My cat died suddenly yesterday. She was old and in decline for the last few months and I did know the end was nearing, but it was still a shock to have it happen like this.

One minute before she died, she was eating. I’d helped her to her dish in the kitchen and left her there, happily munching away and returned to the living room. All of the sudden, one of my other cats leapt with a start and I heard the sound of something falling over in the hallway. I thought it was just some post coming through the letter slot in the front door. I was wrong.

It was my cat, she’d fallen over with what I am fairly sure was a stroke. She was gone in about 2 minutes, but I was there with her.

She was around 16 years old, but its possible she could have been older. Mrs. H got her in 1994 as a fully grown cat, I knew her for over 11 years.

Before Mrs. H got her from the local shelter, she had been living in the local market, existing on scraps and hand-outs from the traders. She loved people food and if it was good enough to be on your plate, it was good enough for her - she’s eat anything, fruit, veg, meat, cheese, bread, you name it, though of course we mainly fed her cat food.

On Monday night, she had cheese from a pizza and licked the remnants of a bowl of chocolate ice cream, which was her absolute favourite.

I appreciate if you’re not a pet lover that this post is probably tedious reading for you. I am a pet lover, I’ve had dogs and cats my entire life. The relationships you have with your pets are some of the most honest relationships you can have.

My cat hadn’t been well for the last few months. She gone mostly blind, her appetite was decreasing and her back legs were getting weaker. I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider putting her down and my one real regret is that I didn’t trust my instincts. The day before she died I thought about it and even yesterday it crossed my mind more than once. I could have spared her a brief, yet horrible death.

Dying is horrible and witnessing my cat’s passing was distressing. While it was mercifully brief, my cat fought and struggled to her very last breath, but that’s what she was like. She was a fighter and didn’t take shit from anyone, not even Death, though in the end, Death always wins.

I spent the last couple of days talking to my cat, telling her how much I would miss her when she was gone. I really did sense that the end was extremely near. My other three cats were all distressed as well when she died and could sense something was very wrong. And even though I cleaned up the spot in the hallway where she passed, they are still sniffing around it. They know, even if they don’t understand.

Pets are part of your family, they have personalities and strong characters and are loyal and faithful companions, dogs and cats alike. When you lose one, it hurts and hurts deeply.

I can remember when I was a child and we lost a pet, my mother being so very distraught that she would always announce with great authority and finality, that this was the end and she would have no more pets, ever, because losing them is so painful. It’s not fair that they have such brief life spans!

I’ve lost 2 cats in the last year and it doesn’t get any easier. I’m lucky now, the three I have are all quite young and I hope it will be a good long time before I have to face losing any more.

I’m going to miss my sweet little girl so much, I already do now and she hasn’t even been gone 24 hours.

In truth, she was partly gone already, as I watched her health decline, especially over the last week or so. I know its a cliché, but she is at peace now. Every day was increasingly becoming a struggle for her. She doesn’t have to struggle any more.

I hate death. It sucks, but I think the dying part is the worst of all.

After all the whinging and complaining over the last week about my problems getting my new iPhone 3G from O2, I thought I would share some of my initial impressions of it.

Yes, that’s right…I’ve got my brand new, shiny, lickable, 16gb black iPhone 3G. I exclusively revealed this exciting bit of news on FaceBook last Thursday when it was delivered to my north London lair.

And again, yes, you read that right, I posted it on my FaceBook profile, as a status update.

Status updates on FaceBook are a lot like Twitter posts. It’s another reason why you should be my FaceBook friend!

Even though it was 6 days later than expected, I was still very pleased to be receiving iPhone 3G and couldn’t wait to unbox it and fire it up.

I didn’t buy the original iPhone, as it was only released officially here in the UK around 8 months ago. My reasoning was sound, or so I thought. As I expected a 2nd generation of iPhone to come out around now, I didn’t want to be in a position of wanting to buy it so soon after getting the 1st gen.

How was I to know that O2 were going to be handing out cheap (or free) upgrades to existing customers? Doh!

I was bit disappointed that Apple left out a couple of goodies that shipped with the original iPhone - the dock and the microfibre cloth to wipe the screen. The lack of the microfibre cloth is a real silly miss, they can’t cost that much when you’re buying a million of them.

The touchscreen does pick up a lot of fingerprints, though they are only really noticeable when the the screen is off. When the screen is illuminated, its very bright and you really don’t see any.

The screen is actually gloriously bright, extremely crisp and pin sharp. I could easily watch a full length film or television programme on it and probably will. The multi-touch control of the device is nothing short of astounding. It’s extremely intuitive and very accurate.

