My Stuff
Gmail
August 15th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | 1 Comment
It all started back when I was a kid and realised I didn’t have to rely on web-based email interfaces. Nor did I need to use the Outlook client that was loaded on the sole family computer we owned back in the day. You see, I discovered a program called “Incredimail” which, along with being able to add all kinds of effects that are cool at age 10, was a client hosted on my computer without having to open a web link.
And so it went on until I learnt more about computers and Incredimail started to become a bit too gimmicky. I needed something serious. Through the use of Mozilla Firefox, I discovered the email client Mozilla Thunderbird, and I was set for years. Old habits die hard and, despite a push from friends and colleagues to start using Gmail as my email client, I stuck with my old Thunderbird.
Until a few nights ago… the drama of trying to be able to receive the same emails on both my computers was too much! Not only that, but configuring IMAP settings were a headache in itself. And so I finally thought I’d trail Gmail…. and what did I think?
It is great. It really is. I was so sceptical, and like so many of the sceptics in the reviews I read before making the leap. Now I’ve also been converted. Not only can I access all my email accounts (Thunderbird couldn’t configure one of them whatsoever, I had to use email forwarding) but I can access it from any computer, anywhere, at any time. And thanks to the selectable Themes, it looks the goods too. (Where are my Calendar themes, Google?)
Although I’m only a few days into officially converting, I’ve already gone far enough as uninstalling Mozilla Thunderbird altogether. And thanks to Google’s other great invention, Google Chrome, I’ve conveniently replaced my Thunderbird “pin” (Windows 7 speak for Quick Launch) with an application shortcut to Gmail.
What else is cool about it? So far I like the absolute ease of adding email accounts, integration with chat, and my Calendar link up the top from the usual Google application links. And of course the search functions. And thanks to “reply-to” addresses and offline access, it pretty much has all the same functionality of a local email client.
Google, you’ve done it again.
Why not try out Gmail for yourself?
Years For Sale
August 9th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
I like making complicated questions to ask people. Like the ethical versions – Is torturing one person justified if it means the possibility of saving hundreds of others? And I like the plain difficult ones – Would you rather love or be loved? (Check out Ethical Dilemmas)
And so I came up with the question of purchasing extra years on your life. It goes like this: How much would you pay for an extra year of life if it was possible to purchase extra years? Would you pay $20,000 to live an extra year than what you would have? $50,000? $100,000? Would you decide now or later?
I think most people would easily put up $10,000 for an extra year. Probably even $50,000. But it gets to a point where you have to start looking wondering if the costs outweigh the benefits. Is half a million dollars too much? It depends if you think life is more about living long, or just having fun for the years that you do have. Maybe you were going to live long enough anyway, or maybe the complete opposite. You never know.
And then you have to consider the cost of living. You’ve purchased another year of your life but you still have to consider that extra cost of living, rent for another year or working for another year. Suddenly the costs are adding up.
I’m not sure if I wrote this blog to actually answer a question, or if it even makes a statement. But I guess it just makes for an interesting topic that sparked in my mind.
So how much would you pay? How many years would you buy at $10k each, $50k each and $100k each if presented with the option today?
Nokia 5800 – The Phone, The Disaster
August 7th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
I’ve been a loyal Nokia customer as long as I can remember. In fact, my purchasing of Nokia mobile phones dates all the way back to the original Nokia 5110, which was my first Nokia phone of many.
I know, Nokia is not the most innovative or featured brand going around. But they supply a suitable phone standard that is always reliable, smooth performing and extremely user-friendly. So when it came time to purchase my first touch screen phone, I ignored all the begging of the Apple fanatics and purchased Nokia’s first touch screen mobile phone, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
This perfect advertisement spoof from Cracked.com
And it was great. You keen readers will remember my original reviews when the phone was brand new to me. It was fun, awesome to use and fault free. For a little while.
7:30am one cold morning, the same time my phone’s alarm clock wakes me every other day, I retrieved my phone from its hidden place in my room (this forces me to get out of bed, you see). As much as I would have liked to have proceeded to turn off the alarm, I couldn’t! It was playing the alarm tone and doing its vibrating thing, but there was a blank screen! Let me assure you my phone had not been dropped or rough-handled in anyway. Taking out the battery was my only way to fix the issue, but the screen remained that cold, dark black.
