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Okay. So some of you will know that I'm a bit (?) cynical of the iPhone. This is partly because it seems like yet another flashy new piece of largely closed, proprietary technology with lots of over-exaggerated hype. I've always been cynical of a lot of Apple stuff in general because of the huge number of people that see Apple as gods who can do no wrong. In truth, I think my cynicism towards the iPhone is mostly due to the fact that it has a touch screen which I can't use. Yeah, yeah, I know - I'm a sore loser. :) Anyway, despite my cynicism, even *I* was wowed reading this article about an iPhone application called Ocarina. From the article:
Once you install and open this program, your iPhone's screen displays four colored circles of different sizes. These are the "holes" that you cover with your fingers, as you would the holes on a flute. Then you blow into the microphone hole at the bottom of the iPhone, and presto: the haunting, expressive, beautiful sound of a wind instrument comes from the iPhone speaker.
Different combinations of fingers on those four "holes" produce the different notes of the scale. (You can change the key in Preferences--no doubt a first on a cellphone.) Tilting the phone up or down controls the vibrato.
Now *that* is pretty damned cool. I haven't actually played with it myself, but I'm sure it could keep me amused for a while... assuming I could figure out where to put my fingers. :)
I slept terribly last night. How unusual. Anyway, I felt pretty awful and as a result, the following conversation ensued between Jen and I:
Jamie: "<sighs heavily> I feel like a dried out turd."
Jen: "Well I'm sorry, but we only have toast."
It made my morning seem so much more bearable. :)
I bought some new 1000 mg vitamin C tablets yesterday and discovered, much to my surprise, that they taste disturbingly like fruit tingles! I find this disturbing because a) I like fruit tingles, which therefore means I like the taste of these tablets; b) I could probably quite happily eat more of them; and c) my taste buds have to be totally demented to find a similarity between vitamin C tablets and fruit tingles. Who would have thought that tablets of any kind could taste even half decent?
update: My brother informed me that they even look like fruit tingles minus the dimple in the centre. Now that I can actually taste a bit more, I can detect more of a slightly bitter aftertaste, but they still taste rather like fruit tingles.
A blind man assaulted a child on a Brisbane bus just before 9 this morning.
James Teh, a 21 year old unemployed musician, attempted to squash the boy with his rather large backpack.
"I didn't realise the poor kid was sitting on the seat next to me," Teh told police. "I was carrying two bags and was trying to get them both into a workable position as I sat down."
This is just one of many incidents of unprovoked assault by a blind person, citing their disability to excuse this unacceptable behaviour. Even if such acts are accidental as they claim, blind people seem to believe that their lack of sight is justification for their failure to see others nearby.
"Damn blindies," a young high school music teacher commented. "You just can't trust 'em."