Randomness and phonage
Today was pretty random. Registered for Uni, bumping into Trailstar in the process, then posted the Kat circuit board to the US. Coming out of the Post Office, it was four o'clock, I had a little while to kick about in town, and I'd been researching mobile phone options the night before, so I popped into Phones4U to ask about the cheapest way to get a K750i.
Rather unexpectedly, I walked out with one. So I'm now on O2, with a twelve-month contract - which I'd normally balk at, but I've just bought a phone that can replace both my digital camera and my MP3 player, so I'm not as fussed as I might otherwise be. Also, the shop gave me some decent (hopefully) discounts, which was rather nice.
I also had to forge my signature at one point. Turns out my signature on my bank card is rather different from my normal squiggle - presumably due to the fact that writing on those slippy plastic sig strips is very awkward - and mobile phone companies are very fussy about signatures. So the sales guy demonstrated how I should copy it - scarily, his impression of my signature was better than my own...
The phone is really rather cool - 2MP camera with autofocus, MP3 player which takes Memory Stick Pro Duo cards (I'll have to find a reader at some point), Bluetooth, radio, organiser and all that jazz. It also has - OMG - a real vibrate function. It's something everyone else can take for granted, but the J70e did vibrate using the ring speaker, which meant that you couldn't have ring/vibrate at the same time, and it was weedy as hell.
The only fault I've really found with it so far is that the keypad is quite cramped compared to my old J70e, and the keys are quite stiff. Also, the joystick is a bit tricky to use - I really miss the jog dial from my old phone, but only the P800/P900/P910 use those any more, which is a pity since I really loved it as an interface design.
Got a Bluetooth dongle with it, too, which works nicely on Arcturus. I'll have to try and get it working under Linux on Neko, so I can do nifty stuff on the move. The phone's Bluetooth ID is Koneko, incidentally... I thought it was quite appropriate. ^^; I'm pretty impressed by Bluetooth - I installed it under Windows and after a bit of fiddling (when connecting to another device, my phone assumes the other device must have a keycode, but it won't accept keycodes greater than 5-6 numbers) it worked nicely. I'm rather amused by the fact that I can use my phone as a wireless remote for my laptop. On the more practical side, file transfer works really well, which will prove great for getting photos off the phone.
Walking out of the phone shop, I was busy trying to stuff everything back into my already overstuffed bag, when I heard shouts of "Giant panda!!" up the street. Looked up and was immediately accosted by Euan, Chewie, Sharp, Mishi and Michael, who proceeded to drag[1] me to Waxy's for a rather nice dinner, then to Chewie's flat for random half-episodes of FLCL and Azumanga Daioh.
[1] May not actually have required any dragging whatsoever
While lurking in town with the SURGe posse, I bumped into gj, and then on the way home bumped into a guy I'd known from school. That makes eight people randomly encountered in a total of four encounters - I'm quite impressed. Normally I don't meet anyone when I'm wandering around town...
Anyway, I should probably go to bed - I'm meant to be in town for half past nine tomorrow morning, to help set up the SURGe stall and possibly the geekSoc one as well. I'll be flitting between the two for most of the day, I suspect, which should be interesting. At least I'm not still on the committee of Fusion SUR - three clubs is just way too much...
[edit] Oh, also: the PC card slot that was fixed yesterday isn't working at all today -.- Not even the "Cannot apply power" errors I was getting before I prodded it. Obviously I fated to have at least one piece of non-working hardware at all times...
[edit, a few minutes later] Well, I rebooted, and it works now. I wonder whether it's a conflict with the Bluetooth dongle, or just another case of Linux forgetting the laptop has certain hardware? It does that with the battery: if the battery's not in when the laptop's booted, it won't recognise it when it's connected.
[edit, seconds later] Guess it's not a conflict: the lights are flickering on and off and the pcmcia driver is getting really confused. Loose connection returns, I guess. It seems stable for now, after a few minutes of losing power every time I put a finger on the laptop. Wish I could get it sorted permanently. Maybe I'll just get a USB wifi card...
