I got an iPhone Friday at 8pm. No lines whatsoever at the AT&T store I went to in Watkinsville where I was visiting family. I literally bought the iPhone and walked out - it was really simple. Brought it back to my cousin’s place and got it setup (I didn’t have any issues with activation luckily). I’m fairly impressed with it - the interface is amazing and is everything I’ve come to expect from Apple. There’s a few issues I’ve encountered though - IMAP couldn’t see all of my mailboxes by default, so I had to set the IMAP Path Prefix in the settings. Safari isn’t blazing fast (on WiFi that is, its even slower (as expected) when using the EDGE cellular data network as well) and it crashes quite often and I’ve run into quite a few web sites that are broken (I can’t update my status on Facebook and I can’t enter text in the WordPress post writer for instance).
The only learning curve has been getting used to the keyboard (which is quite intuitive and easy to use). Mail works intuitively and comes off as pretty well polished - it’s definitely better than a CrackBerry and any of the Palm OS devices I’ve had in the past. The phone just works, which is critical to me. The switch for vibrate/ring works wonderfully (no more ascending/descending beeps as I mute or unmute my phone). And the iPod portion is simply amazing - it’s intuitive, but far more powerful than a normal iPod (CoverFlow is great). Put simply, I love it. Though I will say - there’s a few things I want to see - MMS (I foresee a software update delivering this soon), iChat (it just makes sense on a portable phone), and a terminal for SSH (I’m not holding my breath on this one though).
It was funny from time to time, but as a whole, it went nowhere. None of the plots were actually resolved. It simply was a setup for a sequel. And the “ending,” if you can even call it that, was pathetic (seasons 4 and 5 of Alias come to mind). The failure of the story to actually resolve anything is a major shortcoming that I can’t get past. The acting was great though (classic Johnny Depp makes for good laughs). Go see Superman Returns instead.
So we left the house a bit after 6 to head up to the Mall of Georgia to see the 10PM Superman Returns showing at the Imax theatre (in 3D for 20 minutes as well). It was quite an experience to see it in Imax. The 3D scenes were pretty good too, although from time to time it felt awkward with my glasses on and the 3D glasses in front of them. The movie was great, the acting was really good and Kevin Spacey made an excellent Lex Luthor. Talk about a one night stand…
The Georgia Aquarium was nice, with the exception of my grandfather getting pickpocketed. I was expecting it to be bigger though, at least in comparison to Chattanooga’s aquarium, I just didn’t get that feeling though. The place was packed, which did degrade from the experience (it did just open though, so it’s to be expected I suppose). Check out the pictures.
Awesome. Excellent blend of action, comedy, and a bit of drama. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made an excellent pair on screen. They pulled off their roles quite well. Some of the scenes were just hilarious. It came off as a really well thought out movie. I give it an A.
So my dad and I took a trip to Blockbuster. The only two movies I had a passing interest in where out of stock. We also spent forever looking around for movies we wanted. I ended up leaving with nothing, and my dad settled on some chick flick and some other movie. I do not miss Blockbuster one bit.
Wow. Episode 3 was excellent. It makes up for the last two without a doubt. I think it may even be better than any of the original three, but I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. The soundtrack was excellent and worked right into the movie. The only downer was that we spent two and a half hours waiting for the thing to start, but we got good seats. Driving home was amazing - windows down, moon-roof open, music blaring, and less than a dozen cars on the road. Wow, what a great night. Oh and the movie was longer than I expected. It was also hard not to miss the politics of the movie.
Things to know:
- Some General True/False Questions
- Polymorphism - Questions just like the last test
- Dynamic Binding
- GUI with changing dimensions for window and object
- Linear Data Types (Stacks and Queues)
- Linked List type stuff
- String Manipulation
- Conditionals - DUH!
- Try-Catch-Throw
- Subclasses and Classes in general
- Trees (BSTs & Graphs)
There’s more, but that’s what I remember being on the TWENTY ONE page test. What made the test so bad is that a fourth or so of the test was the last few weeks of material - that we never did any homework on, let alone code anything. The book was also lacking in the code for the last few weeks of stuff. I took the WebCT survey for the extra point on our final grade, and told the professors they were horrible teachers, breakout was a waste of time, the homework was too GUI centric, and that the only redeeming thing about the course was the decent book we used. Thank God that shit is over for now.
Awesome dark movie. I was able to guess how some things played into the end, but the end was simply killer.
I got a new phone yesterday.
It’s a spiffy Motorola V600. It’s a significant improvement over my Sony Ericsson T616 in almost every area. The only place it falls short is the phone book. It doesn’t allow you to have multiple numbers under a singe contact. So you have to create a new voice recording for each each one, versus one for the person and then saying the what kind of number you wanted to dial (Home, Mobile, Work, or Other). The best feature is the fact that it’s a flip phone and I don’t have to frigg’n unlock and relock the keys. It’s bluetooth range is phenomenal, it paired with my dad’s car when I was inside a restaurant. The screen also works in daylight, whereas the T616 was unusable in direct sunlight. So far, the voice dialing has worked as well as the T616, but I haven’t used it as much as I did with the T616. A major plus is that I can set varying ringing loudness levels easily, the T616 was difficult in that respect (so I used it in either silent or normal mode).
Some of it’s other cool (read: toys) are it’s external LCD, it’s mood lighting, camera, and MP3 ringtones. The external LCD lights up a nice blue and gives you various information you’d expect. It’s got a circular ring below the external LCD that glows various colors based on what’s happening. It pulses blue when Bluetooth is being used. It glows brightly when it’s being charged. And so on. The camera is also a slight improvement over the T616; offering a higher resolution, zoom, and better lighting adaptation. The pictures still suck too much to be put on the internet for anything more than a thumbnail. And as always, the ringtones available on this phone are the best you can get- they’re MP3s. I got two ringtones from Cingular: Brass Monkey (applied to Mike for when he calls) and Longview (Currently Applied to Adam). I’ll apply them to others as I get around to it. They sound real, but not completely crisp- close enough for most though. They also cost $2.49, and like anything a cell phone company does, they nickel and dime you by requiring Wireless Internet Express (as a pay as you go option it’s 1¢ per kilobype- an MP3 being about 70 KB and taking about 8-10 KB for the stuff you don’t see that lets you download it). I’m on a bundle that includes 1MB of data luckily. It does poly and monophonic ringtones too, so I used Bluetooth to get all my old ringtones that I liked.
All in all, it’s quite nice. Adam left about an hour ago after beating me down in Halo. And I’ve got to wake up in about 7 hours and I need my sleep. Oh yeah, Spider Man 2 was much better than the first. It was a little cheesy in some places (to be expected I suppose). But overall, it was a good improvement over the first: the characters were better, the story was a little more original (not by much), and the main character was far more realistic. Worth seeing if you have the time.
