One of the consequences of finding a new job was that I had to get a cell phone.
Let me save time by putting in my side of the conversation: No, I didn't have a cell phone until a little more than a month ago. Stop looking at me like that. No, I'm not some sort of Luddite. For pete's sake, I worked at a phone company for 5 years, yes, I know what a phone is.
Look, there's this level of geekdom that comes slightly above regular geekdom, the "rational reasons with somewhat less than normal conclusions" level of geekdom. My rational reasoning is that I didn't need a cell phone. Early on in the cell phone craze, I couldn't afford one. By the time I had enough to get one, I really hated them -- they interrupted people, they constantly went off, and they were expensive. I was reachable by e-mail in six different ways. I had a home phone. It didn't make sense for me. So, I didn't get one.
OK, you think that's geeky, try this: I have no TV, cable, or dish, but I do own a Tivo, secondhand. Yep, it's a weirder world with me around.
Back to the point. I got a Nokia 6600, which leads to a lot of interesting things. First, because the cell phone has Bluetooth, and has GPRS. These two lead to using my GPRS phone as a modem for my laptop, and through that getting an unlimited 33.6 connection wherever my cell phone has access. Naturally I got that all hooked up.
It also lead to using my cell phone as a terminal program, using my cell phone as remote control, and just generally figuring out the thing.
One interesting problem I've had is importing my cell phone photos out of my cell phone. First, Mac's Bluetooth connectivity with Symbian OS leaves a lot to be desired, in terms of just connecting to the stinkin' system. Reading files on the Symbian OS isn't currently possible, for some reason. To transfer files onto Symbian, you send a message to the phone -- it works, but it's annoying. Second, transferring files off of the phone onto Mac involves a laborious process that, for most of my less than stellar photos, is a PAIN. It's the reverse of the process above, I have to send each individual one. Also, Symbian OS is not scriptable out of the box (yes, I'm looking at perl and python), and I'm not spending 10 days sending items to myself just to get the stinkin' photos off. So, I'm working on it.
Aside from that, I've also gotten my Snake EX score up to a respectable number, so I'm well working my way to getting this thing integrated.
Posted by Ted Stevko at October 26, 2004 01:40 AM | TrackBack