Valhalla Island

It was never the plan to buy iPhone 3G the day it was released but the excitement around the App Store and MobileMe going live was irresistible. I walked into the Optus store at midday and waited behind just one customer (that wasn’t buying an iPhone). Mine is the 8GB, they were all out of 16s, not that I wanted one. The plan I chose was the $59 cap, $350 worth of calls and text, 500MB of data per month. I’ve been convinced that this will be enough but I’ll talk about it more further down. I haven’t yet paid a cent for the phone — repayments are $2 a month over 24 months. After almost 24 hours of use, playing and real world, these are my thoughts. Continue reading →

Five days before it’s released, just one of the three initial Australian iPhone carriers has announced full plan details and prices. Since owning a mobile phone Optus has been my carrier and the carrier I planned to use with the iPhone. My experience with phone plans is slim, I’ve used the same pre-paid SIM card and very few phones over the last 5 years. Continue reading →

I’m half way through The God Delusion. Much of the beginning is dedicated to arguing how naive belief in God is. Not necessarily deliberately turning a blind eye to evidence against a God (which many still do) but genuine, indoctrinated belief of God in the children of religious parents for example. People that aren’t aware there’s alternative theories or that they’re even capable of considering other ideas. Consciousness raising is a technique for opening minds to the alternatives. I love Dawkins’ example. Continue reading →

The problem with trying to create your own, accurate floor plan is that it requires tools beyond the most basic while the more advanced is massive overkill. You want it to look clear enough for what’s in your head to be accurately presented but you don’t want to spend hours learning how to use something as complex as AutoCAD. In between tools exist but in their quest to make it easy they apply so many constraints it’s a frustrating battle to create what you really want. Continue reading →

This is why I’ve never cared about mobile phones and why I’m so excited about the iPhone.

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The space around you is important. I don’t think people spend enough time thinking about and trying to improve the space they spend most time in. The options for someone like me, a 20-year-old still at home but almost finished university are few — stay at home (not an option) or move into a house with roommates. My own house would be too expensive and a small apartment can only be found in expensive areas I don’t want to live in anyway. I want to live in a house with the advantages of a house — backyard, verandah, a window on all walls — but I want to live alone and don’t want more than I need. I drew up a floorplan of my ideal house. Continue reading →

I’m a Things user and I’ve never used OmniFocus. I’ve been happily satisfied with Things from the first day I started using it over six months ago. But even when I’m satisfied with a software solution there’s potential for something better, features I didn’t know I was missing but could make my life easier or make my enjoyment of a task greater. When you’re interested in systems for getting things done and just plain software in general, it’s impossible to ignore the hype around OmniFocus. Continue reading →

Almost exactly one year ago I started a one page website at me.jimwhimpey.com (now gone) where I tried to aggregate all my online accounts into one. It aggregated the latest content from the web services I use, provided contact information and linked to all my sites whether they were aggregated or not. I thought it was a great idea, attempting reign in all my online activity, so did others. Morten and I started converting it into a web application which stagnated. Months after deleting me.jimwhimpey.com I came across Matthew Bischoff’s homepage and was instantly inspired. Continue reading →