iPhone - Jan 4, 2007
Yes, the weather has been very windy. I am very intrigued by the iPhone! Will iPhone be as successful as the Ipod? Will consumers abandon buying separate MP3 Players and phones for a device that fulfils both functions? Time will. By the way hopefully the weather will get better. Vic
I found today quite entertaining. I went out and noticed that it was a little windy. Later on, I was heading towards the student bar only to find that it was closed due to windows being blown in. “Oh well”, I thought “time to do something different”. I walked across the street, the name given to the path in the middle of our university, and looked up to the screens, “ship abandoned”, train delays, tiles off roofs, and more. [caption id=“attachment_5829” align=“alignleft” width=“225”]
Due to various trees on the line[/caption] As if to provoke more problems for myself I decided to head into central London. There was a hilarious sign. “Because of various trees on track - severe delays on metropolitan line. It’s such a matter of fact, a casual way of saying there’s a problem. I went up the stairs to the platform ad caught a train limited to 30 mph due to the adverse weather conditions. That’s quite a bit slower than usual. We arrived near Wembley Park but the train remained blocked. Apparently they had to change driver and this was holding us up. So to recapitulate six trees on the line, heavy winds, severe delays, and to top it off delay due to the changing of a driver. Don’t they have enough problems as it is? I went to the world’s biggest apple store but there’s nothing new, no apple tv, no iPhone, nothing I haven’t seen already. The trek back was fun in itself. Highly packed trains filled with commuters and masses of people trying to get back to Northwick park after going to Harrow on the hill because the trains were suffering from the weather conditions. I got out and walked home.
It’s fun to watch documentaries when you know that they spent at least two to three years in the making. I like the documentary because it’s an opera rather than a documentary. There is a minimum of comment and a maximum of shots. There are some sequences where you see things happening in front of the camera and it switches to a second camera. That’s because for sequences like the penguins jumping out of the water they filmed it with one film camera and one pole. Doesn’t that make you wish you were studying a media BA. where part of your studies is television. Every field of studies has it’s advantages. One person I know is studying James Bond
Student unions are one of the best places to meet people and make new contacts. It’s a place where drinks are cheap and normal rules no longer apply. At least that’s what they’d have you believe. The undercroft is one of the worst student bars in the United Kingdom for a number of reasons, firstly the prices, highest in the UK, secondly the location, a basement with rats scurrying about. thirdly poor management, the reason for which many of the staff quit the job. For over two months now I’ve been unable to go due to the management, not the staff, taking a dislike to me. I went in today, not planning to get anything to drink because a friend wanted to drop down. The manager took a minute or two before he asked me to leave. I had not had the time to do anything of any sort. I’m disappointed because tonight is the first night that everyone is back from holiday and I can’t go to be with those I’ve studied and had fun with for two years. I enjoyed the convenience of that bar being so close. After tonight the bar is so empty there is no reason to go anyway but tonight could have been different. On the positive side, I’ve just started my six-day weekend and one friend in the same year is wondering what to do to occupy all our free time. Shall we find work, shall we live at home and commute only for the lessons? Shall we spend three or four days a week on dissertation work? I think so. I need to find work. I need to carry out phase two of the research, interviews, and discussion groups before starting phase three, the first draft, and subsequent copies. Last night I watched the Nile DVD and it’s interesting to see how different it is. It’s an anthropological documentary, taking time to speak first about the geography of the place, secondly about the people and thirdly about how they’re affecting the environment. It’s an interesting documentary that lasts about 100 minutes, 50 minutes per part. Already I’ve written notes about it and I’m getting closer to seeing how it’ll fit in as one of the case examples for what I’m talking about. I still need to read through the two dissertations I have. It’s going to be interesting to have so much time to work on one project. A documentary about the differences and similarities between the two documentary genre. Hours of fun as long as I organise my time so well as not to feel any pressure.
