This morning, at 5:00 am New Zealand time, the main event of the Worldwide Developers Conference took place. This is when Steve Jobs, Apple CEO presents his Keynote. I set my alarm for 4:00 am so I could get up and have plenty of time to do stuff before the keynote, but I ended up sleeping through it and getting up at 5:10 am. At this point, I quickly hopped out of bed to get my laptop and I brought it into bed with me and loaded up many sites so I could see the live happenings, with pictures, of the keynote event.

The whole internet knew what the main parts of the keynote were going to be about, the 3G iPhone, and 3rd Party Applications, as well as the possibility of OS X 10.6. And they were pretty much spot on. It started with a little bit about the next version of OS X but then they moved on and talked a lot about 3rd party applications coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch. At this stage, I was happy I didn’t get up earlier or else I would have been waiting a long time for nothing. I didn’t miss much and there was not much to it. Some developers showed off their apps and games that will be coming to the App Store when it launches.

Towards the end of the keynote, this is when the moment everyone was waiting for came, the announcement of the 3G iPhone. It is basically the same as the original iPhone. The new features are the 3G capabilities, GPS, plastic backing, flushed headphone jack, thinner edges and better battery life. And the price $199 and $299 USD for the 8 and 16 GB versions. This is with a 2-year contract with AT&T. The phone is going to be launching in 22 countries, including Australia and New Zealand on July 11th.

I want this device a lot! And after I watch the video version of the keynote, I am going to want to 100 times more. Reading about it and looking as some pictures of it makes me excited but hearing about it from the Steve Jobs and seeing it on video is going to increase the hype for me by an infinite amount. The only issue I had, was that I was not prepared to get this phone on a contract with Vodafone, but later on in a press release, they announced that it would be available on prepaid and contract plans.

Now this phone is going to be quite expensive in New Zealand. To get an idea of the price it will cost, double the US price and add about 25% on to it, which would make the iPhone cost probably around $500 to $650 NZD, and I assume that is with a 2 year contract with Vodafone. The prepaid version, I would say yu are looking about about $1,000 and $1,200. That is way too much! I am not willing to pay anywhere near that amount, especially for a cellphone I will hardly use as a cellphone.

Since that is the case, I would be better off with an iPod Touch. Although I would really love an iPhone because I don’t carry around a cellphone and an iPod + iPhone would be the idea device and pocket companion for me. At this stage, I would be happy to obtain a original iPhone. I don’t particularly need the 3G and GPS features so a simple iPhone would still be more than ideal for me. I might think about looking for a second hand iPhone but I still like the idea of having the iPhone 3G. We will see how this plays out.

Despite yesterdays awful weather, both of the year 13 Geography classes went on a fieldtrip down to the beach. The purpose of this trip was to see human interference on coastal processes. This is important because the information we will collect and the things we will see will help us with an internal assessment later on in the term.

So anyway, when I woke up that morning, I could hear the rain hitting the roof of the house. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for better weather because I would rather stay warm and dry than cold and wet. I was sure they wouldn’t cancel the trip so I went up school prepared, with pens, paper, lunch and a camera. As I got to school, the rain had settled, although it looked like it could start again at anytime. Regardless, down at the beach was going to be wet and icky.

Everyone got on the bus, and we were off on the trip. Our first stop was down to the Dunedin City Council where we would meet with a lady that will talk about Coastal Dunedin. Oddly, she was Australian and had only been here doing the job for 5 weeks, although she did seem to have a fair bit of knowledge. She talked and there was a slideshow on the projector, but I couldn’t see that. I did have a look and touch of some plants that are down there.

After that, we started heading down to the beach area. But before we went there, we stopped outside McDonalds for people to get (and eat) lunch. It was only quarter to 11 so it was a very early lunch. Me and my mates decided to walk down the road a little bit and get Burger King instead. I got a BK Chicken Value Meal. It was really good, much much better than anything McDonalds could offer.

