Scribblings

Have you ever wondered what V (V for vendetta) says when he first meets Evey? I have, but then thought this is one of the quirky dialogs by the The Wachowski Brothers which you are not supposed to understand. Now that I have heard the audio book based on the screenplay and red the actual comics by Allan Moore (which inspired this movie as well as an underlying presence in Matrix), I’m a bit curious. Funny though that this dialog is not present in the comics, there he just says “I don’t have a name, you can call me V” but considering it closely, they both (comics and the movie) are completely different stories; I know that they share similar story line and characters. I say similar, even though some characters are the same because they act and feel different. For example in the movie V is mostly serious and focused but in the comics he is always joking and playing around even though both characters have gone though the same hell. Nevertheless this dialog moved me (knowing the entirety of the story) and I hope it did the same to you.

The original dialog,
V: [Evey pulls out her mace] I can assure you I mean you no harm.
Evey Hammond: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey Hammond: Oh. Right.
V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona.
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
[carves V into poster on wall]
V: The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
[giggles]
V: Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey Hammond: Are you like a crazy person?
V: I am quite sure they will say so. But to whom, might I ask, am I speaking with?
Evey Hammond: I'm Evey.
V: Evey? E-V. Of course you are.
Evey Hammond: What does that mean?
V: It means that I, like God, do not play with dice and I don't believe in coincidences.

And here is the translation,

V: Voilà! In view, a humble play veteran, cast interchangeably as both victim and villain by the unexpected change of Fate. This appearance, no mere superficial one of pride, is a thin trace of the public opinion, now vacant, vanished. However, this courageous visit of a by-gone annoyance stands to give life to something and has vowed to vanquish these corrupt and extremely poisonous weasels preciously guarding the vice and to promise the violently malicious and eager violation of free will.
[carves V into poster on wall]
V: The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as an oath, not in vain, for the value and truth of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
[giggles]
V: Truthfully, this mixture of word twist is most annoying, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

A few updates on the iPhone 3G now that I had few weeks with the new phone,

1. The phone cannot smoothly move from GSM to 3G when it is on a call.

Meaning if I'm on 3G and make a call then move to an EDGE only area then the call gets cut. This is driving me crazy because my cubicle at work gets 3G in and out. Also, even when the phone is sitting still, it keeps moving from 3G to EDGE all the time. I did some googling and found that this was indeed a common issue not only in the states but all over the place. What was real funny (pun intended) was that neither Apple nor ATT acknowledged it (this was at that time, will talk about the 2.0.2 update later).

So I booked an appointment with the genius bar (I really liked this concept) and off I went to the Apple store. Though they were polite and looked/talked smart, they weren't all that different for a moronic support people you deal with in every walk of life. First he just smiled and said this was an ATT network issue (I bit my tongue and let him continue just to see where he is going with this) and said there is a super fix which not only resolve this issue but enhance my battery life drastically. With a huge frown on my face I handed over the phone, then he started to go into setting; I ask him are you by any chance switching off the 3G? He smiles and gives me a big nod.

No amount of tongue biting could stop me from busting out; I politely informed him that I thought the first iPhone was a joke for a single reason that it didn’t have 3G, and I would turn off the 3G when hell freezes over. Then I add (as noted in this page), I have had three 3G phone on the ATT network and I haven’t till now realized that 3G and EDGE where two different networks. Here is when something new happened, instead of going on an infinite loop calling ATT bad, he just said if I wanted they can replace the phone. Here are a few things to know, if it’s within 15 days they will replace it with a new phone else you would get a refurbished one (refurbished phone doesn’t make a difference because its going to have the same hardware which Apple promises is cute and cuddly). Reading online that the problem could be a hardware issue (3G chip from one particular vendor) I went for the replacement and thank god the phone was just 10 days old. I got a new phone.

I was rather happy I did all this because the phone was much better now. I hardly have dropped calls but the 3G reception was still pathetic.

2. iPhone JailBroken

With 3G somewhat settled, I turned my attention to jail breaking. This might sound all dangerous and exciting but all it does is to open iPhone to 3^rd party software which doesn’t give a tiny rat’s ass about Apple’s approval. Currently though its is all you can do, unlocking the phone will have to wait.

