Trust Tommy

Apologies for the break in posts recently — server issues were experienced left, right and yes, even centre too.

However, I’m back now so it’s all back to normal.

…Or, at least as normal as one can expect ’round these here parts.

I was at home last night, reading my New Yorker, when this fell out from between the pages:

You’re meant to fill it out, and just stick it in the postbox. Am I the only one who sees the problem therein?

Obviously, since you’re writing your credit card details on it, you should put it in an envelope before sending it away, but what about the people who don’t realize what they’re doing?

It’d be nice if the New Yorker had a little note at the bottom telling you how to not be the victim of credit card fraud.

We had a minor hiccup yesterday, which resulted in me not being able to access this blog from home. Something about servers being unavailable. I probably upset some internal server elves at some point.

Today, this has been rectified, and normal service shall resume in the regular time-slot tomorrow.

After seeing a tweet from Marie, and being the impulsive person I am, I decided to make brownies, using a recipe from the Look and Taste school of cooking.

Tasting is an integral part of the process.

Cook for 20-25 minutes? Gotcha.

Serve with New Yorker and side of Twitter.

Om nom nom

The latest social networking that’s slowly becoming mainstream is one which puts more onus on the location-based parts of networking sites. Enter stage left — Four Square!

Four Square revolves around ‘checking in’ at locations like bars, cafés, restaurants and even shops. You connect with friends and so you can see where your pals are and meet up with them. People can’t see where you’re checking in unless you accept their friendship request — which takes care of some privacy concerns, and you only check into places you want to (it’s not automatic — you have to open the app and select your location (e.g. Eason’s, 40 O’Connell Street) from a list of nearby Four Square spots). If where you are isn’t listed, you can add it, and then other people who come to where you are will see “Eason’s, 40 O’Connell Street” on the list of nearby Four Square spots. When you check in, you gain points, and a leader board of you and your friends can be seen on their website/mobile application. It resets every Sunday at 11.59pm, so points are only good to you for a week before everyone reverts to 0. The person with the most check-ins at one location becomes the ‘mayor’ of that location.

Why?

First and foremost, local Italian restaurant La Cucina are giving away pizza slices to mayors of the restaurant. :D

As with all social networks, interaction is what makes it fun. I can see that Patrick Collison has checked in at La Cucina, so I can go meet him there. Also, I can see popular cafés in an unfamiliar cities by how many people have checked in.. or at least one where I’d fit in (heavy technology users for the win!)

Also, bragging rights play a big role. You get a real-time leaderboard that shows how many points you and the people you ‘friend’ are on. Also, mayorship is a hotly contested role, and interneceine revolts are not not uncommon:

Four Square requires an internet connection to ‘check-in’ at spots, and all major smartphones are supported (iPhones, Andriods and Blackberries. Those are device/app store links, by the way). Normal-phone SMS check in is available in the USA and should be available here in Ireland soon.

This week’s MusicSunday — Passing Afternoon by Iron & Wine

It’s a very easy song to listen to, and one which currently sits at number 7 of my 25 Top Played Songs in iTunes.

On Thursday, I was up in Dublin at physio. As always, I took my phone with me and listened to music, read Twitter and caught up on RSS on the journey.

However, when I sitting into the car to go home, I got the ‘warning: less than 20% battery remaining” message.

Ok, I was listening to music for the best part of 2.5 hours, and the screen’s brightness was up at the top but there’s no getting around the fact that 3 hours of battery isn’t wonderful. It’s certainly much less than Apple’s website boasts it is.

Then again, if we add up the amount of time I’ve had my iPhone (11 months) and how old it was according to the eBay seller I bought it off (3 months), it’s nearing the time when one would be beginning to see battery deterioration in electronic goods.

I decided to rectify my battery problems by buying a battery pack from CompuB. I’d have liked one that fitted just like a case around your iPhone but things like that for the 2G iPhone are notoriously hard to come by – the problem when your iPhone’s 2 years out of date.

However, CompuB did have something for me, so future trips to Dublin won’t be met with similar battery woes. It’s handy actually, iPhones aren’t the only thing it charges — anything that connects via USB, so cameras and such are charge-able too. All for €19.99

I haven’t used it fully yet, so I can’t tell if their boasts of ‘2 hours extra battery’ are accurate. Full report coming soon!

Coming up next — MusicSunday!

Recently, I’ve noticed that my old cane (picture) had been getting a wee bit small for me — to be expected; I’m in that age of rapid growth and the cane was fitted for me in June 2009.

