how now brownpau
For the Fourth of July, Amy and I wandered around Theodore Roosevelt Island, where we spotted a turtle in the marsh and an extremely large black rat snake climbing a tree. We then sat down for mushroom cheese burgers and root beer at Mr. Smith’s while the rain pounded down outside. After making sure the weather would cooperate, we watched fireworks over the National Mall, then walked home.
Here is a video of the grand fireworks finale for you:
All in all, a very nice Independence Day.
Why no bare feet? If glass bottles aren’t allowed then bare feet are safe from shards, right? Or are bare feet bad for Metro?
(FeetSign.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Little tree growing out of dirt clinging to the roots of a much bigger, older fallen tree. We’re hiking around Theodore Roosevelt Island today.
(TreeTree.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Having a spot of breakfast at La Madeleine before work. $5 is a bit much, but it gets you like the best danish ever. Plus there’s all this ambience and classical music.
(LaMadel.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
So new iPhone owners have had a weekend to try out the new toy, and reading through the feedback online, I can’t help but feel just a bit of schadenfreude at the plight of those who thought the misery of being locked into a two-year contract with AT&T would be worth the joy of using a first-generation Apple mobile device.
“Activate!”
Other people: still waiting, waiting, waiting.
As we can see, activation of iPhone buyers’ AT&T accounts is turning out to be an issue, and problems now abound, with some users waiting as long as two days to get service — or to still not have service, even after multiple aggrieved waits on hold for useless conversations with support reps. Rogue Amoeba seems to have had better luck, but only after finding out that his activation had to be done manually, and that someone had failed to click on an “ACTIVATE” button. TUAW details some of the hoops to jump through to get service, but it’s pretty clear this is definitely not a case of “It just works.”
“6079 Smith W.! Yes, you!”
Even disregarding customer service issues, the problem of AT&T’s opposition to net neutrality and citizens’ basic rights to privacy are still a looming factor: see this ActForChange petition to Steve Jobs, which also covers phone lock-in, which I regard as plain and simple sabotage. Why Apple fans would so willingly fork over so much cash for a closed, crippled device serviced by an unethical provider is beyond me.
“It’s a Feature.”
iPhone lacks a clipboard. What the hell. My Nokia 6600 can do copy and paste. My Palm Z22 and IIIxe can do copy and paste. How could this have slipped by Apple? And have you tried typing a secure non-dictionary password with that keyboard?
And as I rudely discovered last Saturday, while the phone has a camera, there’s no immediately apparent way to send photos via anything other than email. No sending via infrared, bluetooth, or MMS — all basic methods of transfer available on just about any other phone for ages.
Other Stuff
iPhone Mania Attracts Dummies. Woman pays $800 to first in line intending to buy a whole bunch of iPhones, without reading the rules on the internet first.
Ending With the Good
But let us not be a wet blanket, but rather focus on the good. The iPhone’s prime strength is in Safari, and pending cut-and-paste functionality it should be a major boon to anyone who needs a full-featured standards-compliant browser and internet connection on-hand at all times.
And remember, this is a first-generation Apple device. This iPhone may be to mobile communications what the the first iPod was to portable music. Expect improvements, if Apple can manage to rise above the sludge and mire that is the U.S. telecom industry.
In closing, I give you Sunday’s Opus. Apparently iPhone 2 will have “DTT.”
Liquor store sign at 17th and Corcoran NW. Closed on Sunday of course, and someone’s having a yard sale out front. Lots of baby stuff.
(Liquor.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
I got Pandora a new bed to nest in a few weeks ago, a Puffy Bed on clearance at the Cleveland Park PETCO. It’s only now that she’s noticed that it exists:
Here’s a photo of an iPhone showing a photo of an iPhone showing a photo of me. I had to take this meta-snapshot with my N6600 camera because the iPhone photo app lacks any visible bluetooth or infrared send capability, and sending email requires setting up an account. I tried signing into Flickr but all I got was a mess of timeouts, and anyway I’m not sure I would have been able to upload the photo through the Flickr form since I don’t know how local file browsing for photos would have worked. The multi-touch interface is wonderful, but touchscreen keyboard input is a nightmare, and AT&T’s data transfer speeds are a disgrace. iPhone, C+.
Update: I just realized the iPhone has wifi too, so the timeouts might have been from a bandwidth bottleneck at the Apple Store’s network. Still, boo.
(iPhone.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Quick, which one is soy sauce and which one is a Palm Z22? The wrong choice means dipping my sushi in Address Book.
(SoyPalm.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
This is the men’s room at Kuma Restaurant in Tenleytown. Yes, there are two toilets here, one facing the other, without any walls between them. The exact reason for this remains shrouded in mystery.
(Toilets.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
