Many thought it would be nothing but vaporware, relegated to the depths of the eternal trash can of development hell. But my faith in Kazunouri Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital has finally paid off – the reason that I really got my PSP is finally here!
Well, at least it’s going to be here. First announced with the original PSP, and with its latest announcement on the same day as the new PSP Go, it’s been christened Gran Turismo Mobile, and is set for release on the 1st of October this year, which means I’ve gotta wait 5 more months to get my hands on it. Unless it gets delayed again, in which case, I’ll probably have to wait for a PSP Come before I get any wind of it again… But my faith in Kazunouri Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital shall prevail, and I trust they will deliver on October the 1st.
And the new Gran Turismo 5 makes me wanna get a PS3, because it just looks absolutely stunning:
I feel so infatuated now…
Filed under: Tech
Actually, no, it’s not a giant key. It’s the brand new 3rd generation iPod Shuffle (I meant the one on the left. The one on the right is a giant key…), and I never understood why they call this the Shuffle, and the larger one, the Nano. I mean, look at the thing - it’s puny! Which means you won’t know it’s there, which means you’ll leave it in the pants you threw into the washing machine, or in that gap between the seats in the bus. Just imagine going to the lost and found at the bus interchange…
Idiot: “Hey, have you seen my MP3 player?”
Customer Service Officer: “What does it look like?”
Idiot: “It has no buttons…”
CSO: “Oh, it was here somewhere. I must have lost it…”
And yup, it doesn’t even have buttons anymore. It just has a switch on top to select between off, shuffle, and play in order. The rest of the controls are on a small bar along the earbud wire, which allows the player itself to be just about as tiny as my ability to chat girls up.
Which is why I still love my iPod Classic…
I had a dream a few nights ago. I dreamt that I had 2 new things: a new phone and gray hair.
I woke up, and exhaled a sigh of relief as I looked into the mirror for reassurance that my hair didn’t turn gray. It’s been a hectic semester. Last semester, I was happy to get a day where I could do absolutely nothing. This semester, I’m happy to be able to spend just an evening not doing any work, which was what I did today. It could have been better though, if I had not fallen asleep in front of the television… This semester has been just too much work. 6 formidable modules with very formidable workloads, and I am still reeling from the effects of the first half of the semester even after the mid-term break and the relatively slow week after that. I SO can’t wait for this semester to end.
And I also can’t wait for the Sony Ericsson C905 to be released…
Photo: Sony Ericsson
That’s the phone I was dreaming of by the way. It’s got an 8.1 Megapixel camera. 8.1 million pixels of image and noise. Hopefully with more image than noise. And as if that doesn’t sound demonic enough, it comes with WLAN and GPS to boot, which makes it rather similar to the Samsung INNOV8, except the INNOV8 has no xenon flash and it costs a bomb. In fact, at $788, it’ll cost you several bombs, albeit very small ones. The C905, on the other hand, costs… Well, I don’t know how much it costs, cos it isn’t out yet. Hopefully, it’ll be out sometime this month, and it’ll be cheaper than the INNOV8, though my rational side tells be that it’s probably gonna be even worse…
Everything’s breaking down around me. First up, on Saturday, it was my phone. I turned it on, and it just gave me a blank stare. And by blank, I mean BLANK – empty. Ok, fine, I could see the wallpaper, but that was it! It didn’t respond to user inputs at all, so it basically became a rather fancy looking paperweight. Anyhow, I took it to the Sony Ericsson service centre, and checked in the phone, which was a really stupid thing to do. I had to pay $10.70 upfront so they’d send it to their workshop. So now I have to wait 3 working days for someone from the workshop to call me regarding the bill, before they resume the repair. And if the bill’s too high and I decide not to go ahead with the repair, they keep the $10.70! Talk about a ripoff.
But actually, I’m sorta hoping the bill will get really high, so I’ll have an excuse to get a new phone. Hahaha. Anyway, I’m using this Motorola V3 clamshell phone right now, and over the last 3 days, I’ve assessed the V3’s merits and faults. So here’s the good part about the V3 – the chassis. It’s beautiful, sturdy, and it’s outfitted in matt black, so the whole thing looks really awesome, even though it’s a really basic phone. So yea, I really liked the external design.
