5 things I did this week:
I have received my brand-spanking-new iPhone 4 via FedEx (after they delayed the delivery by 3 days, and then sent it from Mississauga to Vancouver, and then back to the GTA to delay it one extra day). I also preemptively made a case for it out of a Moleskine notebook. Pretty impressive that the damned things fit together so snugly, considering I never had the iPhone with me while cutting, and based pretty much everything off of estimates and measurements from Wikipedia. I made another time-lapse video of the cutting process, and normal recordings for the unboxing and fitting of Ulrich (my phone) in his handmade crib.
Notes: The original audio track was supposed to be Kaela Kimura’s “Level 42″ but because the folks at Columbia Music are dicks sticklers about people promoting their artists on their behalf for free illegal use of their “property” they wouldn’t let me use it on YouTube and the audio got nuked. I then used an audio-swap feature of YouTube’s to substitute a pre-licensed song (the “I’m Feeling Lucky” automatic song finder gave me Finger Eleven’s “Paralyzer” after two tries).
I hope you enjoy the video, without the original, nicely cut and faded audio. Thanks be to Karen for helping me with the cutting of the pages, and Amy for her genius idea on how to bind and seal the pages together. Oh, and thanks be to Columbia Music, just for being the kind of company they are. Please, continue to set this kind of precedent for all those in the music industry and do for your artists what only you can do, and I’m almost sure you will have a flourishing business model on your hands. That, or crash and burn like the bags of fecal matter in airplanes low on fuel that you so desperately wish to resemble.
Hate for petty and childish business models aside, I’m loving the phone and loved making the case. I have indeed been able to replicate the attenuation problem (to crush the dreams of all those who were hoping some magical fix had been implemented in the second batch of iPhones), but it seems that it is only an issue in inherently weak-signaled places, and I do think the reception overall is actually better on the iPhone 4. For example, I get 3 bars that will drop to none or 1 when applying the death-grip to Ulrich from within my condo. As a reference, I normally get zero/no reception at all with my previous handset in the same spot. This proves that attenuation is still a problem. However, the fact that the phone even gets any reception in that spot at all indicates that the antennae actually performs better if not being cheated.
So, my last exam of this spring/summer term is tomorrow.
Soon, soon my lovely little periwinkles, I will be free of this.
5 things I still want to do before summer ends:
Oh yeah, Linear Optimization. Time to get back on that before day dreaming of dates and video games.
The P.Pole has a new-ish face! Freshly polished and adorned for your enjoyment! For future reference, here’s what I’m looking at:
I’ve grabbed some comics to read, and have been reading through Marvel’s “Siege” storyline (January to May 2010), which, as far as I’ve gotten, deals with Thor and the Asgardians (I think it’s pronounced ”az-guardians”, not “ass-guardians”).
Anyway, Thor has this totally badass hammer, named Mjöllnir. Here is an excerpt (taken completely out of context) from the Wikipedia page:
At a banquet Þrymr holds in honor of the impending union, Þrymr takes the bait. Unable to contain his passion for his new maiden with long, blond locks (and broad shoulders), as Þrymr approaches the bride by placing Mjöllnir on “her” lap, Thor rips off his disguise and destroys Þrymr and his giant cohorts.
Read more about Mjöllnir here.
Update: Here’s a video of me, making a Chibi-Mjolnir:
Whether you’ve been here the past few days or if you subscribed to me via RSS, you may have noticed that, since the 25th of July, 2010, this site had previously been pointed to one of those domain squatter’s pages (see here for an example).
Apparently, my claim on the domain had expired on the 25th but the notifications were never received by me. The WhoIs information was never changed with respect to my email address. To make things worse, I had assumed I was on an automatic renewal setup, so I never bothered to check when my lease expired.
You can imagine the shock I had when I went to make a post last night (probably about how much Statistics I’ve been doing over the week—a lot) and instead found a squatter on my page, with links redirecting to pole dancing lessons and pole barns. When I ran a WhoIs check, it said the “people” at Enom.com had swooped in and gobbled up my domain. I went there, and test-registered the domain. They wanted me to pay the $69 for something intangible that I owned a few days ago.
I asked a few people who’d know about this sort of thing (thanks Tim, Adwin, Stephen, and David) and the general consensus was that I was not getting my domain back. I contacted Hostgator about the problem, sort of in a panic, and the helpful support guy told me he’d do his best to snag it back on my behalf, and all I have to do is pay for the renewal for the coming year (since after all my lease did expire). So, $15 and one night’s worth of sleep later, www.the-ppole.com is back in my rightful possession, with all the WordPress installation + databases intact (I checked first thing this morning when I woke up).
Let this mark the start of a new age, where domain squatting bastards like Enom Inc. can cram it with their business model.
Re: Amy – The squatters’ asses have been soundly kicked.
This used to be just funny.
Thanks xkcd.
And as is now regular, a song: a relatively new (to me) sad song, Annie Use Your Telescope by Jack’s Mannequin. ☥
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☥ Michelle was the one to introduce me to Jack’s Mannequin many years ago, and the Carl Foundation of Musical Enjoyment thanks her for her generous contribution.
