So, I’ve had this WordPress app on my HTC Hero for a while but never used it until now. Now being defined as a prolonged moment of brain ache and lack of productivity. Also readable as I’ll try anything to kickstart my thoughts again and get back to work.

The first thing that I notice while using this app is that having upgraded my Hero to Froyo (Android 2.2) yesterday, my keyboard is lightening fast. I always thought that the keyboard on the Hero was a little laggy but now it’s really good and I’m using it in portriat mode and rarely hitting a typo.

Anyway, back to WordPress mobile blogging. So, I should really be the last person trying this out given my lack of current blog postings but hey, what the heck? The app seems quite nice, easy to use and uncluttered. I like that. I never use much text formatting in my posts but the buttons are there for that too and work fine.

Perhaps this will lend me to a new mode of downtime blogging from my phone? I could see it sparking interest in me for things that venture beyond the limit of Twitter’s payload and deserve more than the scowl of Facebook’s angry army of friends.

Nice work WordPress people.

I’ve been guilty of the moniker “tech fanboy” for most of my adult life and a greater part of my childhood. In the last decade I could even have proudly worn the title of “Mac fanboy”. However, there comes a time when, in spite of my own desire for technology, I have to draw a line.

Not my pad!

The iPad is a truly remarkable device – thank you to Paul Watson for letting me have a quick experience of his – I could see it replacing about 90% of my home online requirements and bizarrely, I could see it encouraging me to read more books (don’t ask). It would consume less power than my iMac, I could wander freely with it on WiFi, it’s form factor is amazing. So why doesn’t my phone have a text message with a code similar to W83xxxxxx giving me a warm fuzzy feeling? By all accounts I should be considerably out of pocket yet strutting about like a turkey on December 26th.

The reasons are many:

1. It costs a whopping €499 for the basic model with WiFi only and a miserly 16GB of storage.
2. An update to the 64GB model would cost me €699 and if I wanted 3G on top of that it would be €799.
3. For the love of <insert your deity here> can somebody explain why it doesn’t have a USB port or SD card slot?
4. Mobile data is still backward. I already have home broadband and a data plan for my smart phone, I don’t want yet another contract for data on the move. It’s not Apple’s fault that this is the case but we need operators to start issuing SIM-1 SIM-2, SIM-x cards under the one download limit plan rather than 2/3 contracts for different SIMs before this becomes a feasible option in my book.
5. Apple are just getting tighter than a duck’s arse under water by not shipping this premium product with a dock and that annoys me. Apple always cost that little bit more but you could always appreciate where the extra money went, that seems to be slipping now.
6. The website quotes operating temperatures of 0ºC to 35ºC and non-operating temperatures of -20ºC to 45ºC. So, when exactly does it work? Okay that’s just a semantic issue with the blurb but it annoys me – Apple isn’t supposed to annoy me, it’s supposed to be perfect and enrich my life, giving me a toothy smile.
7. It’ll cost me 2¢ should I wish Apple to ship me a free micro-SIM from an operator of my choice. WTF?
8. The Steve will invariably announce a brand new one in 3/4 months with built-in camera (and everything else that’s on the iPhone 4) at a slightly increased price and a wave of depression would sweep over me if I had an original device.
9. I’ll show you 9!!
10. Aaaarrrgggghhhhhh!

So, there you have it. The iPad; I lust for its pleasing design and function but there are just too many things about it that cause me inner turmoil and anger. I’ve never had an Apple product do that before – even the iPhone, if I’m honest, reserves a certain space in my techie heart despite the fact that I will never buy one. The way I feel about the iPad right now, I couldn’t even accept one as a gift because there are too many fundamental things wrong to ignore by allowing the exchange a very large quantity of hard earned cash for penny pinching production and an unsuitable market environment.

Perhaps if the price point dropped to a sensible €349 and operators got their game together and offered a multi-SIM plan with one limit but several devices then, maybe then, I could see myself dropping some more cash in Apple’s direction.

Regular readers (ahem, cough) will no doubt notice that my rate of updates has been somewhat stifled in recent times; I don’t blog like I used to anymore.

