As my close-knit of friends would know, and the same goes for all of you reading this through my Facebook notes, I never did reduce the time I spend on Facebook like I said I would. Sometime last year, I had said that Facebook was about having too much information. At the time, I had said that not only do some of us over-share, but in return we tend to know more than what we would want to know about people we are not necessarily close with.

But I’ve since found a happy middle ground with the things that I share and I’m enjoying the reaction and comments that I get. Some people may view that a friendship that exists purely on Facebook may not be as substantial as one outside of it, but I find that the social interactions can be just as fulfilling.

I think that if you use Facebook to augment your “real life” relationships and not to supplant it, that’s where it’s true value as a tool lies. As its tag line says, you can use it to connect with people whom, because of the tyranny of time and distance, you don’t connect enough with. And it can enrich an already good relationship. That is why I think that the interactions are as real as those conducted face-to-face or over the phone, even though some are quite frivolous (does anyone still “poke”?).

As an example of the good that it can bring, today is my birthday and I didn’t really expect much from the day because I’ve already had celebrations earlier with family and friends. As I was commuting to work, the birthday wishes started trickling in and it didn’t stop for the whole day. As I am writing this now, they continue to come in.

Friends, new and old, near and far, and relatives in other states and countries have all said happy birthday to me. I’m quite sure that the only reason that I’m getting more birthday wishes than normal is because Facebook has made it easier for people to leave a few words, and as a result, it has allowed me to feel more popular than I normally would.

Yes, I feel very popular right about now. So thanks Facebook! Feeling good didn’t cost me a thing today.

Been playing DJ Hero for the past few days and it’s super fun. It took me about an hour to go through the tutorial and to get the hang of it. After a few more hours of playing, I’m now comfortably playing the medium level. There’s still hard and expert to conquer.

Aside from the gameplay, the graphics are pretty to look at though you’d be mostly concentrating on the scrolling music highway. And the music will definitely get a party started – the mashups of the different genres of songs including house, trance, R&B and Hip Hop are really cool and there are over 90 songs included with the game, and more to become available for download at a price.

Check out this insane clip of hard-level gameplay.

At $129, it’s well worth the money.

Just got my copy of [PROTOTYPE] – the video game where you are an infected biological weapon of a super-human being running and flying around New York City mass-murdering, bashing and destroying things with total abandon and mayhem. In other words, a totally awesome toy for stress-relief!

I got it from India via ebay for about $65 (including delivery), compared to about $90 for the cheapest retail price here. Bargain!

If I don’t answer my phone the next few days, you know what I’m doing.

So how come my blog postings have been reduced lately? Dating? Girlfriend? Too much partying? Wrong! It’s video games! Yeah I wish that my life was more interesting too. Hahah!

Anyways, “Ninja Blade” is the video game that I’ve been obsessed with for the past month or so, and I’ve been playing and replaying it on my days off and when I’m recovering from a hangover.

You are a super-ninja with big swords and … erm yeah, that sold me on the game.

And it looks like I’ll be similarly distracted in the upcoming months when the following games are released. First up is “Bayonetta” where you play a female witch with guns, magic powers and an awesome butt. Woohoo!

I’m quite excited about “Batman: Arkham Asylum”. The voice-actors from the original animated series will be voicing the game. This includes Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark “Skywalker” Hamill as The Joker. If you’ve watched the cartoons, you’d know that their voices fit the characters perfectly especially Mark Hamill’s. His voice-acting is a real revelation.

Plus the gameplay looks sweet!

And then there’s “Bioshock 2″ later in the year. Squeee!

With this much video-gaming and partying, my mom had asked, “How you gonna meet a girl this way?” I dunno myself but I shall blog about it when I do.

This is my second month with the iPhone 3G. For the most part, I love using it and it has been a worthwhile purchase. Before I get to how it’s changed my daily commute and other things, I’ll list the things that I wish could have been done better or that took a while to get used to.

The not-so-good includes:

1. It can’t recognise numbers stored on the SIM card, and therefore cannot transfer them from the SIM to the phone. To get all my contacts onto the phone, I had to use my colleague’s Mac and its bluetooth connection to first transfer the numbers off my Nokia 6280 onto the address book in his Mac, and then use iTunes to transfer the numbers to my iPhone. If I didn’t have access to a Mac, well I probably would have had to do it manually.
2. You can’t easily save numbers from calls missed, received, and dialed, or in text messages. There’s just no function to do so. You have to manually key the number in by flipping back and forth between the call log and the virtual keypad, which thankfully retains what you type as you flip between screens. Otherwise, this would have been an even bigger pain.

   (Update 6th Jan 2009 – ok I’m a dork. I’ve now figured out that touching on the blue arrow is different to touching the actual number that it is next to. It takes you to a screen that allows you to save the number. )

3. I’m ok with the camera being 2 Megapixel but the focus is slow and it’s kinda fiddly to use because the shutter button is virtual. This makes it hard to take self-potraits or reverse shots. And you can’t do MMS which is a glaring deficiency in such a multimedia capable phone. Oh yeah, no video either but that’s not that big a deal.
4. I’ve mentioned this before and that is: the virtual keyboard takes a little while getting used to. And even after that, you can’t do single-hand texting easily like you can with a phone with a more tactile feel. So you can forget about texting coherently if you are holding a drink in your other hand.
5. You can do your own custom ring tones but it’s not as straight forward as copying a sound or a song onto the phone. And you can’t do custom message tones, even if you buy them from the iTunes store. Because the phone just doesn’t have that capability. And that sucks. I miss my Yoda message tone that says, “Mmm, message from the dark side you have.”
6. The phone software updates can potentially fail and you will have to restore your phone from the automatic backups (now I know why iTunes do it!). Which is not so bad if it didn’t mean having to sync up my songs to the phone again. Depending on how many songs you had on the phone, this can take a while. Because yeah, when the updates fail? It wipes the hard disk clean. Oh you’d also have to re-download any apps which you have downloaded from the iTunes Apps store previously. This area of the phone should have been done much better than this.