I tried this once and I couldn’t get it right, so ‘sour graped’ and licking my wound (because I had to restore everything back) I thought these application wont make a big difference. Then I gave it another try and this time got everything right, you wouldn’t believe the difference it made. Now I firmly believe it is not worth having this phone if its not jail broken. First, there aren’t many applications out yet but it has a huge collection of themes. There a few applications which I cannot do without now. One is OpenSSH, this gives you access to iPhone’s folders tree and you can transfer files back and forth using either putty or winscp. So now I start to make themes and it’s easy and very cool. But sadly though you cannot transfer either music or photos directly this way. There, you have another example of Apple stubbornness.

3. Software updates from Apple

The logs in these updates just read “Bug fixes”; I would really like to know what’s behind this. Are they trying to hide the fact that there is no change except that it un-jail breaks your phone or that the apple fan boys would finds this like a ‘find six difference’ game. Or this could be a smart physiological thing; someone says it improved their 3G (it should be because the baseband version has been changed, yes that’s pun again) and then Apple comes out and says ‘O! Yes, in case you didn’t notice we had a 3G issue and it fixed. Still problem; ok, now that’s an ATT issue’. But the signal bars where so low both at work and home. (Funny that! it’s the modern example of Murphy’s Law. I tend to have better signal everywhere else expect the place I work and live) I finally upgraded to 2.0.2 and I can report that there is absolutely no difference. I neither had the keyboard lag nor the contacts page lag so I can’t report on those. But this update does nothing to 3G reception. I’m bad at find six difference game anyway.

4. Assortment of little annoyances

It’s like everyday I find one thing or the other which annoys me so much. Today I was planning to send screen shots of the themes to couple of friends and then I found out a cool way to get the screen shot. I just have to hold the home button and press the power button. The screen flashes and viola! You have the picture stored in the camera roll. But now comes the irritating part. I start composing a new mail, and then I look around to see how on earth I’m supposed to attach a picture or anything else for that matter. There is a keyboard, a cancel button and a send button. Google again and there you have it; pretty simple. You cannot. The only way is to open the picture and click ‘send it by mail’. Are you kidding me?

I travel a lot these days which led to a lot of FM. Which inadvertently led me to crap they call popular music. But then these stick with you like that poor skunk in ‘God must be crazy’; especially the hit song by Katy Perry which goes like this, “I kissed a girl And I liked it. The taste of her cherry chapstick”. I want to make one thing clear on the outset, I’m a huge Hip hop fan so am not the best person to talk about crappy lyrics but common; this is pushing it.

Then this week I had a similar experience, wait! It’s not what you think. I jumped on the apple bandwagon and bought myself an iPhone. This is actually like a straight guy kissing another or probably a gay guy kissing a girl, o you get the picture.

I have been using a mobile phone for about 8 years now and smart phones for about 4. Ok, I just did some thinking, I have owned about 18 mobile phones in that about 9 were smart phones. Most of it is with Windows mobile. So it wasn’t a big surprise that I absolutely hated the first iPhone, I would beg and plead with people not go for it; then point and laugh at those who bought it. The single biggest reason for me hating the iPhone was the lack of 3G. See, a smart phone is useless unless you have access to internet (that being mails, streaming music, maps and stuff). Please don’t throw the ‘It’s got Edge’ in my face, with edge speed I would have to wait for the next ice age to open an email attachment or even check (for example) a movie show time. And with so many phones (some even basic) having 3G, this was actually a joke. Don’t get me wrong, It was a beautiful phone with good if not great UI and if someone just wanted a bulky (yes it is bulky for its features, check the Nokia 5310 to know what I’m talking about) but nice looking phone with a great music player; I could possibly suggest them to go for this.

So when I decided that the iPhone is not for me I went with the amazing HTC Kaiser, o! What a phone this was. I already had the similar HTC Tytn but with a black body, tilt screen and GPS this was the best phone I had; simply put the best smart phone money can buy. In no time I was flashing custom ROMs and it also had push mail to boast. Then I got the Sony UX UMPC and I didn’t need a bulky smart phone anymore. So it got me thinking about the iPhone again, I still couldn’t part ways with WM so I got the smart sleek HTC touch.

