So after writing yesterday about QR codes, I went to the letter box (I almost typed litter box then but had backspaced before I realised how apt it sounded) and got the junk mail. Among the specials on minced beef, cordless drills and label makers, there was a Tel$tra flyer, spruiking their (or should I say “their”) very own Telstra Mobile Code innovation. I watched the short video on their qrious site today. And the implication is quite clear that this is a Tel$tra product; at least, it’s not expressly mentioned that it’s a generic, free tool that anyone can use. It’s also implied that you would need a 3G phone to use the system, which is not quite correct. If you want to link to a web page, then yes, you’d need a web-capable handset, but the SMS feature should work on non-3G phones. Of course, T$ra are linking it to their own data services, trying to get us all hooked on phone internet (which I kind of already am, but not because they claim to have invented it, I’m not even one of their customers. Suffice to say, I don’t use any web content on my phone that was supplied by my carrier: it’s kind of lame and/or too expensive)
But in addition to the link I posted yesterday to get the QR reader, I’ve been looking at QR generators today and this is the best one I’ve found so far. Reason being, it can create a vCard that can be saved straight to your phone’s contacts. At least, it can save it straight to my phone’s contact list. You may have other results. I use a SE K800i, btw.
The one bug I’ve noticed is that (on my phone) it gets the email address and phone number mixed up. My work around is to mix them up also, but again, not having tested it on other phones, this may turn out not to be the best one. I can’t see how it would be the phone’s fault though, it would have to be the software, surely. [...thinking music...] yeah, the software for sure.
If anyone gives it a go on a different phone, let me know how you get on.
I discovered the very useful QR codes the other day. They’re a bit like barcodes, indeed they’re a type of bar code, only not so bar-like as actual bar codes, which seem to be composed solely of bars. These are two-dimensional bar codes, whereas barcode barcodes are only one-dimensional (when you think about it).
The useful thing about them, as far as I’m concerned, is that there are readers available that you can run from your mobile phone. I never saw one of these for the one-dimensional barcodes. It would have been useful. But now these two-dimensional barcodes have a reader that works with your phone’s camera, so that, to me at least, is useful.
I guess also, they’re of limited functionality. But they’re still in the early adopter phase, in this country at least, so I’m prepared to think of them as very cool, until they’re ubiquitous, at which point they’ll become banal and old.
If you want to know what this says and have a popular brand of phone camera, there’s a reader here.
If nothing else, it’s fun for an hour, and would make for a cool avatar if you hate putting pictures of yourself in avatars.
I just found out what rickrolling is.
Fuck, that’s funny.
The red internet light came on, I think it was Tuesday night. It happens from time to time but usually fixes itself up after a few minutes. Like a watched pot though, you have to go into another room for a few mintues before you can come back and find the green light back on.
We got by without it last night. I had House to watch on TV and there were forms to fill out for Little Miss L’s school. It was probably a good thing as it meant C couldn’t check her work email, forcing her to think about something else for one night. She told me today though, “I have stuff I need to do tonight. Fix the internet as soon as you get home”.
When I got home tonight and there were four green lights but one red one: the one you don’t want to be red if you want to link to the outside world without having to dial numbers (soooo 20th century). I tried the usual methods: turned off the router for a few minutes… reboot… red light again; unplugged the network cables… reboot… red again.
So the next thing to do was ring the ISP. I got through the initial phone menu, selected the appropriate options, then made a cup of tea and some toast while the scratchy hold music struggled out of the 1cm speaker of the phone. I watched the lights reset themselves over and over while I was on hold: one green, two green, three green, red!
I was caught a bit off guard when a real voice came on the other end saying “Hello, this is Hassan, how may I help you?” and as I was saying the words “My internet connection is down”, bugger me if the red light didn’t turn green, blink a couple of times, then settle into a nice solid all-systems-go kind of glow.
I gave Hassan my customer number as I plugged network cables back in and hit the home button on the browser, then told him what had happened and thanked him for a job well done as the timer on the phone clicked over to 30 minutes.
For the discerning among you who know that raster images aren’t Bob Marley posters:
VectorMagic | The Online Tool for Precision Bitmap to Vector Conversion
It’s quite good. And it’s free. Gotta love the internet.
Job search is in full swing. Though I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to procrastination. I just tried to log in to my preferred careers/jobs web site only to find they’re down for maintenance for 30 minutes. Graciously though, they put up a page telling you this, and give you a game of Pacman to keep you occupied while you wait. I’m happy to say I made it to level three, which I think is some kind of record for me. It’s not that I suck at games, just never got into Pacman. I was more a Grand Prix II or Moon Patrol kind of guy (and was the Moon Patrol music not the coolest arcade game music ever?).
But how about that? Free Pacman. I wonder what people would have said in the early 80s if you’d told them that one day, they wouldn’t have to pay 20c a game, you wouldn’t have to buy your own Pacman cartridge (for your Commodore 64, obv), it’d just be there, for free, when you did the equivalent of making a phone call.
I suppose that’s how radio seemed to people who used to have to go to the opera or local music hall to hear anything.
One of the first things I did when Gmail was released to bloggers, was to sign up my kids. Sure, they can’t read yet but I figure one day they’ll probably learn and will want to email their friends. So instead of them having usernames like littlemissl8382938576298 and little.miss.m09847au, I thought I’d get in early and stake a claim to their names while the going was good.
I have a Gmail address which is firstname.lastname@ and I have an evil twin: someone with the same name as me who obviously thought they got dibs on the good email address, when they didn’t. I get library notices when his books are about to be overdue. Last week I even logged on and renewed his travel guide to Spain (me… sorry, he and some friends are going on holiday to Ibiza. In fact, we may even be there now). I’d hate to have to pay the late fee.
Now it turns out one of the girls has an evil twin also. I had an email for her a few weeks ago from a friend of hers, talking about moving out of home and starting college. She’s from the US, and I figure must be 18 or so and starting uni in September. When I got this email, from Stephanie, her friend, I wrote back and let her know she had the wrong address. Now an email has come from her dad to her and her brother. It’s one of those “you’ve made your mother and I so proud” letters. We’ve all had those.
I’m a little concerned though that this other father of little miss L, who is so proud and making such an effort to connect with his little girl, doesn’t know her email address.
Of greater concern is the fact that he wrote the email in Comic Sans. What is it with Dads?
