bodhi tree swaying » iPhone

New oyPhone coming from AT&T?

bodhipaksa — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:30:52 +0000

I wonder why AT&T has its bullet points in Hebrew? (Is that Hebrew? That’s what it looks like to me.) Will I need a Talmudic scholar to decipher my next bill? Did AT&T confuse itself with Associated Talmud Torahs? Will they soon be bringing out an oyPhone?

“He died in a hail of bullet points”

bodhipaksa — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:13:09 +0000

Apparently God does not like his followers to resign for ethical violations, misuse of taypayers’ money, lying, and dereliction of duty, as Mark Sandford attests.
"Joe" "The Plumber" calls for the assassination of a senator, or at least comes close. He also reveals a stunning grasp of history. I had no idea that Karl Marx predated the American Revolution.
3/4 of people in the US who are pushed into bankruptcy by medical problems have insurance. You can read about some health care horror stories in this NYT article.
My 2-year-old pointed to NYT columnist Maureen Dowd’s picture on my monitor this morning and identified her by name. Maia, you rock! (She’d asked me Maureen’s name at least two months ago).
Glenn Greenwald discusses the deaths (possibly by torture) of perhaps a hundred or more US detainees.
It was 13C (58F) in my town today. And rainy. It’s been raining for a month now, and it’s becoming rather depressing.
But I met with Nagabodhi this morning and we had coffee, talked Dharma, and compared iPhone/iPod Touch apps. That was fun. Sadly he only has the iPod Touch, so most of the things I was most excited about aren’t compatible with his device. Dukkha!
I bought a boxwood bush to screen the trashcan that sits by our front door. That means that tomorrow I get to be manly and dig a big hole!
Lastly, I’ve been moaning about the WordPress app for iPhone not working. It now is, presumably because I added a trailing slash to the URL when entering the details of the blog in the application. So that’s very handy! And the bugs that handicapped the previous version all seem to be fixed. Good job WordPress volunteers. It’s amazing really, that so many people are willing to devote so much time and expertise to making software available,

The weightdate rollercoaster ride

bodhipaksa — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:02:58 +0000

This is an “apropos of nothing” post if I ever wrote one.

If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch (not iTouch!) owner do you remember web apps? Before Apple opened up its web store the only way short of hacking your machine (which I did) you could get a new application was to use a web-based one. These are probably still flourishing, but I’d imagine that the App Store has probably undercut their use a lot.

But… one I used and still use is Weightdate, which is a simple and free way to record your weight and have it displayed over time as a graph. So that’s my graph above.

It doesn’t quite cover a full year, starting in April 2007 and ending today. It’s an interesting pattern of weight gain and weight loss, especially since I haven’t consciously tried to do anything to alter my weight. I lost weight from the spring until mid-June, and then started fairly steadily to accumulate it again. Now I’d expect to start putting on more weight in the fall and especially from Thanksgiving, but I can’t think of any good reason why my weight would start climbing from July onwards, unless perhaps it’s a seasonal thing connected with day-length. Right now I’m losing weight, but again I’m not trying to do anything to achieve this. Last night, for example, I had a bottle of beer and a bad of corn chips. Today I had a chocolate croissant. Believe me, I am not dieting! I’m also not doing any exercise, because I have a broken toe and don’t even walk much, never mind run or do anything strenuous.

Anyone have any similar experiences of seasonal weight changes that go beyond the mere accumulation of weight around Thanksgiving/Christmas?

P.S. You’ll notice from the “searching” message in the screenshot that the AT&T service in my area is totally useless. I was told I’d have one bar inside my house, but often I can’t even get one bar when I step outside.

Hellelujah! (I mean “Sadhu!”)

bodhipaksa — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:45:53 +0000

Given that one of the greatest inconveniences and deficiencies of the iPhone is the lack of any ability to copy and paste, and given that the second major revision of the device’s operating system lacked that ability, I have to wonder if Steve Jobs has no ability to blush. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is an astonishing invention. It brings near-ubiquitous access to the web, and does that in a way that is esthetically pleasing and eminently practical. But literally millions of jaws dropped when 2.0 came out and Apple continued to pretend that copy-and-paste was so unimportant that they simply didn’t need to include it. (Currently, the lack of c&p is the second most popular grouse on Please Fix The iPhone). It reminds me of an old British beer commercial where a man asks for a particular kind of beer and is told, “Sorry, mate, we don’t sell it. You must be the hundredth person I’ve told today — there’s no demand.”

Kludges have been attempted, and some have worked, but Apple — adding injury to insult — pulled functioning applications from their store. Like I said, no ability to blush.

But now (and I humbly thank Gizmodo for the news) a company has created a web-based application that allows for copying and pasting. It looks good, as I think you’ll agree from the video above. As long as Apple doesn’t block access to the site I think we’ll be set.

Now I’ll be able not only to tweet from my iPod Touch, but I’ll be able to copy and paste tinyurls to articles I want to share with my friends. The world has just become a better place in which to live. Or it will, tomorrow, when Pastebud is scheduled to go live. If the site doesn’t crash under the weight of traffic.