InsaneJournal

Why So Serious?

Like everyone else in the Western world, last Friday Mat and I went off to see The Dark Knight. And, really, after a weekend’s worth of reflection the one line that I think sums the whole experience up best just-so-happens to be the film’s tagline:

Why so serious?

Because, damn, this is one serious motherfucker of a film.

( Cut for those of you who haven’t seen it yet… )

So. I was going to say some stuff about the Harvey/Rachel plot which I think is probably the film’s weak-point but… after reliving all that I think I need to go do something cheerful instead.

How about talking about the iPhone?

A couple of people have asked about it, so here’s the deal; it’s an 8 GB and I pay $41 a month for $20-something worth of calls and 250 MB of data. Pretty much the one thing I don’t use my phone for is making phonecalls — I hate the phone and avoid using it if at all possible — and the main reason I wanted an iPod was so I could keep a mobile email device in my pocket.

The thing people seem to want to know is whether or not it’s as functional as Apple makes out, and I have to admit that so far I’ve got very few complaints. I use a MacBook, of course, so it interfaces brilliantly with iCal and Address Book. It flawlessly imported all my email account settings from Mail (though not the messages themselves; use IMAP for that, though I don’t… yet). Its Exchange Outlook Mobile Access — that’s Microsoft’s corporate answer to BlackBerry — is simple to set up and works smoothly. The web browser is surprisingly good, as is the keyboard once you get used to it (plus its typo self-healing ability is a godsend). It snaps easily onto WiFi connections and uses these wherever it can, and I set myself a cool wallpaper (very important; it’s Laucian, incidentally).

The things that bother me include its lack of a decent multi-protocol chat client (I’m using one at the moment that’s AJAX-based, but of course it doesn’t run in the background), the weird fact that you can’t use MP3s as ringtones unlike every other phone made for the last five years, the two-finger zoom control, and some of the configuration options — particularly for adding multiple email accounts — being a bit obtuse. It’s also doesn’t have a camera flash, and therefore no flashlight (the other thing I use my phone for on a regular basis), but you can get a free application that duplicates this feature through the high-tech solution of turning your screen completely white.

So, do I think it’s worth it? Hell yeah! Sure, it’s the most over-hyped piece of kit in years and a lot of people are going to hate it for that alone, but I’d bet my villain cape that it’s going to do to the mobile phone/PDA market what the iPod did for portable music…

Speaking of my villain cape… Laucian now has one! Double XP weekend means he’s now a grand Level 25; that’s totally like halfway to endgame! So now he’s got a cape, an alternate costume and five robot Henchmen (I get my final one next level). Plus I figured out how to make free money on the Black Market (slowly, but it’s easy pocket-change).

Not to mention that on Sunday, Random and I totally teamed up for some groups smashings, and I have to say that the Malefactor/Lackey system is awesome. Plus Lau now has a back-story and a supporting cast… but more on them later.

Life is good.

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