So, what’s happened? Has everything in the world stopped or have I just stopped leading a life that gives rise to interest and the need to talk about it? Well, the answer is neither really. Like most Irish bloggers who started out in the early days, I too got a little carried away with the 3 P’s of the whole social media triangle: Perusing, Posting, Peering. In that time I learned of some great folk whom I can occasionally drop a line or whom I have at least vaguely introduced myself to such that if I add them on Facebook or Twitter they’ll generally reciprocate and that’s nice because it’s a link to a learned ear whom I can ask questions of or get feedback from.

However, in learning of these folk I also became painfully aware that a journalist, I am not, nor do I have a unique angle or skill to convey material that isn’t better done elsewhere. As such, in recent months (perhaps the last year) my blog has been retired to a personal rant zone, where I can feel free to get things off my chest and with the hope of extracting some sanity check feedback from the masses. I am still a blogger (badge of honour says est. 2001) but blogging my thoughts on a regular basis would only clog up the interweb with meaningless garble that I can simply link to in del.icio.us, snip to Posterous, relay on Twitter or humourously share on Facebook. Apart from the occasional flatulence of niggling societal imbalance, political angst, or corporate discontent the world does not need my contributions and as such I don’t have the audacity nor arrogance to believe that it does.

Blogging a Dead Horse?

The whole experience has been a very worthwhile journey and occasionally I get the odd question popping in about something I wrote years previous, giving me a warm fuzzy feeling that somehow I helped somebody with a small tech problem or provided an angle of required thought – for that alone it is worth 1 post per month or thereabouts but any more would be delusional.

These days I’m more vocal within the Twittersphere, a world whose frontend applications provide a mesmerising view of constant news streams from micro-bloggers and celebrities alike, sometimes useful, sometimes crazy, always entertaining and beyond all else, as addictive and impulsive as licking sugar from donut consuming lips.

Not that I presume you are but should you be missing me or my idle banter, feel free to follow me over on Twitter/jbwan perhaps I’ll say something that will make you smile or at least get you angry enough to tweet back. If you track me down on Facebook and I don’t respond to your add then please don’t take offence. I generally stick to adding folk whom I have at least met, know well through virtual mediums or whom are co-workers of some temporal existence.

For some time now, anyone with their ears open will have heard of the “lock out” problem that is supposedly attributed to a 2G/3G handover issue on Meteor Ireland’s network for all users of the HTC Hero. Now when Meteor became the first Irish operator to launch an Android device last year (i.e. the Hero) they attracted a great deal of interest, myself included. I gave up all my beliefs about not paying monthly subscriptions, ditched my O2 prepay account and signed up for an 18 month contract. Since then there has been an array of issues all attributable to the Meteor network such as port blocking preventing some applications from running as advertised and the simply unbearable “lock out” issue.

Locked out on Android 2.1

The “lock out” issue can affect users of the handset anywhere up to 10 times a day on average. Basically what happens is that the phone drops signal and will not, no matter how long left alone, reconnect to the network. The only way of doing so is to reboot the phone or the faster route is to enter flight mode and then exit flight mode to re-register with the network. I have had friends verify that this is not an issue on other networks, trawling the web seems to throw up nothing in other countries but the Meteor forum is burning with rage about this issue. Some users are apparently being told that the problem will be fixed when the Hero is upgraded to Android 2.1 however, I can unequivocally say that this is not the case as I have been testing for a while now with a “rooted” Hero, running Android 2.1 and the latest radio firmware and I still experience the problem. For example, yesterday I had to cycle flight mode on my phone 6 times.

Normal people don’t check their phone every 5 minutes to see if they have a signal and as such this issue means that so many people are potentially going for the majority of the day without a signal on their Hero; paying for a service that they are not receiving. I can only imagine that this is going to turn ugly for Meteor and will no doubt be a PR disaster as currently, at least in my correspondence and the anecdotal sources on the Meteor forum, the company is not doing anything to appease the affected users and customer care agents are giving wrong information about Android updates solving the problem.

Here’s a video I made this morning of the “lock out” symptom and temporary solution of flight mode cycling.

“When integration is actually exclusion despite what the letter of the law says.”

Towards the end of 2009 I published the first of a planned series of articles on the tide of scumbag culture that is sweeping over the country. Detailing the attitude of many who are branded as “disadvantaged” and “minorities” but whom through my, and many others, personal experience do not constitute a minority of their own, self-imposed distinction from the rest of the populous. We are all equal in this world – it is only those who seek special treatment because of perceived circumstance or wrongful use of social guilt, who seek to twist the system and create inequality, who are in any way thinking of themselves as different.