[edit, much later] Hmm. I stuck my Orange SIM into the new phone to get my contacts off it, and to my great surprise, it connected without a fuss to Orange. I thought contract phones were meant to be locked to a particular network? o.O Not that I'm objecting overly much - I have a tenner's worth of credit on that SIM that I need to use up...
Rather unexpectedly, I walked out with one. So I'm now on O2, with a twelve-month contract - which I'd normally balk at, but I've just bought a phone that can replace both my digital camera and my MP3 player, so I'm not as fussed as I might otherwise be. Also, the shop gave me some decent (hopefully) discounts, which was rather nice.
I also had to forge my signature at one point. Turns out my signature on my bank card is rather different from my normal squiggle - presumably due to the fact that writing on those slippy plastic sig strips is very awkward - and mobile phone companies are very fussy about signatures. So the sales guy demonstrated how I should copy it - scarily, his impression of my signature was better than my own...
The phone is really rather cool - 2MP camera with autofocus, MP3 player which takes Memory Stick Pro Duo cards (I'll have to find a reader at some point), Bluetooth, radio, organiser and all that jazz. It also has - OMG - a real vibrate function. It's something everyone else can take for granted, but the J70e did vibrate using the ring speaker, which meant that you couldn't have ring/vibrate at the same time, and it was weedy as hell.
The only fault I've really found with it so far is that the keypad is quite cramped compared to my old J70e, and the keys are quite stiff. Also, the joystick is a bit tricky to use - I really miss the jog dial from my old phone, but only the P800/P900/P910 use those any more, which is a pity since I really loved it as an interface design.
Got a Bluetooth dongle with it, too, which works nicely on Arcturus. I'll have to try and get it working under Linux on Neko, so I can do nifty stuff on the move. The phone's Bluetooth ID is Koneko, incidentally... I thought it was quite appropriate. ^^; I'm pretty impressed by Bluetooth - I installed it under Windows and after a bit of fiddling (when connecting to another device, my phone assumes the other device must have a keycode, but it won't accept keycodes greater than 5-6 numbers) it worked nicely. I'm rather amused by the fact that I can use my phone as a wireless remote for my laptop. On the more practical side, file transfer works really well, which will prove great for getting photos off the phone.
Walking out of the phone shop, I was busy trying to stuff everything back into my already overstuffed bag, when I heard shouts of "Giant panda!!" up the street. Looked up and was immediately accosted by Euan, Chewie, Sharp, Mishi and Michael, who proceeded to drag[1] me to Waxy's for a rather nice dinner, then to Chewie's flat for random half-episodes of FLCL and Azumanga Daioh.
[1] May not actually have required any dragging whatsoever
While lurking in town with the SURGe posse, I bumped into gj, and then on the way home bumped into a guy I'd known from school. That makes eight people randomly encountered in a total of four encounters - I'm quite impressed. Normally I don't meet anyone when I'm wandering around town...
Anyway, I should probably go to bed - I'm meant to be in town for half past nine tomorrow morning, to help set up the SURGe stall and possibly the geekSoc one as well. I'll be flitting between the two for most of the day, I suspect, which should be interesting. At least I'm not still on the committee of Fusion SUR - three clubs is just way too much...
[edit] Oh, also: the PC card slot that was fixed yesterday isn't working at all today -.- Not even the "Cannot apply power" errors I was getting before I prodded it. Obviously I fated to have at least one piece of non-working hardware at all times...
[edit, a few minutes later] Well, I rebooted, and it works now. I wonder whether it's a conflict with the Bluetooth dongle, or just another case of Linux forgetting the laptop has certain hardware? It does that with the battery: if the battery's not in when the laptop's booted, it won't recognise it when it's connected.
[edit, seconds later] Guess it's not a conflict: the lights are flickering on and off and the pcmcia driver is getting really confused. Loose connection returns, I guess. It seems stable for now, after a few minutes of losing power every time I put a finger on the laptop. Wish I could get it sorted permanently. Maybe I'll just get a USB wifi card...
[edit, much later] Hmm. I stuck my Orange SIM into the new phone to get my contacts off it, and to my great surprise, it connected without a fuss to Orange. I thought contract phones were meant to be locked to a particular network? o.O Not that I'm objecting overly much - I have a tenner's worth of credit on that SIM that I need to use up...