I’m normally really not a fan of old films. But after watching this, I’m starting to reconsider that point of view. The film wasn’t great but it was really watchable. For some reason, old films usually just irritate me or bore me to tears. An unfair generalisation? Perhaps. I’d define an “old film” as anything made before 1980 and experience just tells me, if it’s that old I probably won’t like it. Now I loved Mary Poppins when I was a kid, but got over it. With Breakfast At Tiffany’s the characters were pretty non-offensive, and some of them were even quite hilarious, Hepburn’s character included. The Japanese neighbour Mr. Yunioshi was also a crack up. It turns out he was played by Mickey Rooney would you believe it!? I did wonder at one point that Yunioshi was so shamefully stereotyped (let’s face it, just plain racist) that they’d have a hard time finding a Japanese actor willing to play the part. And I guess they did! For me the amusement comes not from laughing at “funny Japanese man” but from looking back with disbelief that such blatant racism was given a platform back then.
Spoiler Alert! More ramblings after the jump.
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