The iPod functions are also impressive and it blows away my old 60gb 5th gen iPod with video.

I’ve also set up several email accounts on my iPhone. If you want to reach me when I am on the go, you can contact northlondonhippy@gmail.com or northlondonhippy@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll receive them pretty goddamn quickly! You might even get a mobile reply…

I’ve also got the FaceBook mobile application, AIM for instant messaging and I’ve been playing around on Twitter with that cool app called Twinkle. I’m northlondonhippy on all of those services too, though Twitter registered my username as n_londonhippy because they don’t give you enough characters for my full online name.

Surfing the web on the iPhone is something else I’ve spent a good deal of time doing and its the first hand-held device that gives you any sort of useful internet experience. I’ve accessed the net from various mobile phones and an old Palm Pilot of mine and I’ve always found it sorely lacking. Spend ten minutes doing the same on the iPhone 3G and you will wonder how you lived without it. I’ve used both wi-fi and the 3G network and pages load very quickly too.

I read that the new iPhone 3G has about as much computing power as a laptop made in 2003; similar processing power and storage is what I took that to mean. Think about it - I’m now carrying something as powerful as a five-year-old laptop in my pocket now. It blows my mind!

There really are only 2 major differences between the new iPhone 3G and the original iPhone (and yes, I know there are plenty of minor changes, just humour me, please). The inclusion of 3G network access and GPS.

The GPS is nothing short of amazing. Even sitting here , deep inside my north London lair, not near any windows and it still knows where I am with frightening accuracy. The map software lets you know how certain it is of your location, by using variously sized circles to indicate your approximate location, until it is certain and then places a push-pin like marker where you are. Outside with no obstructions, when the iPhone can see the sky, you get a remarkably accurate reading of your location, so much so that if you walk a bit, the blue dot adjusts to your new position.

The location data isn’t only utilised by the map application, but any app can grab it. This includes geo-tagging of your photos and with some Twitter apps, can include your location so you can track people nearby. Spooky!

Can someone please release some turn-by-turn, good enough to work in my car, navigation software? I’ve read that TomTom have already written the app, so why can’t I buy it already? My old TomTom is massive, compared to my tiny, slim little iPhone, if I didn’t have to carry the TomTom with me, it would be a real bonus and my pockets would thank you.

And while I’m at it with a wishlist, could someone please design, manufacture and sell the following:

A powered dock for use in my car, that has a suction-cup windscreen mount, so I can position the iPhone like a SatNav, plus a built-in, sophisticated FM transmitter that scans to find the best frequency and then beams audio to my in-car stereo, in high quality.

My super-dooper in-car dock/transmitter/mount is not actually such a big ask and it would sell like proverbial hotcakes. Bundle it with a code to get a navigation app and you would probably sell 500,000 of them in the first year alone. I’m giving you a multimillion pound idea here, for free, so if one of you do this, at least cut me in for a slice of the pie. Or just send me one of these cool in-car suction-cup, FM-transmitter thingies for free. It’s the least you could do!

There is a third thing that separates the new iPhone 3G from its predecessor, though you can upgrade the original to the new 2.0 software and enjoy it as well. I’m talking about third party applications which you can access via iTunes or on the iPhone itself. Some apps are free, others cost. So far, I’ve only installed the freebies.

I’m not being cheap, its just none of the pay apps have really appealed to me and the best ones seem to be games and I’m not that bothered. When I see one I like the look of (navigation software!!!!!), I’ll happily part with my readies.

There are so many applications available already that I’m not going to actually talk about any of the specific ones now, but I’d rather come back at another time to give them proper attention.

What can’t be denied is that this is the real game changer with the iPhone 3G, the ability to do so many cool things with it. And that’s just today, who knows what tomorrow’s killer application for the iPhone might be…perhaps one of you out there in internetland is already working on the next HUGE thing! Just whisper it in my ear, before your start-up has its IPO, so I can get in on the ground floor and make a little dirty lucre too…!

The one thing no-one seems to ever mention when they write about the iPhone is the phone itself. I think that shows you how far we come with personal technology and gadgets, that the voice-communication function of something with the word “phone” in its name, is taken for granted and doesn’t matter that much.

It does to me and one of my concerns about the iPhone was how it performed as a basic mobile telephone.

It turns out I had nothing to fear, the iPhone is a very robust cellphone. Calls over my network on 3G are clear and the connection seems strong. The speakerphone function really works too, dialling a contact or a phone number is also very simple and works very well.

