iPod Touch

iPod Touch

I picked up a new toy the other day…a new 16GB iPod Touch.  This is my 5th iPod, and they keep getting better and better.  Using one convinces me that I should get an iPhone when my current contract expires.

The applications are the key to the iPod Touch.  The combination of OS X and wi-fi make this a great device to have for keeping connected when you’re away from your computer.

I’ve been reading and hearing about these ever since they came out, but the only way to really get how cool they are is to use one for a few minutes.  You’ll be hooked.

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Links for the Week Ending December 14, 2008
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Bell Express-Vu – Worst Customer Service Ever!

<rant>

I’m telling you, Bell Express-Vu’s customer service is horrible!  Not only do you have to sit through menu after menu just to talk to somebody, when you do finally talk to a real person, they either have to transfer you, or they screw up your account in some way.

I called this giant of a company a couple of weeks ago to cancel my service.  I haven’t had my receiver connected since I got my HDTV because the receiver wasn’t HD.  So, I figured I didn’t need to pay for what I wasn’t using.  Well, after trying to cancel, the phone jockey convinced me to say with the promise of a free HD receiver and 30% off my bill for two years.

Great, right?  No.  The guy insisted he needed to send a technician out to install my HD box.  He said something about running a second line from the dish.  Fine.  Send the tech. Appointment time?  Between 8am and 5pm on Saturday.  Lovely.  Bell can bill me to the minute, but they can’t schedule an appointment any more accurately than a 9 hour span.

So, I’m waiting at home like a mindless sheep last Saturday for the Bell tech, when I get a call at about 11:30am.  The guy is in the driveway of my old house in Grand Bay (about an hour from where I live now).  He’s wondering why nobody is home.  Gee, maybe that’s because I don’t live there any more!

When I moved here 18 months ago, I had to wait on hold with Bell for an hour to tell them I moved.  They’ve been sending my bill to this address ever since then.  Funny how they only know where I live when it comes to collecting my money.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had trouble with installation.  When I moved into my last house Bell missed 4 installation appointments before finally showing up.  I should have known something like this would happen again. Anyway, Bell had to schedule another appointment a week later.

To top things off, the tech didn’t need to install another line.  He didn’t know why the phone jockey told me he would.  He just hooked up the box, called the office to activate it, said “Have a nice day, guy!”, and left.  In and out withing 30 minutes.

I spent an hour trying to get the Harmony Remote to play nice with the new box, sat down to waste some time watching some HD, and…nothing on.

</rant>

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Lifestream

I finally finished a personal development project that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while now.  I made a Lifestream.  A lifestream is an aggregate of online activity.  I have accounts at Twitter, Delicious, Digg, YouTube, Last.fm, and Flickr.  These sites all track my activity for social networking purposes, and make them available via RSS.

What I’ve done is aggregate these sources into one stream of information…a lifestream.  I got the idea from Sean McGrath a few months ago, and he even gave me use of his code, although in the end, I decided to write my own and avoid the use of a database.

To write the site, I used CodeIgniter, Blueprint CSS, SimplePie, and Yahoo! Pipes. I think I had to write about 300 lines of code in total to get this to work.  I have a little polishing up to do, but then I’ll be able to release it under the GPL.

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Links for the Week Ending December 07, 2008
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