No doubt anyone who has their ears open will be aware of social planning strategies that are operated by local authorities throughout Ireland. These strategies comprise everything from allocating individual houses in private estates, to demanding a percentage of new housing estates for “social and affordable” housing, to building one-off small developments from tax payers money to house “minorities” who need somewhere to park their Mercedes M-class jeeps.

Social planning strategies vary between counties in Ireland but because I live in Waterford I will simply, without opinion, and factually outline the reality of the social planning strategy and its resultant impact on Waterford City. The one commonality however, across all counties, is what is known as “social inclusion”. A term devised by somebody who was obviously so ridden with social guilt that they wanted to change everywhere besides their own back yard to make up for it.

Waterford City centre largely comprises long-term residents in old town houses, coupled with a few new apartment developments. There is little exception to this norm. On the outskirts of the city lie the old and the new housing estates – some of which where old style council houses in a time before private developers ruled the earth and others are council estates comprising a large proportion of “housed” families, our “disadvantaged” masses, a blend of people distinguished in society by a criminal record and/or a complete lack of respect for the world around them and the real minority who bear suffering at the hands of their “social inclusion”.

Every county has its “rough” areas, the proverbial no go zones. Limerick has Moyross, Dublin has too many to name borne of the same social planning disasters, although you’ll do well to find social inclusion in Foxrock. So, the question is really this: With so much activity and resource dedicated towards social inclusion strategies and helping to integrate minorities into various areas of each county, how come every city in Ireland has the exact same problems with a critical mass of problem people all living in the same area coupled with a few decent folk thrown in like a star on a dead Christmas tree? When does social inclusion actually turn into social exclusion?

Let us examine the situation in Waterford. Waterford City had a number of established council estates that gave residence to a large number of problem families – there’s nothing peculiar to Waterford in this respect, all cities do the same, that’s just life. These estates were on the outskirts of the city and provided decent quality accommodation for anybody “housed” there at the tax payers’ expense. Within the last 20 years however and specifically within the last 10, more and more “social inclusion” sites have been developed in the city and its outskirts. The city now has 3 purpose built “halting” sites for members of the travelling community – these comprise very high quality residences of significant size with privacy and were delivered at a huge cost to the tax payer. These sites are positioned almost equidistant from each other. In addition, two housing estates were developed by the council for the purposes of housing families and from my unfortunate personal experience they appear to house a disproportionate number of problem families and people who really do deserve the term scumbag for their respect for others, attitude towards the community and complete ungracious sense of entitlement for the benefits that they have been given free of charge.

So what? That’s every city isn’t it? Sure, it is. However, you haven’t seen the map of this development yet. You haven’t seen the complete lack of “inclusion” in this inclusion exercise. Below is a map of Waterford City, I have left the scale key to illustrate the failings of the strategy employed. The red dots are council estates with both historical, continuing, and verifiable problems caused by more than a minority of the “housed” residents. The blue dots are dedicated, purpose built halting sites, developed by Waterford City council for members of the travelling community (these members were supposedly vetted and deemed most suitable for inclusion and the award of housing).

Map of housing sites

In the map above we can clearly see a ring around the outside of the city centre with a specific concentration of sites in one small geographic area, less than 2km in radius. Interestingly, one of the largest population belts in Waterford city lies outside of this yellow zone, the area known as the Newtown/Dunmore Rd stretch – not much social inclusion going on there despite the concentration of people whom could no doubt accommodate it. The vast majority of the sites shown have also been named in on-going drug programmes to help “clean up” issues. With some of the sites shown, stretching more than a kilometre in length and a practice of social inclusion in play, why is it that this picture shows a critical mass of housing sites in one specific area, separated from the larger population zones, and all of the sites shown are removed from the central population?

