Jake’s Life

I love it.

I never realized just how much I missed the form factor of my T-Mobile Dash until I got my Blackberry. I’m finding that I don’t miss Windows Mobile though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those Crackberry addicts that hate the Windows Mobile OS, I just don’t feel it’s right for me. And no, a Mac is not next on my list of things to buy.

The one issue I’ve had with my Berry so far is the small piece on the very bottom in the middle of it, which happens to be the mass produced piece that carriers stamp their logo on and snap on to cover the antenna.

 

Since it was ordered online the store “100% cannot” exchange it, and according to them by the time that I do get it back to the warehouse it will be out of the 14 day exchange period, and will then be covered under warranty, giving me a chance of getting a refurbished one as a replacement. So, I’ve decided to go at it myself. Hopefully my big sausage fingers and a small pry tool, maybe with a dab of some sort of super glue, will fix it.

Back to what I like about it. The messaging app, is great. All of my accounts in one box (and no, I didn’t make that snazzy @tmo.blackberry.net address for myself yet). Blackberry users are also issued a PIN which identifies yourself on RIM’s servers, and you can send peer-to-peer messages which are not taken out of your SMS.

Aside from the usuals; calendar, address book, tasks (all of which sync with no problems with my Outlook), messaging, IM, web browsing,the interface is great. Besides looking for the settings initially, there’s been no hunting for anything: Everything’s right there.

Battery life is amazing as far as handsets go. It was at 40% when I went to sleep the other night, and 2pm the next afternoon it was at 35%. Another great thing I like is the option to turn an e-mail into a task. From the messaging screen you open a menu, click the option to turn it into a task, and the e-mail is copied into your task list. So simple, yet so smart.

Anyway, all in all, I love it so far. If you have a Blackberry and want my pin, just let me know.

Yesterday I ordered a Blackberry Curve through a friend of Sandro who works at T-Mobile. It’s something I’ve been considering for a while now, even though I have always been a Windows Mobile fan. I’ve had some frustrations with Windows Mobile in the last few months and looked around at different mobile platforms. The Smartphone Round Robin, an event put on by a group of mobile web sites, had users of the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile trade in their native device for another for a week at a time, until they had a chance to experience all of them as their everyday device. Reading through them everyone liked the simplicity and messaging of the Blackberry.

Don’t get me wrong, Windows Mobile is great. I’ve always considered myself a power user when it comes to technology. With Windows Mobile I can tweak the phone all I want, customize nearly every aspect of it, and have access to thousands of third party apps–many free. I’m not sure why, but messaging, which us a huge part of why I own a mobile device, has been bugging me on my Wing. I have my blog address on it, along with work e-mail, Live e-mail, Outlook sync, and SMS/MMS. In Pocket Outlook each of these are listed in different inboxes, so to get to a specific e-mail it can get involved, especially one-handed. Messaging on a Blackberry has all of your messages–SMS, e-mails, etc.–in one inbox. SMS is also threaded, a huge plus for me and wish that Windows Mobile would catch up on.

Overall, one handed operation and getting to what I want quickly has become important to me. Instead of hitting a hard button, scrolling, getting the stylus out and tapping, the trackball on the Curve makes it so that I don’t have to have my hand all over the place to open a program or send an e-mail. Another thing I like about the Blackberry is that the hardware is made by the company which makes the software, so mostly everything works well together, instead of different speeds, types, and configurations of hardware with the same operating system.

Anyway, I’ll report back when I get it to see if it’s all that my mind says it will be. Either way, I’ll be having either my Wing or a brand new Curve for sale soon!

While not the most prestigious award ceremony (mostly it consists of me typing, you reading, and me having a beer to celebrate), and superficial at best, here they are. They are mainly from the blogs I read daily or have on my blogroll. If you’re not here and think you should be, send me an e-mail.

Just remember…my blog is the USS Enterprise, and I am Captain Picard. Make it so, bitches.

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Most Insightful Blog

Spo-Reflections

 

Spo-Reflections is a blog that I’ve followed for a long time but only recently added to my blogroll, mainly due to laziness in organizing my Google Reader feeds. From his reasons for choosing the name Ur-Spo as his blogger pen name to the categories he posts in on blog, you can tell he’s a shrink. No, seriously, he is.

