To all my phony friends

I'd been thinking about replacing my crap phone with a less crap phone for a bit. This weekend I accidentally slammed it in a car door, wrecking the display so now I have little choice but to do so.

So.. I'd not mind some recommendations for a new phone as I've made every attempt to know nothing about the wretched things. Still, I like the idea of a combined PDA so here's a set of features and limitations I'd would like/have. If you know of anything that fits, I'd appreciate the input.

Limitations:

• Network we're using is Sprint.

Desires:

• I like the general UI design of the iPhone; touchscreen, no buttons.
• Data space for music would be nice.
• Being able to write on it as though it were a notepad like an Apple Newton would be nice.
• Ability to use as modem for Macbook (nice but not necessary)
  
• GPS (nice but not necessary)
• Access to mindless flash games (probably a negative but I kind of want it)
• Web access (nice but I probably won't use because I'm a skinflint at heart)
• Play video (nice but not necessary)
• Photos and an easy/cheap way to get them off the phone.
• gCal or iCal access (preferred) or some other method of setting multiple alarms and a datebook
• Personal wiki, note system, or a toolkit for building apps for the phone.
• Developer's kit (nice but not necessary)
• IM and/or IRC access (nice but not necessary
• Some kind of drawing app (wishful thinking)
• Voice recorder (local to phone, not stored remotely)
• Reasonably friendly file management system (more wishful thinking)
• Access to phone's data from Mac. (Yet more wishful thinking)
• Bluetooth pairing with a chorded keyboard and/or ability to plug in external keyboard and display(now I'm just being silly)

Oh, and if it could cost less than a zillion dollars, that'd be nice too. :P

Also, if there are any other features I haven't thought of that are nice to haves, suggest them. It's probably past time for me to stop shunning a technology that I haven't worked with much since they were a large black box called a Car-Fone which had a regular telephone handset attached to it. ^_^

Motorcycle Diaries

Last night, while winding down from the convention, Stacey and I watched The Motorcycle Diaries, a film about Ernesto Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado traveling across South America by motorcycle. It's a good film, well worth watching. Put a few things to ponder into my head.

I'm sort of wondering about the transformative nature of certain types of travel. I don't mean hopping in a car with your family and road-tripping to DisneyLand but rather the type of journey where you don't have a lot of money, stay at hostels, hitch-hike, talk to people in little towns that barely show on the map, to be a true wanderer for a while.

I had some degree of this in my life. When we were doing rendezvous when I was a child, we traveled slow from remote place to remote place, staying in camps and on reservations, cooking big pots of food and sharing them with people, sitting at campfires, making friends singing and playing music and telling stories. These places were an important part of my life. I feel like I got something from them that was well beyond the experience I got simply living in a rural/suburban area.

I've gotten the feeling before that most conservatives are prattish momma's boys who've lead a sheltered and insular life. Particularly the ones I've run into online. On the other hand, most of the liberal people I know seem to be ones who have traveled, spent time with others, been poor, been wanderers, and I've seen dozens of stories like that of Guevara where a journey like this has changed someone and made them awake to the world. Makes me wonder... Is my vision skewed or does wandering change people?

An article I shouldn't read

Okay, I had to abort after only one page of this 5-page article.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article6992299.ece

Perhaps it is meant as humor or sarcasm or something but I confess it FAR too closely matches my view of men and heterosexual relationships and it just fills me with the kind of contempt for humanity that makes me want to find some way to get a rocket to the asteroid belt so I can shift a few massive rocks to send them crashing down on the Earth in hopes of obliterating mankind.

If this is really truly what you people are like, please do the entire planet a favor and either evolve or die out. I really have a low tolerance for such pathetic simian behavior.

If this article honestly is not you, congrats and thank you. This article has literally upset my stomach. :/