Frame of my Mind

So, on my third time (lucky) trying to upgrade my phone, I succeeded. The LG Viewty Smart GC900 is all mine. First impressions of the iPhone competitor – it’s nice. Sleek and thin (albeit wide) the lack of buttons is somewhat daunting. I have to say, the first time I tried to use the touch screen I completely failed. Approximately ten text messages, some internet browsing and a few phonecalls later I seem to have gotten the hang of it.

Things I like about this phone:

• The fact it provides me with a compact camera that produces somewhere close to alright images.
• I can access my emails and RSS feeds with it, so I no longer have to religiously carry around my now broken laptop.
• It has a hole to fit my charms on it. The strawberry was a present from a friend, and the fox and train I got from Japan (Fushimi Inari shrine and Hakone), in case you were wondering.
• It has a clock widget that shows multiple timezones, and some other funky bits and bobs that I wouldn’t expect from a phone.
• It can store so many details for each contact that you will never forget a birthday or address ever again.
• It works, and doesn’t have some of the faults that my old phone, the Sony Ericsson k850i, had. (Bad touch screen, bad battery, bad camera lens cover.)

Things that I don’t like about this phone:

• You can’t show downloaded applications on the homescreen, you have to go to the applications subsection.
• The default browser is crud. However, installing Opera Mini went smoothly.
• There is no support for Japanese. However, there is support for various European languages including Greek and Russian.
• It cuts off my best really super fucking cool ring-tone ever that you should definitely check out at “I’ll let it ring foreve-” before diversion to answerphone.
• It doesn’t support M2 memory cards, so I still can’t access the videos I captured in Japan that were stored on my old phone when it died (before we got home).

Overall, I am happy with my purchase, but only time will tell how good this phone really is. After all, the Sony Ericsson broke mysteriously half way through my old contract. In other news…

We Got A Flat

It’s located in Plaistow, East London. Yes, one of the most deprived areas in London (but what areas besides Kensington and Chelsea aren’t deprived?) but we got a total bargain at £866 a month for a really nice, large one bedroom apartment on the first floor of a ~four-year-old block overlooking a park. Hopefully a lot of money will be going into the local community over the next few years because of the 2012 Olympics – they’ll be right on our doorstep in Stratford, only two miles north! This will probably be our nearest shopping hub, too.

There are a few ideals I’ve had to sacrifice for this flat, however. Primarily, we don’t have a balcony, a river view (we were hoping for dockside apartments, but since Justin didn’t get work we can’t afford £1,000pcm), our own furniture or a gas stove. The biggest hit is that the landlord wasn’t willing to take out the furniture so we’ve had to discard Justin’s sofa, and we can’t buy ourselves a new bed. We’re still going to take our bookcases, desk and revamped bedside cabinet and chest of drawers. We’ll fit them in somehow. It does mean that I can spend the bed money on kitchen equipment instead, though. Here I come new pots and pans.

Work has been going great, I’ve had some fun the past couple of weeks creating forum software. A very steep learning curve what with the new programming framework and templating language I’ve had to teach myself (no documentation, can you believe it?!).