In the last 10 years I sadly bought a house near this critical mass, sadly not knowing the extent of the problem which seems to go completely unreported. I have since sold that house because I no longer wanted the danger of owning an asset in that area. It came as a great surprise to me that any time I wrote or contacted the council about problems in the area, they seemed oblivious to any issues at all. I’m not talking about noisy neighbours here, I’m talking about gangs of aggressive youths roaming the streets, intimidating pedestrians and motorists, obvious drug dealing in certain areas, and a myriad of other problems. After I bought my house I learned that an area with an existing critical mass of council housing and problems was to receive a further addition by way of a halting site. A halting site that had originally been planned for another location but somehow moved to be closer to existing council developments. Since that site was developed, Waterford witnessed the now nationally famous traveller feud that spilled out onto our streets, saw cars being crashed on our roads, and cost the taxpayer an unconscionable sum of money to police. My wife and I could hear gunshots only a few hundred yards from our doorstep, not from the halting site but within a nearby council estate. An area with no problems, seemingly, and no connection between the different housed locations?

I can think of no way to end this article other than to list a number of headlines that relate to serious problems in Waterford over the years. News items that have brought shame to our doorstep and huge distress for people living here. Not one of these headlines relates to something other than a problem council estate or purpose built halting site for vetted tenants. The wave of scumbag culture is sweeping over our fair land, social inclusion strategies are clearly not working because there is a significant amount of NIMBYism going on in terms of where social inclusion is placed, and the most unpalatable thing of all is that we still hear that we’re not doing enough despite providing acres upon acres of high quality, free accommodation. We still have social guilt thrown at us because we did something with our lives. Some of the best and most successful businessmen that I know, came from so-called disadvantaged areas but decided to do something with themselves rather than sit around waiting for handouts. It’s nothing to do with environment, it’s all about attitude.

2006 – Kilbarry Halting Site

2009 – stabbing death linked to Waterford traveller feud

2008 – Mutilated horses

1998 – Juvenile crime problems and drug use

1998 – Report on drug use in Waterford City (68% of all juvenile crime comes from a fraction of council housing locations pg. 14)

2008 – shots fired at house (November)

2008 – shots fired at house (December)

2007 – shots fired at halting site

2008 – shots fired at house (August)

2008 – shot fired at house (July)

Sadly not a definitive list; even sadder to say it all relates to social inclusion sites; even sadder again that while areas have problems these ones are making national news and dragging down the reputation of what should be the jewel in the crown of the Southeast and Ireland’s oldest city. We have done everything we can, no more funding, no more handouts, no more sympathy can be allowed. People have to make their own choices in life and the responsibility should not be shared by the rest of us. Decades of trying to do otherwise has just shown us that problems get worse and even more people suffer at the hands of an ever-growing “minority”.

The charm of the vulnerable, less fortunate, minority?

“Question my attitude? I’ll show you f**kin’ attitude!”

I was very fortunate to grow up in Ireland’s oldest city, Waterford, while even at times of recession and underdeveloped localities, kids had the resource of culture, a sense of pride in what was theirs, and a healthy respect for right and wrong. Now I’m not saying that kids didn’t fall off the tracks, of course they did but it was isolated incidents not a daily routine that turned into a reign of terror.

Today is a very different story. In ever-increasing numbers, young kids, young adults, and alarmingly their parents, are laying siege to our fair country. Anti-social behaviour is now a way of life, for which it is almost protected in local by-laws as a human right to invade and terrorise public spaces. Anyone who has not experienced anti-social behaviour or those who have witnessed it but never tried to tackle it, will find the next statement rather shocking: If you live in a private (whatever that means) housing estate that is being terrorised by gangs of ill-behaving teenagers (and sometimes younger) you are powerless to do anything to stop it…

The Garda response time is such that it is a physical impossibility that they arrive on time to catch the offenders in the act. If they do catch them and they are under 16 then they are simply dropped back home to Mammy and Daddy only to return an hour later, seeking revenge. If they are over 16, they are cautioned and told to move on – again the same problem ensues. If you can identify, provide video footage (since it is now legally, morally and socially questionable to take a photograph of a minor committing a crime because you are deemed to want that photo for immoral purposes), give written statements, and eventually turn up in court, then the best you can hope to achieve is the issuing of a JLO (Juvenile Liaison Officer – basically a visiting nanny) for anyone that has not previously been convicted of a crime or perhaps the ultimate goal of a slap on the wrists because by hell or high water you will not secure any other punishment! The number of ASBOs handed out since their introduction is almost countable on one hand, apart from that kids pretty much have to kill somebody before they are locked up. Oh the poor kids, the vulnerable, they must be protected! Of course if you do go to court and give evidence against (read harass a child who is crying for help if you are part of an action group) the child of a “bad” family, oh boy, you truly are on your own after that; not to mention what their bite-size accomplices will do.

