After my recent flurry of posts about my new iPhone 3G, I’ve noticed lots of new visitors attracted to my site by this particular subject. With the rumours of Apple planning on shifting 45 million more of them next year its likely to remain a popular topic for some time.

And with good reason as the iPhone is the most powerful pocket-sized device available so far thanks to the ability to add additional applications that extend the functionality nearly to infinity. It truly is a Swiss Army Knife of gadgets.

As a result of my recent health problems, I’ve pretty much had the last month with nothing but time on my hands and my iPhone in my hands. I’ve barely put it down, its the first thing I fondle when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I stroke before drifting off to sleep.

As much as I adore my iPhone, and believe me I do, I’m not going to lie to you about the smoothness of the experience. I’ve been suffering with some of the issues and problems you may have read about; apps crashing on launch, apps and updates not installing properly and the dreaded poor signal on the 3G network, but even with these niggles, it is still an amazing piece of kit.

I believe the problems I’ve had are addressable and Apple will be able to fix them through software updates. The last update, to 2.0.2 has already stopped the crashes on the phone itself and since installing it, I haven’t had a spontaneous restart.

I did have to do a full restore though, as I had lost some apps when iTunes tried to install their updated versions. It took a couple of hours and the most recent back-up I had done was around a week old, so I lost some SMS messages and a few other bits of data, but the phone is now working well.

The 3G issues persist for me and it could be that the coverage where I live isn’t that great, but I have trouble believing that, since I live in London. I hope it improves and soon.

I’ve installed dozens of apps already, stretching across 5 home screens and I thought I would share a few interesting ones with you, that you might not have heard of yet.

Simplify Media
Simplify Media is very cool, it allows you to stream your entire iTunes collection (unprotected tracks only, nothing with iTunes DRM), over wi-fi, Edge and 3G to your iPhone and it really works. In real terms, it means there is no storage limit on your iPhone, it will hold as much as your Mac or PC at home. You install a small piece of software on your networked computer, install the app on your iPhone, log into both devices with the same account and your entire musical collection magically pops up on your iPhone and you can play any track! The app is currently free, but after 100,000 downloads, they will start charging for it. Grab it while you can!

Sol Free Solitaire
There are many versions of this popular solo card game, but I like this one, mainly because it is free. I’m not much of a gamer, but I used to play Solitaire on Windows PCs and its nice to have a version to play on my iPhone. The interface is smooth, you tap the card you want to move, then tap the card you wish to move it to and it away it goes. There are several variations to play, my favourite is Klondike 3,

Dual Level
This is another app that’s free, which makes it preferable to the paid versions. Its a simple idea, when you start the app, the screen turns into virtual horizontal and a vertical spirit levels linked to the built in accelerometers. You can use it to level hanging pictures or anything else you might use a spirit level for - very cool!

iVote
This is a simple app which lists poll questions for you to respond to, ranging from politics to personal, with the results available for you to break down in various ways. It’s more geared towards Americas (like almost everything online!), but it is a fun app and a real time waster. I like it!

WhosHere
Of all the social networking apps, this one shows the most promise with its simple, yet focused function. It’s a chat app that uses your location to show you other iPhone and iPod Touch users and their approximate proximity. In other words, its a location based chat application which is very clever. You fill out a profile with as much, or as little (or nothing) and tap the near button - you are then presented with a list of people, their profiles and the approx distance from you. You can set the proximity of your search from as little as 5 miles up to 3000 miles. You can also blur your location, up to 2 miles from where you really are, so you do have options to maintain some privacy. The app’s user base seems to be growing fast and yes, this one is free too.

PhotoSwap
PhotoSwap is very new, its only been available for less than a week (at the time of my writing) and I find it strangely addictive. The premise is simple, you take a photograph on your iPhone and the app sends it to a random stranger, while you receive a photo from the same random stranger that receives yours - that’s the photo swap. Once you receive a photo, you have the option of replying directly to that person with another photo, effectively having a conversation with iPhone snaps. I’ve received all sorts of photos; city skylines, beach views, people’s homes, pets, all sorts really. And before your sick imagination conjures visions of body parts, I’ll disappoint you - I have yet to receive anything offensive and there is a “report” button to tap if you do. The app allows you to chose a user name, plus one line of description for a mini-profile (accessed through the main settings via the home screen not directly from the app) and you can choose to show your location on a map. I would suggest turning off the location stuff if you are at home and only use it when you are out in public. It might sound a bit strange, but try it, I think you will agree that there is something very endearing about using it.

