iridani.com

Those who know me should realize that I will be purchasing an iPad as soon as it is possible for me to do so. That should mean sometime this next week if all forecasts were accurate.

In preparation, I’ve started to get my head tuned around the change in my reading habits. I don’t need to buy physical books anymore. I will make the transition to eBooks on this device. Having already read Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” on my iPhone via the convenient Kindle app I can attest that I will have no trouble making the switch. That is not to say that I won’t still buy some physical material, but no longer in the quantities that I have in the past.

My initial thought was that I would cart he iPad around everywhere I normally do my reading. But have since changed my mind in that regard and I hope the brain trust at Apple is thinking the same way. I think for me to fully get the best experience out of iBooks (and yes I know it isn’t available in Canada yet, it just needs the right help to get it going. Andrew, I hope you are listening) the books themselves will need to be available wherever I want them. iPad, Mac, and iPhone.

If iBooks takes the same approach as does my iTunes music account, I should be able to buy a book and enable multiple devices to access it. This way I could read in bed on my iPad, continue reading during my commute in my iPhone (sorry but the St. Clair streetcar is too crowded to whip out a large iPad). Heck, when textbooks and technical manuals are available, I think I’d rather read reference manuals on my work desktop and MacBook when working rather than having to haul an iPad over to look at a manual.

I have complete and utter faith in Apple and I know they will get it right.

I’m starting on a new project that I hope to see off the ground in a few days. the big sqaure will be a webcomic of sorts. If a webcomic could be crossed with a Digg or Reddit that is.

The gist of it is: I can’t draw, but I’ve got tons of ideas. Serial and otherwise. So, each week I’ll post an idea and an empty square. Anyone can draw what I’ve asked and submit it. Upon acceptance, the image will join any others gathered. Every visitor can then vote on which is the best depiction of my description. When I post the next square’s description, the winner of the previous week is set as the comic and will appear in the archive appropriately. All others will still be stored and available for perusal. Every piece of art remains owner by the artist, yadda yadda yadda.

I hope it will cause many different interpretations of what I describe. If not, it’ll divert my attention for awhile.

Expect an announcement and promotion once I finish creating the back-end to run it. Should be an easy dev project for an old horse like me.

Oh noes! Say it isn’t so. Part the sixth of The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, “And Another Thing“.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the series. But, I mourn Douglas’ passing each year. This book will not, cannot be in the same galaxy as Douglas’ work. I cringe fearfully of what will come this October.

I’d forgotten that I had signed up for the JoliCloud¹ Beta a couple of months ago when I was trying to decide on a Netbook vs. a MacBook. Apple won and Steve has my money, but I got my JoliCloud Beta invite a couple of days ago.

The OS still looked cute and highly polished, if only in a GUI way. So I decided to try it out. Virtualization for the win!

Problem: Most Virts don’t like USB keys, at least not for booting. And that is precisely what JoliCloud needs. A bootable USB key.

Solution: After trying a variety of solutions with minimal success I found that the IMG file that you get from JoliCloud, you do have beta access right?, is a bootable HDD file that VirtualBox will recognize. So here are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded JoliCloud Beta Image File
2. Downloaded and installed VituralBox (Google It, I’m lazy…)
3. Created a new VM in VirtualBox
4. Assigned HDA to use the JoliCloud Beta Image File, set this to be the boot disk
5. Created a new Disk (HDC) for installation
6. Booted the VM
7. Ran JoliCloud in ‘Live’ mode
8. Played, installed some apps etc…
9. Used the built in installer and chose HDC as the destination. Defaults all around.
10. Shutdown the VM
11. Removed the two HDDs from the profile.
12. Assigned HDA to use the old HDC file.
13. Turned on the VM and it booted perfectly.

Pretty simple really. Glad I thought of it!

Really tho, VirtualBox, while nice is painfully slow. If you want to try out JoliCloud, build the USB key, walk into a BestBuy and reboot a machine into it. That is the only way to test it’s speed etc. Just don’t install it onto the store’s netbooks. It’s not nice to tease the GeekSquad nerds.

Okay, my free time is officially over. I got my Beta invite to Dungeons & Dragons Online.

See you next year.

You may have seen the comercials, or perhsp heard the radio spots on any Rogers’ owned station. “Buy our Home Phone Classic Value Plan. And save $25 over Bell’s comparable plan.” I call shenanigans on that right there.

First of all, much like a pop band who’s third album is called ‘Classic Hits’, can you really call a package ‘Classic Value’ when you’ve been selling home phone service for less than three years?

But let’s ignore that for now. Let’s debunk the claims…

Rogers says you save $25/mn based on a comparable plan. The key word here is comparable.Rogers is able to compare it’s plans (and it does have one that is even cheaper: $21.95 w/ 250 LD mins) against Bell’s plans + long distance because all of the Rogers plans come with some minutes.

You can save $25 a month because the Home Phone Challenge¹ automatically adds Bell’s $19.95 Unlimited Long Distance Minutes package. (This is hilarious because they offer the exact same package but don’t select it by default when you take the challenge.)

If you deselect any of the features (voicemail, call waiting, etc) you will compare the Basic Value package against Bell. But even then, you are forced to select at least one long distance package from Bell for comparison purposes. I understand the ‘white’ side of this lie. You want to compare apple to apples. Rogers’ plans all come with long distance whether you want it or not.

You only save money over Bell because they are forcing you to take long distance minutes even if you don’t use them.

I hate these kind of mistruths in advertising. If I was an uninformed consumer and walked into a Rogers store and wanted to save my $25/mn and switched, the odds are I wouldn’t be saving much more than five bucks. If I didn’t care about long distance, the most I’d save is a dollar.

But in reality it is worse than that:

So there you have it. You may not get long distance, but you pay less with Bell.

• One stump down… One to go. Tomorrow. #
• Playing GemCraft chapter 0, damn it is addictive. http://bit.ly/11wRNB #

• Trying out Tweetdeck for the iPhone. very sweet! #
• Finally fully integrated my iPhone with my mac… So many apps so many syncs… #
• Thank you DevTeam. 1st Gen iPhone now has OS 3.0 on it. Easy. Painless. Why wouldn't you jailbreak? #
• Happy Father's Day Dad, been missing you since 1994! #
• RT @spooons: @jqs_ebay kijiji is 95959593993589393949394% better than CL #

• Must read this later… http://is.gd/Ynb0 #

Aw crap, there goes all of my personal productivity… GemCraft¹ is a wonderfully addictive tower defense style of game. It sucks you in with a interesting take on the genre.

You don’t have a variety of towers in this game. There are only two units, towers and traps, but they are modified by different gems. Each gem can be upgraded.

Oh, and then there is skill building between levels giving you better abilities and controlling things liek how much each gem costs.

And did I mention that there are nine different ways to play each map? That’s right, multiple maps.

Damn, there go my sleep filled nights.