Dec 20 2009

The Nexus One and Google countdown

I have been waiting for the “right” Android phone for quite a while now. I’ve tried many different ones in the retail stores, but I simply don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a phone if it isn’t darn close to what I want. The Nexus One is certainly the first Android phone that seems to do everything I want it to do. There are certainly some drawbacks, but most things seem to be right. It supposedly comes with Android 2.1, screen resolution of 480×854, a 1GhZ Snapdragon processor, and it won’t feel like a brick in your pocket. I’m certainly looking for other features as well, but those are the primary considerations for me.

Anyway, the main purpose of this post regards the release date/time of the Nexus One. Many are suggesting that the release date is going to be 05 January 2009, but much of this is simply speculation. Well, I found something interesting on Google’s page today. Go to Google, and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” without typing anything into the search box. See that? See that mysterious timer? It seems like this counter recognises one’s timezone, and then calculates the time left (in local time) until the new year (midnight, 01 January 2010). However, could this also be the debut of the Nexus One? Will Google release this phone as a New Year’s present? Of course, this is simply speculation, but one never knows.

|:| Zach |:|

Dec 13 2009

The DLD abuse contest

Hello all,

Recently, on deviantART, the literary group known as =DailyLitDeviations (or DLD for short) started a prose contest regarding abuse. I have recently finished my entry for the contest, and posted it on my profile. To get to my profile page, you may click the “deviantART” button in the toolbar to the right. If you’d rather just go directly to this particular piece, I’ve placed a link to it below:

Onlooker: The Spirit of a Broken Boy

Please leave comments on the deviantART page if you have a membership there. If you don’t have a membership there, you should because it is free and will grant you wonderful exposure to masterfully created pieces of art.

|:| Zach |:|

Dec 12 2009

Thunderbird 3.0 in the tree

Four days ago, Mozilla Messaging made an announcement about the release of Thunderbird 3.0. This release has been a very long time in the making, and brings with it a very impressive list of features. Thanks to the work of Jory A. Pratt (anarchy), we Gentoo users have a quality ebuild for mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird-3.0 in the tree (committed the same day as the release itself)! It is, for obvious reasons, only available in the testing (~arch) repositories at this time, but if you would like to try some bright and shiny new software, I urge you to add it to your /etc/portage/package.keywords file. If you were already using Thunderbird 2.x, then I believe the only additional package that will require keywording is >=x11-plugins/enigmail-1.0.

After I have used this new release for some time, I will report back on my experiences. I hope that some of you Thunderbird users will do the same, and file bugs if necessary.

|:| Zach |:|