Off to the Nokia warranty centre, conveniently located in two locations for the whole state of Victoria. After waiting in their highly staffed (did I see highly staffed? I meant two people) centre for a good half hour, I explained my issue and submitted my phone for warranty work.
They gave me a loan phone along with the required deposit (refundable with the return of the phone) I was back on the calling and messaging road again. A few days later I received a call that my phone had been fixed and was ready to pick up. So I headed back to the centre, collected my phone and found the issue was a faulty screen, which had been replaced free under warranty. They fixed it, I was happy.
Getting that deposit back despite returning the loan phone (around $100 from what I recall) was another story. For days on end my calls to the Nokia Care Centre simply rang out. I emailed with no response. A second email was finally responded to and they contacted me by phone the next day. By this time I had already paid off my credit card bill, and the refunded deposit didn’t turn up for about another 2 weeks. I wonder if it would ever have been refunded if I didn’t constantly have to chase them.
But the dramas don’t end there. For the point of not making a ridiculously long blog out of this, I’m going to cover off the issues the phone has given me to date:
- Calendar disappeared off the home-screen, needed to restore factory settings to fix.
- The stylus became lose and fell out by itself. Electric tape to thicken the slot fixes this.
- Phone turns itself off because the battery moves away from connections. A piece of paper alongside the battery fixes this (most of the time).
- A few occasions the phone has rang but upon answering you can’t hear anything.
- Phone resets itself randomly on numerous occasions.
- Screen freezes randomly and has to be reset.
- The screen-lock button lags or sometimes wakes the phone up but doesn’t unlock the keys.
- The wireless rarely finds any wireless networks. When it does it disconnects after a few minutes. Restoring to factory settings apparently fixes this, but with the amount of problems this phone has you’d have to restore factory settings every week to have a stable phone.
- Installation files menu wouldn’t open and froze phone. Was a corrupt install file – this may have been a third party issue.
- Sometimes battery charging will keep going even after being plugged in for hours and must be full.
- After a full charge, the phones battery will die and go completely empty – half an hour late to work the other morning because of this – thanks Nokia.
- Touch screen menu items don’t always open properly, they just stay highlighted.
And I’m sure there’s more I have encountered, or will continue to encounter.
Nokia, what a piece of crap you’ve made! Will you fix it? Sure, but you take months and months to issue software updates to fix the issues. And when you do fix them, you create more bugs with the software update.
My loyalty to Nokia has officially ended. It’s a Google Android next for me.
Master Chef
July 23rd, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | 2 Comments
It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve been cooking for myself and that big hurdle that seemed so hard to achieve has been reached, thrown down and stomped on. Not only have I succeeded to make some pretty decent meals, but I thoroughly enjoy it too! Yep, 23-years-old is about the time you have to make sure you can do your own bed, cook your own dinner and work out which bins go out on which nights.
So yes, you heard right, Luke is cooking! You may remember my Cooking For Dummies blog published many a month ago, but now cooking is a just another part of life for Luke Himself.
First off, for any of those who were like me and didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t cook, it really is easy. All you need is some spare vegetables, some cooking utensils and a bit of imagination. My first creation didn’t even have support from a recipe! I chopped up a variety of any vegetables I could find, made a sauce from mixing other assorted sauces found around the house, heated up a wok and put it all in. So the sauce didn’t work out great, but for a first effort I was quite proud.
And stir fries are definitely an awesome meal for beginners and pros alike. They’re quick, easy and your choice of ingredients is widely varied. Two of my favourite meals so far have been stir fries, and I’d like to share them here for any fellow novices. They both cover the same basic principle, except the first one is a bit of a cheat as you use two packets of flavoured noodles!
Luke’s Racing
June 29th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
Well I thought it was about time I sponsored a racing team. Sure I could have used the Liberty, but I thought I’d start with something a bit more tamed…
Happy Birthday
June 1st, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | 4 Comments
The 23 Enigma is a theory that most incidents are directly connected to the number 23. Depending on the source, 23 is seen to be lucky, unlucky, sinister, strange or even sacred to certain Gods.