We have spent so long identifying groups of people that social guilt forces us to describe as “less fortunate” or “minority” and nailing down legislation to protect them that we have forgotten to balance the legislation to protect the majority also. We now have laws that effectively ensure that any terrorising delinquent who is from a “less fortunate” or “minority” background will get away Scott free, while Paddy up the road gets 2 penalty points and a fine for doing 2kmh over the limit on a dual carriageway with no traffic. Hey, it’s the morally right thing to do, isn’t it? The law is the law and we must punish those who break the speed limit perhaps even put them off the road for repeated offences, but if you’re a member of a “minority” group or a youth from a “less fortunate” background, oh no, you can’t be banned then, the Equal Status Act and many other ridiculous pieces of biased legislation are your get out of jail free card (literally). So, just like every school kid knows the name of the Taoiseach, so too does this knowledge trickle down into the socially depraved ranks of delinquents and criminal undergrounds. Whether it’s casual vandalism or organised usage of un-prosecutable 11-year-olds to run drugs, we have laws that protect each and every one of them so that they can return tomorrow to do the same.

Attitudes change with age; we become less tolerant of our childish ways and a greater part of social conscious reflects that “boys will be boys” and the older we get, the more we forget our wayward childhood that caused anguish for our neighbours. Indeed it is possibly true in terms of our past interaction with our neighbours but what so many of these action groups and rights movements carelessly fail to recall, is that after running across our neighbour’s front garden we didn’t give their car a kick on the way out; after deciding to knock on somebody’s door and run away, the knock was not delivered through the heavy kick of a foot; anytime we were caught short on nature’s call it was when we were in the country with our parents and the nearest tree was the only option, we never unzipped and watered the neighbour’s plants like some dog marking its territory; I could go on but these meaningful differences would seemingly have no place in the debate of protecting the vulnerable.

We didn’t do these things because even though we may have been little terrors, we acknowledged that some things just weren’t done and weren’t right. Not for the age-old fear of getting a physical retribution from patre and matre but moreso because it just never entered our heads that you could urinate into somebody’s letterbox nor did it seem appealing that you could damage somebody’s car for fun – why would it? Somewhere along the line, attitude shifted, coupled with legislation and social mindset that provided enough freedom for “less fortunate” children (and indeed sometimes fortunate children who are still young enough to be immune to punishment) to roam free and test the system just short of murder. They passed on the way to the next rank below them and it propagated from there. Young adults they became and then parents themselves, taking with them the knowledge that life was just one big event without consequence – isn’t that lovely!

Where did it all go wrong? Through times of development and pseudo-boom many pockets of society developed extreme social guilt that others didn’t get up off their arses and make something of themselves – give rise to the term “less fortunate”. At the same time we somehow allowed ourselves to see criminality, trespassing, rape, public disorder, and illegal dumping as an ethnic way of life that must be protected. We then spent decades shouting this from the tallest soap boxes and instilling it in the minds of the community in addition to making those whom we patronised for their inaction and potential wastage, believe the social guilt that we spewed, that they were the “less fortunate” and “minority” groups whose way of life should never change and should be protected, why should they conform to laws that apply to everyone else? Yes, we’re “less fortunate”, our kids will roam the streets shouting and screaming so that everyone will identify them as “less fortunate” and excuse them from crime. We’ll cause social disruption, block roads, spill violence onto the streets because we are a “minority” that doesn’t have enough acknowledgement and it is our right to draw attention to ourselves so that people will understand us. The local councils will wash their hands of corrective action against “housed” problem families if they cause trouble in the community because it is their job to help the “less fortunate” and not punish them. The Gardaí will do their best to obey the letter of the law until such time that they can get a promotion from community policing and into a real position that allows them to enforce law equally, across the board. While the attitude of those who cause so many problems for society, stinks ever so badly, it is the social guilt of certain lobby groups and action groups who will never find themselves dealing with the results of their lobbying, whom have gotten us into this dire situation. They gave birth to the attitude of wrong is okay and insult thy neighbour but it’s not okay and it’s time that things changed.