This is just a small selection of apps that have caught my attention, there are literally over 1000 of them available already, with more being added to the App Store every day. Have a look, I’m sure there are some that will appeal to you too.

And I’m still waiting for the two apps I’ll pay for, TomTom navigation software for the car and a SlingPlayer client. I’d lay you odds I have both before the year is out!

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!

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?

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!

Well fuck me, look who it is!

I mean me. Where the hell have I been?

I’ve been nowhere, doing nothing. Honest, officer, I swear.

That’s not strictly true, because I am still the part time libertycityhippy, so you know where I’ve been hanging out sometime.

I’ve also been working a fair bit, but my schedule has been all over the place without any sort of pattern, rhyme or reason.

I’ve been distracted, I’ve been unfocused, or as it say in the larger, yellow font above, I’ve just been “coasting through life.” That means anything requiring the slightest of effort has been relegated to another day…and when another day comes, I am gonna be one busy hippy.

I wish I could be telling you otherwise, that I’ve been busy recording my album, or writing another book, or providing sexual favours to a small gang of voraciously demanding 16 year old glamour models. I wish I could tell you lots of things, but I won’t lie to you.

I can’t lie to you. It would be easier if I could.

I get up everyday and seem to be busy, I don’t actually just sit in a dark room all the time, yet I couldn’t tell you what eats my time away. Maybe its some time-eating monster from another dimension.

How cool would that be? To be a time-eating monster from another dimension, travelling to north London to eat hippy time. I wonder what time tastes like?

Probably time tastes like chicken. Everything tastes like chicken.

Never mind time monsters, now its just time to meander…

I was very disheartened and sad to read of the passing of George Carlin, yet another big influence on me when I was younger. Along with Hunter S and Kurt V, George Carlin was a hero of my youth.

I used to listen to George Carlin’s albums endlessly with an absolute obsession. His humour, on the surface, could be seen as crude, but when you explored what he was actually saying, it was genuinely profound. His comedy dealt with word-play and idea-play and nothing in this life escaped his critical gaze.

Just off the top of my head:

Words that go together, yet are contradictory:

Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence

But the words he’s most famous for are the following seven:

shit
piss
fuck
cunt
cocksucker (not a bad man, but a good woman!)
motherfucker
tits (sounds like a snack. I’ll have the cheese tits)

And later on he added:

fart
turd
twat

And one that still makes me laugh, “You can prick your finger, but you can’t finger your prick.”

Carlin continued to perform practically right up to his death on Sunday, his final gig was the previous weekend. While in the business for nearly 50 years, his jokes never went stale and he never, ever ran out of material. How could he? The human race excels in stupidity and that could have continued to fuel his humour for centuries.

Sorry to see you go, George. You left your mark on this world and we won’t ever forget you. Something tells me that another generation will be discovering you very soon, thanks to your untimely demise.

Speaking of death (and inappropriate segues), my Logitech Harmony 885 remote bit the big one this week. It thinks its working, when you press the buttons, but it doesn’t seem to be transmitting any infrared signals. This is a bummer of enormous proportions, as it it is the central command for my small, yet perfectly formed media centre. My life is now awash with too many device-specific remote controls.

The upside to this is that the remote is still under warranty and I am waiting for a call back from Logitech support which I hope will result in them sending me a replacement. The first guy I spoke to tried to help me sort it out over the phone, but his remedies didn’t do diddley. I’m missed their return call yesterday, but they should phone me back again later today.

And staying with my electronic theme, I cancelled my Vodafone contract today, in anticipation of having a brand new, shiny, lickable iPhone 3G on launch day, which is 11th July, just over a fortnight from today. Vodafone were surprisingly mellow about my departure, no hard sell, the phone call was brief and painless. Actually, the guy was so nice, I told him I was switching to O2 for the iPhone - usually I don’t tell these people anything, so this is out of character for me. I’m a marketer’s worst nightmare!

Once I get my fancy new iPhone, I’m going to experiment with blogging from it. I’m not sure how it will go, but I like the idea of providing short posts on the fly. We’ll see if the reality keeps up with the fantasy!