So it’s no surprise that today is my very own 23rd birthday. It may not be the most exciting age to reach, and not really a milestone like 21 or 25, but for me it is the age I will get my university degree, travel overseas and who knows what else? The next 364 days will tell!
So happy birthday myself, and I hope you have a great day!
Interested in the 23 Enigma? Check out the Wikipedia article.
Aussies Vs. Kiwis
May 25th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
Last night I attended the farewell match of the Australia Socceroos and New Zealand All Whites battling it out in a friendly World Cup warm-up at the MCG. Despite having attended quite a few A-League and Asia Champions League games during the last seasons, this was my first attendance of international teams, even if the game meant nothing.
The crowd of Aussies and Kiwis was packed with over 55,000 people coming out into the cold and rain to show their support for their respective teams. Although Aussie fans made up the majority of people, quite a few people came dressed in black and white to support the country that lies across the ocean to the east of us.
The All Whites gave Australia a shock by playing hard and keeping the ball down their end early on in the game. They ruled the possession for the majority of the first half, looking like the Socceroos were in for a losing night. Despite various incidents of All Whites players coping some injuries resulting in yellow cards for the Aussies, the game continued to keep possession on New Zealand’s side.
The second half stepped up the game with both teams playing it much tougher, resulting in the Socceroos scoring a goal to make an equal 1-all. The playing was hard for the rest of the game up until penalty time, where 3 minutes remained making it sure to be a tie.
With hardly any time to go, the Australians shocked the crowd with a final goal to take home the win, leaving the crowd cheering until the remainder of the game, which wasn’t long at all. It was a great game for my first “real” soccer attendance and I wish both the Socceroos and the All Whites good luck in the World Cup in South Africa next month.
The real action starts on the 11th of June, a mere 17 days away, with the official FIFA World Cup 2010 opening ceromony, commencing at 10pm Australian (Eastern Standard) time followed by Johannesburg Vs. South Africa at midnight marking the first game of the World Cup.
The Socceroos will be competing in Group D with the following games:
14th June 4:30am – Australia Vs. Germany
20th June 12:00am – Australia Vs. Ghana
24th June 4:30am – Australia Vs. Serbia
and New Zealand in Group F (for Fail) with:
15th June 9:30pm – New Zealand Vs. Slovakia
21st June 12:00am – New Zealand Vs. Italy
25th June 12:00am – New Zealand Vs. Paraguay
You can catch all the action live on SBS TV: Find at more at SBS: The World Game and don’t forget to add your name to Australia’s 2018-2022 FIFA World Cup Bid at Come Play if you haven’t done so already.
Game Over
April 15th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
For some reason, the other night I remembered this. In Year 7 I wrote a poem called ‘Game Over’ and it got into the school yearbook.
Here it is:
I rush through peak hour traffic,
Dodge cars, buses and trees,
The cops are right behind me,
Their bright lights blind me,
I start to swerve and lose control,
And head right into a tree,
The fire engine arrives and somebody screams,
“Luke! It’s time for tea!”
Wow, I sure was creative back in those days…
Windows 7
March 27th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | No Comments
A few days ago I decided it was time to take the plunge and catch up with the newest operating system everyone has been talking about – Windows 7. I picked up a genuine copy of Windows 7 for the fantastic student price of AUD$49.95. Although available as an electronic download executable or ISO file, I paid a bit extra to receive a hard-copy via a DVD disc, as disasters do happen.
So one night when I had some free time ahead of me, I decided to start the install. First up I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, a handy tool which lets you know what is and isn’t compatible, and allows you to make the necessary preparations before starting the install. I had to uninstall two never-used Vista-packaged programs, but after the install you can reinstall these programs with no issues.
So I started the install and surprisingly, it went forward with little trouble and relatively quick install time. There weren’t many prompts displays, and generally it just went on its way and before I knew it Windows 7 had installed, booted up and even remembered most of my user settings and designs. The first thing that caught my attention was a much improved and updated design, but more about that later.
Happy Birthday BJ!
March 17th, 2010 | Published under My Stuff | 2 Comments
Today it is a whole 730 days since BJ was born – that’s right, BJ is 2-years-old today!
In his 2 years, he’s chased plenty of insects and animals, slept around 11,000 hours, laid in the sun for many more hours and chased too many toys to remember.
Happy birthday BJ!
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