Well yesterday I went out and brought a copy of After America, the new book by John Birmingham.. Why did I buy it the day it came out, so I can read it before anyone tells me the ending.  The same with why I have seen some movies on the day they came out.  Thinking about Starwars Ep 1 which I did see opening night gave me my answer.

The movie was crap, and full of problems.  Now that the iphone4 is out and people are complaining about things like it dropping calls when you hold it.

So the fanboys are rushing out to buy a piece of tech before the spoilers come.

……………
Update…

This video from Futurama kind of covers it really….

[ video via Engadget]

Now it is time to take a stand Australia and get the government to free him…..

I’ve gone with its name sake.

(and if some one has already done this.. sorry but I hadn’t seen it so I wasn’t coping you honestly)

Ok.  quick what the fuck moment.

I stopped at the local Woolworths to get a couple of things that the local IGA didn’t have and could not help but notice all the advertising for their new credit card.

Fine big deal…   no story here… bar this little fact…

The big gold star, at the bottom.. the one that says award and oh aren’t we important.  The one that says they have the most innovative product of 09… in January.  Seriously… they writers of Money Magazine must know that things are going to be so bad this year… that this crappy credit card from Woolworths is the best we are going to get.

Well must be game over for the financial industry after all.

But I couldn’t help myself with this…  A little mashup between footage from ID4 one of my fav movies and the Obama Speech.

Enjoy.

But it got me thinking. Now we are tenants and have to put up with what feels like a parental inspection to make sure our room is tidy. Now last time I checked I was a grown up (yes my wife and a number of my friends my strongly disagree) and yet we have to put up with this.

Now the financial income to the landlord/lady on our property is around a low mortgage repayment. So of course the landlord/lady has a vested interest in the property being maintained.

Now consider this… image if we had a 105% loan on this house and the bank was owed a shit load of $$$ with the risk that we are trashing the place and dramatically reducing its value.  At this point the bank could be seriously out of pocket and with the credit crunch that is happening you’d think they might give a flying toss as to what is happening. But no.

Banks go “here is your mortgage please pay on time we need never speak to you again”.  For me there in lies the rub.  We are going to put less money into the house, for all we know it is being negatively geared what ever that means, than the landlord is.  Yet we have to put up with having our bathroom checked for mould.

Now our Agent was all very nice and was in and out in 5 min and took notes on something that we would like fixed, but what is the bank that lends 105% doing about their investment… nothing.  This is one of the reasons that tenants feel like second class citizens.

</rant>

Ironic Mobile Advert Fail

Originally uploaded by wolfcat_aus

One of Eye Corps’s wizbang signs (the portrait plamsa tv’s) at Southlands had a modem failure

It was even more ironic given that the add was for a mobile phone. of course it was for my mobile phone, so that adds to the whole circular nature of the experience, an Nokia taken a photo of a Nokia kind of thing.. all very deep and profound I am sure.

I always suspected that these adds were basically simple flash animations just running on a windows box. And the windows error message just proves it. Seriously what a waste of computer just to show some simple animations, but I guess some one is a paying a lot for these adverts that cost nothing to build and nothing to run.

Yep, I am definitely in the wrong business.

The Face of Google?

When Google Street View Australia went live, there were of course some images that made it through…

This is one of them

12 Patonga Dr, Patonga, NSW Of course they removed it.. but not before the screen dump appeared…

and the SMH has some more mistakes as well.

But I thought I would put two of my favs up now (I may come back and edit this page later )

http://digg.com/apple/First_iPhone_Hands_On?t=15971646

How many HTC Touch versions of ANY websites are there? None
How many cars offer full integration with your Samsung Instinct? None

Oh my god didily dang…

two little observations about these points….

All websites can work with HTC touch if they are coded correctly(that is they are properly compliant to web standards and have a mobile css) and oh yeah the play flash as well!

and the second point… firstly any phone that offers bluetooth can be integrated and oh yes in stereo as well. This person seriously thinks about spending say 1k on an Iphone which is what it will cost at least, and then bases say a 30k car on this. The phone will be obsolete come next year (if not earlier) and the car? I can just see the car for sale adds in the future.

Good car, low km’s (sorry doesn’t support Iphone2.2, ready for quick sale)

People it is a phone, it is obsolete before it lefts the shop, you will drop it loose and scratch it. That happens. Get used to it and stop thinking that it is the best thing since sliced bread. The best thing since sliced bread was spreadable butter, that way your bread did not get mangled. (and whilst bread and butter both have a used by date, they are not obsolete!)

edit– this sums it up the best

“Apple Is to Geeks What Breasts Are to Men”

contains such great lines as

“It’s like watching a group of teenage boys who have never seen a pair of breasts lining up to get a peek at their first Playboy.”

and

“At the end of the day, as much as I love breasts, I won’t pay money for them and I certainly won’t wait in line for them.”

go and read it….