all things me

10 years ago, on February 13 1996, my favourite band Take That split up. I was quite mad at them for splitting up on Robbie’s birthday (Robbie had left the band some time before). I remember sitting in front of the TV watching a program for teens. They showed Back For Good and there was an animated heart beating over the video. I think I cried. (I wasn’t/am not the crying type.) I programmed my mini-stereos to play Back For Good 32 times (that’s the maximum) and I must’ve listened through at least half of that.

Just the previous year I had been caught in the craze (I have to thank my penpal Shuk Yin for that) even though I’d sworn I’m not the boy band type. Well, at least I never was into New Kids on the Block or Boyzone (yuck).

Gary was my favourite, my dream guy, my biggest crush, although in their solo careers Robbie’s been my favourite all along — quite obviously.

Now they’re back and they just released an album on November 27 — I didn’t know that! On Friday I was listening to the radio while walking home from work and they said Take That’s newest single was going to play next. I walked all the way home during the commercial break (even though I tried to walk very slowly!). I ended up standing in the hall, with the earphones — and my coat — on, listening to Patience.

Gary is still so so cute!

(I know Take That wasn’t big in the US — your loss! )

Update

This is Gary…

Our summer cottage is such a beautiful place and so special that it was declared a national treasure today. Well, not exactly, but check this out:

Omakuvapostimerkki (Personal Stamp) is a service at the Finnish Post Corporation where people can order stamps decorated with their own photo.

Let’s hope my grandparents don’t know about this blog… The above stamps are their Christmas present. The photo is taken (by my sister, says she) at our summer cottage. I was surprised that the stamps arrived today. I ordered them on 27th (Monday) and on the site it gives a delivery time of 7-31 days. I got it in 4. Amazing!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Now that I can take a photo any time with my phone I’ve started noticing the times when I can’t. Then I see something and think “aw, I would’ve wanted to take a photo of that.”

I don’t take the phone with me when I’m walking the dog but maybe I should. A couple of weeks ago in the morning there was a really wonderful full moon, the sky was clear and very dark. That would’ve made a wonderful photo. I thought, “it’ll be there when I leave for work”. Well, it wasn’t, a cloud had drifted over it. The next morning the moon and the whole setting was back — I didn’t have my phone. When it was time to leave for work, the sky had lightened too much.

Today I saw an interesting spray painting on the asphalt — and I didn’t have my phone. I’ll have to try and remember to take it with me tomorrow.

The other day (Nov 10th) while I was away from my computer for a while, I saw my boss sit there and do something. After thinking “gasp, did I lock the computer” (just instinct, no security issue if he saw what I was working on) I went to look what he was doing. Well, take a look:

The bottom Post-It has, I was told, dog treats (I had to ask what on earth were those) and it reads “yum!”.

(Hmm… I was missing my favourite pen this week, those are maybe written with it. I’ll have to go get it back.)

On Wednesday I was voted employee of the year (thankyouthankyou) — it was a tie, though, and I had eventually won in a paper clip draw. Luckily I won because the other one got a bottle of wine. I got a whopping gift certificate to a fancy restaurant chain so I’m taking my sister, Grandma, and an aunt/godmother to eat. It should be fun but the restaurants are so fancy (everything has mushroom and/or alcohol) that I don’t know if I, let alone my sister, find anything to eat.

Grandma always remembers when the first snow comes each year because she notes it down in her calendar — I never remember (barely remember what I’ve eaten a day before), so I thought this time I’d record it: Last Tuesday (Nov 1st) it snowed for the first time this winter (in my opinion) but it turned to horrible slush by the end of the day. The next day it showed again and that time it stuck. Today we had a wonderful blizzard so I took the above photo through the train window.

I finally bought Robbie’s newest album, Rudebox, last night. It came out on Wednesday 25th (at least in Finland) but I couldn’t find the CD+DVD special edition in the two supermarkets that are close to work. On my way to a friend on Friday I finally went to a music store that had advertised the special edition plus a badge. Well, I never thought there’d be any badges left but I got one!

Had a bit of a “scare” when I thought I was starting to listen to the audio CD on the computer but no program was able to recognise the audio tracks. They started playing the DVD instead. I had taken a white disc from the slot with the booklet so I assumed it was the CD part. Well, no. The black one was the CD. I should’ve thought of checking the CD/DVD labels on the discs before freaking out.

It’s too early to love or hate the songs. I was too hasty to judge Tripping the last time so now I’ve learned from that mistake. I do know that Bongo Bong is wonderfully bouncy, and the two singles, Rudebox and Lovelight are alright, too. As a whole, the songs feel a bit too electronic to my taste.

Another bafflement is with the CD box. It’s noticeably wider than a regular CD. How am I supposed to store it?

(‘Scuse the blurriness, it’s difficult to balance one hand while crouching down and holding the CD with the other hand… And my hands aren’t very steady anyway.)

Intensive Care (previous album) has a paperboard wrapper around it and because of that I can’t fit it in the CD tower either. I suppose I need a separate box for Robbie CDs. Doesn’t matter though because my CD tower is flooding as it is. Could the next album be accompanied by a life-size cardboard Robbie, please?

This post is the first in my new category, PM.