I did consider playing around with Twitter, but I got frustrated at the registration phase. The character limit of your screen name on Twitter is far too short and I couldn’t fit northlondonhippy into the tiny little box. None of that matters anyway, I mean who in their right mind would sign up to follow me around on Twitter? How many times can you read: “had a piss, now smoking a spliff”, over and over every day?

While you ponder that, I’m going to go for a piss, then smoke a spliff.

See, I told ya it would be lame…

There’s about one week left to enter my rocking Bubbler contest. You can really win a brand new Bushmaster Bubbler, plus other cool prizes. You want some cool shit from the hippy, don’t you? Click here, click now!

I took delivery of a Playstation 3 this week, along with a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA 4). I’ve abandoned north London and am now a resident of Liberty City. Just call me the libertycityhippy from now on.

I’ve never been much of a gamer, the last console I owned was a Nintendo NES, back in the early 80s. I haven’t really played any computer games since then.

I debated buying a PS3 for a while as I think having one is the equivalent of giving up on reality, though technically I gave up on it a couple of decades ago. I’ve got friends who have been telling me how cool they are for a while and with the release of GTA 4, I thought it was time to take the plunge.

I very nearly bought a PS2 and GTA San Andreas, but convinced myself my free time would be better spent pursuing random acts of creativity. I’m feeling far less creative at the moment and rather than trying to extract blood from a stone, I’ve elected to spend my leisure time in a virtual world where I can steal cars, shag whores and kill people. That’s better than exploring the same activities in reality around north London, I guess.

Video games are time bandits and they will eat up your free time quite effectively and if you’re as crap at playing them as I am, they will take up even more of your time.

I thought long and hard about this purchase, seeing it as a mini-surrender to having a life. In some ways, this is me giving up, just a little. Not forever, not even until I finish GTA 4 (which at the rate I am going will take years), but just enough to clear some of the cobwebs out of my skull. It was either this or some LSD and finding quality acid these days seems like too much of a struggle, so I am now a gamer.

Setting up the PS3 was a breeze, I’ve connected it directly to my Bravia’s only HDMI input and I have the output set to 1080i, which is the best resolution my tv can deliver. The audio also goes via the TV and is then fed back to my amplifier via a stereo cable – not ideal, but serviceable. I only have 2.1 audio, so its not like I am missing out on the 5.1 surround sound – I don’t have enough speakers to benefit from it.

I was also able to get the PS3 straight onto my home wi-fi network, which means online game play and updates are already within my grasp. I’ve actually run some updates already and my operating system is bang up to date.

I bought 2 games with the console, the afformentioned GTA 4 and Gran Tursimo 5 – The Prologue, on the recommendation of a mate.

Gran Turismo is positively stunning, especially the backgrounds. I’ve been doing laps around a track in London and it is pin sharp and photo-realistic. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean, it is positively jaw-droppingly good! I’m still crap at controlling the car, though and I definitely need lots of practise.

GT5 is a taster of the full version of the game, which is due to be released next year and only cost me 17 quid, which I thought was a real bargain.

GTA 4 is unbelievably involved and has a scope and scale which is mind boggling. The gameplay takes place in an expansive and extremely realistic realm, which is massive and has a level of detail which would thrill most feature film makers. I can’t get over how good it all looks.

The main reason I really bought all this is I’ve felt for a while that I was missing out on a significant part of home entertainment by not having a games console. Video games are big business, making as much or more annually than most feature films. I think I read GTA 4 took over 50 million dollars in its first week of release, making it the best selling game of all time.

GTA 4 cost nearly 40 quid, which may sound expensive, but if you factor in the number of hours I’ll be playing it and the shear size of the playing field, you can see why they are that expensive. The amount of time and man-hours that go into developing such a game is immense and they have to make it back somehow.

I also think there’s probably work to be had in the world of gaming, for a middle-aged, make-believe hippy from north London. Someone has to write the storylines and create the characters – I could do that! I would love to do that! Games probably reach more people than films, so it’s a big audience to satisfy and satisfy them, I would!

So who out there has any contacts with the major gaming developers? Wanna hook me up with a highly paid, emotionally satisfying position coming up with concepts and stories for future games? I promise you that given the chance, I could come up with the most compelling games imaginable!

