Gadgets, technology and the history of man

With all the god damned hubbub that’s taking place around the iPhone at the moment, the wired blog has taken it upon themselves to put it firmly in its place, get a real perspective on things, and ask their readers in a good old fashioned poll, what they think the greatest gadget EVER is.

Hedonism and technology have gone hand-in-hand from the dawn of time, from the first flickers of fire heating up fine cooked meat, to the humble toilet bringing forth sanitary and an all around more pleasant atmosphere to modern civilization.

Calling fire a gadget is pushing the boundaries, defined by the internet a gadget is officially:

"A small specialized mechanical or electronic device; a contrivance."

Some online dictionary

So everything else in their list easily falls into this remit, from the combustion engine – my personal favourite – to the personal computer. What exactly is the greatest ever is something that could obviously rage on forever. The iPhone is clearly not the greatest, it’s average at best, the Nseries N95, which I currently sport, wipes the floor with it in most departments and it’s already freely available.

I’d also submit Lego, simply for it’s awesomeness, whilst some would argue there’s no real practical use, Lego art is just one example of how this work of engineering and technological genius is moving leaps and bounds ahead of what it was originally set out for. In fact, I’m going to start blogging more about Lego, I invisage a world made of Lego, and not just the miniature ‘Lego World’ I visited in Blackpool as a child.

On a side note, I still have no serious internets at home, so I’m staying late at work and blogging from here, which sucks, I still want to get my head wrapped around a few cool ideas I’ve been introduced to but don’t have the inclination to at work. Very annoying.

More Lego and more other stuff tomorrow.

All good things come to an end

As part of a blogger relations programme from TalkToshiba, I was recently given a Tecra A8 Toshiba laptop to handle for a week or so, test out and finally put down my thoughts on.

And after a week I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, whilst not the lightest or most compact lappy in the world, it’s a good size and of quality build, the sort of build that’ll make sure the only reason you need to get a new laptop is because three years down the road, the spec needs updating, but you’ll always have your backup there.

I took it around to various places, the local coffee shop, even to a cider festival in Wales, to make sure I wasn’t left out of the loop. After pairing it with my N95 it still rocked and I managed to grab my emails. Whilst the spec on the one I had wouldn’t exactly tare up some of the latest graphically heavy games, it did the job for what I needed it to do, and because of the mid-end innards, it kept the weight down to bearable.

Probably the three most important aspects of a laptop, as far as I’m concerned, are the keyboard, battery and the screen, all three of which I’m pleased to say do the job well. In fact, after getting used to the slightly ‘positioned-right’ nature of the keyboard it was a pleasure to type away at, the monitor had a nice contrast and handled even high-definition divx playback to a reasonable degree and the battery lasted for hours, on highest brightness setting.

Anyway, I have to run but, they’re good lappys, if you’re after something that’s mid-end, good build and reliable, I’d recommend them. The only bad thing was the amount of heat it pumped out, making it slightly uncomfortable on the lap after an hour or so, but you tend to get that with most laptops.

I enjoyed the experience, technology allowed me to have a good time and put a smile on my face, which is after-all, the point of reporting on this blog, and I loved the fact that because I am a blogger companies like Toshiba value my opinion and ability to affect people, perhaps more than a magazine or TV advert could. Interesting times, I might talk more on this later on.

More later.

The spotlight on Jack: Connected in the 21st century

HA, my alter ego Jack Rawstone has been reborn over at the site that launched a thousand pale white boobies, that’s right, Suicide Girls. He was / is a peculiar beast that Jack Rawstone, a man of might and panache; he turns heads, strides with a purpose and is never undone, not by any fucker.

I’ve been looking over the old blog posts I made on there - I'll transfer them over to hear when I have the bandwidth - a couple are tragically funny, case in point below:

"Whenever I go down to London there are bad crazies on the streets. We found a club where it was 70p a drink, I went in with £35 which would have given me the opportunity to buy 50 drinks. This was a mammoth task as I'd already hit the Wild Turkey hard, having 6 doubles in a pub around the corner from the club before hand. But I persevered and almost made it, I only drink doubles so about 20 drinks later, on the most foul of whiskey, I got kicked out of the club. I lost my t-shirt, split my head open on a wall and continued to stomp around in my Punisher vest like a wild animal pissing off the most of London."

- Jack Rawstone MARCH 11, 2005 @ 06:49 AM

And some are fairly serious:

"For the first time I became an actuated self facilitating media node. This bascially meant my laptop came in time for the trip and I wrote up the Hatebreed article on the train down, which I thoroughly enjoyed."

- Jack Rawstone MARCH 2, 2005 @ 04:05 PM

I make the point in the above statement that I’m ‘a self-facilitating media node’ which comes straight out of the Nathan Barely book of quotes for cunts. At the time I had a vague idea of what it meant I guess, but today, I’m more and more that person, but in the least possible cuntish sort of way, and I’m fairly proud, in fact I fucking love it.

Whilst I rock along between countries or just home and the office, business or pleasure, I stay constantly connected, constantly in the loop, uploading, writing, never miss a thing.

It’s brilliant, my Nseries N95, almost everything I need, the only thing holding it back is the physical screen size, and that’s because it’s a mobile device anyway, it’s meant to be fucking small. But it’s ace, I was recently in Paris, had no idea how to get around, but once I slid my N95 open, turned the GPS on, I found my way around no problem at all, it even got be back from Mont Martre to my hotel one late boozy night. So, it’s my connection, it’s my GPS, digital camera, podcast recorder and downloader, MP3 player, and a whole host of other things that keep me in the loop. Combined with my N800 for travel, it’s even more awesome as the screen on the N800 is big enough and with a decent enough resolution to do pretty much whatever I need on and offline.

The point I’m trying to make ladies and gentlemen, is that as the likes of Intel introduce the thinnest laptop in the history of the world, those of us in the loop, rushing forward with the devices and technology to back us up, can do whatever we want whenever we want. Geotagged content, a 3G net connection tethered via Bluetooth to your UMPC, and you’re rocking for whatever you want, and it’s consumer based, not yellow pages, not some bullshit advert or a list read out by some fucking tool at the other end of a 118118 call.

It’s from someone who has been there, done it, taken the picture, geotagged it, written the review, put the address in and recommended it to the social web, to us, well to me at least anyway.

Hedonism is deriving pleasure from the things around you, and if you are a ‘self facilitating media node’ you can do that, I know I do, instantly, without bother, and in perfect style.

The visible man is also a big story today, he’s put his entire life online because he thinks the FBI are following him, it just goes back to what I was saying about being open, and the social media, let everyone see, and the government is double fucked because not only have they got no excuse to fuck you over, but everyone else can see that’s the case. BINGO.

More tomorrow.