Review: Treo 750

Recently my JasJam decided (after it's 5th graceless crash to the ground) that it would only work under certain conditions. These include the 4th blue moon of the year, only on days starting with X and the like. You get the picture. Adios JasJam.

So being phoneless is no fun (although very quiet :-) ) Being a geek and needing email access and the like, but refusing to have a crackberry, I opted to have a bit of a look at the Treo 750. Compact, nice weight, nice screen and the keys feel good. Okey dokey. So being a high powered manager I demand and receive one immediately (ahh sweet sweet power). I've been using it for a couple of months now and here are my thoughts:

Windows Mobile 6 - much nicer than 5. Speedy and hangs up in a quick manner. I like that. Interface is nice, the green is very pretty and it has some useful functions. These things I like. Very easy to set up mail and stuff and I like the way it handles text messages using threading. Aye, that's pretty. I *still* don't like that you can't have an MP3 for the alarm tone. Come on! It's 2008 - catch up Microsoft!

Stylus - cunningly placed, nice weight, unlikely to get lost in the pocket and works well. I like it.

Keypad - I like the keypad too, although the buttons are small and I sometimes hit the wrong ones when I'm not paying enough attention they have a lovely tactile response to them.

Generally it's a good device. It hasn't crashed yet on me and it holds a good charge given I use it extensively throughout the workday. I can get probably 3 days of battery life out of it which is great. It's weight, shape and size are pleasing also. In general I feel this device to be a better one than the JasJam was. It has mini-SD memory (bit of a change from micro like everything else). I promptly put a 2GB card in there and it works great.

It lacks a front camera for video calls (but I never make video calls so who cares). Also, the camera that's built in has poor resolution and the like but again, that isn't why I got it. It does a reasonable job and that's really all I care about. Sound and voice quality are fine, dialling easy.

So I'm quite happy with it. It's not quite as good as my e61 though on calls and the like, but is smaller and easier to deal with than the e61. So in conclusion - not a bad bit of kit at all.

Self Worth

What do you think of when someone asks you about self worth? Is it merely a financial thing? Or does it refer to an overall way you think about yourself, your values and value or where you are going in life?

I ask these questions because I have recently had great cause to question my own self worth. Someone I care deeply about lost a someone they love recently and I was helpless to do anything. I am still feeling this way as I cannot do anything to save the person in question. This naturally led me to question my own self worth, my self-esteem, and confidence in myself. I've learned a few lessons and I'm not sure if they'll help others if they go through this, but I'll offer them anyway.

It's not always about you
This is something I've struggled with. When something bad happens to someone else and you can't help them, it's not about you. It's their grief, pain and anger that is shaping the situation. All you can do is offer support and if they choose to take it, then so be it. If they don't then that is their choice and you have to accept it, hard as it is.

Some of it *is* about you
Questioning your own self worth, feelings of inadequacy and jealousy in this sort of situation is about you. These things spring from internal conflicts or problems, not external ones. My challenge has (and still is) to move through these feelings without allowing them to impact on my loved ones. Jealousy in particular is dangerous. Sometimes it's warranted and sometimes it's not. When it isn't, then it is critical it can be controlled because it may very well develop in control issues. I refuse to allow this to happen - controlling someone in a relationship is the antithesis of why I'm in the relationship.

Focus on your blessings
Put the positive thoughts and images back into your life. Our thoughts shape the way things happen. Fear, jealousy and the like are negative influences on our life and shape things in the way we fear. Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts is a key factor to moving past these problems.

Seek help
Find a therapist, or a kinesiologist, or whatever to talk to about this. They will offer (if you get a good one) ways and means to work through feeling low self worth. Self Worth is tied up with lots of aspects of your life including (but not limited to):

• self esteem
• prosperity
• confidence
• love of self
• love of others

Of course, these are pretty big things for anyone. For me, it's been about how I feel about myself and what my life path is. In context with my life, the double hit of what has happened and the sudden and immediate requirement for me to address these problems has put me through a loop. Most of the time I don't know how I feel with the exceptions of pain, loss, confusion and frustration.

