Funny iPhone 4 Ad

My New Phone: Nokia X6

So I recently bought a new phone, the Nokia X6 and wanted to share with you why I bought it and how I feel about the phone so far. Before this one, I had an old Samsung which was 2G. So this is my first smart phone and runs 3G (3.5G if you want to get technical).

The main candidates I had were Nokia X6, Google Nexus One and HTC Desire. The iPhone 3GS was not in the running because of its price being similar to the Desire, but not having as good specs. And I also just don't like the way Apple runs your life with iTunes.

So why didn't I get the Nexus One or Desire? The main factor was price. These two phones are priced between $800-$1000 depending on where you get them. And my personal opinion is that the Android OS is just not quite mature enough to warrant such a high price. With Google continuing their success of the Chrome OS, I can forsee that in a few years time, Chrome and Android will overlap and mobile phones will be much more like laptops. But back to today, its still a little way off.

The Nokia X6 won because I was able to get it from Gadgets Online for $560, and the phone comes with Ovi Maps, Nokia's free GPS Navigation software. It is by far the best GPS Navigation software available due it being completely free. You get access to all the maps of the world, plenty of different voices and languages - you can even record your own voice. Currently Google Maps navigation doesn't allow turn-by-turn navigation in New Zealand, and you have to be Online to access it. Ovi Maps has both online and offline modes - just download the maps while your on wifi.

I have to admit, the rest of the phone's features are average for a smart phone, nothing spectacular. Not quite as friendly as the iphone or android devices, but at the same time, those features aren't really worth the premium of $400-$500 extra.

So if GPS Navigation is a big thing, and your on a tight budget, Nokia phones are the way to go. And I would recomend the X6. It will take some time to get used to it coming from a non-smart-non-touch-screen phone, but I got there after a few days. But if you have money to burn, get the Nexus One, and spend another $120 for a GPS Navigation software that gives you offline maps. The Nexus One beats the Desire because it will get all the updates from Google, especially the upcoming and highly anticipated Android 3.0 which might just kill the iPhone...

Top 20 Must Have Geek Ringtones and Text Message Alerts

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/10_musthave_geek_ringtones_and_text_message_alerts

Ringtones

10. Dial-Up Modem Sequence

9. Futurama Theme

8. Hiphopopotomas (Flight of the Conchords)

7. Windows 95 Startup Tone

6. R2D2

5. TIE Fighter Theme

4. Kill Bill Theme

3. Ralph WIggum

2.Code Monkey (Jonathan Coulton)

1. CTU Phone Ring

Text Message Alerts

10. Post Beep

9. Price is Right (Fail Horn)

8. Murloc Gurgle

7. Wookie Growl

6. Zelda Chest Opening Chime

5. KITT

4. Lightsaber Swoosh

3. Battlestar Galactica Cylon

2. Metal Gear Solid Codec Alert

1. Star Trek Communicator

.NET Deploy Multiple Assemblies (DLL) to the GAC

If you have too many assemblies you need to deploy to the GAC, and you can't drag and drop due to administrative rights, you can go through the Visual Studio Command Prompt.

Run Visual Studio Command Prompt in Administrator mode.

Change directory to the folder containing all the assemblies - its easy to just copy all the DLLs you need into some new folder and point it there.

Run the following:

FOR %1 IN (*) DO Gacutil /i %1

Go Spain!

Although I love the Netherlands, and even though Spain beat my beloved Germany... if Spain wins the World Cup, New Zealand will be the ONLY unbeaten team.  Imagine that.

New Look Miami Heat: Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, LeBron James

I never thought it would have been possible, to see half the Eastern All-Star team on a single team.  But all basketball fans would have fantasized about this for their team no doubt.  Even I wanted to see it.  But now they are the team to beat and its looking grim for all other teams, in particular Orlando who are in the same division.

If two of them joined Chicago, the Bulls would have been immensely strong - but only one could have reach a max deal.  In Miami, it looks like they are getting 3 Franchise Superstars at the beginning of their prime.  I hope they don't get many players otherwise they are going to dominate too much and hog all the championships.

PS Check out all the hate for LeBron in Cleveland now... LOL

Looking back on my time at Olympic

I'll be starting my new job at ICE Interactive next week, but first I'd like to look back at the last chapter of my life at Olympic Software.

Prologue

I applied for a position at Olympic after being told about it by a fellow Software Engineering graduate, Wendy, who was my Part 3 Project Partner. They wanted to offer her a position but she had already found another one, and so that opened an opportunity for me. And after an interview involving "the supermarket question" I got the job!

I then worked 2 weeks over the summer developing a neat little lottery application before starting officially in January 2009. I also introduced my good friend Alex to Olympic, and so I was really excited to have a fellow classmate on board.

Day 1

My desk on my first day, you can see the beginning of the gadgets.

I went through a Helping Clients Succeed course, which is about "Peeling the Onion" and getting to the root of the problem, not just accepting what the customer is saying.

Also in my first week, Dinuka was leaving for Australia and André had already left for Europe.

BrainDump

Worked for a few months on BrainDump with Alex. There were a few late nights just chugging along with the never-ending stream of issues. Was a fun first project though!

Pedro showed up as Darth Vader. Apparently coding with the Force was quite productive.

SharePoint and OlympicCare

Started working with Stephen (the SharePoint Guru I might add) on Oly-Care, Olympic's client portal for communicating and sharing knowledge with our customers, including the support process. Went through most of what WSS 3 had to offer from setup and installation to developing web parts (mostly using the Smart part though) and administering pages and users.

Round the Bays

There was a big push to get everyone in the office ready for Round the Bays. In 2009 we had a fair turnout of around 10. But in 2010 we had a whopping 20! We went for Running Bunch twice a week, even though there weren't too many most of the time.

ITM and QV

My last projects were Projects for the above clients. Gained lots more experience in development :) Got experience with Test Driven Development, learnt some MVC.NET, some .NET forms web development, played around with JQuery, Javascript, CSS, and did some Win Forms development.

Joseph's Great Wall of Coke

Joseph drinks some 3-4 cans of coke a day, and after 3 odd years had accumulated quite a collection. He took them down to build a wall on his last day. Then proceeded to bust it down.

Final Words

I really hope that I have had some impact on the company or the team I worked with. Perhaps brought up morale when it was low, or just made people laugh when there was nothing to smile about. If nothing else, I have left my CubeeCraft guys there :D