Then it was time to go down to the beach. We went down the St Clair beach and walked along it. We looked at the water and what the beach looked like. Everyone took heaps of pictures so we could look at them and refer to them later on. During this walk, the weather was starting to get worse. It didn’t pour down, but it was starting to drizzle. We then got back into the bus and drove further along the beach. At this point, it was raining. The teacher decided that we would stay in the bus and not go outside and do what was originally planned.

Driving around for 2 hours was interesting but started to get boring. Then we got back to school and I went home. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the weather was bad, but at least we didn’t have to go out in the rain and get cold and wet. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been collecting data of the beach such as measurements, calculations, sketches and pictures of the beach, so I suppose we got of that work. The trip wasn’t that bad because it meant a day of school. I can’t wait for the next Geography fieldtrip later on in the year, we’re going to Queenstown!

Geography Beach Fieldtrip Photographs are at http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/sets/72157605209611191/

Well it officially just ticked over to 2008 in New Zealand. I wish my regular reader a Happy New Year! For the rest of you, New Year, it would be happy if you were a regular, but you aren’t. Best of luck for 2008 and lets hope it brings joy to you and your friends.

I watch a lot of TV shows. Some TV shows are good, other are average, some are utter crap, but I’m not going to discuss the quality of television that is currently airing, that is for another post. I don’t watch my TV shows the way that typical people do. You would expect typical people to watch television shows, well on a television. Don’t sound obserd, does it? Well I am not like these people, I am not a typical person, for many reasons, but in particular for the way I obtain my television shows and watch them.

I don’t know whether or not it is true to assume, that more people are not watching television on their television. With computers being able to play video and being great to use as media centers, some people watch video content on there. Also with the huge growth of portable media players, there is another place that people are watching video content. People are watching video, not just on their television, but on other devices. I myself watch most, if not all, of my video content on my computer. But why do I watch it there? Why do I watch my TV shows on my computer, rather than on my television?

There are many reasons behind this. I do not live in America, the place where “all” television comes from. I do not get to see Heroes, Prison Break, or even Lost, when it gets released over there. No, if I want to see it on my television, I have to wait half a year to a year. But the thing is, I can access this stuff freely on the internet. It is so simple for me to just click a few buttons here and there and in no time, I have this television show, hot off the press, on my hard drive ready for me to watch.

Its not only the waiting times, it is also the quality. Over in America, they have had High Definition channels for quite some time now. Over here, nope, no HD channels till next year! So this pretty much means, by the time it does get over here, we get it in average standard definition. Back a couple of years ago, that would have been nothing we could do about it, but things have change, because there is something we can do about it. We can get these shows, in high resolution, 720p, off the internet. They may not want us to but we can do it! I don’t have to put up with second best because I can get better.

There are many other advantages that come with downloading your television shows. One of them is freedom. You aren’t being told when to watch it and where. You can watch it at anytime, as long as you have it with you. You can also watch it anywhere, your computer, your iPod, even your TV. You’ve had your HD television for a while now and you are watching standard definition on it? Well why don’t you play those 720p TV shows on it. Finally, something else you have to take advantage of the full capacity of your television.

There are many ways of obtaining these shows, some legal, and some questionable. If it is available in your country, or you have a way of accessing a store that has TV Show downloads, you can get the shows that way. The problem is, they generally either have ads, are overpriced, and if you save them to your hard drive, the most likely have some for of Digital Rights Management. Another way of obtaining them it through bittorrent, or any other p2p program, or other file sharing sites. This way you can always guarantee free, ad-less, DRM free, high quality video. This is alway the best video and far surpasses any other methods of obtaining television shows.

It is a game of cat and mouse. Networks want you to pay for their shows but they give us a crap deal. We can get it for free, and much better doing other means. If they want me to watch television shows on my television, I should get them the same time as the rest of the world, and in the same quality. I understand that there are issues and it is not necessarily the networks fault that they cannot provide this, but the least they could do is give it to me online to download, legally and without overpricing it and giving me worse quality than I can get illegally. If you wanna beat it, you have to do just as good, if not one up from what is already available to me. I am going to get my television shows in a way convenient to me by all means necessary.

