Nokia Surge, photo from mobilegazette.com

I replaced my wireless phone of two years with yet another Nokia product.  Since I tend to send text more often than I talk, I've wanted a phone with QWERTY keys for some time, so when this guy showed on AT&T's website with the price tag of "free with contract renewal" it was hard to turn down.  Naturally, I did a little homework on it anyway.

Numerous articles imply that this device is probably going to be one of the last of the Symbian smartphones (since I saw some other articles declaring that even Nokia are ready to orphan the Symbian project.)  Like many toy/technologies on their last commercial legs, this device is being sold as an entry level or youth market device.  Perhaps the assumption is that the sort that would want a Blackberry will have trouble reading a smaller screen on a smaller device, although its QWERTY keys are bigger than Blackberry's or Treo's.  It's smaller than an iPhone, in fact, it's smaller than the flip-style phone it's replacing, and yet, it can do more than I really want it to do.

Descriptions of Symbian reminded me of descriptions of Palm OS (after everyone was no longer mystified by it)- that it is clunky, awkward, a good idea that never reached fruition, and so on.  When this happens, marketing tends to neglect a very important selling point- it is a known and mature technology.  I've now owned this phone for a week and a half, I've rebooted it only once, and it has yet to crash on me.  Can't say that for my previous (java) phone, in fact, I can't say that for any tech I've owned, really.  I assume that this thing will crash on me eventually.  Apparently, it's more powerful in processor and memory than its predecessors, it's smaller than a Blackberry or an iPhone, it's very snappy to operate (as opposed to sluggish, a compliment I saw given to many of the Palm Treo series before Pre came out,) which brings me back to my point that it does its few things extremely well, something tech salesmen don't really know how to pitch.

The web browser is good as well, so it appears thanks to this thing, I'm almost always connected to the net in some way, which is a scary thing for a habitual introvert.

When the Symbian project sinks (forgive my pessimism but I don't think the open-source Symbian project is going anywhere good right now,) I'll most likely still be happy enough with this thing to keep it through its contract; I'm used to deliberately using obsolete gear.

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It's no secret that work is headed straight to crunch time and that this is the time of year when I focus on making back the money I overspent throughout the year.  I hope everyone is doing okay.

Famicompo has opened for entries, if things don't get too hairy I'm going to try to put some NES tunes in.  Mukunda made a new tool that I've played with a couple times and really like.

More on that later, see you next time

I wish I had noticed this feature while it was happening so I can say thank you and welcome to all the visitors from Japan that have come in the past month or so. Thank you very much for the feature and recommendation, which can be read here: http://ping.fm/OnuRQ The BLINK OF MEMORY blog is a nice [...] http://bit.ly/1dIdUh

As stated in the other blog, the performance went very well. I have not yet thanked Brett Moots, Yatagarasu, and Bubblegum Octopus (the other performers of the night) so I will do that here.  Thanks for being part of a great night, and thanks again to Ian, Britt and all Gamesboro for setting it up.

Some thoughts about performing tracker music live:

• Either my audience found my improvising boring (which means my skills in it are lacking and I need more practice) or I should wait until later in a performance to resort to it.  I had the impression that they were bored of DS-10 quite quickly; no one to blame for that but me.
  
• As above, the pre-programmed and karaoke-sung bits went over better than the spur-of-the-moment in most cases.
• Despite that, there was still a sense of spontaneity, mainly in finding things to play while other programs took a long time to load. I'm proud of myself for this. I won't name names so the Renoise team can relax.
• The only awkward pause of sorts was when I found I needed to tune the guitar. 12-string guitars are such a pain to keep in tune.
  
• To better maintain that sense, I should make a point to not require too much concentration early in the performance, as above.
• Then again, I may be over-analyzing and it may be best to be deep in concentration early on and not react strongly to the audience impression until sometime later.
  

Somewhat repeating what I've said elsewhere, I'm thankful for a very attentive and open minded audience and I hope this will become a regular event.

See you next time.