No doubt there will be many who take exception to this outwardly suggestive prose, implicating the “less fortunate” as the main trouble makers and that “rich kids” are even more problematic – greetings to you who obviously have never dealt with these children outside of your social work and lobbying! Having suffered at the hands of anti-social behaviour for years now, with thousands of Euro worth of damage done to my property and living in fear most evenings to the extent that I have had to install CCTV around my home; I can tell you that 100% of my problems have been caused by “less fortunate” children from nearby housing estates. On quick survey of one estate, while working with the Gardaí to report damage done and anti-social behaviour on one occasion I noted that in a small council estate (about 40 homes) there lived a gang of over 20 children from different families, all of whom either engage in underage drinking, stone throwing at cars and houses, prior history with the Gardaí, and on, and on. There is no bad apple spoiling the barrel: The barrel is rotten, accept it. We do not need to nurture, condone, nor defend this indefensible way of life. We need to correct it and change the attitude of these social terrors so that decent people can get on with their lives. We created this attitude as a society who cared not and saw it fitting to develop unwarranted social guilt; we must now change it and correct the laws that give rise to such problems. Three strikes and you’re out – kids in detention and families evicted from housed locations for not dealing with the prior behaviour leading up to it. It’s the only way ahead, the only way to social harmony, and the only way to reduce petty crime figures.

HTC Hero

Yes for the last week or so, I’ve been conducting my own Louis Theroux style documentary, hence the title chosen for this blog posting.

They say that you should never meet your heroes; you’ll always be disappointed. Well, I’ve been living with my Hero for the last seven days and disappointed, I am not. Last Thursday I ventured to the Meteor store in Waterford City and threw caution to the wind. Readers whom I may have lost over recent months due to a lack of posts will remember my regular criticism of mobile madness, the iPhone culture, and something that I termed the Phone-omenon that was sweeping over our collected lands. Today I stand before those readers, a somewhat reformed prude, perhaps not a hypocrite but marginally bordering on technology whore.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a piece on “Living with iPhone“, a week-long journal on my experiences with the iPhone from pick-up to regular usage. It wasn’t my phone – just on loan for the purpose of evaluation. Despite many alluring design features and a joyful user interface there were enough things about the iPhone that made me not want one but I tired to like it. This time, it’s my Hero on the chopping block…

Day 1: Picked up my Hero from the Meteor store, switched my prepay O2 number of 10 years to a Meteor postpay plan of Eur 20 per month with an added Eur 5 data plan to cover the phone’s thirst for connectivity. First complaint, Meteor had not previously advertised that they would not sell this phone without a data plan (for obvious reasons) and as such it was misleading to suggest that the lowest price plan was Eur 20 per month but I got over that quickly enough. Porting my number from O2 to Meteor took about 2 hours – very nice. As soon as my old Nokia 6233 lost signal I powered up the Hero. Ah look at that, cute little robots dancing around on my screen; a bit like the Google equivalent of the Microsoft search puppy in Windows XP. Instruction manuals are not for intuitive devices so that piece of literature was quickly defenestrated in favour of a proper test. Flicking around through menus wasn’t too arduous and I quickly found what I was looking for; my social network account settings. Entered my Google details waited a little and a-la-kazam! All my contacts pulled down from GMail contacts, my calendar synched with Google Calendar and not a single copy to/from a SIM card required, and as such it will continue for as long as I have the Hero. Now that does impress me greatly, especially considering the hassle I went through to get my contacts on the iPhone. Then again if it wasn’t for the iPhone I may never have had imported all my phone contacts to Address Book and been able to import them to Google some time ago. A little browsing, window shopping in the Android Market, and setting up Twitter and Facebook – ooh! I can link Facebook accounts to my contacts too. Damn this thing is really winning me over. Where’s me Google fanboy t-shirt, I’m getting plastic surgery to look like the Android robot!

