DeeKnow’s Grotto

For a good number of years now I’ve held off from buying myself a mobile phone. This has infuriated my friends and family, been the cause of many an argument with my wife, and apparently been generally disruptive to other peoples lives, without actually having a significant impact on my own.

Its not that I’m afraid of technology, I love the stuff. I wasn’t particularly worried about the effects of radiation, you’ve gotta die of something right? Its also not that I don’t like to be contacted or am incapable of communicating, there are public phones for that. The main reason why I’ve held off is I’ve been waiting for the convergence of a bunch of devices: phone, camera, personal organiser, ebook reader, multimedia player, WiFi internet access and general computing

For many years I was a loyal devotee to the Palm pilot platform, I’ve owned a bunch of them and was pretty happy with what they provided. What pissed me off about them eventually was their apparent lack of commitment to ship a decent camera or WiFi connectivity.

So it was I could hardly contain myself when Nokia released the N95 last year. Its got it all. The things I mentioned above, plus an inbuilt GPS, and an accelerometer (essential stuff obviously). The call quality is good even tho I spend most of my time TXT-ing coz I’m on prepaid (one of the conditions the domestic accountant put on the the purchase). The camera is awesome (tho a little slow to fire up), and the phone runs the Symbian operating system which means I can tinker and add, customise or create add-ons to my hearts content. Bloody awesome machine.

There’s only one thing that upsets me about buying the phone. I always used to beam with pride when people reacted to me not owning a mobile, I loved the jaw-dropped look of confusion on their pathetic faces, it gave me a sense of self-reliance and independence to not need to own a mobile, and I honestly began to think lately that perhaps I really was the last person in NZ to own a mobile. I mean even my Father has one, not that he actually knows how to answer the thing.

Anyway, life goes on, I’ll just have to think of some other thing to annoy or upset people, it wont be difficult to think of something.