Tuesday, February 21, 2006

[insert uninspired blog post title about us getting new phones here]

Yes, despite the low key post title, Kirsten and I are very excited - today we got new mobile phones! :) Don't worry - for those of you who know our numbers, we are still keeping the same ones.

After being with Optus for nearly two years (our contracts both terminated early because we had some expensive bills that reduced the effective time of the contract), we decided to switch carriers to 3 and get new phones. The reasons for switching carriers was that: a) we have had bad customer service experiences; b) 3 offers a great $29 cap, has free call time between 3 mobiles, and even with our phone and minimum spend monthly costs, works out to about the same per month, or even cheaper if we have a heavy usage month; and c) for me especially, I was aching to get a new phone with lots of cool features, and I was never 100% happy with my previous phone.

We had talked, along with our friend Geoff, of switching to 3 for some time, but had to wait for contracts to expire. Last week Geoff made the switch (also from Optus), which spurred us into action. Now if we could just convert a couple of other key friends, we'd have almost all of our mobile calls for free (or very cheap at least) :) Now for the geeky part: the phones. Let's look at Kirsten's first. After seeing Geoff's new phone, she realised she liked it so much she wanted to get one. Here's a pic of the Nokia 6280:

(no it doesn't have a little "New!" thing on it in real life). This is a slide phone, meaning you push the top of the phone and it slides up to reveal the keypad. Noice. It's also black (also noice). Kirsten likes it even more because being a Nokia she already knows (mostly) how to use it. It also has a 2 megapixel camera - takes some good quality pictures.

My new phone is the Sony Ericsson Z800i:

At first glance it looks a lot bigger and bulkier than K's, but it actually isn't much bigger at all. Even compared to my current phone, it's only about a centimetre or so longer. It's a flip (or clamshell) phone, with a little colour screen on the outside, and a big one on the inside. I'll be the first to admit, that while not stonkingly ugly, it's not quite as nice to look at as the Nokia is. But then, I didn't get it for the looks, I got it for the features. You can plug a MemoryStick Duo into it, allowing you to put images, music and video on the phone, without clogging up the phone's internal memory. It plays MP3s and even has Sony Megabass just like on their Walkmans. There's a lot more, but suffice to say it does all the usual stuff too. I'm v. happy with it myself. Now I just have to spend some time customising *just* to my liking :)

The Force Is Strong With This One

This is very geeky (hurrah! More geekiness is what this side of the blog needs). On Sunday, we went to Carindale to pick up a book I had had on lay-by for time (well overdue in fact, but such is the leniency afforded to ex-bookshop employees such as myself, especially when you have good friends who still work there). We also purchased a new mower that day too (not from the same store), but that's another story...

Waaaay back when I was still in Hobart (and had lots of money since I lived at home and didn't have to pay much in the way of board...) I bought a Star Wars book called Star Wars Chronicles. This was a big, heavy, hardback beast of a book, with glossy full-colour pages that covered the first (or last depending on how you look at it) three Star Wars movies in exquisite photographic detail. The book even came with it's own nifty open-up slipcase. It was, and still is, one of my most prized Star Wars possessions (the book has been out of print for a few years, and was not produced in huge quantities). It was also fairly expensive as books go.

So I was rather pleased to hear that they were producing a companion volume for the second (or first, depending again on your point of view) three Star Wars films. Star Wars Chronicles: The Prequels now sits right alongside the original on my bookshelf. The book itself looks like this:



That's actually the slip-case you're looking at. The image of Darth Vader is actually cut-outs in the slip case allowing the cover of the book to show through. Very cool. Well, I think so. I have spent a few hours pouring over the book, and in my geekily excited way, looking for all the pictures that I haven't seen before. And there are quite a few. I love it.

Now that my blog is getting the geek factor up again, I need to find something to rant about. As soon as I do, you'll see it here :)

Monday, February 20, 2006

Geek Rant: Separated At Birth

It's been quite a while since I've posted a Geek Rant. Truth be told, this isn't really a rant (apologies if my post title has misled you), however it is a bit geeky. I should probably give credit for this to Kirsten, as I think she was actually the one who noticed this first. But since I'm posting, I'll try and take credit for it myself, and just assume that no one will read that previous sentence...