My final piece of advice is this: Once you start to build or re-build your self-worth it's a tough road. It is your choice walk it or to remain where you are. My choice is to walk that path. I recommend you do it too. Once you look at where you were and the changes you've made to get to where you are, it's pretty amazing. I don't think I could go back to being the person I was before. So much of the sweetness of life passed me by. Now I'm actively looking for it and finding a small measure of peace as I go along.

New Games and the Quality of their Storylines

I'm a fairly avid gamer. Since I was a wee fellow, I've enjoyed PC games and console games. Over time, though, it's become less of an interest as the story lines and general plot development of games seems to be in a decline. The imagery, the music, the sound have all improved. The hardware requirements have likewise increased to match pace with the increased demand on processing power and available RAM. What gets me is that older games were more interesting. Less bling and more substance if you understand what I mean. Take the early Police Quest, King's Quest and Space Quest games. There was a lot of work involved in those games and I can remember being immersed in them for hours. Then there was the F117, F15, Test Drive and various other simulator games that worked so hard for realism. And let's not forget the excellent role play games like Pool of Radiance and the games following it.

Nowadays I've got an Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, and PC to play game on and none of the current titles really grab my interest. I've finished playing Halo 3 recently and while it wasn't a bad game, it was far too short for my liking. I started with Halo on the original Xbox and loved it. The game was great. Halo 2 never seemed to run properly for my liking on the Xbox and I tired very quickly of the long load times. I'm not there to sit around waiting for the next bit to load, I've got more things I want to do. Likewise, Gran Turismo 4 is not as good as Gran Turismo 3 to my way of thinking. Sure it had a few better bits and stuff, but at the end of the day, I played GT3 for a lot longer than GT4.

Take for example the Need for Speed games. I've been playing those since the first one came out. I loved NFS High Stakes and its sequel NFS HS II. Gold. Loved the cars, loved bringing other cars in. When NFS Underground came out I liked the new driving challenges. NFS Underground 2 was a revelation. Cruising the city, driving wicked cars - all good. But there was a discordant note. It was becoming easier to do everything in the game. Once you had to have a clue about sliding the car into a high speed drift. Gradually it became so easy that retaining control of the car in the slides became more difficult. The most often response I got regarding this from people was so that kids could do it. I see - let's not force them to learn how to do it properly, let's instead dumb it down so the lowest common denominator can handle it. Seems to be the way of all things these days. Task too hard? Aww poor kid. We'll make it easy for you so you can do it with even less effort than your putting in now. Lets dumb down everything! Yay! Fortunately this seems to have changed for the better - NFS Carbon had some difficult driving required in it and it paid off if you had the time and skill to put moves together successfully.

One of the few games I've truly enjoyed in the last few years has been Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. I've played this through four or five times already and the story is excellent. It's a decent trip to go on. I like to read novels and see the advancement of plot and KoTOR II provides that kind of entertainment. You have to think - consider your options, consider the outcomes and the writers and designers of this game have done a fantastic job with it all. I'm slightly biased though - I love the Star Wars universe and the Jedi. Of course, a game with choices that change many things at once, some subtle, some gross, is not a game with some stress. A good choice is worth some stress over and the rewards are in the results.

Thinking on it further, I guess that shorter games are more appealing for the attention deficit children of the current age. If it's more than 8 minutes without a break, they'll probably lose focus and need an ad break to let their minds recover from the exertion. Does this reflect back on real life? I think it does. The gaming industry seems to reflect the market quite well and so shorter, easier games are going to sell better than longer, more complicated games that have greater depth and require analytical skills and planning.

I really hope they bring out another KoTOR game!

SCO Unix gets a lifeline?

I've just read this news article about SCO being thrown a $100 million dollar lifeline (source: InternetNews Real Time IT News).