Day 2: Crikey it’s late! In retrospect a little silly on my behalf but rapidly came to the conclusion that the Hero, once powered off, does not behave like every Nokia I have ever owned. Setting an alarm will not wake the phone up, nor me – you piece of crap! Damn you! Damn you! No, no I’m sorry, forgive me my teflon coated Android. Oh well, just as well it wasn’t a work day. Powered on, still a reasonable amount of power left on the device. Now that was surprising considering I had put it through its paces for a long time yesterday with lots of connectivity burdens. Next challenge, trying to get the device to pair with the Bluetooth kit in my car. Didn’t go well initially. No matter what I tried the phone just wouldn’t discover nor pair with the car kit. After about an hour of playing around, unsuccessfully, I refused to believe that there was an incompatibility and looked for the workaround. I then thought that over the years I have had my Bluetooth kit there were a lot of devices paired with it, hmm. I decided to clear the memory of the unit and viola! First search, phone finds device and pairs. Happy as Larry again.

Day 3: Alarm went off this morning, woo-hoo! Unfortunately the battery was almost dead after the first snooze so it was time to charge. Can’t say that I was unimpressed with that considering how much use the phone had gotten in the last 2 days. It’s great that this device charges off a standard USB mini-B connector. There’s no end to leads, car chargers etc that I have lying around to charge the device at a moment’s notice. Pretty uneventful day though, didn’t get up to much apart from linking all my Facebook contacts to my phone contacts for those that existed in both worlds. Went to Eddie Rocket’s and discovered the joy of Facebooking while eating fast food – where have I been all this time! Was asked if the Hero told you of events/reminders from the calendar if you had turned it off at the time of scheduled notification or the battery had run dead. Quick test with a reminder and no, it doesn’t. Not sure if the iPhone does either?

Day 4: Lazy Sunday. Started playing around with the other apps and features of the Hero. Unlike the bad experience I had with the iPhone, I discovered that I could set differing volume levels for different alerts; it’s a simple thing but it keeps me happy. Woo-hoo! Downloaded a compass (and a marine compass) application for my phone. Never will I get lost again. Then I remembered, oh yeah, this yoke has GPS built-in, hadn’t tested that out yet. Sitting near the box window in my living room, turned on Google Maps. Alert tells me that I can expect location results accurate to 70m. Hmm, that might be a bit useless? Oh no, wait there I am, that’s a lot more accurate than 70m and I’m mostly indoors. Not bad, not bad at all. Haven’t gone looking for a navigation system yet but in time I will complete my full sellout.

Day 5: Off to work I go and the building that we affectionately call the Faraday cage due to the nature of its construction, steel girders and metal cladding. Surprisingly the signal was no worse than my O2 signal and perhaps even a little better. Keeping an eye on the device during the day, drifting away to a state of admiring its form factor. First thoughts, it’s not the darkly mysterious, alluring beauty of the iPhone but then again I’ve never been that big into fashion. What it is, is a very clean, pleasing and well constructed device. The only downside to its form factor would be the slot for the micro SD card being behind the easily removable back panel. However, considering my Nokia 6233 had issues with hot swapping cards and the iPhone has no card slot, I can live with this. Additionally I can take out the battery to replace it should the need ever arise – take that iPhone-e-o’s! Sitting on my desk for the day, trickle charging off the USB port of my MacBook Pro, partial harmony with the one exception of not being able to sync through iSync with my Address Book app. No biggy though as Google covers that for me over WiFi or 3G, syncing is now something that just happens and not something that I need to do. That’s nice.

Day 6: A colleague in work asks if I have tried the sky map feature on the phone that works with the compass, GPS, and accelerometers. Eh, no. Didn’t hear about it but am now very interested in finding it and giving it a whirl. Later that evening I located the application and downloaded it. Downloading and installing apps on the Hero is an absolute joy. I have yet to purchase an application and my phone isn’t hacked with some alternate app installer loaded onto it. I don’t have to enter account details to “purchase” free apps nor upgrade them. The Apple Store could really learn a thing or two from this. Anyway the star chart is known as Google Sky Map and it works brilliantly, the initial position from either GPS or network inference coupled with highly sensitive compass and accelerometer adjustments make use of the app, a very enjoyable experience. Naturally there wasn’t a star in the sky due to heavy cloud but I saw them all through the screen of my Hero. I may never have to look upon the harshness of the real world again!

