Last thing you'll ever read…again
Posts tagged iphone
Quickie
Jul 30th
So the last time I was working on my honours I couldn’t get subclipse/pydev installed in Eclipse at uni. I gave up and decided to install them at home.
Now…finally, I’m at uni and going to start on some serious work.
Yup you heard me.
But I think I’ll write up a short blog before I start doing this shit.
Was talking to a workmate on Wednesday.
Me: How do you prevent yourself from being a “creep” in a bar?
Her: By not being sleazy?
Me: Nope, by not being unattractive.
QFT.
Thanks reddit. Your endless supply of hilarity will keep me going for a long long time.
I ordered my iPhone 4 online at 12:07am. Hopefully it’ll arrive on Monday and then I can show it off to everybody because that’s how epically cool I am by owning the next generation iPhone.
$59 cap and since I ordered online I get 2 months free.
Let’s do some mathscraft.
Cancellation Fee: $365
2 months free: $118
Remaining iPhone 3GS repayments: 12 at $12/month
$365-$118+$144 = $391
If I sell my iPhone 3GS for more than the above I get a free upgrade =) I think it’s doable. Lots of people on Ebay that’s willing to pay good money even for an used iPhone.
Okay, I think that’s all.
I hate Spam
Aug 1st
I constantly get spam on my blog from bots that use “Cheap Viagra Online” as their username. I guess it’s a valid strategy. Because sooner or later guys will be old enough to have to use it right? Maybe I’ll keep one of the spam comments for future reference.
I read an article the other day about some researchers developing an algorithm of detecting spam before it even reaches your inbox. That would be useful if it has an 100% accuracy rating. Which I doubt it does. I’m still pretty happy about my current gmail inbox which doesn’t receive any spam. Even my hotmail inbox which I’ve had for like 8 years now averages 10 spam emails a week. I guess the spammers must be making some sort of money otherwise they simply wouldn’t waste time doing it.
~~~
During the HCI lecture, Ronnie Taib suggested that we can come up with our own HCI projects. I’ve actually had one in mind, but have little idea on the actual design. It’s a relatively simple problem that doesn’t really require a solution. I was thinking about designing an iphone app that helps you navigate through the Uni on the iphone. It seems rather simple but there’s a couple of problems:
- I believe that the iphone SDK does not give you direct access to the maps api, the best you can do is launch Google Maps with trip information and building location
- Cross campus support will be tricky
- Buildings would need to be regularly updated (Some locations aren’t even at USYD)
- I DON’T HAVE A MAC
I guess I’ll see what happens then.
~~~
I’ve also caught a cold. I still have no idea what the differences are between a cold/flu. People “think” they know and they “try” explaining but it makes no sense. I’ve even heard people say that “flu is a virus, a cold isn’t”. I just googled it and ninemsn gives a pretty good explanation. It even suggests drinking Honey water which is what I usually do anyway. I probably caught it from the daily interaction with students over the past week or so. At least I can rest over the weekend and hopefully be well enough to attend uni and also work (if that’s even going ahead) on Wednesday. What was ironic was that yesterday one of the people from Timetabling said “I can’t believe nobody has caught swine flu yet!”. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing these swine-flu remarks. Lucky we live in the modern era where pandemics can be controlled, certainly wouldn’t be laughing about it 50 years ago.
~~
I also just paid for my Uni fees for this semester. It gives the message:
Important: Please print and retain a copy of this page for your records.
You must close this web page and exit the browser application after printing your receipt
Fail system is fail.
In the mountains
Jul 15th
So a lot has happened over the past two weeks or so, I was meaning to blog about it but it turned into a long-winded piece of crap that I don’t think anybody would appreciate to read. Hopefully this post doesn’t end up in the trash like the previous two.
To start off the break I went to watch Transformers 2, worst movie I’ve seen in a while. Some movies are just plain stupid so I don’t bother complaining about it, but this movie was a 200 million dollar blockbuster which made no sense and to be honest was just a bunch of senseless explosions whilst you have some hot chick in tight white pants running across the arid Sahara, she doesn’t get a single scratch on her whilst her boyfriend ends up having half his face ripped to shreds.
