Mike Cannetti was having a barbecue. Then he wasn't. Then he was again... I sung him a song for inspiration. This is obviously pointless, but what the hell? Felt I'd share.

Today's podcast features:

An introduction to the co-host of the show, Angie
Discussing the first show and Angie's notes.
What's been goin on?
Movie review of: Transformers
Movie review of: Knocked Up
New movie idea of the week
Queue it up
Listener Feedback

Links:

The Dharmalars Lost Podcast

Well, the major question we've all been waiting for has finally been answered. Just how much is this contraption going to cost me a month? The answer came this morning, and it couldn't have been better. Well maybe, if they had offered it for free, but meh. Rate plans for the iPhone start at $59.99 a month for 450 minutes. "Yikes!", yells the Crackberry fanatics! But oh ho, look deeper and see what's included. 200 text messages, 5,000 night and weekend minutes, rollover minutes, unlimited mobile to mobile, oh yea, and UNLIMITED DATA. Umm... Pwn'd? My plan will be exactly this $59.99 one, as I can't see breaking those numbers to easily especially with rollover. The plans do go up to $99.99, as detailed in the image below.

Click for full size image

The other great news is after waiting on line for hours to get an iPhone, you get to go in the store, walk up to the counter.. say, "One iPhone please" they ring you up, and you walk out. Ack! What about activation!? "Hahaha", laughs Steve Jobs! "Puny mortals! I have thought of everything! Go home, connect your new iPhone to your computer, and sync it through the activation process from the comfort of your own home! Bwaaahahaha" (some dialog may not accurately depict the official press release and is instead used for emphasis.")

Needless to say, the news with this product just keeps getting better and better. The Blackberry's on the other hand, while amazing, cost about $99 for a plan somewhat similar to this, but with less weekend and night minutes and no texts; I believe they are a separate $5 or $10 dollar charge. The rate of that of course comes from buying separate phone and unlimited data plans.

Anyway, I will now officially start pulling my hair out until the 29th at 6PM. Yes, the next time you see me I will be bald. But at least I won't be as sweaty as this guy...

Gizmodo - Man waiting in line for iPhone for 100 hours

Today's podcast features:

An introduction to the show and Pete
Information on the show
A review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Discussion of the iPhone

Links:

ABC's Lost Podcast
Jay and Jack's Lost Podcast
The Dharmalars Lost Podcast
The Tenth Wonder Heroes Podcast
Today in iPhone

A lot is happening for me this month. I am surrounding myself with so many electronic devices, it'll be a wonder if I don't develop some kind of disorder. Let me run through the lot.
First and foremost, as I might have possibly previously mentioned something about, is Apple's iPhone. It launches at 6PM EST on June 29th, and I will be one of the gadget denziens of the world patiently waiting in line for mine. Though, it will be another gadget keeping my wits about me whilst doing so. The Archos 504 Personal Media Player. This puppy has saved my mind on more than a few traveling trips and numerous other occasions. It sports an 80 gig harddrive which is absolutely filled with all my favorite shows and movies.
Second on the big list is my new (or I should say replacement) Alienware Area-51 Desktop computer. At some point in a podcast I'll get into the long and arduous story that has been my experience with Alienware, but this big honkin piece of electronic beauty is set to arrive on my doorstep tomorrow. Once I get it up and going the podcasts shall begin. It sports 4 gigs of ram, 2 top of the line video cards and oh so much more. My old desktop will be shelved most likely for the time being, but will make some come backs when it comes time to do some video/animation rendering I'm sure. She's served me well since 2002, but now needs a rest.
To compliment the new Alienware, I sprung finally for something I've wanted since back in college and have been spoiled with at work. Dual monitors. But not just any monitors. 2 22-inch widescreen ViewSonic's. Absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately they are so massive, that I'm going to have to move my desk across the room, because they utterly block the view not only from my desk but for people walking through the room or sitting on the couch. I managed to get these at about half of what they usually retail for through eCost.com, an amazing site that has been tempting me a little too much lately. Finally I have enough resolution and space, and not to mind computer processing power to handle multiple apps on multiple interfaces. Huzzah! And the other thing of beauty, is that one of the monitor's bases is set up to dock with iPods. See where I'm going with this? IPHONE DOCKAGE FTW! So I'll have my computer, two monitors and iPhone all within arms reach. Can we say major media center?
Next up on the more quirky side, is a Roomba iRobot Scheduler floor cleaning robot. I fell in love with these critters when I was visiting my parents who had recently gotten one cheap. Since I got this early in the week, I've had it scheduled to run every other day. And the stuff it's picked up just around our little apartment is amazing. It gets under the beds and couches to get all the stuff out you can't reach. And it's fun to just follow it around. It cracks me up. Now all I need is a cat for it to chase around like at my parents house. I managed to get this from Amazon.com for a drastically reduced price and with rebates that astoud. One offers a free second robot that excels at picking up larger things like thick dirt and spills, another offers free replacement filters and parts, and another got my wife a years subscription to domino magazine. 4 for 1 isn't bad.
Moving along, I have reanimated my xbox for the first time in well over a year. And now that most of the games for it are dirt cheap, I am playing serious catch up. I managed to get a couple for great prices, most around 5-10 dollars. And I even got Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy for about a third of what it is still retailing for. I won't talk long on this subject, but it reminds me how great console games can be, now that the infective nature of MMORPG's and the like have worn off.
Lastly, bringing it full circle back to the iPhone again, is the Jawbone Bluetooth headset. I managed to get this one very cheap as well, and think it's noise canceling nature will really fix the bad taste my other bluetooth headset has left in my mouth.
Anyway, I am amazed by all the deals I found this month. Everything above had me only spend a couple hundred dollars. Usually I budget a lot more, but for some reason this month has just been by total chance the time when I needed to invest in a lot of it. Now I'm sure I'll be on a few month hiatus again as I don't foresee anything else until the fall. Anyway, view the collection below. Thanks for reading this rant.