Day 7: Oh yeah, I’ve got a 5MP camera now, must check that out. Funny how few things I have had need to photograph in recent times. Even with my SLR I hardly snap anything anymore. Anyway a few quick snaps, generally impressive. Haven’t downloaded them yet but at least on a phone they still have the look of phone cam photos. Nice array of photo settings though, white balances, autofocus, the lack of a zoom function by default is a bit upsetting but not disastrous, and the geo-tagging of photos is good. Oh yeah, the Irish vs France soccer match was on tonight. Suddenly the Facebook and Twitter apps make so much sense when away from home and the absolute need to express one’s utter rage at stupid, blind officials. Okay, must suppress rage towards cheating, razor flogging, footballers. A few text messages coming in tonight: Very few people have contacted me since I got my Hero. Is it the white phone image that I feared? Now branded a white power supremacist? Probably a little over-sensitive on that one. Anyway one of the features of the iPhone that I really liked was the threading of SMS and thankfully the Hero has it too. There’s nothing worse than not getting the context of a delayed reply and responding inappropriately. All is good – end day 7.

So, that’s a week of my life with my Hero. Has it changed my life dramatically and forever? Well, the simple answer is no. However, that’s not an anticlimax by any means. The fact that the Hero has not caused me to do a single thing other than input my Google sign-in details and just works, while providing me with loads of free apps and no store account sign-up is testimony to the realisation that holding out for this phone was definitely the best decision ever. The iPhone has been thrown in as comparison several times because I feel it is the only device worthy of direct comparison. It’s a stylish, popular device with oodles of features and support. However, it’s more expensive than the Hero, less upgradeable (in fact not upgradeable at all apart from the software), the price plans are more expensive with O2 for entry level usage (which in reality is a lot of people who want these devices), the iPhone never worked properly with my car kit and the lack of a standard USB charger makes powering up a little less likely in random locations or by using another device’s cable. So, the HTC Hero has not changed my life at all. Instead it has nestled itself into my way of living, it uses my old hardware, I can swap memory cards at will, my existing contacts manager syncs with it, my calendar is now only in one location and syncs continually in both directions. Has the Hero any faults? Sure, probably but show me a device that doesn’t; they don’t exist. For me the Hero is perfect for all my needs while giving me access to the much advocated smart phone world. I knock the iPhone a lot but perhaps it’s because it’s just not for me? I associate better with the underdog, I admire its understated marketing, the fact that it’s non-intrusive. For those reasons the Hero may well flop as a serious competitor to the iPhone, I hope it doesn’t because this phone deserves so much more accolade than the lack of press that it’s getting, and I’m not just putting my mouth where my money is.

Just a few of the things on my mind today:

1) People who walk into warzones with the ambition of refusing to let people fend for themselves and get into trouble, only to arrive home and brag about enjoying “Eggs Benedict” should never be received with open arms nor great applause for their false altruism and complete lack of a grasp on reality.

2) Mary Coughlan threatening the Irish consumers that shopping North of the border will cost jobs in the South. A few weeks back she and her cabinet were begging us to share everything with the EU now we can’t even drive a few miles North for massive cost savings without being held accountable for the way the country is run? Never mind the complete hypocrisy of the situation when the equivalent case is people in Waterford going on a shopping trip to Dublin, thereby costing jobs in Waterford, but somehow that’s ok? Get a f**king life Mary!

3) Wondering how we got to the situation whereby nobody has accountability when things are deliberately f**ked up in this country but yet the compensation culture always finds somebody accountable and punishable for trying to help or for doing their job.

4) Thinking that it’s entirely fitting and says a lot about the Irish future when the RTE correspondent on financial matters is called Rob Shortt.

5) Liking that Muse’s new song Uprising is making me think of a crossover between the original Dr. Who theme tune and Blondie’s “Call Me” and that’s exactly why I’ll buy it on iTunes.

6) I know David Byrne from Talking Heads had a solo career but why can’t I think of a single song title?

7) Thinking that evolution of communcations technology is a mostly useless activity that only causes more disruption and wasted finances that it creates benefit. We should be focussed on laying fibre to every door in Ireland and let the bandwidth provide the benefit instead of trying to lay shyte on top of it that nobody really cares about but only uses because the traditional channels are no longer open.

8 ) Wondering how much longer I can stand the constant irritation of reinvention.

9) Wondering how some people live life in a Scott free way, without any recourse for illegal activity and knowing fraud; protected by organisations that never find in favour of complainants nor admit failure despite being 100% wrong.

10) Thinking I’m going to need a bigger hard drive for the movie footage, 1h 20mins of HD is coming in at 40GB and there’s many, many more hours to be captured.