Just a Gwai Lo

Deepa Ranganathan: “We liked our new [sleep] schedule the way it was. It had given us a newfound sense of control over our lives. We started each morning with an act of will that set the tone for the day. We went to work early and finished early. And if the evenings were a bit less fun than before—even a lot less fun—we also remembered how we often stayed up late into the night, zombified, both of us staring silently into our laptops.

The past year, especially the past six months, have revealed sides of me I didn't necessary want to know about. A slightly fuller range of emotions and a slightly fuller range of experiences up until today, which marks the end of one decade and the start of another. My girlfriend and I will celebrate it quietly by re-watching episodes of a certain science fiction TV thriller she has yet to catch up on.

If you really must know, yes, I'm getting an iPhone. It was not a no-brainer until very recently, when Rogers/Fido offered a promotional 6 GB plan for $30 on top of a voice plan. Still not a no-brainer, because after some speculation, about whether my plan was eligible for the most coveted of mobile computing platforms, I called Fido today to find out if I'm eligible for that which must be worshiped and/or bitched about. The plan has nationwide Fido-to-Fido calling, necessary for calling the girl while we had our long distance relationship, my being in Vancouver and her being in Toronto; unlimited weekends and evenings; something called "Can. ID" (can someone enlighten me as to what that does?); and that's it for exactly 30 dollars a month. That last point is important because it qualifies me for the $249 8 GB iPhone, not the $199 8 GB iPhone, which comes with a plan of more than 30 dollars a month.

Added to my current plan are Caller ID and 50 monthly text messages. No voicemail for quite some time now: it was always quicker for me to call the person back and ask them what they were calling about then to listen to the message, find a pen to write down the number (which requires rewinding not being as fast a write as people are talkers) and forget to delete the message, then listen to my voicemail later on wondering if it was a new message or not. Visual Voicemail looks interesting, but I don't get enough phone calls to warrant paying for it. Forgetting to ask the helpful French-accented Fido representative if I could keep the add on features, I still assume the answer is yes.

There's still time. Happy Canada Day!

Last night I attended my first meeting of the Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) Mapping & Wayfinding group. They are a group of mapping enthusiasts who want to organize collaboratively mapping Vancouver's public spaces and have some interesting ideas on how to do so, including a web service with a REST interface, but also hand-drawn maps.

There are a few things I would do very differently at Friday's Blogging 101 for Northern Voice:

Here are the originals of the Moo MiniCards I got on Friday and Saturday from the Northern Voice conference.