It was followed by Jase’s 20th Surprise Bday Party. Highlights include being pecked on the cheek by Jase, gossiping like a bunch of 12 year old school girls (no shame) and getting a 5-shot Long Island Ice Tea. Yes, kids, 5 shots…not the standard 5 half-shots, 5 full-shots. The bartender, instead of making 4 drinks, made 2 drinks which had the alcohol content of 4. Normally, after you put in the coke the drink turns into a slightly cokey colour…ours remained white. It was great though! It was a pretty good hit and made everything more entertaining.
I then had a Jay Chou concert. Half the Asian population was there along with 2 white chicks, 1 white guy and an Indian. Sam reckons they were lost. Okay…yes…the fans are loyal, gave Jay Chou lots of “face”, but people can you please be more active? They handed out these blow up sticks which you’re meant to hit together to create noise. I guess Asians aren’t loud enough so they need assistance? Come on guys. Nobody was moving, nobody was jumping. Look. The concert was great but I wasn’t tired from the concert, I was tired from standing. Experience from standing is probably not different to sitting. I originally was in the second row but I had to go pick up Diana so we ended up in the back. My original plan was to push in-front but that failed…horribly. Nobody was moving! It’s like as if they all decided to do some firm Kung Fu stance. I eventually crawled to the back and stood next to some white chicks. I don’t know why they were there but they seemed interested in the concert. Overall, it was pretty good concert, just wished that people moved a bit more. I mean god…this one guy was voice recording the concert on his iphone. The quality would be horrendously crap and in any other concert the crowd would have pushed him so hard he would have dropped his beloved iphone.
I also went to Perisher from 5th to 8th. It’s actually colder in Sydney than it was “in the mountains” mainly due to the fact that I wore a lot more. On our way there we were playing “I spy”, twas awesome. We had words such as telegraph post, sky, blue and weed. We also played 20 questions which was slightly more amusing. Poor Kelvin was sick for majority of the stay and only went boarding on the second last day. God snowboarding was hard. I had two major stacks. One going down Village 8 and just face-palmed the snow. I spent a good two minutes on the snow going “Fuck…fuck…holy fuck that hurts…fuck”. I also knocked my head on the snow after trying to turn from the edge to my heel, had problem lifting my head out of bed the next day. Honestly, I don’t think I would have survived another day of boarding. It was just too ownage. Having said that, it was a great experience and I won’t mind doing it again.
The next day after getting back from snows a package arrived! My new iphone 3g s! Excellent. However, since it was delivered the box was quite owned and I later found out that the iphone itself is dented. The screen dents into the phone. I scheduled a genuisbar appointment and managed to get the phone replaced, thus bringing the number of iphones owned by me to 5. I also listed my iphone up for sale. Today it was finally sold for $561.97 + $20 p/h. Subtracting ebay and paypal charges it ends up being $549.38.
Lets do some calculations:
Postage for new iphone: $9
Contract termination: $438
Remaining iPhone payments: $144
Total: $591
Difference: $41.62
I paid $41.62 for the new iphone 3g s. Pro Asian skills I must say. Pro Asian skills.
There’s also some other nitty gritty stuff that I want to touch on but I think I should just leave it here and save it for the next post, stay tuned I guess…although whenever I say that I don’t end up posting a follow up >.>
Optus you sly dog
Jun 29th
So I made like 5 calls to Optus today. Got transferred here and there but eventually I managed to get what I want.
Termination fee is $730 for the first 12 months regardless, after the first 12 months it’s a percentage. The termination fee is calculated based on the plan you FIRST signed up with. Doesn’t matter if you upgrade it’ll still be the same.
So I thought, hang on then can’t I sign up for the $19 cap and then upgrade to $49 with a much lower termination fee? Well, it seems they have that loophole covered. You can do that but…you’ll end up paying for the handset payments from the $19 cap instead of the $49 cap, which will turn out to be a lot higher overall. Bastards!
But in the end, I weighed my options and decided to just upgrade. It’ll cost me $438 to terminate my contract (after the 40% discount) and an addition $156 worth of handset repayments, which adds up to around $594, which should be around the same price that I can sell my iphone 3g for.
To finish off I saw the most hilarious tweet today. Kevin Rudd tweeted “Ok. So its only a couple of hours to go before I’m on Rove. With Bruno! Any ideas guys about how I can get out of this one?” and then Rove replies with “Send a fake email?”. Brilliant.
Another rant at Optus
Jun 22nd
I’ve talked about how fail Optus is before, this will be another one of those rants.