I wonder if they'll squander it on more ill conceived lawsuits that win them nothing but costs and ongoing losses? Someone must be awfully brave. I could never understand what SCO were about with the attacks they made on Linux, claiming patent breaches and the like. Along with many other Linux enthusiasts, I was shocked and appalled (my strongest expression of unhappiness) by their behaviour. I was likewise very pleased when Novell's prior patent claims were upheld and it became apparent SCO owed Novell money for all the products it had shipped. I laughed very hard. I had followed most of what was happening through the excellent work of PJ at Groklaw (www.groklaw.com) Bravo to her for all her brilliant work on the subject and for successfully enduring the unpleasantness that was apart of it all. I really felt for all the folks who were suckered in through fear to pay SCO for their Linux installations. I'm glad that it's all quietened down.

So now we can focus on using the best OS out there - Linux!

The Culture of Fear and it's prevalence within society

It seems to me as I read my daily doggdot.us compilation of stories from such sites as digg.com, reddit.com, del.ico.us and slashdot.org that the apparent culture of fear in the US, UK and Australia (and various other countries) is maintaining itself very ably through the political machinations of the various governments, most notable of which is the US government. I can only imagine how the members of these groups little hearts shrivel with fear at the thought of the next terrorist attack - or more accurately, at the thought that they could be losing power in some way. And that's what their real fear is. The US continues it's warrant less wiretapping, listening in on countless constitutionally protected conversations while proposing to allow those who have caused this to happen, and those who have facilitated it, to get away with it all. I was pleased to note that the US House of Reps have rejected the telco's immunity bill. I think at some point, all the folks involved are going to have to take responsibility for their actions in this area. And that, gentle reader, is probably their greatest fear.

But using fear as a tool is an old government trick. Hitler used it, and so is Bush. The constant, ominous warnings about terror strikes come at any point his attempts to subvert the US Constitution are curtailed is a source of snorting amusement to me. "If you don't let me torture people for information - there will be another 9/11!" Wow, I bet that's true How about this: the more people you torture, imprison without adhering to the vaunted US laws and the more involved you are with other people's countries and religions, the more likely it is that someone is going to want to attack you. It's a simple act of trying to protect themselves. I liken this somewhat to the Palestinians and Israelis. Israel bomb a bunch of them, cut off food and supplies and what do the Palestinians do? The only thing they can - one of them puts bombs on him/herself and goes and detonates it where it will have maximum shock value. The cycle of violence continues. I don't condone this behaviour, but I understand it. After all, Israel has enormous backing from the US - and why that is is a question I'd like an answer to. I realise that the news reports out of that region are probably tainted by the agenda of the various news and government agencies and are most likely to be biased in some way or another, but I feel that the Palestinians have probably copped a raw deal out of it all.

That's a bit off topic though. I was ruminating on fear and the consequences of having fear drive your life. Bush's veto of the bill against torture is such a thing, and I feel it to be in the worst interests of all involved. It's no longer a possibility that he will take the award for the most craven, mentally challenged President of the United States - I believe he'll hold that award in perpetuity. But, he's a cunning bugger for all his apparent deficits. After all, he has fairly successfully manipulated things so that the "democracy" of the US is powerless. And fear has been his tool.

It was fear too that led to the death of a gay teenager in the US too. WTF? I hear you ask - where did that come from? It's not that much of a leap really. People fear what they don't understand, they fear what is different, and in the case of homosexuality, they fear they may have their own proclivity for it. This kid wore clothes that proclaimed his sexuality and as one of the folks there put it: "That was freaking the guys out." (source: The LA Times) Freaking them out why? Fear!

It is apparent throughout our society. It's not just in the US. Australia has it too and it's appalling. The longer we live our lives afraid, the worse things will be. At some point people have to say: "I'm not afraid of that. I can live with it and it has no power over me." For example, I'm not going to live in fear that the terrorists may strike in Australia. If I live that way, I give them power over me. That's just not cool. No can do and no will do. I call on all people to get a can of Harden Up and drink it. Fear doesn't deserve your obedience. As Yoda put it:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” (source: Yoda Quotes)

So very true....