But here’s the bad part – I really liked ONLY the external design. The rest of it was, well, lacklustre to say the least. It’s got a really basic feature set. But then again, it’s a really old phone, so I guess that’s ok. But the keypad takes some getting used to. The thin profile of an open V3, and the raised ridge at the bottom of it turns the task of typing messages quickly into a huge challenge. And then there’s the software. It’s not the most user-friendly interface I’ve seen, and it’s really ugly as well.
But I guess a V3 is better than nothing, and I’m trying to grow on it.
So that was Saturday. On Sunday, the printer quit on me too. My attempt at printing notes was foiled when I discovered that the printer wouldn’t power up. And yes, everything that had to be connected, was connected.
So I’m gonna have to go out this weekend to get myself a new printer, and possibly, a new phone. And the IT Fair just ended a week ago, which makes me look kinda retarded. Anyway, I’m not too sure if I need the new phone yet, though the Nokia 6500 does look awfully tempting…
So anyway, after ruing over my downed phone, I watched Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, and it was brilliant! Both Nick Heidfeld and Nico Rosberg got onto the podium! But maybe the fact that only 7 cars finished the race, out of the 22 that started, had something to do with that. Nonetheless, it’s great seeing both Nic’s on the podium. After the race, I set about revising for the Electrical Engineering that was held earlier this evening. The test went pretty OK, I think. And it made me feel a bit dumb, because everything that I’d prepared for over the weekend didn’t appear in the paper at all. But I guess it doesn’t really matter, as long as I get the results I need, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Up next: The first draft of the position paper is due in 2 days, and my team still has some way to go before we can have a paper that looks decent enough for submission. So, it’s back to work.
Oh, and I’m never getting a Sony Ericsson phone ever again. Ever…
So I celebrated my birthday with my family at Jack’s Place with a very nice piece of steak. I love steak. Mmm… Anyway, it was a pretty good day, since I didn’t do any work at all, which also meant I had to make up for it throughout the following week. To come to think of it, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. I’m feeling more relaxed, but that could be a side effect of constantly feeling so exhausted, and I’ve just completed all my assignments yesterday! I feel so proud of myself…
So anyway, my dad gave me this:
It’s the new iPod classic! And it is so cool. I mean, this thing has 4 times the storage space of my old Pentium 2 (I actually miss that old museum piece), and it’s so thin! The sound quality wasn’t as good as I had expected, but still very good nonetheless, and so is the user interface, especially if a lot of your songs have album art, because it’ll be displayed as you browse through your music library. And now, the iPod has an aluminium surface instead of the old glossy plastic surface found on the previous iPod, but the lack of a protective case is still a pretty big omission when you consider how easily the chrome backing of the iPod can get scratched. Unlike the PSP, which made shops so enthusiastic that they sold protective cases even before the handheld itself was released, there’s nothing in stores right now that actually fits the iPod Classic, so I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before I head back to the shops in search of that elusive leather protective case.
As you can see from the above picture, my camera-phone produces very noisy pictures. But that’s not my point here. I have become addicted to Red Bull. It’s nice actually, and it has taurine! Did you know that cats need taurine? Because if they don’t take enough of it, they’ll turn blind. But don’t worry – if you can read this, there is a good chance that you are not a cat, so you won’t be turning blind anytime soon. And even if you were a cat, you don’t have to drink Red Bull to avoid turning blind, unless you’re vegetarian.
What a load of bull I just typed in that last paragraph…
But I’m drinking a lot of it because of a lot of late nights spent doing work and chatting online (mostly work… Really!), and I don’t wanna fall asleep during lectures. Coffee makes me feel a bit bloated, and I ended up not eating too much during my next meal, so Red Bull is the next best thing. Plus it tastes kinda nice. Well, it doesn’t really give you a sudden burst of energy or anything, but it does keep you awake. Or maybe it’s just a placebo effect…
So there goes week 6. Up next is recess week. Notice they don’t call it “mid-term break” because everyone’s gonna be studying for the mid-term tests, which comes right after the week is done. I’m starting to wonder how I’m gonna study for the tests right now, because I don’t quite know the coverage for some of the tests. But I guess we’ll soon see how that works out.
