I miss #twitter

It’s been almost a week now since I handed over my phone to be fixed and I have severe withdrawal symptoms. I think the worst bit is all the tweets I want to send… begging the question, am I addicted to twitter? What did I do before twitter? I think I just used to send Barb, Dawn and Kelly random texts of my thoughts but considering that it takes about 20 minutes to bash out a text using the geriatric predictive test on the loan phone of doom, even that isn’t really an option anymore.

But I still have my blog (lovely, lovely, snugly blog) so in the meantime I feel like I must release my tweets or bust… so I present you with a selection of thoughts from last week:

One is being followed around Boots by a security guard. One must be looking more suspicious than usual today.

Things with wheels should not be on the pavement. Pedestrians should be able to protect their right to the pavement with deadly force.

Things on wheels should not be in the supermarket. Small things on wheels should not be allowed to carry the basket. My knee hurts.

My hair drier has just made a terrible grinding noise and died. Unfortunately my hair is still half wet. #firstworldproblems#

Louis Walsh is the most ridiculous creature on telly. It should be rounded up and waterboarded.

Paul is treating our new sheets like a kid with a Batman suit. I have to wash them during the day and put them back on before he comes to bed.

I officially love #thefades although it makes me very, very scared and have nightmares.

Eavesdropping is the delicious reward for long distance public transport journeys.

I hate rugby.

Wondering who had this loan phone before me. The first option for the predictive text if you type in “soon” is “poon”!!!

Sunday roast, fnarg, fnarg, fnarg…

Come back HTC Legend… all is forgiven!

I don’t like my HTC Legend. I’ve made no secret of that. I think it turned against me a couple of months ago and delights in my misery by regularly seizing up, crashing and refusing to let me make or answer calls or send texts. So when its screen slowly turned yellow, giving the wedding pic I was using as wallpaper a distinctly jaundiced glow, I wasn’t particularly surprised. For a while it didn’t bother me too much but as it got worse and worse I eventually gave up and took it to Vodafone for a repair. Apparently they’ve never seen something like that before but it’s going to take about two weeks to fix it.

In the meantime I have been given a geriatric Samsung as a “courtesy” phone. I feel like I’ve gone back to 2005. All it does is calls and texts… these are merely peripheral uses for my “phone”.  What am I supposed to do if I get lost (which happens approximately 4 to 6 times per day)? I need my GPS. Plus this morning I wanted to take a picture of a funny sign and tweet it and I couldn’t. I can’t pick up my email unless I’m in front of a computer. I can’t even play angry birds!

The worst part though is the social shame. Every time I get out the “device” I look around at all the iPhones, Blackberries and various forms of Androidery and cringe. I want to shout, “I didn’t choose this phone! My real phone has a touch screen… and apps… lots and lots of shiny, shiny apps! Please don’t judge me!” Come back HTC Legend… all is forgiven!

Of course every cloud has a silver lining… no matter how thin. The battery life on the Samsung is extraordinary. Unlike my HTC, which lasts 12 hours at a push, this one has been going for 2 days without dropping a single bar. If only we could combine form and function!

In the meantime I have no one’s numbers so if you want me to be able to get hold of you, please text me your number!

Hello? Is that 1943? I've found your hairnet!

The legacy of Monster TV and how I was seduced by Sky+

Paul and I have spent the last two weeks living in Dawn and Bobby’s house in Earlsfield. Not as weird as it sounds. They were away on holiday and needed someone to keep an eye on their beloved feline companion, Boo. See below.

While Boo mostly ignored me unless I actually had her food bowl in my hand, she instantly fell head over heels in love with Paul and him with her. Any opportunity she got she draped her little ginger body over him, followed him around and ground her little face into his beard and since Paul has never had any pets, I think it was a particularly special connection for him.

I had a slightly different focus though. We have been living in a house where our primary TV in our lounge is about 20 years old and has an illustrious history. My former house mate, Justin, bought it second hand off Gumtree when he first moved to London, about seven years ago, taking it from house to house until Astonville Street where we lived together. When he moved out he graciously left behind the 40-ish inch, pre-flatscreen, 20kg TV beast for us and the legacy remained until I eventually brought it to Hartfield Road with me. Along with Dawn’s old off-cast Freeview box, I thought we had our entertainment made.

That was until I experienced Dawn and Bobby’s 46-inch, HD ready flat-screen plugged into a Sky+  HD box… we’re talking crystal clarity, the option to record multiple things at one, goodness knows how many channels, live pause and series linking.

Two days… it took me two days before I quietly suggested to Paul that we might also need to have Sky, Sky+ in particular. He took little convincing especially when we discovered a brilliant deal on a Sky+ box, the catch being that the free box was a HD box… and you just can’t have a HD box if you don’t have a HD TV, can you?

So tonight I am watching Masterchef on my new 32-inch LED HD ready TV (on special of course and thank goodness our lounge is too small for a 46-inch monster) with several things Sky+-ing away in the background. Do I regret it? Not for one fucking minute although I don’t believe it has done anything for my patience as I now have almost no tolerance for anything where I can’t fast forward the adverts. How quickly one gets used to such luxury…

And what happened to Justin’s old TV? Well I couldn’t let the old monster go to waste so I put it on Gumtree, where it came from and it was picked up, this time for free, by a young Scottish gentleman who, according to Paul, seemed very pleased with his new “entertainment system”. The legacy lives on…

HTC… legend or loser?

This week my faithful BlackBerry was finally retired. After about eighteen months of service it decided it no longer had any will to live and stopped charging, amongst other weird and wonderful glitches like turning itself off at will. After some umm-ing and ah-ing I decided to go for an early upgrade rather than attempting to get it repaired and after the dismal reviews of the BlackBerry Torch, I also decided it was time to move on from BlackBerry altogether since it all seems a bit stagnant in the RIM camp.

 

So all hail, the new phone… a zippy little Android number otherwise known as the HTC Legend, which is yet unnamed.

Am I in love with my new progeny? Well I don’t know yet. Like the departed BB it chomps battery like there is no tomorrow but this seems to be a general smart phone trait. The days of weekly charges of the Nokia brick are behind us and a daily charge has become the norm. This phone is no different. I’m also finding wrangling with the touch keyboard a steep learning curve. Damn You Autocorrect is my new motto. The one thing I really miss is BB messenger… there just isn’t anything like it for keeping in touch.

 

However the sheer customisability of Android along with the delicious, delicious apps (BB app world is of almost no value to anyone) and the ability to operate six home screens and several broweser windows simultaneously is a joy. In terms of general coolness it leaves the BB in the dust. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want and need where, so it ends up being recustomised on a daily basis… and I haven’t quite managed to figure out how to answer the phone, leaving me frantically swiping at the screen yesterday with no success, but all in good time I guess. Generally traditional “telephone” functionality is of little importance to me when it comes to phones. I believe this makes me one of those annoying smart phone geeks…

 

Verdict: not love at first sight but I think the newbie is definitely more Legend than Loser and we might just have a future together. Watch this space!