Archive for December 4th, 2008
Toys for Christmas?
It’s that time of the year again when we start looking at gifts for our friends and relatives, and of course for each other!
I’m thinking of gifts for myself that have a good chance of satisfying the gadget geek and true techie in me.
- The iPhone 3g, 16gb, Black
- The Asus EeePC 1000h 160gb w/Linux also in black.
The iPhone looks like a good upgrade for me, as my HTC Wizard with a WM6.1 rom image upgrade, is starting to behave badly. The HTC is losing the SIM card sporadically, losing the connection to the phone network more often, and up to 3 times per text message it white-screens and requires a quick double-press of the power button. It’s still a fantastic PDA but I think that it’s time as my primary phone is soon to come to an end to be replaced by the shininess that is the iPhone. This would be my first iPod as well as my first Apple product. I have enough music that I could use a good mobile player, and I have to say I do like the UI on the phone. I am also fascinated by the nerd possibilities of a jailbreak and openssh server on it, and being able to access all of the files on it for backup or replacement.
The EeePC now, for about €350 via laptops direct, gets me a light sub-notebook that does everything that I am looking for in a laptop. The plan is for viewing of tv shows that I obtained, watching the odd film if I’m travelling for work, communicating with people using the inbuilt webcam and mic via Skype or similar, working on various documents for work when out of the office, doing some online studying for some professional qualifications that I have planned, and for some simple game playing. I have already tested out Quake3 on one owned by Florian at work and it gets a respectable 50FPS timedemo of ‘Four’ with all the shiny switched on. Playing normally gives 80-90fps. I have a lot of games that are Q3 engine derivatives and I would like to play them! Adding in to the mix the fact that the battery runtime is so good, I have to see this upgrade over the Dell Inspiron 4100 that I got upon my graduation as a really good thing!
Wasting the court’s time..
Where to start with this one..
It’s a pain in the ass when a private company that is the sole provider to a state-sponsored monopoly fails in its role. Typical example is the NCTS : They appear to be unable to book a test over email, even though they advertise this service on their website. As a result of their failure, I had a day in court, nothing major, just the waste of time for myself, a garda and the judge.
To top it all off, the NCTS group seem to be unable to provide simple information like “how long did it take to get a booking in this particular centre on this particular date if you used the online (non-email) booking system”! I really do hope that this crowd of incompetents lose the contract to stiff us all of our money and time next year when the contract is reviewed. At least the current review puts them in 2 out of 3 bidders for the contract!