What’s interesting about the iPhone is the many standard mobile phone functions it DOESN’T do. There’s no MMS messaging, so no sending photos as text messages. There’s no way to forward a text message either. The iPhone has BlueTooth, but the only thing it uses it for is to connect a wireless headset. You can’t send a photo to your computer, or to another phone, you can’t exchange contacts with another phone, you can’t even Bluejack strangers!

I don’t really understand why Apple has locked these functions out. At the very least, let us send photos over bluetooth. And synching notes from my Mac would be useful too!

Something else I don’t understand is the lack of cut & paste. It couldn’t be that hard to get a clipboard like functionality running on it. It’s supposed to be the same software that runs on Macs, so what’s the problem? I know some Apple big-wig mentioned that it was on their list of things to do and they just didn’t have time to get to it, but that comes off sounding lame. There’s got to be some marketing reason for withholding this function, I just haven’t a clue what it could be!

All of these cool things do come at a cost and I don’t mean your monthly bill, though they might sting a bit too. I mean battery life, or the lack of it. Surfing the net, checking emails, playing with apps, all drain the battery far faster than you would like and its very easy to see it drop 50% in a couple of hours.

I could see carrying a spare dock cable and attaching it to the nearest PC at every opportunity. It’s another reason why I want a powered dock for the car. I don’t see how I would get through a full day of serious usage without topping up the battery a couple of times.

So am I happy with my new iPhone?

What do you think? It’s easily the coolest, most powerful device I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning. I’m looking forward to 18 months of delirious joy as I find new and fun things to do with it.

And at the end of 18 months, I can only imagine what sort of iPhone I will be upgrading to then! It will probably transport me to a virtual new reality where I’m the king of the universe and everyone worships me as a living god. Now, that’s a app I’d buy!

If you’re like me, you receive a lot of emails from bankers in Nigeria, offering you the contents of someone else’s substantial bank account after they died, leaving no heirs. All you need to do is send them enough of your money to cover the transfer fees and a bazillion quid will be all yours.

It’s called advanced fee fraud, otherwise known as the “419 Scam” and its believed to have originated in West Africa.

I have many email addresses and a fair few of them are published on the internet, which means I get dozens of these emails every day. It always amazes me how many of them get past the myriad of spam filters allegedly protecting my inboxes.

That’s why I found the results of the following BBC investigation so very interesting:

“I was victim of a Nigerian football conmen”

They’ve started to scam money from people closer to home.

They’ve also started scamming poor people.

I can only guess that less of us rich people in the West are falling for these scams, so they’ve had to turn to aspiring young footballers to compensate.

Reading that report just made me sad.

It’s easy to exploit people’s dreams. You would be amazed how simple it is to convince someone of almost anything, as long as you wrap it in the words they need to hear the most.

There’s a popular scam involving aspiring models and actors, where someone pretending to be an agent, offers to represent them but first they need to get a photo portfolio (or audition video) produced for lots of money. Naturally, the agent can arrange everything, because his brother-in-law is the photographer.

No agent would ever charge you money or force you to get photos done through them. A real agent would offer to represent you for a percentage of future earnings.

Of course, they sell it all better than I just did, by telling you how beautiful or talented you are and how they have an eye for spotting future stars and baby, that’s you!

Where do I sign? How much for the photos? Do you really think I will be famous?

Fame is so overrated. Given the choice, I’d much rather be seriously wealthy and anonymous, than famous and poor.

I don’t think I have to worry about being rich or well known. At least not at this rate.

Unless you’re an eccentric billionaire who’s taken a bit of a shine to a certain north London based hippy of questionable moral fibre…? I could do with a patron. How about a couple of hundred grand a year, plus expenses?

Weed and high end electronics ain’t cheap, you know!

Man, am I pissed off!

I’m still sitting here without an iPhone and I think every single one of the many people I’ve spoken to at 02 have lied to me about it, repeatedly.

I’m fucking fuming!

Imagine if I had to take Friday off because I was told IT was coming, only to be told on Friday that IT was coming on Monday. Imagine if today was my second day of missing out on work, to wait for a delivery that’s near as I can tell, not coming.

Now imagine I was looking at taking a third day off to actually receive my iPhone. Wouldn’t you be feeling homicidal?

I have the urge to crush, kill and destroy! Thanks O2!

Luckily, I haven’t had to take any time off work; I was off on Friday anyway and while I am working tonight, Mrs. H is off today, so it wouldn’t have been a problem if it was coming today.

But its not grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

This morning’s O2 liar is “investigating” why my order hasn’t been shipped yet. She says the “stock hasn’t been released”, which is bullshit, because I was told on Weds that it was following my credit check. She says it could be still sitting in their warehouse, awaiting clearance for shipment…

As fucking if!