Last night I had a Moment. It was a moment when I realised that what I do at work is really really fantastic (or should I say fah-bulous).

I’m not really talking about the technical stuff. It’s mostly pretty monotonous and, most importantly, only temporary. I do My Thing to the files and wish them well, and the projects go on living their lives I’ll never be a bigger part of (except when I get the files back and do My Other Thing before they’re sent to the client). But the projects I’m managing are really interesting! Of course, I can’t talk about them, which sometimes is a shame when I’m itching to tell about something great that happened at work and I can’t.

These Unspecified Fancy Operations make me feel very cutting-edge — which I’m not. But because I’m not, they feel very hip and groovy. (Convenient.) Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I do. It feels great to have settled in, found my place, and actually be excited about what I do. It takes one over the stressful times quite nicely, doesn’t it? (Today was pretty hectic, as a matter of fact.)

4th floor is the floor I work on. I’m one of the upstairs people.

I just ordered a 2 Gb miniSD card from an online store (I’ll pay it when I pick it up from the post office so I feel more secure with that). I had read good things about it.

Last Wednesday I paid for the travel insurance with the reference number I was asked to use — I haven’t heard anything from that yet.

We’ll see how they go.

Update Oct 28th
The insurance arrived the same day (Oct 17) and the memory card a week later (on Oct 24th).

Update on November 25. Added a bit about the game selection and joystick…

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Today the package subscription finally started working and I can start using my phone for real. I’ve had a chance to play with it offline so this is what I think about it at the moment.

I think I should mention that this is my first S60 phone; my previous phones, Nokia 3210, 3330 and 6101 have been Series 40. (If that’s all gibberish, Forum Nokia has a nicely presented Device Specification section. Those two 3xxx phones I’ve had aren’t included, though.)

You navigate with a joystick that is located between the call start/end keys and the softkeys. It is quite easy to get used to the joystick even though at first it felt very weird. Pushing up is a little bit awkward still. Some have reported that the joystick has broken off — let’s hope that won’t happen to me. It does feel a bit flimsy, true, but I’m not planning on manhandling my phone.

I like the menu structure very much. It’s nice when there’s only a few options, the submenu pops on top of the main menu.

(I’m using the default Nokia theme for the moment. I’ll have to look for a nicer, less blue, one.)

Also a nice feature is the tabbed menu. In many submenus e.g. Settings I can go to the next selection of settings by moving the joystick left or right.

The Active standby screen is heaven-sent! It shows the calendar, to-do list, currently playing radio channel or music track and probably much more. On my old phone I used calendar and other memo features, but only way to be reminded of the events was an alarm which I never use. Now I see current (a week ahead?) calendar entries right away!

(Yeah, I know there aren’t any calendar entries for this week. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any plans. Well, yeah it does, personally, but I have lots of work plans )

On the screen there is also a customisable list of six shortcuts.

Media key gives 4 more slots to customise shortcuts. I’ve chosen to have shortcuts to multimedia applications but it’s not restricted what you can have there. There is one grief with the Media key, though: it makes a sound when the view opens. I haven’t found any way to silence it except to use Silent profile.

There is only one game pre-installed. In some nooks of the world people get also Sudoku in addition to the Snake that is installed on my phone. Whyyyyy oh whyyyy can’t we have Sudoku installed? I could do without the weird 3D Snake (nothing beats the Snake II that was on e.g. Nokia 3330) but I love Sudoku!

The world clock is also a fancy feature. I’m sure I wouldn’t find it useful if I didn’t have a trip to Australia to look forward to…

A great tip was given by Harri in a comment on S60.com Blogs » S60 User Experience. He told that he uses a camera (digital or phone cam) for taking notes of for example timetables. Well, I took a photo of the timetable for buses from work. Now I only have to remember that I have the timetable easily available.

A great shortcut is that by pressing # you can switch between silent and default profile.

On the N73 support page there is an SMS Accelerator application and “it is recommended that you install this application to prevent slowness in SMS sending.” I sent my first SMS today and it left very swiftly so I’ll just have to wait and see what this alleged slowness is.

I’ve had a bit of a ‘Scuse me? moment. There are “My Folders” for messages but I haven’t yet figured out how to move messages to them (or anywhere for that matter). Today I finally received SMSs in my inbox so I can try if it really is difficult or I just didn’t have any moveable messages. (I could only move old messages to drafts so I think I’ll leave them on my computer and not move them to my new phone at all.)

Today I went shopping and bought the Music Headset of HS-20+AD-41. The AD-41 audio adapter has a 3.5mm plug for headphones so I can use any pair I like, but the HS-20 earphones are pretty good too. It has 3 (pairs of) ear pieces in different sizes and the smallest is actually small unlike with Koss’s Plug. It fits in my unnaturally small ear (or ear canal) very nicely. Now I only need to get a 1 Gb or 2 Gb memory card to get some music on the road. Before that I can always listen to the radio.

I also ordered my preferred Robbie ringtone (I’m not going to say what it is because I don’t want to hear it from any other phone than Mine! ) so I’d say this phone is all set.

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Screenshot application: Screenshot for Symbian OS (S60)

Some nice links
Nokia Nseries
S60 Blogs
S60 Tips

All S60/Nokia website tips are welcomed