Ok, all this is gibberish, what I wanted to convey is this. Even when I wanted just a phone, I wouldn’t get the iPhone because I believe a mobile phone speaks a lot about the person who owns it. Show me a person with a Razr(any one of the zillion models) ill show somebody with a mid life crisis, girl with a Nokia N series; there you have a lesbian, somebody with a blackberry they are either high up in a software firm or just plain stupid, somebody with a HTC; there is the one who knows what he is doing and then you have the iPhone, this is the worst kind. It’s the Porsche Boxter of mobile phones. An inspiring company in pinnacle of their technology comes up with an ‘affordable’ crap. That was the bottom line, its glorified crap with a fictional cool factor.

But they have rolled out the Boxter S now. Still I won’t call it to compete with the best smart phones but I can see why somebody would get it now when they just needs a phone with lots of trick up its sleeve and an actual cool factor. So yes ‘I kissed a girl’ but am not sure if I like.

Read on for my iPhone experience.

First, the build quality and looks are amazing (even though you cannot remove the battery), also I like how the cam looks subtle (though I don’t care much about the cam), the speaker is well placed and the UI was spot on.

But then I connected it to my laptop. Now, with all my other phones; I just play a few days around with some custom ROMs then install all my favorite applications, sync my contacts and calendar with outlook and swap the memory card and that would be it. But now I need to install iTunes (there is no other way), I’ll tell you why this is a big deal, I already have napster membership and that pretty much takes care of my music library. Ok! I give in, downloaded the iTunes. The phone connects like a charm. Take me about 30 mins to setup my music but contacts/mail/calender syncs like a charm from outlook. Then I make some wallpaper (the iPhone has got an amazing screen); then uploaded it to the phone (again I have to use the iTunes). Now I want some cool ring tones, I have a huge library of this; so I choose a few. Now what do I do? I don’t want it to be mixed with my music or show up in my ‘iPod’. Go to google and find out I need to convert it to acc and then rename it to .m4r. Done all that and my phone is good to go.

Now here is the huge huge problem. The iTunes lets me sync music/pictures/ringtone (pretty much everything except mail/contacts/calendar) with just one machine. This is a huge problem because I have 3 laptops and I just can’t download a song in one machine and add it to the phone. Please enlighten me, how is this even remotely existing in this time and age? I’ll give u an example; you have a desktop you pretty much use at home for all the media. You keep your phone synced with this. Now you are out on a vacation and you hear a cool song, you download it to your laptop. But for sure you can’t listen to it on your ‘iPod’ phone. If you want to play it then you loose your entire library. Maybe this is not a common problem but then I can come up with millions of examples. It’s the same for wallpaper and ringtone. The worst part is you can’t sync your ring tone without affecting you music library. Forgive me but this is a bigger problem than the ‘cut and paste’ debacle. No flash for the camera, o phalease.

Next, I use gmail as my main email but I also forward all my other mails to gmail and set it up to send mails or reply back from different email ids. The problem with that setup in an iPhone is; for one there is no ‘push’ service for gmail and two, I can’t configure different ‘From’ address for one email account. Generally I won’t be mad with this because not a lot of software for PC or WM6 allows me to do it, in fact the only software which supports it is thunderbird for PC. I’m mad because there is a way you can do it on the iPhone but only if I sync the mail settings from a Mac. As for the MobileMe feature by Apple, open it in IE7 (don’t ask me why but I use IE), it throws an error saying IE7 is not fully supported, that’s a good one. Why, do I suddenly get a ‘Microsoftish’ feeling about this?

So it looks like Apple wants me to drop every other service provider and start using them for all my needs. Buy a mac, use iTunes for music, safari for browsing, me.com for mail, MobileMe for photos, storage and everything else. Actually these are all good service maybe even the best but I certainly don’t want to be told what I have to use. I have a Sony Vaio, I use gamil, flikr and napster. That’s because I love these and I’m in no hurry to jump ship. As for the iPhone, I’ll keep it, it has 3G and I’ll find a way around everything else.

The bottom line here is that even though the iPhone is smartly made, its way short on the ‘smart phone’ meter.