There probably isn’t a 16gb iPhone 3G to be had right now in the entire country. The chances of a stray one, just sitting on a shelf in a warehouse with my name on it, awaiting someone’s green light is laughably absurd.

I’ve just had a call back from O2…they still don’t know if I have an iPhone waiting for me. Their “system” is giving them mixed signals and its not clear what’s going on. How impressive is that?

The woman who phoned me back says she will keep an eye on my order all day and will phone back if it is shipped out today for delivery tomorrow.

Put it this way, I’m not going to sit by the telephone waiting for that call.

I don’t think I’ve ever put so much effort into spending my own money. This is beyond a joke. I wish I could go to another network and get one, O2 appear to be shite!

I have iWorries over my brand new, shiny, lickable iPhone 3G.

iDon’t think its coming today.

And ok, ok, enough with the iWord jokes. They are wearing a bit iThin now.

As I previously posted, I was assured on Wednesday that my iPhone would be delivered today, but that now appears not to be the case.

According to O2’s website, I should have had a text message before 6pm yesterday, confirming delivery today. I didn’t get that text. Further more, a mate of mine who is getting an iPhone 3G as an upgrade has been able to track his package all the way to DHL. My order is showing online as still “in progress”.

I’ve already phoned O2 this morning. Yes I am sad.

The rep I spoke to told me they are still having problems with their website and database and she couldn’t confirm if it was coming today or Monday. She said the stock had been allocated, but it didn’t appear to be shipped yet, but because of their internal problems, she couldn’t be sure. Her feeling was that a Monday delivery was much more likely, but again she assured me I was definitely getting one and told me not to buy one at the shop.

As if the shops have any left by now! I’ve had reports from my spies of small (10-30 people) queues at every O2 and Car Phone Warehouse shop they passed this morning. With the very limited stock numbers, I’m not the only potentially disappointed person in the UK today.

Of course, I could be pleasantly surprised by the arrival of my brand new tech-toy, but I am not feeling confident at all.

It seems like O2 screwed this up royally and they should never have attempted to pre-sell them online. If they kept all the stock they had for the shops, I’d probably be stroking mine right now. Instead, I foolishly believed that pre-ordering as soon as they went on sale would secure me one on launch day. Oh what a twat I am!

Instead of having a huge celebration of gadgetery-geekery, I’ve spent the better part of this week suffering from a bad case of tech-stress and customer service rage.

So there you go, its 9:30am on the 11th of July, international iPhone day and rather than playing with my new toy, I’m sitting here playing with myself and that’s no where near as satisfying as it sounds!

Please Mr. iPhone man, deliver mine today! I’ve waited oh so long and I’ve been oh so patient! I deserve to have all my iPhone 3G dreams come true!

Don’t I?

Doesn’t everyone?

Hey ho hippyfans and internet surfers everywhere!

Welcome to my humble online home, though today I wanted to tell you all a bit about my summer residence on Facebook.

I’m not on Facebook with my real name, but I am on there as the northlondonhippy - or as I am technically registered on there: North Londonhippy.

I’ve been a member of Facebook for a few months now, but only recently have I decided to take a proper interest. I’ve joined a handful of pro-cannabis groups and added the LastFM application, so you can keep an eye my current musical tastes.

LastFM is connected to iTunes on my Mac Mini, which is how I play my music through my amplifier and it keeps an eye on every track I play. You can see my top ten lists on my Facebook profile.

On LastFM, my login is n_londonhippy, if you want track me down there.

But if you’re a keen Facebooker and like making friends with (pseudo) internet-celebrities, I’m ready and waiting to accept all requests.

I don’t have many friends on there, but that’s because I haven’t been pursuing them, but I am now.

This is a an open call to all of you to befriend me on Facebook! I’ll be popping over there for the occasional status update and amusing comment on my wall. It’s also a place you can message me, if you prefer to contact me that way rather than via email.

So go, impress your friends, dazzle your family when you proclaim to the world that you are internet-friends with the world’s number-one, north London based hippy of questionable moral fibre! The pride that will fill your heart will be overwhelming!

That’s not wishful thinking, the title up there. That’s what O2 told me on the phone today.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I managed to get a real live human on the phone, provided the info they needed for my credit check and had it confirmed that a black, 16gb iPhone 3G will be delivered to my north London lair on Friday.

I’ll believe it when I see it, and so will you, because I’m going to post some pictures of it once its here.

Tune in again on Friday to see if O2 make one particularly demanding customer in north London very happy. I’m counting the seconds already.

Back in September, I wrote a little piece on why my phone was not an iPhone, yet.