Links:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/House-Rejects-Telecom-Immunity-as-FISA-Clock-Ticks-Down-61671.html?welcome=1203024707

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080214/pl_afp/usbushcongressintelligenceveto

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/114259/280/987/456673

US Presidential Primaries

I've been watching with some interest the primaries in the USA. As I understand it, the current mini elections are for the Republicans and Democrats to sort out who they want to have as their candidate for the Presidency. I can't help but notice the biased media reporting. TV, newspapers and radios support the industry favourites - Obama, Clinton, etc while the Internet crowd seems to be massing behind Ron Paul. And I can understand why. Someone who has a track record of consistency, answers questions straightforwardly and doesn't attempt to pass blame off is very attractive the attention limited crowd on the Internet. We don't want to read through the bullshit that some of these cretins are spewing forth. That idiot Giulani should be hung out to dry - is he mental? The leverage for his campaign is 9/11 - a tragedy that was arguably caused by the US intervention into other countries affairs. I was really amused when Ron Paul tried to describe the phenomenon of blowback to this moron. I guess he doesn't get that if you blow up bombs in your neighbour's backyard, sooner or later that dude is going to come back at you with some heavy shit.

And while I'm proselytizing on that issue, I've read a few things suggesting that 9/11 was planned and executed within the US government to give Bush the kind of momentum he needed to suspend all kinds of rights and the like and also to invade Iraq. Well done. I salute him on his planning and execution skills, even though I reckon he didn't have much to do with any of it and someone else planned the lot.

I think it would be nice to have someone who isn't tied up with all the big companies and oil and the presidential dynasty in the US leading that country. Ron Paul seems to be my favourite at the moment. Even though I disagree with some of his policies - for example I think a woman's right to choose an abortion is her business (as Jay in the movie Dogma puts it: "A woman's body is her own fucking business") I like the fact that he has stood by the decisions he's made and makes them in good faith. Good luck to him. Were I American he'd have my vote.

Windows Mobile 6 Review

I've just updated my i-Mate JasJam to Windows Mobile 6. Although I was initially skeptical about this, I had to do it, basically. My JasJam checks my email continuously throughout the day, and when I'm on a call, the data check drops the sound for the call which is a major inconvenience. So I looked into some updates - via the Telstra JasJam site and found that Windows Mobile 6 was a free upgrade.

Being an early adopter of technology I decided to give it a whirl (even though it's been out for a while). During the update things went slowly. At one point I thought I'd fried my JasJam, a moment that made me decidedly uneasy. It came back to life however, and things progressed from there. I've been using it for about 14 days now and here are my impressions:

• wireless connectivity (802.11) is much better and setting up connections is easy and relatively fool proof.
• bluetooth seems more reliable
• no more sound drop outs during calls and while phone is checking email (yay!)
• I like the look of the new interface - pretty!
• Speed of dialling is faster. Previously the onscreen keys took a moment to register a press - now it's very quick.
• hanging up happens immediately. Previously, I had to press the "End" or red phone key several times until the phone would drop the call. Annoying if you say things after a call you don't want the caller to hear (oops!)
• Email interaction with the server is smoother and runs without any errors.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the improved interface. I note that it has it's own "Windows Update" built in. It also has updated versions of the various mobile office applications - Outlook, Word, Excel for example.

Most importantly it still has the block breaker game - my usual boredom killer.

OK, so here are my gripes:

• the alarm tone still has to be a wav file - large, unwieldy files that rarely seem to work
• the phone has hung a couple of times
• battery life seems to have decreased

All in all, not a bad update and fairly straightforward to implement. Works well with both Vista and XP. I should also note that the use of the phone as a modem is much improved. Well worth the time and effort to do.