Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Sudden Disappearance of Seetha

There is something I’ve wanted to write about for… well, a few years now. But I wasn’t allowed to. Andrea has written a novel, called The Sudden Disappearance of Seetha.

The books is currently available on Amazon.ca (and Amazon.com for that matter). It won’t officially be released until January 27th, but you can pre-order it.

However, even though the book isn’t supposed to be released until January 27th, it was spotted in Yorkdale! We stopped by yesterday to see it.

Seetha on the Shelf

Seetha on Display

The Author and Her Book

The Author and Her Book

Monday, January 19, 2009

My Next Phone? (Pt. III)

I think I’ve been behind the curve. I’ve been resisting getting a phone that’s so dependent on the internet—meaning that it’s dependent on my cellular carrier’s ridiculous rates—but that’s the wave of the… er… present. It definitely hit me during the video I linked to in my last post. (And, incidentally, now that I’m in Windows, I notice that I didn’t get the symbol right in Pre. So I’m not going to bother trying anymore. It looked weird in Firefox on Ubuntu, it looks weird in Firefox on Windows, and it’s just a square in Chrome and IE on Windows.)

Maybe I should have gotten an iPhone when it was still cool. I mean, I’d rather wait for the Pre, but it’s not going to be released until “the first half of 2009” and I don’t know if they’ll release an unlocked version (like they did with the Centro). In fact, they have some kind of exclusive launch with an American carrier, so there’s a good chance that they won’t have an unlocked version—meaning I could be waiting a long time for the thing to get released.

I might get stuck getting an iPhone just until a better phone can come along.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

My Next Phone? (Pt. II)

For my last few posts, I’ve been putting up images and videos. I should have warned my readers not to get used to it, because my blog is still mostly text-based, but unfortunately, I didn’t. And I got a comment from a friend of mine, saying that I should keep doing that. So he’s going to be disappointed, because I doubt most of my posts in the future are going to have images or videos. (Sorry Stephen.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I found another video of the Palm Pre̅. (I apologize for the weird symbol above Pre̅; I’m not sure if that’s the right character to use for that e̅.) It’s a very long video—over an hour—but it shows off the device very well. (As it should, since it’s the unveiling of the device at CES.)

Saturday, January 10, 2009

My next phone?

Anyone who’s seen the iPhone knows that it’s very cool technology. Just from the commercials it looks great, but if you’ave actually gotten your hands on one, the impression is backed up; it’s impressive.

But I didn’t want one, because it’s not really built for synchronization, it’s built for doing everything over the air. (It can synchronize, but, surprise surprise, it syncs with iTunes.) Which means that you need a good data plan from your carrier—and Canadian cellular service providers are outright thieves when it comes to data costs for cell phones. Rogers came up with a temporary, kind-of-reasonable service plan when they released the iPhone in Canada, but it still wasn’t great when you compare how much we’re paying with Europeans, or… well, anyone else in the world. (That article is probably out of date, but I’m pretty sure the main point still stands.)

But I need something. The phone I’m currently using has gotten worse and worse over the years. (Does software actually degrade over time? Whenever I use a smart phone based on a Microsoft operating system, it seems so.) So I wanted to get away from a Microsoft-based device; what does that leave? RIM? I don’t want live email, which is the thing that device is built around. As mentioned, I don’t really want to do everything over the air; I just want to sync with Outlook (or whatever), which leaves out the iPhone, and also the forthcoming Google device.

So I pretty much settled on the Palm Centro. I haven’t used the Palm OS before, but from what I understand, it’s a lot more stable than any Microsoft-based operating system—especially the mobile ones. But today, I found a new phone, that might become my next phone (depending on when it’s released).

Unfortunately, again, their plan is not to do synchronization—they want to do everything over the air. This seems to be the trend, which means that no matter what phone I switch to, I’m going to have to set aside a large portion of my salary going forward to paying my cellular carrier.