A day without the internet

On a normal saturday night, I had an abnormal idea. Spending a day without internet access. At first the thought horrified me, but it sounded kinda fun. So I sent a SMS to deactivate the data connection on my phone and turned off my wireless router. Theoretically, I am now cut off from the internet.

8:16 am: Just got up and was shocked to see only two sms on my phone’s notification bar. No emails, no IMs, no new wave conversations. Going back to sleep.

10:34 am: NewsRob (my google reader client) doesn’t have any new feeds. Missing the luxury of reading news feeds while brushing my teeth.

10:39 am: Switched on my desktop. There are a couple of programs screaming about internet access already.

10:43 am: Started UT3 and realized my biggest loss here: no online play. Will play against the AI.
Update: The AI is dumb. Except at godlike. The bots go hunting for you like you have a million dollar bounty over your head.

11:25 am: My girlfriend called me. She was wondering if I was invisible on gTalk. I told her my story. She thinks I am trying to avoid her. Nuts. Why are girls so weird?

12:20 pm: I’m hungry! Tried a voice search for a local pizza joint. No results. Turns out Android uses the internet for almost everything. This is kinda bad.

1:03 pm: Facebook and Twitter still send sms updates to my phone. Looks like one can never be totally off the internet.

1:36 pm: Had awesome lunch with a serving of ice-cream to finish it off. Want to tweet about it. Or maybe a status update on Facebook. Oh I miss the internet so much!

1:58 pm: Playing Tekken Dark Resurrection on the PSP. Missing online play again.

2:45 pm: Wikipedia! It is such an indispensible tool. I miss the convenience of anytime access to Wikipedia. Reminder to self: donate to Wikipedia when i go online again.

4:10 pm: Movie time: Again, i miss the convenience of checking movie ratings and booking tickets thru my phone. And my girl is boring me to death. Wish I could escape to Mars. Do they have internet there?

8:20 pm: My iPod is also complaining about no internet access. So is my girl. She wants to check some stupid site.

9:26 pm: Just noticed that no internet means really good battery life for my phone. Almost 80% juice left. Otherwise it would have been screaming for charge by now.

10:10 pm: Will turn on the internet in about an hour. Why am i feeling so excited?

11:23 pm: Turned back the data connection on my phone and switched the router on. Feels so good!

11:28 pm: Information overload! Shitload of emails, IMs and other stuff. Over 200 news feeds. Phew.

12:02 am: Confession: It felt like the longest day of my life. I am sort of over dependent on the internet. Going to sleep now. Will post this later.

This is Tuesday. I forgot to post it. Shitloads of work. Posting now.

Posted from my iPod

Linux ported to iPhone! Absolute Nirvana!

Absolute nirvana. hit to read the official post

Ok, we had been waiting for it, and now finally, our favorite OS, Linux has been successfully ported on the iPhone. Devteam member planetbeing has done a incredibly phenomenal job of reverse engineering Apple’s hardware drivers and has successfully ported Linux on 1^st and 2^nd generation iPhones and 1^st generation iPod Touch. Though it’s a bit buggy as of now (read: no touch screen, wi-fi, audio and cell radio support), it’s definitely a first step in the direction of absolute nirvana on Apple’s darling device. The team is hard at work and even looks to port Android (yippee! Android) to iPhone. Thing just can’t be any better.

So if any of you guys want to check it out, hit this link, and if possible, lend a hand to this project. Even if you don’t know Linux or can’t code, just spread the word about it. Blog about it, digg it… try to bring this wonderful project into visibility.

Cheers for open source! Linux rocks! Even better on iPhone!

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Apple iPhone SDK: I’m (not) happy

Apple launched the iphone sdk on the 6th. And I, as an iPod touch owner, left me with mixed thoughts. Apple never fails to surprise me and this time it was no difference. The iPhone and iPod touch are already wonderful devices and the upcoming 2.0 firmware will make them even more capable and powerful.

The iPhone will truly trash the competition as push E-mail and Calendars, Activesync and Exchange Support is coming to iPhone. It had already smashed the combined sales of windows mobile devices + Motorola in the 4Q of the last year, and now I can safely tell that RIM has got a reason to worry. It is going to be a true enterprise level device. And there are going to be multi touch games and applications. All this is going to make the iPhone a really cool gadget.

Though the feature additions are impressive on the iPhone front, all the iPod owners can do is curse Apple. Reason: you will have to spend more of your hard earned cash to get the installer application installed on your iPod touch. And guess what excuse apple says for that: “accounting reasons”. That sounds hilarious to me. And the iTunes store is not yet available for my country. It means that I will not be able to get third party applications on my iPod touch until apple starts the iTunes store service for my country (the iTunes app store is going to the exclusive place to get the apps – DAMN!).

So what I am going to do is to continue using my jailbroken iPod touch. At least I won’t have wait till June (when the 2.0 firmware arrives) and the best part: all the apps via installer.app are free of charge.

Somebody has fairly said “sometimes the best things in life are free”.

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