I hate slow connections, they force you to wait patiently whilst the content you desire shows itself. It forces you to select more carefully the content you are about to read. When the connection is fast you skim through the pages reading the first paragraph before jumping onto the next page until several hours have passed. In contrast with slow connections you look through articles of interest and start downloading them. As one arrives you read it without rushing. There’s no point. You’ve got time. Whilst I was in the southwest of England every Sunday I would go to a pub where I’d order a coke and find all the newspapers. I would have four or five papers and I would skim through each paper looking for articles of interest. On occasion I would read the entire article, learning new things as I went along. It allowed me to keep up to date with what was happening. It was a method of escape, of relaxation. There was no rush, nowhere to be. It was directed daydreaming rather than free. It was directed by the article. The eyes read the text and the mind translated it into pictures and thoughts, spreading and converging. Occasionally those daydreams meant that the eyes were reading the text but the mind was thinking of something else. That demonstrates that the article was not written as well as it should have.
I just ran a test and skype with my mobile phone works fine. It means that when in range of open wifi hotspots without restrictions I can take advantage of free phone calls.
In Austria, there’s a pollen warning. Apparently the lack of frost has encouraged the trees and other plants to begin releasing pollen. That’s quite amusing. We have the same temperatures in central Europe as you’d expect to have down in the south Israel has seen snow but the resorts can’t open because of the lack. Where is winter? Is it hiding in the south? Should people go on skiing holidays with their bikes and hiking boots rather than snowboards and skies? On the Porte du Soleil ski pass you’ll see that they advertise their summer time activities like downhill mountain biking.
It’s a nice screen, it’s a laptop replacement similar to the phone I’ve had for two or three months but the hard drive is much better. He advertised all these features as new yet I’ve got most of those capabilities already so I’m laughing slightly. I was just two months ahead of that particular market. I’m wondering about wifi access. How easy is it to connect to password-protected networks and how strong is the antenna?. Would it work only on open networks? I like the screen but where’s the keyboard for fast texting? How easily will it scratch? I know at least one person that’s going to be looking forward to the PVR with integrated wifi although I don’t find it interesting because the hard drive is too small at the moment. The fact you can stream from five computers at once is nice.
It’s a wooden tray with two sauces on the left, a dish to the right with chips, at the back some vegetables. Front and centre you find a slab of stone. It’s very hot. That’s because it’s Entrecote sur ardoise, similar to a steak. There’s a hot slab of stone and you use it to cook your meal on top. It’s delicious.
I love watching television series on DVD and straight from the hard disk. You never understand the complexity of the storyline until you spend 12 hours or more watching entire seasons of series like Scrubs or House. If you look at the series scrubs you’ll get to know the characters very well and they’ll become far more interesting than if you were to watch only an episode a week. That’s probably why they have channels where you run a series every day for a number of days before going back to the beginning again. The best example of that is the Simpsons and Mash. How many times have you seen certain episodes? Recently I enjoyed watching the series House because it’s analytical nature. You’ve got a patient and you run tests, and lot’s of lumbar punctures. For some reason that seems to be one of the favourites… probably because it’s the most interesting. When I finished watching a few episodes I saw how greatly I enjoyed the series but more than that how diagnostic you think you become. I don’t mind that you can cure diseases or anything of the sort. I mean that the series is exploring how reason and empirical knowledge can accumulate so that when you see something out of the ordinary you try to understand it. You start to notice smaller things. It’s great for students, It’ll encourage you to diagnose various situations and find solutions. The most recent series I’ve been watching is Dexter. After I came back from New York I was curious about the program. The adverts had peaked my curiosity therefore I had to find a way by which to access the series. I’ve been watching the series and I’m enjoying it. I watched the first episode on my video iPod, to see just how watchable series were on an i-pod. It’s not that bad. I watched the next two or three episodes on my laptop since that’s more comfortable. The beauty of holidays is staying in a quiet place and doing what you want, driving around and more. It’s just over a week until I go back to England and the fun starts again.