OK. As you may know, both Kirsten and I watch a little show called Stargate SG-1. In it, there is a character called 'Baal', who is essentially a guy with an alien-snake in his head called a Goa'uld. He likes to pose, sneer, and generally misbehave, much to the annoyance of the good guys. You may also be aware that there is a group of five American guys who "sing" in a group called the Backstreet Boys. The oldest member of the group, Kevin (I did my research on Google, OK!), bears a striking resemblance to the guy who plays Baal. So much so in fact, that every time Baal is on SG-1, we go "Ooh, it's the Backstreet Boy!". Half the time I expect him to bust a few moves and crank out a few bars of Backstreet's Back (Alright). Let us now allow you to do your own comparison:

So there you go: one is an evil megalomaniac, bent on galactic domination; the other is an evil (probably) megalomaniac (probably), bent on dominating the boy-band music scene. But I ask you: which is which?

Friday, February 17, 2006

Now I Have Closure

Hey, I graduated last night!

Now go read Kirsten's blog to find out about it (lazy S.O.B. aren't I?)... :)

Monday, February 06, 2006

If I Were Smart I Would Have Booked A Rec Day In Advance

A while ago I posted about how my NFL team (well, not mine as in I own them, but mine as in that's who I follow) the Washington Redskins, were having a good season this year. Well, they had their best for a long time - they made it to the Divisional Playoffs (i.e. two wins away from the Superbowl). Which brings me to my (short) post today.

In case you didn't know, today was Superbowl Sunday (or Monday here across the Dateline). And the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-10 (I don't particularly like either team much, but dislike Seattle more as they remind me of the Philadelphia Eagles, a despised rival of the Redskins). In the last few years, I have either been at home to watch the match, or taped to watch later, though usually only if I organised a Buds'n'Dogs day on the weekend to have a few boys round to watch it with me. This year I did neither. It would have been nice to take the day off, but I'm saving up all my rec leave for this event in September. Apparently, I will need some time off...

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Talk about an anti-climax...

We went into the city today to go to a Bridal Expo (which I'm sure Kirsten can tell you about). Thank you Dan for filling me in beforehand that they have lingerie modelling at these things. This of course in no way influenced my decision to go to the show, err, expo, but I couldn't say it wasn't a nice bonus either. This however, is not the focus of this post (even though it too was a bit anti-climactic with the lingerie section of the fashion parade lasting only a few minutes).

No, the focus of this post is something after the expo. We were walking to PO Square to look for some lunch (which we didn't end up getting there anyway as the food shops were all closed), and when we got to the crossing between Queen St and PO Square, we were surprised to see a couple of hundred people standing around looking at something. What they were looking at was a crane suspending a car over another car, with a film crew setting up to record a shot. No prizes for guessing what it was they were about to try and get on film. Like everyone else, we were interested in seeing a bit of wanton car demolition, so we hung around for about 5-10 minutes waiting for the big moment. When it finally came, well, I think we were all a bit disappointed. I was expecting flying glass and crumpled car bodies. What we got was a couple of broken headlights and some dents. I suspect that part of the problem was that they dropped the car from only about 2-3 metres above the other one, rather than the 10 or so metres that it was originally suspended from when we got there. Oh well. If we find out what it will eventually be in, we'll let you know (or let us know if you know something about it!).

Yes I'm slack, but the pain is gone...

I really should blog more often. It's been too long. Mind you I have been busy. I recently completed my first solo website as a registered business (well, sole trader). If you care to have a look, the site is here. With some of my payment for that site, yesterday I purchased a new monitor for my PC. My old one (which, for those who care, was a 17-inch Samsung SyncMaster 750s) was a CRT monitor - you know, the ones that are essentially TVs with better resolution - and while being a very good monitor, had begun to go a bit blurry over time. This had the annoying (and sometimes painful) effect of making me squint whenever I had to read most text on the screen. So for my eye's sake, I had to get a new "squint-free" monitor. What I ended up with was a 17-inch Samsung SyncMaster 730B (picture below).

As you can see, this is an LCD monitor, and as such will never go out of focus and get blurry. My eyes are thanking me already. It also is lighter, smaller (though the actual screen area is larger, even though it is supposedly the same size screen - if you're interested in knowing why this is, let me know, otherwise I won't bore you with the details), uses less power, and most importantly, just looks far cooler. I'm working on another site at the moment, and likely another one after that, so you can expect more posts about my geeky adventures upgrading my PC in the future.

Hmm, I feel another post coming on...