Friday, August 28, 2009

A Few Months On With the Blackberry Bold

So I've had it for a bit. I basically use it for all my email now, since most of my email is read-only with only short replies occasionally. I do fire up Thunderbird every so often to deal with complicated emails or ones with Word attachments, even though the Blackberry can open those, because it is so much easier to work with on a large screen.

I had an SMS chat application installed, but deleted it. I found I like the way the Blackberry stores it by default. The setup is quite clean. Each SMS has a history that is like the conversation in the SMS chat applications anyway.

I still very much like the keyboard and screen. I discovered that it can play XVID video with no conversion, and can play AAC audio as well. It also can play x.264 video and plays iTunes non-drm video just fine. Well, Handbrake rips directly to iTunes format, as do many tools these days. With the hot-swappable mini-sdhc card, it is actually a pretty good media player.

I still periodically entertain myself by starting the one video that inexplicably reboots the device, but nothing is perfect. As a matter of fact, this thing is good enough I've sold my iPod Touch. Seriously. I've also sold my backup e71 because going to that would be so painful anyway.

Besides, I still have the Centro, which, were it not for the Bold, would be my new favorite device. It does everything Palm is supposed to do, and, even if its keyboard is nearly unusable, especially compared to the twice-as-wide Bold, it is ok for SMS, and I never did email on Palm OS anyway. The size is nice, although it really isn't any smaller than the Treo 680 or 650. It feels smaller. It weighs about the same, but feels lighter. And, thankfully, it is a lot less fugly than the Treos. Other than that, it's pretty much a gimped 680. Don't get me wrong; all the capabilities are there, but the whole experience has been dumbed down for Palm's target audience, which seems to be tweens and soccer moms looking to trade up from a featurephone.

However, every time I pick up the Treo to do something, the adorable clunkiness of Palm OS makes me put it back down and pull out the Bold.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Another One For Ya

Stumbled across this show 'ctrl'.  The easiest way to find it is to search Amazon downloadable video for it, although it is on hulu as well.  The theme song is by an artist named Cat Jahnke and is available to purchase in full form on her website.  The song is called 'Apple' and is one of the more impressive aural works I've encountered in some time.  Oh, and yes, the show 'ctrl' is also very good.

Speaking of hulu, I think the network execs ought to get with the program and let them have every show ever made, because it is so nice to sit down and go through, say, 'Sliders' one show at a time starting from the very beginning.  I've now seen every episode ever made of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show', 'Alf' and 'Arrested Development'.  I can sit here at my desktop and program on one screen while watching tv on the other and call it 'working', although convincing the wife that I'm working has been hard going lately, especially when the other screen is clearly running freeciv.