Blogger I’d Mind Meld With

jay+gay=me

Jay blogs pretty frequently, and it’s always usually about something that makes you think. He’s originally from the Caribbean, and from what I hear coming out in any way, shape, or form there is really hard to do, and I think his coming out process and inner battle with his sexuality was a big more epic than most’s are. I’d love to take a peek inside his head and see what’s in there.

Favorite Windows Mobile Blog

The Boy Genius Report

 

Anyone who reads my blog knows I’m a big fan of Windows Mobile and other mobile technologies. While I subscribe to several blogs that cover that topic, if I had to choose one it would be The Boy Genius Report. Besides the news stories, reviews, and un-boxings, there are also several photo galleries of different devices.

Wordpress Jedi

Lorelle On Wordpress

If you are just starting with Wordpress, or you’ve been using it since the beginning, you can learn from Master Lorelle. This blog provides so much information on the Wordpress blogging platform it’s sickening. From the small tweaks to fix something only you are bothered by to the good ol’ overhaul you’ve been planning, and everything in between. Bookmark, subscribe, however you do it, but read it. Cheesy as it may sound, the Force is strong in this one, hrmm, yes.

Biggest Fan Award

Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings

Here’s one blogger that likes me! Seriously though, during my Coming Out posts he said some nice things about me, and between our IM chats and talks on the phone he has always been there when and if I needed him.

Gayest Blogger

A Boy’s Life…in Utah

Maybe I’m alone in this one, but of all of the blogs I read daily, this one seems like the blogger is sipping a diet cola, legs crossed, E! on the TV in the background, and Christina Aguilera as the ringtone for the celly.

Heartthrob Blogger

Troystopher

Seriously though, you’ve seen pictures, right? One of the first I ever saw of him was one holding a baby girl, and my heart melted. His blog is private now but if you’re lucky enough he’ll give you access.

Solitary Blog Award

Our View on Superior

I’ll be honest here, this is what love should be. While the blogger is monogamously partnered and technically isn’t living in solitude, I get the feeling through his wording and the overall feel of his blog that if he were to live alone in the entire world, not another soul in sight or in mind, save for his partner, he’d be alright with that.

Blogger I’d Stalk

Paint The Blog Orange

Well seriously, V. Jay, what do you expect? You dangle carrots in front of my face, giving me tiny bites of your blogging goodness, then disappear for a week at a time. How else am I supposed to get my fix unless I follow you around, take photos, set up video surveillance in your bedroom, and put a tail on you?

Blog I Look Forward To

Frozen Underwear

Frozen Underwear. Yes, it’s cold where he comes from, but that does little to detract from his blogging. It’s always great when I open Google Reader and see he’s posted something new!

Easy Sleazy Blog Award

The Neighbors Will Hear

Would you really give this shining medal of valor(-ian disease) to any other blog other than the defunct Note For Rent? Four craigslist hookups in one day and enough time to clean up the house for Thanksgiving. I’m no angel, but that’s outright ho-ish. But, we all have our vices and addictions in one form or another.

Favorite Dirty Blog

Dudetube

We all have one, and boy, this is mine!

Blogger I’d Love to Photograph

Closet Frat Boy

I’ve been keeping up on the Frat Boy’s posts lately and would love to see who actually writes the blog. Because he’s in a frat he doesn’t feel comfortable posting his picture, but come on, he’s a frat guy! Who wouldn’t want to see a picture of him?!

Please Post More Award

Already Bruised

A very close runner up to my favorite blog, Already Bruised missed it by the lack of posting. Who am I to criticize his blogging ferocity though, as I have been through many weeks where I’m busy or just don’t want to post. His blog was the first place that really inspired me to post photo blogs of my day, and so far I still like his the best. Definitely a cutie too!

 

I’ve been looking for a way to manage my Wordpress blog while away from my computer. Pocket Internet Explorer can only do so much and while Opera Mobile renders the Admin back end well, it’s too slow for my taste (and T-Mobile’s EDGE network). The WPhone plugin for Wordpress formats the admin interface of your blog originally for an iPhone, but works with most mobile browsers.

You can do everything from the mobile interface that you can from the original one, save for uploading files and a few other things.

