Well, yesterday was another “rain day” here. Today is starting out as hopefully a break from the never-ending rain showers we have had for 2 days and which simply drenched lower parts of Chennai proper. I am heading out for a bit of a break to Chennai Citi Centre today to go look at the Landmark Store, perhaps grab lunch at KFC there, etc. The KFC is one of those must see/go places if not for the food for the scenery. You know in the states how the younger crowds go to basically scope out the other younger crowds? Same thing here. Weekends are fun days at the Centre.
The Monsoon produces a hibernation-like facility in me where I am content to sit in my room at the New Woodlands, watch TV, screw with my phone, read about Ubuntu stuff, and play games on my PSP. I’m also reading a very good book about the American West and Kit Carson’s role in the westward destiny called Blood and Thunder. Its an excellent read. History should always be this richly entertaining. Hampton Sides brings alive the whole panoramic view of Carson, his amazing triumps, tragedies, treks. This man was a true hero who had those nagging human doubts, was modest, did great things, and downplayed them all. He also had this wanderlust and went with Fremont to California, fought in revolutions, and did generally amazing things. Hampton speaks with such great authority and vividness; its like a time machine descends on me whether I am in the Krishna restaurant at the New Woodlands or in my room. I am whisked away to those days and times.
In other news the Droid ™ is now out on the CDMA Verizon network. I’ve resisted the urge after reading the droid forums at Phandroid because of issues with sync’ing exchange email and some other things which need to get evened out. All of these things are so fixable and they do not dilute the value of the droid as a technology which will disrupt the amazing status quo. It just means I will wait or use another Exchange tool that is out there to sync my stuff like TouchDown. I am gonna get a Droid but it most likely will be the GSM version called the Milestone and it will be unlocked.
Another bit o news is that there is finally a way to discombobulate the ipod Touch 3GS and the new iPhones it appears. By discombobulate I mean jailbreak. You can then make the 3GS entries do other evil and dark things than what Apple intended. The way to get there is here. Its too late for me though. I already gave up on the latest iteration of the crap stuff that Apple sells and gave away the ipod Touch 64gb to someone. Now I believe I could actually make the Touch sync with ubuntu through some new fuse based tools. But this is all way too much work and I have to ask one of the big “W” questions. Why? Why make people do all this crap to simply have choice? C’mon Apple. You can do better. I think every iphone should have an app called “iJailbreak” installed by default and “iUnlock” as well. You spend the money on a phone, you make the commitment; why share it with ATT? Then there is the whole iTunes thing which generally annoys the Hell out of me. Simply put iTunes sucks it big time.
The whole thing is yet another reason to use an open platform, open tools, open SDK.
Finally, Ubuntu 9.10 seems to be a decent entry and I like its boot time. I just wish they would get the damned radeon driver thing fixed for the T60 Thinkpads. What is the deal here guys? If I turn off effects it flashes and annoys me. I have to run with basic effects? The no auto-mounting of external devices has me applauding. I hated always having the damned things mount. Now I control that completely. I have to admit to not understanding what exactly grub2 does and I think personally its a mistake to fiddle with something as personal as a boot loader. Grub2 should have been a choice. EXT4 file systems are probably okay. But the boot loader? Guys this needed some extra thought I think.