a byproduct of perfectionism and quirkiness
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
">Google Bookmarks,Bought a new monitor so I thought I’d show off my desk hehe, it’s a lovely 24inch widescreen monitor, got myself a nice graphics card to compliment it too. Hopefully this will improve my productivity at home.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Well, found out that I can blog on my mobile and send it as a post via email. I’ve been really slacking with the updates, even if my posts were short or bulleted. I suppose this was inevitable once you have a job and barely any time to do outside the nonworking timeframe. Ah well. Good thing is I’ve been using Google Calendar to keep note of all the dates as well as Flickr to provide me with quick memory bumps of what happen at what corresponding day.
Think I’ll just compile a list of entries I still owe, and boy it dates back to Christmas. Don’t expect super long posts though, unless I have lots of time available:
So yeah, loads to write, hopefully a nice batch of flickr photos to illustrate everything, maybe I should use the blog feature on Flickr to start my posts, seems logical and all, I kinda like the idea of making it so every Flickr photo is significant enough to have a story for each one.
">Google Bookmarks,Thursday, December 13th, 2007
My phone was getting old and annoying, theres a pin where the power socket is and it’s snapped off meaning I cannot charge the phone. So i decided I should get myself a new phone as well as a contract to go with it. I’ve been tempted to get a contract since I wanted to phone Alice quite a lot without wasting too much money and knew that Orange did magic numbers, meaning you can phone people you’ve assigned as your magic number for free. It’s really handy and definitely promotes communication. Looking at phones I was stuck at what to get, I eventually opted for the phone similar to Maddox’s epic e70 phone he used to compare against the iphone. I’ve been a fan of Nokia phones so it was quite push to stick with Nokia again. I already knew that there were a lot of apps that were unique to Nokia. So yeah, here’s my phone..
And instead of giving you the specs from the nokia site, here’s some things I can do with it:
So yeah, very useful phone! It’s nice to have it all packed into one! I’m not keen on having my music there however since I love an awesome chunk of hard disk space to listen to my t00ns haha.
For my contract, I got myself a dolphin £20 plan at first which had 200 txts and 70 minutes, I later on upgraded to the Racoon 25 with 100 txts and 220 minutes, not sure why but it encourages me to phone people a lot now (inn keeps assuming I’m only phoning her because I’m wasting credit). But yeah, now it puts a smile on my face when I have an excuse to phone people hehe.
">Google Bookmarks,Friday, April 27th, 2007
Deary me, I have a lot of phrases for this one, including “Geeks will always be geeks”, “They’ll never learn” and perhaps “Whats your logical intervention for all of this?”
Anyway, after a lovely lecture at Mobile Business today (as well as a nice talk about my project report with my supervisor). I had the urge to do something immediately when I got back home..
No not that (filthy minds you), and no not finish my report! Rather then following the crowd and continuing to juice out 60 pages worth of project banter, (I’m on 57 now anyway so I can take a break haha), I decide to.. FLASH MY PHONE!……….AGAIN!
Now I dont think I blogged about the time I flashed my phone (actually I just found it haha). But the first time I received my phone, I was instantly appalled by Orange’s stupid Homescreen crap they’ve put on the phone. These days, mobile operators would like meddle with a perfectly functional and cool phone firmware and shove alot of their operator specific crap in it to restrict users when using their phones. Usually its to protect themselves from people using other features etc. Anyway, the first time I flashed it I got it done professionally (though the location I got it flashed from wasn’t too professional looking, in fact it was their house and they just do it with their laptop haha (they have the gear before you ask!)). Anyway, that was fine, my phone was flashed then (I also suffered a nasty fall that day but lets not talk about it haha)… the second time was when Nokia announced that you can flash your own phone. Being someone who enjoys having their stuff up to date I jumped on the software upgrades etc and downloaded the nokia software, it was nice and official so it was alot more chilled and relaxed to do it etc.
Anyway, the thing I didnt know was the fact that it recognised my product code and that it required an operator specific firmware. So BAM! I’m stuck with the operator specific crap… AGAIN! I wasn’t having none of that, I didnt really want to spend more money to get it debranded again so I opted in looking at ways of doing it myself. Now there are, but they are DODGY and usually carry a risk in bricking your phone. But I did it anyway, and guess what? Bricked phone. Had to go back to that professional place and get it reflashed in order to get my phone working again.
So yeah… after that traumatic experience, here comes part 2. My supervisor / lecturer talked about his new swanky N95 phone and talked about how Orange were sly enough to disable voip calling. He was then googling for solutions to get past this and in the end he was contacted by someone who gave him the solution.. which was.. ladies and gentleman, flashing your phone. The whole phone debranding thing sent shivers down my spine. Though for my lecturers case he managed to get it done successfully, using the same dodgy software that I once used. So what does that leave me? I’m stuck here googling for new firmware updates and whether or not there are new safer methods out to do the job, and strangely..there was! Which was out in 2007 (where have I been). The method is alot safer and requires changing the phone id to a generic code. Reading more into it I found out that you can also turn N70 phones into an N70 music edition phone (firmware wise). So yeah, it got me all excited and this is where the crowd all shakes their heads, tut and go “geeks will always be geeks” haha.
So yeah.. I’m waiting for my phone battery to charge. I have my phone all setup and ready to go. Once again I’m going to panic over it but it does seem like a reasonably easy task this time, not to mention the fact that I’ve tried the official route before and it seemed to have worked :). So yeah, another crazy day of phone flashing and all.
So yeah, if you cant reach me on the phone after this.. chances are I’ll be heading back to that damn place to get my phone professionally reflashed because I bricked it again haha. Also, if you play me on Tetris DS around this time and notice that I’m beating you mercilessly, that means I bricked it again, if you find me very agitated or antisocial, that means I bricked it again. Haha. But yeah, if I feel happy after this ordeal, that means I’ve successfully flashed my mobile phone and managed to add in a TINY bit of functionality to my phone which I’ll probably won’t use anyway haha. So yeah, this is where you go “geeks will be geeks” again with their constant need for updating stuff even though it adds no real benefit.
Update: Haha, well, just managed to get my phone RE RE Flashed. It worked the first time and I had the new music edition thingy but I felt it was kinda rubbish so I reflashed it to a standard generic one. So yeah, it worked 😛 Just funny how I felt the need to reflash it because something was bothering me haha. So yeah, everything is fine and dandy 🙂
">Google Bookmarks,Saturday, September 23rd, 2006
Had to go all the way to Brixton to get the whole thing reflashed, alll thanks to stupid orange and their shitty branded firmware. So glad its all sorted now though. Phone works again and slightly updated and all. The journey was scary as hell, the buses stank and you feel pretty insecure most of the time. Ah well. But yeah, never flash your phone if its cacked up, just makes things worst. Get someone with a JAF box to fix it.
">Google Bookmarks,