Today is the 31st of October, also known as Halloween. To be honest, this is probably the one day I have no idea what on earth is going on. It seems like a day companies made up so they could sell halloween costumes and decorations and candy. Its silly how we fall for it and waste our money on these things. Its not like Easter or Christmas which have a greater purpose than Chocolate and Presents. I decided to get the Wikipedia to tell me a little about Halloween. This is what he said to me.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, Halloween festivals, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses” and viewing horror films. Halloween originated from the Pagan festival Samhain, celebrated among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is now celebrated in several parts of the western world, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom.

In my city, we don’t do any of that. I haven’t had any trick or treaters, festivals, bonfires or people dressed up in silly costumes.  They do however have some Halloween programming, especially when the day fits in with a weekend. I suppose it is mostly celebrated overseas, in the United States, and not in the small country of New Zealand. I would one day like to see what the fuss is all about and got play in the US on this day in the future.

Well I didn’t get to go trick or treating for candies, actually, I have never been trick or treating in my life. I ended up going virtual trick or treating on some random server with Ketsueki and cowy. I dressed up as a Little Ghost and they dressed up as a Big Scary Monster and a Psycho with Chainsaw. It was fun and we were doing it for an amazing one and a half hours. Now that s a long time to be doing it online, especially when you don’t get real candies. Ketty and Cowy were so nice and I thank them heaps for taking me e-trick-or-treating. I hope we do it again next year!

As I said two weeks ago, I pre-ordered my iPod. I did so a few days after the announcement of the new models. On that same day, there were pictures of people in the US with their new iPods. I knew I was going to have to wait a few days for them to get to my country.

Well now it has been exactly two weeks since I have pre-ordered it. Today I went to Dick Smith’s to see if my iPod was there yet since the expected date at the time was the 20th of September. That is a long time to wait for a product that is out everywhere but here. The status on the iPods is that there has been a delay in shipping. This now means I have to wait longer.

This could result in me getting it next month, possibly exactly 30 days after its release date. This would be okay if it was launched like the iPhone and I wasn’t expecting it but I think they someone should be putting a little bit more effort into getting these things to us here in little old New Zealand. Our neighbours in Aussie have probably had them for two weeks now.

But this is not new! We are always the last people to get products (with the exception of third world countries,) no matter what it is. Okay, that is easy to understand. It it can be a lot of work getting a piece of hardware released worldwide in a short time period. It is also just as hard to get software, such as video games released simultaneously worldwide with the PAL and NTSC and languages ect. ect. I have just counter-argued a point I was trying to get across.

Lets move onto to one last thing then, television shows. Why is it so hard for them to be released at the same time as New Zealand (and possibly Australia.) I can watch the show a few minutes after it has finished airing in the US so why do I have to wait a month, half a year, a whole year in some cases before I can watch a show broadcasted on TV in my country?

No wonder people pirate television shows, its because you make us wait so bloody long. Also you try and target piracy by using tactics like offering some shows cheap or making it easy to pay for stuff, but the big problem is, all this stuff is only available in the US. Why can;t you give anything to us international viewers.

It sucks that the world revolves around the US. Maybe I should just move there so I can get in with all the action and getting things on time and as soon as they come out. New Zealand is a great place but it is behind in a lot of things, some of that is our fault but sometimes some things are just out of our hands. It’s not our fault we have a tiny population and we are insignificant to the rest of the world.

Well today my parents pre-ordered my iPod from Dick Smith Electronics. They were one of the cheapest places with the 80GB Black Classic costing us $339 NZD. Now all I have to do is wait for the stock to arrive, which they predict to be the 20th of September. Lucky Me! Only problem I have now is keeping my nose clean or else my parent’s with hold it ransom.