But soon, my phone will be an iPhone.

iHope.

iPray.

iDream.

iPre-registered…

…for the brand new, shiny lickable iPhone 3G just as soon as O2 let me. Yesterday, I received an email advising me that I could pre-order one of these little babies online and it would be delivered to my north London lair on Friday, which is the official launch day for this latest version of the world’s favourite touchscreen mobile.

Sorted!

Or so I thought.

I placed the order before 8:30am yesterday, put in all my details and saw the conformation screen with my order number. They said I would receive an email with all of these details as well.

I’m still waiting for that email to arrive.

In O2’s FAQs, they say you can email them your PAC code, from your previous network and they can add it to your account, so I did.

The reply I received was a bit surprising.

I need to mention that this reply to my email wasn’t spotted by me until many hours later, because I slept all day, because I was between shifts.

I still am, so there will be another snooze very soon.

While I was sleeping, O2’s entire online ordering system was melting down into a steaming puddle of poo.

They were overwhelmed by the number orders being placed, or “victims of their own success” as I am sure some O2 spokesperson will be stating in front of a TV camera very soon. That’s what all companies say when they can’t keep up with demand; its an oldie but a goodie.

So anyway, I wake up and waiting for me is an actual reply from an actual human O2 employee, who apologised for the lack of a facility to input my PAC code when I placed my order and then explained what I needed to do with it (all after I receive the iPhone 3G) AND then went on to share an extremely important fact…

“Your order (on-xxxxxxxxx) for the 16Gb (Gigabytes) iPhone 3G is currently out of stock. You’ll receive your order on or after 11 July 2008.”

The key words in that sentence are:
- out of stock
- on or after

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

FUCK!

You have no idea how deeply my little heart sank at this most distressing and unpleasant turn of events.

I ordered my iPhone 3G less than 30 mins after they went on sale and it sounds like there’s a better than average chance I will be sitting here all day on Friday, staring out my window for a courier that will never come.

Oh the horror!

I’ve been waiting a seriously long time for my iPhone 3G, forgoing the original version which I could have had last autumn…and if I did get that one, I would be getting a free upgrade to the new model, just for signing a new 18 month contract.

These ain’t tears of joy staining my keyboard, trust me.

So I wait and I wonder. Is there an iPhone 3G sitting in a warehouse somewhere with “the northlondonhippy” on printed on the label!

I hope not, because there’s no way they’d know where to deliver it, but my real world name and proper address might be better.

You get the idea anyway, either I ordered early enough to have them allocate me one, or they have so few that they ran out in like 10-15 minutes of online trading and I’m screwed.

No one knows for certain how many iPhone 3G’s are even available, O2 and Apple have remained silent on this issue, at least according to the various newspaper reports I read this morning. The closest I got to any sort of detail was that one newspaper thought half the iPhone 3Gs were being pre-sold online and the other half were heading to O2 shops around the UK. How do you play the odds on that one?

So here’s my next quandary, do I cancel my online order and gamble that I will have better luck at 8am on Friday at my local O2 shop? Will there be a queue? Will there be enough to go around? Will I get mugged on my way back home, because criminals read the news too?

I don’t have the answer to any of those questions, except that last one…I would die or kill to protect my brand new, shiny, lickable iPhone 3G, so you best think twice before you attempt to pilfer it from me!

I’ve got mixed feelings about O2 already and I’ve only been a (non active) customer of theirs for only 24 hours.

On the one hand, I’ve had a personal reply to my emailed question, but on the other hand, they have not confirmed my order by email, as they said they would, nor given me any sort of update on my order’s progress.

In light of the massive media attention this launch has seen and will likely see over the next week, you would think O2 would be prepared for a situation like this. Holding emails and press statements would be out there already to counteract all the negative information I’ve seen about shortages and poor customer service.

Maybe they should hire me to do their PR.

Then again, they don’t have to do anything. It seems we’re all slavering like rabid dogs at the prospect of owning the latest iPhone and no matter how badly we’re treated, we still want one.

It’s not like we can get one elsewhere, thanks to O2’s exclusive deal with Apple, we have no real choice.

I’m no different, I’m willing to jump through multiple hoops of fire and swear an oath to satan if I have to, as long as I’m clutching mine this Friday.

Ok, I know I’ve already sworn several oaths to satan, one more’s not going to make a blind bit of difference.

As long as I get my goddamn iPhone 3G on Friday, I don’t care about anything else!

Please oh great gods of high technology, may you be smiling upon me, your most worthy and devoted disciple!

Just gimme my goddamn iPhone, goddammit!