[WPhone plugin for Wordpress 2.1 and up] via [Wordpress.org]

Although it may be a bit late to showcase Windows Mobile 6 which came out earlier this year, it’s still great that they’ve done this. It’s geared toward mobile business users but also shows some of the strongest points of the Windows Mobile OS. If you’re looking into a mobile device or just like nicely done Flash sites, check it out.

I love Wordpress. When I first started blogging in 2003 I used Greymatter, then it died. Then I used Mambo (two installations, one for my blog, the other for freelance web design I was doing), then that died. Ever since I have been using Wordpress things have gone fairly smoothly (unless you count that time my web host tried to upgrade their databases and found out that all of the backups were corrupted…that was fun).

Lately, and I hadn’t noticed it until recently, the “Previous” and “Next” page links at the bottom weren’t showing in any browsers except on my Windows Mobile device (using the WP-PDA plugin). Once I realized it I was fairly annoyed because I usually like to read back in blogs I find and others have not been able to easily do this on my site. I started at the Wordpress forums and read through a bunch of posts before finding that the Adhesive plugin interferes with them. Now that I disabled that plugin it’s fine.

I also modified the single post template to include a links to the next and previous posts.

I’ve been thinking of changing the theme for the last few days and wanted input. Do we like the lighter theme or should I switch back to something darker? Is the general layout okay? Respond bitches!

I wouldn’t say that I’m a “die hard” RPG fan, but I do enjoy a good game that I can engross myself in for a bit. Often those are RPG’s because they actually take some thought. Since I do a lot on Windows Mobile now I looked for one for a while. When I had my T-Mobile Dash, it was nearly impossibly to find one. They just don’t seem to make solid RPG’s for Windows Mobile Standard, but Professional edition has a few goodies. Undercroft is the best I’ve found so far. It has good graphics, gameplay, leveling system (although a bit slow, especially for Priests and Assassins), and plenty of areas to explore. There are only five major areas of the game, but each area has quite a lot of space in it to perform the multiple quests you’re given if you activate them.

UNDERCROFT

Great looking program for Windows Mobile devices.

SketchArtist — Vito Technology

Well after that whole car fiasco I needed something to make me feel better.

Okay, well I have a bit more self direction than that, but that’s just what I say.

I picked up the new T-Mobile Wing yesterday and decided that if I don’t like it or get that awful buyer’s remorse I would take it back. I do, after all, love my Dash. Before I got it I placed a Craigslist ad for my Dash to help pick up some of the cost of the Wing, and found an almost immediate buyer. I met with him in the early hours of the morning at a Shell station and we found his old Voicestream SIM card wasn’t working. He went and got a new one this morning, so that was sold, and now I paid about 60% of my Wing’s price off with my Dash. This doesn’t mean I had buyer’s remorse…it could have been letting-go-of-my-Dash remorse though.

So far I like the Pocket PC version of Windows Mobile 6 a lot. It’s more involved, obviously, and one thing I miss about the Dash is one handed messaging. The Wing has a set of keys on the left side, as well as the right. On the right (thumb area while holding it like a normal phone) is Voice Command and Messaging. Left side is the volume slider and camera app. The front has the usual keys: Send, End, left soft, right soft, and a navigation wheel with center key. It also has a Windows key and an OK key. It sounds crowded, but it doesn’t really feel like it.

So far I’ve installed the following:

Resco Explorer 2007: replacement for the file explorer and has several useful plugins such as registry editor, etc.

Spb Finance: financial tracking app which can sync with Money/Quicken/QFX files from your bank.

Spb Insight: RSS reader.

Spb Mobile Shell: This is a shell replacement which many PPC users preach about. Still trying it out.

Also, my car reached my birth year! I know, Sandro says I’m a geek too.

If you’re anything like me you read a lot from your mobile device. While Pocket IE is a great browser to read on the go, often web sites and their designers do not take into account the fact that images, Flash content, and those million rotating ads won’t load very quickly. I personally love it when designers aim for quick loading times.

Today I installed WP-PDA, a Wordpress plugin which renders the web site in a very friendly view for mobile devices. It doesn’t redirect the browser to a mobile version of the site, it just uses a modified mobile-friendly CSS style. It allows searching posts, category browsing, protected post access, and commenting.

This is how it looks on my T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6.

Of course, most of the blogs I read also have RSS feeds that I read through Newsbreak.