So I went ahead and ordered a new cane from my cane website earlier this week. Thus followed the usual XKCD-style package tracking madness.

I decided not to order the same cane again for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted something different, simple as. Secondly, there are times when a cane with flames on it is unsuitable, and something more reserved is called for. Finally, experience played a part — the flamey-cane scratched a lot when it fell or brushed against a wall, so I wanted to go for something that wouldn’t mark so easily.

From the brief bit of walking that I did today, I can tell that I was pretty on-the-mark with the height (from your wrist joint to the floor — mine’s 35 inches) of this cane, and that the sturdier material (wood versus carbon fibre) will be a bonus. The website tells me that the wooden cane is .2 of a pound heavier than my old cane — though it feels more.

All in all, a great success :)

Music is a huge part of my life — as much as computers, without a doubt.

It began in or around 2003 – John had an MP3 player that would, in fairness, be scorned at. It had a memory of 320 MBs (if memory (no pun intended) serves me right), which, in comparison to the 120 GBs (that’s 327,680 MBs) iPods that they have today.

He was selling it so that he could purchase an iPod Nano (which was chubby in those days! and the screen was in black & white!). He set down a cool €100 asking price which I agreed to. Upon asking Dad, he gave me the money but suggested I try haggling. So I did.

9 year old me: How about €90?
John: Nah. €100 or nothing.
9 year old me: Ok so.

As you can see, 9 year old me was one cool customer, and a force not to be reckoned with…

But there it was — my first MP3 player, and I was in awe. Powered by an AA battery, its little pixelated ticker-tape display proudly showed what song you were playing. You controlled it by a little cog wheel and with the volume keys.

Not having a computer (or music tastes) of my own, I promptly handed it back over to him to put some music on it. I only vagually remember what it was he put on – I know some Red Hot Chili Peppers were on it.

Over the next few years, I moved onto an iPod Shuffle (which I bought from Patrick for the slightly-less extortionate price of €30), an iPod Nano (a leaner cousin of John’s one, but not as wafer-thin as the current model) and finally onto the iPhone I have today.

Were your MP3 player beginnings Apple dreams or were they AA powered machines?

Christina, a friend of Patrick’s from America, is creating a book on Happiness. To do this, she’s using the people who have made me happiest in life, and the people who have made you happiest in yours.

So why not go help out? Head over to happymem.com and submit your story.

An instance you always look back on that makes you smile or laugh. A time in your life that you thought was miserable but, looking back, was magical. You can be brief or prolific, silly or profound. You can give background details or you can leave them out. You can focus on the minute, the hour, the weekend, the year. Spend a little while thinking (it’ll be fun, I promise) and then start typing. If you’d like to submit anonymously, feel free.

Here was mine:

I climbed the last of the subway steps and looked around, watching my breath rise in bursts in front of me. “Look for the grandiose buildings”. I recited John’s instructions to myself. As I gauged the lofty stone buildings in front of me, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and turned on my heel to push the button for the pedestrian crossing to continue my journey, which had begun at 7am Irish time earlier — much earlier — that day. John had also warned me that Boston drivers were unforgiving and sure enough, those Chrysler bumpers looked like they could make short work of me. While I was waiting, I extracted my (well, John’s, technically) small video camera from my jacket pocket.

“Pan across Boston at night” I narrated, swiveling around to take in as much of the city as possible in my short video. “It’s been a long day but it shouldn’t be too long more to the café. Like Patrick said -”

My voice-over was cut off by the low bleeping of the traffic light as the little green man made his much-anticipated appearance. Hastily stowing the camera back in my pocket, I crossed the road.

Crema Café, it aspired, was hidden away in a corner of Brattle Street, between a restaurant and what appeared to be a mountaineering store. I stepped in and was immediately greeted with the low babble of talk and the smell of coffee and cinnamon. The place was busy, but not crowded so full that movement or discussion was restricted. No tables were free downstairs so I climbed up the stairs at the back to the balcony of sorts. It was less full — perhaps thanks to the friendly chalkboard message requesting that patrons limit their time at the tables to one hour. Shrugging off my jacket and scarf, I retrieved my book — The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown — from the depths of my bag, trying not to let the contents of my over-packed bag spill out onto the floor. Then, I settled down to wait for one of my brothers to show up, and thus, a great weekend was preordained.

Go on, click here to submit