iHave an iPhone

And yes, I like it as much as I thought I would. Favourite features:

* inbuilt speakers for use as a speakerphone or a tiny tiny stereo for playing podcasts of In Our Time as I fall asleep at night.

* just beautiful user interaction and graphics. I don't think any other gadget makes me say "oh, cool!" quite so often.

* using Safari to Google for tourist locations in Houston and then find them on the map, while actually en route to said locations. (note for the safety-worried: I wasn't driving)

* "visual voicemail" - it's just a list of my voicemail messages that lets me listen to them in the order I want, but that's actually very useful.

* unlike my Treo, the call quality is not at all bad.

Things I wish it could do that it can't, yet:

* recognise addresses on web pages and turn them into links to open Maps.

* stay un-smudged for more than five seconds. I guess that's the price we pay for a multitouch interface.

* really know where it is, on Maps. It's usually out by about half a mile. (Mind you, that's often close enough to be useful).

Best bit: I managed to get a prepay account from AT&T, and avoided having to sign up to their 2-year contract. When I come home for good, I'll be free of AT&T entirely - yay!

Limerick

From my new favourite site for random browsing, LimerickDB:

int factorial(int sum) {
if (sum == 1) return 1;
if (sum != 1)
return product(sum,
factorial(sum - 1)); }

(I just love this, especially since it works, but they're not all this geekily mathematical: click the Latest Submissions link and away you go). Caveat: not necessarily safe for work or those offended by the odd naughty word.

The best part is that all these limericks have been submitted in the past SEVENTEEN DAYS solely by readers of my all-time favourite webcomic, xkcd.com. The forumites here are the most civilised I've ever found. Actual conversations! Politeness! Profundity, even! It gives me hope for the future of the interwebs. Especially since most of them are still in their teens.... the kids are all right.

Gadgets you wouldn't need in NZ, part II

Inside/outside temperature gauge. I've been wanting one of these doofers for the longest time but they're kind of expensive in NZ. Not so here: eighteen bucks in Wal*Mart will get you such a gadget. So far it seems pretty accurate, when checking it against the web and the temperature thingy in the car (no radio in the apartment: I miss NatRad!).

Yes, that's 29 degrees Fahrenheit it's showing as the outside temperature. That's about -1 Celsius. This was first thing in the morning a couple of days ago - this morning it said 25 F and I nearly didn't get out of bed. It's supposed to be 18 F tomorrow morning and I'm not looking forward to it.

I'm beginning to wonder whether buying this gadget was a good idea after all :0)

Gadgets you wouldn't need in NZ, part I...

Even without buying an iPhone I have been having fun with gadgets here. This first one is the GPS navigation in the car.

I'd never used one of these before (I mean, in NZ, who needs it? There's always a handy mountain to triangulate on). It's incredibly easy to use - pick the address and it works out a route and tells me the intersections in a Generic American Female Voice, in enough time to get into the correct lane even when I'm still getting used to the car and the roads and there's a truck trying to drive up my tailpipe.

With roads that look like this....
it's kind of essential.

Mind you I wouldn't mind if it could find some other way of saying "when it is safe to do so, please make a legal U-turn".... and while the calm woman's voice is all very nice, I think George Clooney really starts needing to do voice recordings for these things....

But the name's not quite right. It should be "NeverCompletelyLostButSometimesOnTheWrongStreet". Maybe they figured that wouldn't fit on the label.