Well, Optus released pricing and release dates for the upcoming iPhone 3GS but it didn’t say anything about upgrading from an existing iPhone plan. So I decided to call them up instead.
I was greeted by the usual computer. My question is this…why is it that Optus have 5 different numbers registered for different departments but they all get redirected to the same computer? I mean, I dialed the number for sales why the hell should I go through the process of telling the computer…again…that my enquiry is about sales?
So I was greeted by a technician called “Roy”. He sounded Aussie so I was rather relieved. I explained to him my enquiry, once I stopped talking, it was obvious that he wasn’t Aussie at all. Here’s my theory…these techs from India probably practices an hour each day on how to say “Hi this is the Optus Sales department, my name is <blah>. How can I help you?” in an Aussie accent just to trip me out. I know you’re trying to make the customer experience better…but you’re really not.
Anyway, the conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, I’m John and I would like to make sure enquiries about the upcoming iPhone 3GS
Tech: mhmm
Me: I’m just wondering if there are any plans to upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS for existing iPhone 3G customers?
Tech: Yes there is, it’s already on the website. The website contains all the plans and prices.
Me: Yes, I know…I’m asking if there are any plans for existing iPhone owners which is not on the website.
Tech: You can already upgrade your phone. You just have to plug it in and then download the latest version.
Me: Okay sorry, I meant the iPhone 3GS not the software.
Tech: Yes…the iPhone 3GS is the software.
Me: (At this point I start laughing) Nonono, 3GS is the physical phone…not software
Tech: If you want to upgrade to another phone you have to wait until your contract ends
Me: Okay…that’s all I wanted to know
Tech: If you want to upgrade your iPhone you can do that already
Me: (Laughs again) Yes, I’ve done it already, anywho…thanks for your time, bye.
Hilariously…within 2 hours of making that call I got sent an email from Optus regarding the new iphone. It read…
Existing Customers
If you are an existing Optus customer, and you want a New Apple iPhone 3G S, make sure you open the emails we send as there is a special offer just for you coming soon.
Thanks Optus.
Just thinking…
Jun 17th
So I was walking home today after a rather unexpected QQ exam. I was thinking why does our justice system support “emotions”. Maybe you law students can explain it to me.
For example, when a person commits murder and shows remorse why would his/her sentence be shorter or less harsh than someone that didn’t show remorse? You still killed someone, doesn’t matter if you show remorse now…that person is still dead.
By the same premise, if the victim’s family showed outrage then shouldn’t the murderer get a higher sentence simply because the family members were VERY VERY angry?
Makes no sense to me.
So yes, today was my AI exam. Well, for the most part I didn’t understand a lot of the concepts. Getting simple questions wrong, but then again, I got couple of harder questions right. Though I’m sure if were to come back to it in the future I might understand it a lot better.
2 exams down and 2 more to go. I purchased an iphone/ipod charger, cause I left my official apple charger in Canberra, I haven’t been bothered following it up and they haven’t bothered replying to me. The charger works pretty well and it only cost me $10 bucks. How long it’ll last is a different problem and it certainly doesn’t look as nice compare to the official charger. It does it’s job.
I also bought a battery charger for a Canon IXY 55 that my mum found. It’s a pretty old camera, only 5mp, in somewhat good condition. I bought the charger for $30. Going to charge the batteries and see if it still works. If it’s decent I might put off buying my own camera. If it’s crappy, I might ebay it or give it to my parents and ebay an even older Olympus Camera.
I’ll probably bludge for the rest of the day. Too depressed to do any work. I collected my AI assignment as well. Apparently by bi-directional search wasn’t working. I beg to differ. But I wasn’t in a mood to complain and if that 1.5% is the difference between a C/D (yes I’ve given up prospects of HD) then I will QQ so hard.
Ontop of everything, yesterday I owned my headset.
My leg got caught, I tripped and yeah…rest is self explainatory.
Apple’s Excellent Customer Service
Sep 26th
Lately, I’ve grown extremely irritant towards anybody who does not show a gesture of “kindness”. Clients at work who do not say “Goodbye” before they hang up, drivers who do not bother stopping at the zebra crossing, random people on the street who are just rude in general. It ticks me off just by thinking about how unthoughtful and rude some people can get at people they don’t even know.
