So I Got An iPhone

So I got an iPhone. I hate me. A little more so after finding out that Apple is now locking out selected platforms. But my logic was this:

1. The price dropped $200 and the 4GB model was being discontinued, so this looked to be a limited opportunity to get one at this price. To all of those crying that they got ripped off, shut up, this is the way technology has always worked, you can't bitch that you didn't have the money to splurge on the iPhone when you clearly did and did so of your own free will. There was no iGun pointed at your head.
2. Ever since I parted with my Palm Vx, I've wanted a PDA.
3. I had an iPod nano, got it for free with my latest purchase, a MacBook Pro, and promptly sold it on eBay, along with my old MacBook, to help fund the purchase of the MacBook Pro. (I upgraded because Aperture really needs a respectable GPU.) But I've always wanted a portable digital music player. Hell, I've been subscribed to the Lullabot podcasts for over a year and never really sat down at my computer to listen to them.
4. My cell phone sucks. No, really. It's an old Sony Ericsson T610. My parents try to call me from time to time and it ends up being a three minute shouting match of "What?! I can't hear you!" back and forth. Now, where I flat out got "no carrier" I get two to three bars out of five.
5. I can sync not only my podcasts, video (read: TV shows) and music to it, but also my Aperture photos. Or rather, automagically scaled down JPEGs of either all or specific projects or smart folders (e.g., five stars, photos tagged Allie, etc).
6. I can violate my TOS and tether it to my MacBook Pro for when I can't violate someone's open access point.
7. I can install an ssh client on it and remote admin a server from pretty much anywhere. I would have loved to have had this back when I was running a business, this would have been wonderful.

If I were to purchase individual devices to take care of 2, 3 and 4, I could probably spend less than $300. I'd probably spend more to get exactly what I wanted. Instead, I got this. I'm pretty happy with it, though things like closed source, no SDK, etc. don't make me happy. So I hate myself a bit. Especially when people are coming up to me about it at random. Ick. Being "cool" because of an Apple product drives me bananas.

And I plan to offset the extra that will appear on my cell phone bill by switching over to Linode as a VPS from my currently crappy (and unnamed intentionally) provider. The guys at Linode are just great. I'm probably going to sell a camera lens and buy a cheaper one to make up for the cost of the iPhone itself.

Metadata Aware Image Handling In Drupal

I've posted an RFC regarding the use of DAM applications and how Drupal can take advantage of them, basically, my wetdream for online image galleries. I've been toying with Aperture for a week and love it, it offers several things Lightroom doesn't, however both feel sluggish on my not too slow MacBook. Not sure which application I want to use yet, but it doesn't matter since MAQUM would work off EXIF and IPTC.

MacBook Random Shutdown

Blech, my MacBook BlackBook HeatBook has done the random shutdown thing (original German article on random shotdowns) not once, not twice, but three times within a 15 minute period. It's been up for a bit now, but I'm starting to worry. As much as I love this computer, it has given me far more than it's fair share of problems.

Yeah, So I Got A MacBook

Yeah, so I figured after growing up on Windows, spending over three years on Debian (and Ubuntu), it was time to try out Apple's OS X, especially since they do seem to target the UNIX crowd. UNIX under the hood with a whole lot of shiny on top or something. OK, I'll give it a whirl and I can always go install Ubuntu on it if I hate it.

The $150 Paint Job

Since I've got this thing with electronics and the color black, there was no do'ubt that I'd get the black model. It is replacing my tank of a Thinkpad, after all. The one downside is you can get the white version with the same specs as the black one for $150 less. So yes, I paid $150 so my gadgets would match. And I still got a white remote and white cables. Those will be the first things I change either by modifying them or purchasing third party ones. But yeah, I paid $150 for looks instead of buying a 512MB RAM chip from Newegg.

But It Isn't Free With A Capital "F"

Yeah, this isn't Free software, but then again, I was using non-free on Linux. Things such as my video drivers and software such as qmail were non-free software. Debian has no problem with non-free software.

To me, there are three levels of freedom:

1. Free software and open file formats
2. non-free software and open file formats
3. non-free software and proprietary file formats

The first level is ideal, but the second level is OK in that as long as there are open file formats, the Free software can compete on a level playing field with the non-free software. You run into problems when you have proprietary formats which leads to vendor lockin. I'm actually posting this with a Free web browser and I am looking for Free software where ever I can for OS X. If I use proprietary software, I make sure that the file format is open so I do not get locked in.

Yes, I omitted the possibility of using Free software with proprietary file formats. No one would do that willing, the only time it would happen is when a Free software user needed to send something to a non-free software user and they could only accept a proprietary file format. No Free software user would want to use a proprietary file format.

Busted ThinkPad And Busted Support

Before I left on vacation my ThinkPad started acting funny. It would no longer recognize the AC adapter, which is a problem since I had the battery at that point down to 50% so it was only good for an hour of runtime. Since there were rumors of cheap, Intel-based iBooks floating around, I decided to wait to see if I could just pick up one of them instead of paying IBM $400.00 for a new mainboard. I forgot that I was five hours behind New York time when I called on Friday and didn't get to complete my service call. So I called again on Monday, explained that I tried using both my brother's and father's AC adapter and that my laptop did not recognize any of them, however, it would power on just fine under battery power. They told me it was probably a mainboard issue, something I already knew. A box would be waiting for me when I arrived home.

I received a call today and was told that my laptop worked fine, both off battery power and while running on the AC adapter. I was told my AC adapter was bad. I replied that I had tested not one, but two working AC adapters and neither one of them was recognized by my laptop. They told me it worked fine and that no repair was needed. I said that if my laptop was working flawlessly to please send it back. Given my last encounter with IBM, I have a funny feeling that I will be receiving a broken laptop in the mail tomorrow morning.

Until then, I'm running my laptop harddrive in my secondary computer.