I was just reading a blog post here by a guy who has quit world of Warcraft in order to get his life back. He’s exercising now and everything! It’s a very long read but the gist is, I don’t think WoW is the problem. I think you are either capable of moderation or you’re not. I’ve been playing WoW for 2 years (in moderation), and I haven’t yet cancelled a real life activity in order to play. I joke about it being addictive but in reality I play whenever I have spare time to play.I sometimes go weeks without touching it and i know hordes^[1] of people do the same thing.

We are adults after all, what is so difficult about managing your time so that you can go out on your bike, do your job, visit your friends and family, mow the lawn, walk the dog and yes play WoW and even Farmville! It is possible to do all of these things. Is that so hard?

If it is then (imo) it’s not WoW that’s the problem, it’s the player. If you can’t manage your time then don’t blame the game/activity. Frankly i don’t care if you are an addict, some addictions are great but i don’t much care for people getting on their high horse and making it sound like we must all follow suit now that they have seen the light.

Anyway, i can’t sit here blogging all day, i have a Blood Elf that needs levelling up …. :-)

1. Do you see what i did there? [↩]

I was reading an article on www.wired.com and the following paragraph in particular caught my eye:

…You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone. – full article here

I personally spend a lot of time doing my internet stuff on everything but my computer. I often browse my favourite sites from my smartphone, i bought the other half an iPad and after seeing what it’s capable of, plan on getting one myself. I listen to internet radio on my phone, ipod or internet radio, i sometimes blog from my phone. I frequently facebook and twitter from my phone and i notice a lot of my facebook contacts do too. Using iPad i rarely use the web browser, Apps pretty much give me everything i want.

Is the Internet kicking the bucket? Ok maybe not but it does seem to be changing more quickly than ever. Obviously there are a lot of things you need your computer for (like World of Warcraft 8-) ) but it’s only a matter of time before tablet devices catch up. And why not, who the hell wants to be sat at a desk or dragging a laptop around?

Well i handed my beloved HTC Hero over to the hubby and i got myself a Motorola Milestone. I must say i haven’t taken to it as quickly as i did my Hero. It feels very much like a work-in-progress device unlike the Hero which felt fabulously polished. I love the screen on the Milestone, it’s bigger and better than the Hero (and in fact most phones). It feels very solid and it looks geeky. It’s a brilliant portable internet device.

But as a phone, it’s crap.

There is built in noise cancellation and it’s a pain in the ass. You have to hold it really close to your mouth or else the person on the other end can’t hear you. The problem with this is your cheek then brushes against the screen pressing either the mute or the hold icon. The screen should switch itself off but it doesn’t always unless you hold your phone at an EXACT angle and at an EXACT distance away from your face in preferable lighting conditions ….. WHAT THE FUCK!?

So as i say, it’s a shit phone. Interestingly though if you use something like Fring or Skype, the noise cancellation switches off and you can use the phone normally. Sadly there is nothing in the settings that lets you switch off the noise cancellation yourself, It really is a pity because there have been thousands of complaints about it. But Motorola don’t seem to do ‘listening to the customers’.

I carry around a Samsung Soul with me and i use that for the phone and my Milestone for texting and internetting on the go. And as an internet device it is amazing. The big screen is wonderful and it’s nice and snappy. It’s saving me having to go and switch my main pc on a lot. I can facebook, tweet, post to wordpress, shop on amazon, have my fave news feeds delivered to me, play on google earth, play games, email and what not without going near my pc. Fabulous! It’s a great time saver.

Now the main reason i went with this (because i was very happy with my Hero as i said) was for the physical keyboard. Well, imagine my disappointment when it turns out the physical keyboard isn’t great! Ok it’s not shite but the keys are so flat that you keep hitting the wrong one or press two at once. It’s much faster to type on the virtual keyboard. But what it is handy for is if your in the car (as a passenger of course) or on the bus, it’s a lot easier to use the physical keyboard when you’re shaking all over the shop.

The camera is also important to me because i’m always taking snaps and don’t always have a main camera with me. It’s not brilliant but it was ok for a phone – until that is i updated it to Android 2.1 which has added more camera features and a shed load of noise to the images. Lord knows why and i hope they fix it. Mind you that said, the ladybird macro photo just below this post was taken with this phone and i don’t suppose it’s that bad?

So i don’t regret having it because having a portable internet device is very important to me and i believe this is the best one. It’s a shame about the phone, keyboard and camera but you can’t have everything. However it has made my mind up that i’ll probably never have another Motorola device but will definitely be going back to HTC -something like the Supersonic (EVO) or whatever they have coming out after that because i’ll probably keep me Milestone for a while yet.

itunes Fuckery

I’m going to add this little bit of info to my blog in case anyone searching for this problem is struggling to find a solution, hopefully Google will find this.

A few months ago, for no apparent reason my iPod touch would no longer be recognised on my computer and windows kept throwing up the messsage ‘apple mobile device has stopped working‘. I had to disable it in services to stop the message but this left me still unable to update my iPod. Then the same thing happened on my partners laptop a couple of months later. We have the exact same laptop, both are Dell.

So i looked what what was common between both laptops in the programs list and we both had ‘Dell Support Center’. I uninstalled that and what do you know, the problem was fixed. I don’t know why there is a conflict between Dell Support Center and iTunes but if you’re having the same problem and you own a dell then get shut of that program.

Or if you have a different make of PC perhaps you have a similar support program? The point is, this is not a vista or itunes problem (as such), there is a program on the pc conflicting. It’s just a case of uninstalling and reinstalling stuff until you find the culprit. I’m sure it’ll be a support program of some kind. Good luck!

For google:
apple mobile device has stopped working Dell Support Center

Well i bought a subscription to Vimeo because i always thought that the video quality there was slightly better than youtube … if you squint … kinda. Both sites allowed Half def 720p HD video. Until now that is. I read this post [ 1080p HD is coming to Youtube ] last week on the Youtube Blog and i’ve been dying to try it out. So i shot a little test clip in 1080 HD and have uploaded it to youtube. Now the weather conditions here are miserable and grey, hardly ideal! So i’m not sure how good this is gonna look.
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