I had to visit the Optus Store twice, call up Optus thrice and sign the same contract twice just to get the name changed on the owner of my iphone plan. Once should be enough. Not to mention it took Optus nearly 4 weeks to actually deliver me the iphone.
This is the conversation I had with the woman at the Optus World Store.
Me: I’m wondering…how many people have actually RECEIVED their iphone?
Woman: What is your number?
Me: Sorry?
Woman: What is your number? So I can check to see if we have it.
Me: (Tells her my number)
Woman: Oh…it’s available now
Me: (WHY THE FUCK HAVE NOT CALLED ME TO COLLECT IT THEN YOU DUMB BITCH?!)
Me: So when was it available?
Woman: Yesterday
Me: (WHY THE FUCK WAS I NOT CALLED YESTERDAY?!)
I tried to get a free iphone case off her to compensate but she just shook her head at me.
About a week after I got my phone I went to the apple store and bought a dock and a $40 dollar case…two month later…the case broke. Just to make it even more ironic, I scratched my iphone sometime between getting my iphone and putting it on. I believe that I scratched the screen putting on the case, perhaps there were some hard dust particles trapped beneath the screen protector which I somehow managed to scrap across the screen.
That said, I was sad, I always tend to get over excited about new technology that I over look taking care of it, I tend to take good care after something once I’ve gotten over it. Unfortunately, it’s during the process of getting over it that I damage it. Once it’s damaged, you hardly ever care about it.
So today, I decided to visit the Apple Store again for two reasons:
- See if they can replace/trade it
- Purchase some screen protectors
I first tried to replace my broken screen. Took it to the counter and the guy told me the case is not an apple product so they cannot support me, they advised me to email the manufacturer. I thought this was fair enough, but still a bit upset that they couldn’t just help me out with the problem.
I then went up to the second floor to look for screen protectors. There was a Apple techie replacing some cases on the shelves so I decided to give me a chat:
Me: Hi, do you know how to remove scratches from the Iphone screen?
Tech: Hmm…you don’t?
Me: If I did I wouldn’t be asking you…
Tech: No as in…you don’t
Me: Oh…
Tech: Let me see the scratch
Me: *hands over iphone*
Tech: How did you scratch it?
Me: I think I scratched it putting on one of these cases *points to case*
Tech: That’s impossible *takes out pen* Look. *Grabs nearest sample itouch and begins to stab the shit out of it using the pen*
Me: …
Tech: If I can do that to the screen and not scratch it I doubt one of these cases can. Where did you get your iphone?
Me: Optus Store
Tech: Maybe you can talk to them…and possibly get them to replace it…if you’re lucky.
At these point I realised I’ve lost the game. As soon as a techie tells you to call/visit/email some external source, 99% of the time they don’t want to deal with your situation and most likely not want to help.
Me: *sad face*
Tech: Have you got insurance?
Me: Nope…
Tech: You know what, let me talk to one of the technicians upstairs and see what we can do for you.
Me: Sure, thanks
Tech: *walks away*
I honestly wondered if he’ll really be back with anything or it was just one of those “Let me put you on hold whilst I do nothing” sorta thing.
~5 minutes Later~
Tech: We can book you in for a session upstairs
Me: Okay
Tech: *grabs my details* (The computer said that the soonest session was at 4)
Me: …
I can’t really remember what happened next but for some reason he went back upstairs to speak to someone. He came back 5 minutes later again
Tech: Okay we’re going to replace your iPhone
Me: *heart just skipped a beat*
Tech: I’ve talked to one of the people upstairs and we can call it “manufacturing defect” and replace your iphone
Me: That’s great, thanks a lot!
Tech: Come back at 4 for your appointment
Me: Sure, thanks!
*shakes hand*
I ended up going to a net cafe to waste time, I tried getting a game of dota in but…my comp didn’t have the map and nobody was willing to let me download…so I just played Cod4 single player.
Eventually, I went to the Apple Store again and retrieved my iPhone. The only downside was that I lost 5 days worth of SMSes and Pictures since I last synced my iphone with itunes 5 days ago…
I also purchased screen protectors for $20, when I got back home I looked it up on ebay and somebody in Chatswood was selling it for $8 AND it covered both front and back…so I bought that as well.
So in the end I’ve spent around $150 on iphone accessories. I’m in the process of getting $30 back from my “dock extender” and also hopefully I can return the “Nu form” case I purchased off the Apple Store.
All in all, Apple has great customer service.
