Over the past few months, my mobile phone has been slowly but steadily suffering from some sort of destructive disease, which has been destroying its internal organs.

First, the external speaker began to stop functioning; it would work on occasion – usually after a friendly whack – but you never knew when it might stop. More recently, the internal speaker (used for voice calls) began to fail as well. The same percussive maintenance usually managed to resolve the issue for a while; but again, you never knew when it would stop – usually at the most inopportune time.

Last Saturday afternoon, I was outside Ab Fab cakes – Justine’s working there every now and then – and tried calling Justine. After five or six attempts at trying to call, almost hearing a message, whacking the phone and trying again, I whacked a bit too hard and watched as the top part of the clamshell separated from the bottom.

Luckily, the thin cable connecting the top from bottom was intact; one of the hinges had separated. I tried pushing the displaced hinge back into its place, and just as I succeeded, the other hinge – the one through which the cable ran – snapped off, breaking the cable.

Obviously, it’s time for a new phone. I used my Ericsson t68 on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday while searching for a new phone. Should I get an expensive Windows Smartphone, or opt for a cheaper model? I searched high and low on all of the Internets, and decided that the state of Windows Smartphones was not quite at a point with which I felt comfortable. So, instead, I bought a Nokia 6288 for less than half the price of the other phones I had been considering.

The phone is not perfect, but what phone is? Being a geek, I downloaded a “theme editor” from Nokia’s website and began geekifying the phone. Now, when I open up the slider, I hear the “Mario got a mushroom” noise, and when I close it, I hear the “Mario just shrunk” noise. The “extra life” noise is the SMS tone.

Which makes it all worth it.

We’ve all seen those ads for Hutchinson Telecom’s 3 phones, where people are having a video call and using the magic of vision to show the other party what they’re talking about.

I don’t have a video phone since they’re too big and the coverage isn’t good enough to bother. The camera feature of my phone is used mostly for taking photos of funny things or as a last-ditch camera because I don’t have any others.

When I was getting some stuff at the supermarket today, I couldn’t remember whether Justine had asked me to get one thing or another… It was a capsicum or something, really uninteresting (just like this post!) Technology was the answer to my conundrum! Why talk and describe the two things when I could just show Justine what I was rambling on about?

Of course, I ended up getting a call shortly after I sent the message to clarify which things she wanted, so it didn’t really end up being very useful.

Thanks, technology!

Last night, when I arrived home, among the usual assortment of letters was one from Vodafone. Most non-standard sized Vodafone envelopes contain uninteresting promotional material, so I just about threw it in the bin.

Since I’m so curious, I just had to check what it was before I threw it away. Lo and behold, it was a free subscription offer to a magazine of my choice (well, a six-month subscription offer to my choice of six magazines).

Initially, it was a toss-up between MOTOR and Australian PC User. However, I soon realised that even though the magazines were free, and delivered right to my door, I still probably wouldn’t bother reading them. So, I chose Gourmet Traveller (which is mostly a food/recipe magazine) and gave it to Justine.

I’ve been with Vodafone for something like 6-7 years (including when I was with Nomad, which was a reseller that went bust) so a reward for that is, as the title says, better than nothing. How about permanently cheaper rates instead?

We just got back from see the Black Eyed Peas in concert at good ol’ Rod Laver Arena. They weren’t too bad live, though they didn’t see that excited to be there though of course they tried to convey that they were.

There was some good dancing by the group members (not the choreographed rubbish too often seen) and a pretty funky “jam” session in the middle with the band members. The flautist had a reverb pedal thingamajig which I’d never heard/seen used with a flute before; sounded pretty cool.

Like I mentioned when we saw Blink 182, the band had the audience hold up their mobile phones. This time though, I had mine with me and took a (dodgy) photo of what it looks like. Some of the pics I took are below.

As I mentioned way back in June, Justine had bought tickets for us to see Blink 182. Well, tonight was the night.

After driving for twelve hours last night I managed to get a good night’s sleep so was pretty much ready for a lot of loud noise and annoying teenagers screaming (luckily we were in the over 18 section so they were a reasonable distance away).

Worst part of the concert was the wait between the two support bands and the “main” band; and the volume of the voices was too low compared to the instruments’ volumes.

Best part was when the guys got everyone to hold up their mobile phones (instead of lighters) — interesting to see how in a few short years the focus has gone from lighters to mobiles. I was also annoyed that they didn’t play my favourite song (”Dammit”); this feeling was short-lived though, since they saved the best ’til last and played it in the encore.

And then we forgot where we parked… for a few minutes. Duh.

This morning I had the bright idea that it would be cool to be able to read the website on a mobile phone. More importantly, it would be great if I could update the site from my mobile — it would encourage more frequent updates (though I think I’ve been doing pretty well in the latter half of this month).

So, this evening, I spent a couple of hours knocking out a WAP section of the site and testing it in various web-based WAP emulators to make sure it worked and looked like it was supposed to. All seemed fine.

Of course, the site’s configuration makes it seemingly impossible to actually use via a mobile. My phone and Justine’s phone — despite Vodafone’s claims to the contrary — fail to connect to port 8080 on which the web site is served. This small hurdle makes it pointless to continue for the moment.

If you’re interested in seeing the WAP site (use one of the emulators above), go to http://hijukal.ath.cx:8080/wap/