Ok so those are my major complaints. But I still enjoy using the phone a lot. The big sell for me? 3G Internet surfing and the iPod touch functionalities. Thanks to both of these, my daily commute feels shorter and is much more enjoyable.

Despite reports of 3G reception problems, on my daily route to and from work the signals are strong enough for me to have a good surfing experience. I use Google Reader, and news sites like News.com.au and NYTimes.com – all of which have iPhone versions so they are light on the multimedia and loads up fairly quickly. The amount of information on screen is just right, and text is easy to read and scrolling is smooth. Try and read a full size site though and that’s when you really notice the inadequacy of the screen, so I don’t.

Checking my Gmail is also simple and easy to set up. I don’t compose or reply to messages though because that would take too much effort. Other useful internet applets includes Yahoo! Weather and Google Maps, both of which I use quite often.

There are also other apps, free or paid ones, available from the iTunes Apps store. So far, I’ve got the Facebook one and the New York Times one.

And finally, the iPod touch. I love it, I don’t know how I lived without it. I’m now listening to more music than I did before. I’ve been ripping a lot of CDs, and in addition to what I normally download (shhh), I’ve been purchasing more music as well in CD form and from the iTunes store. The iTunes store is quite well done because if I find one song that I like, it recommends 5 more to me. This can get addictive and it’s very easy to just click and purchase more than you want to.

To really enjoy the iPod, I’d highly recommend getting a pair of 3rd party headphones. I got a pair of Seinheiser in-ear ones from the Apple store. And these are great. Like how you’d press normal earphones into your ear to hear better, except you don’t have to because these block out outside noise. You don’t have to turn it up so it’s good for your hearing and you don’t disturb others. Only downside is that it can get quite mucky because you are pushing them into your ears, so you will have to clean them after every use.

And lastly, because you are constantly touching the phone it will require daily cleaning if you want it to look its best all the time. Oh yeah I almost forgot – the phone itself? Call reception and quality is nothing fantastic, but nothing shoddy either. It’s adequate.

As a package though, you are getting so much more than a phone. Because of the way it looks, the touch screen, and how it feels in your hand, the whole thing just rocks.

Yesterday, less than 2 weeks after I had placed a raincheck on an iPhone 3G at Optus World in West Perth, I received a call from them telling me that my phone has arrived in the shop. I was very pleasantly surprised because I had anticipated a 3-week wait.

When I got to the shop, I told them about that. And the woman serving me said, “Yeah we just had a big shipment.” Then she corrected herself, “Ok when I said ‘big’, I meant 4.” Heheh.

On the train ride home, I soon realised the one big benefit that I had wanted from the phone. Whilst surfing the net, my stop had arrived quicker than it has felt in the past. Killed time? Hell yeah.

When I got home, I played with the iPod side of things. No complains here, it’s an iPod touch. Sweet!

Pretty soon I was dragging and dropping songs from my computer onto the phone. And then I started ripping CDs too. I ripped CDs that I thought would be enjoyable for my daily commute. Before long, I was digging out dusty old CDs that had been lying in my stacks, neglected in the past but ready to be enjoyed once more.

I can see my hard disk space been eaten up very quickly if I keep up with the ripping. It’s got a little bit too addictive at one point that I had to pull myself away from the computer. It felt like I had wanted to cram in as much stuff as I could.

The touch screen is awesome to use but I still have to get used to the virtual keyboard. Typing in a text message is kinda awkward. It made me feel like I have fat fingers when my hands are tiny. And I can see it being a problem whilst being intoxicated in a bar or club. So I’m thinking that I will probably use my Nokia 6280 on the weekends and the iPhone during the working week. Best of both worlds!

Woo! The last time I was so happy with a gadget was when I got my Xbox 360.

Cliched vanity shot for any blogger who has an iPhone

Well that was quick. 1 day after I felt like getting one, I decided to have a day to think about it. I always do for major purchases. This way, I make sure that I’m not getting it on impulse and that I give it some time to research my options.

I scoured blogs and searched for objective and Australian-relevant reviews. It was kinda hard because there are so many gushing fanbois out there – I swear I could feel the stickiness of their spontaneous jizz just from reading their posts.

I was already sold on the features – I like the fact that I’m getting an iPod, mobile internet and a mobile phone in one package, but I have no idea about which company I wanted to sign up with. Luckily for me, one of my daily reads the Sydney Morning Herald had an excellent review of the bewildering number of plans from three telcos (Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone) for the iPhone 3G. In this aspect, Australia is really spoilt for choice and we’ve still got one more telco company, 3 Mobile desperately trying to petition Apple to allow them to sell the phones.

Review: iPhone plans – iPhone Insider – Digital Life – smh.com.au

Telstra had the worst offers and Vodafone is par with Optus, depending on your needs. I was already an Optus customer and I was interested in staying on my current plan, and it became a no-brainer. It was near the end of my existing 24-month contract and I was always going to upgrade my phone at zero cost anyway. I only had to add $7 per month on my current plan over 24 months to get the iPhone. And I’d justified it to myself thus: that’s a bloody cheap way to get an iPod touch at the same time.

So, 4 days after I felt like getting one, I did. But the store ran out of stock and they’ve given me a raincheck – I was told that some of those who had wanted one on launch day last Friday are ahead of me. Oh well. Now I just gotta wait.

In the mean time, I went and got this from Rush Faster: Griffin Nu Form 3G iPhone Shell.

It will arrive in 2 weeks. Hopefully I’ll get my iPhone by then too. Colour me iPhone fanboi.