Like how about this…a northlondonhippy videogame! You would get to be me, in an RPG sort of way. You could hang out in my virtual lair, roll and smoke virtual spliffs, watch TV and play PS3 games, as me. And then their would be missions, like scoring weed on a Friday night, but still having time to get home and order a nice Japanese take-away, before the restaurant closes.

You’d pay 40 quid for that, wouldn’t you?

The entire month of April slipped quickly and effortlessly through my fingers. I say “effortlessly” because that is precisely how much effort I’ve put into my site this month and for that I am ashamed.

You shouldn’t have to pay the price for this and you won’t, which is why I am extending the deadline on my “bubbler contest” until the 1st of June, so there is still plenty more time to enter. And don’t worry if you’ve already entered, your email still counts very much so and you will continue to have an equal chance with everyone else.

I’ve had loads of emails with questions about the contest, which I will answer here in a mini-FAQ:

Is the contest for real? YES

What’s in it for you? SELF PROMOTION

Do I just send you an email to enter? YES

Will you really post me the bubbler if I win? YES

How will you choose the winners? LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE PUT IN A BOWL AND I WILL WITHDRAW 16 OF THEM, ONE FOR EACH PRIZE, FROM 1ST ON DOWN.

Will you announce the winners? JUST THEIR INITIALS AND WILL CONTACT EACH ONE INDIVIDUALLY TO ASK FOR THEIR MAILING ADDRESS

And that’s it for now. Get entering!

While I’m here, a quick update on why I haven’t been here. I’ve been working too much, I’ve been distracted by other things, most notably a book which I will review at some point here, because it deserves to be read and I’ve been sorting out the usual bullshit at my north London lair.

My SKY+ box died a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was gone for good, but I was able to give it a master reset and getting it going again…for about 2 more weeks before it well and truly went to that great gadget shop in the SKY. It was around 5-6 years old, an original V1 Pace box and I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I booked a call out with SKY, which costs £65 and included a replacement box and I really didn’t have a choice. Well, I did, I could have used this as an opportunity to upgrade to SKY HD, but I’m still not convinced its worth the extra dosh with so little proper HD content available.

The SKY engineer was cool and it took him all of ten minutes to swap the boxes and pair the new one up with my card. The box he installed is a PACE V3, with an 80gb hard drive, though I think that some of it is partitioned for SKY Anytime, which is where SKY choose programmes they think are the best of the week and record them to your hard drive in the background. It can be disabled if you don’t like it, but I thought I would give it a go and see what its like. I’m not convinced if you switch it off that it will free up the other half of the hard drive for my recordings, but its worth looking into if the SKY selected shows are crap.

The new box is about a third the size of my old one, its really dinky. It’s also a bit noisier than the old one, either because of the fan or the hard drive and I’m not certain which. It seems to work well so far and isn’t much different from the old one, except for the aforementioned ANYTIME feature.

It’s not just a device that died, but I found out last night that one of my mother’s sisters, my favourite aunt passed away over the weekend. She was nearly 84 and it sounds like she was surrounded by loved ones and went peacefully. Whatever the fuck that means.

I don’t like many of my relatives, and to be honest I downright despise quite a few of them, but not this particular aunt. She was really special and yes, I know people always say nice things about the dead, but I would have said the same last week, when she was among the living. She was consistently kind, generous and loving and was beloved by many, myself and my younger brother among them.

I hadn’t seen her in years, as is true of 99% of my family and its probably been 4-5 years since I spoke to her on the telephone. I would have liked to chat with her, but she’d become quite deaf and the telephone wasn’t really an option.

One of my earliest childhood memories, which is vague and hazy as I would expect of a minor event prior to my 3rd birthday, over 40 years ago to be, is of my aunt visiting us in a house we lived in, in 1965. She took me for a walk up to a nearby supermarket and I can just remember being excited by this unusual outing with an aunt that I loved and trusted. It’s just a small memory, but I still carry it around with me to this day.

Good bye my dear, sweet aunt, you will always be remembered fondly by the many people whose lives you touched, including mine.

Check this out:

It’s over 6 minutes long, but I promise, it’s worth it.

Don’t have 6 minutes? Ok, you can read THIS VERSION in 2 mins, from the NY Times.

Personally, I think this is the first rational explanation I’ve ever heard on the nature of existence and it deserves a much wider audience. Please spread the word!

Now that you’ve read the NY Times article, or watched the video, read the title of this entry again.

Ok, who’s with me?