Flick to the right folks. The iPhone is just a mere week away from launch now. This afternoon/evening AT&T and Apple sent out a pair of emails with a 24+ minute video attached detailing all sorts of info about the iPhone. If there is one thing I can say about these final weeks, the tension has obviously been getting worse and worse for me and many others waiting for this device. If nothing else can be said about Steve Jobs, it's that his keen and yet wicked ability is like none other when it comes to dangling these little tidbits in front of us like yarn in front of a kitten. There's actually so much news and hype right now I couldn't begin to delve into it all for fear of a serious case of carpal tunnel.
At a minimum, I must applaud Apple and AT&T's amazing work in promoting this device. I cannot think of anything including recent gaming systems that has gotten so much hype from the masses with almost no direct work to advertise and really push the item. They have really just announced it, kept it as secret as possible, and let their little calculated bits of info slide; letting us, the common man do all the rest for them. The endless blogs and podcasts have made this product one of the most celebrated devices next to the wheel.
Having watched through the video and seen the amazing things this phone can do in perspective for once, it really satisfies my mind, that I haven't been wasting my time in following this phones development. It will truly go down in history as a game changer.
The video itself was quirky. Very matter-of-factly presented. The speaker who spends too much time waving the iPhone around, managing to keep my eyes following his hand and not at his less-than-normal model ideal of a face man's face. Only briefly does he even flash the front of it at you. It makes you want to jump in the video and snatch it from his hands in the most deranged possible way. Regardless, the video answered many more of the lingering questions. I can only imagine release day will be like the final episode of Lost. All the great mysteries finally answered. In the meantime, they answer a few here and there, and then leave the rest to be thought about and debated over, and ultimately thrown out the window as they unveil all new amazing things. That is why Lost succeeds, and that is why this iPhone's marketing has succeeded so well. It's almost Hitchcockian.
Anyway, as the little bits of news come and go, like the amazing extended battery life announcement earlier this week, as well as the addition of YouTube, and more, I managed to settle on my battle plan. Not that anyone is reading this blog yet anyway (which I hope will change soon), but I must keep it under wraps. I managed to check with the store I'll be going to, and they answered my questions perfectly. Now I can only wait, and hope, and try to get on line at such a reasonable a time as that I go home on the evening of June 29th, 2007 a happy man. I also have to keep my wife away from this blog before she thinks I'm more nuts than she already does. Viva la iPhone!

Fantastic news. A long time ago I signed up with Apple and Cingular/AT&T's mailing lists for info on the iPhone. Since that happened, I think I've seen maybe one or two pretty pointless e-mail's from them. Today, one finally arrived with some good news. The e-mail mostly was reaffirming that the phone would be released on June 29th, and then was giving some pointers on how to prepare your info/pictures so you could quickly and easily transfer it over. Mostly common sense types of stuff.
Anyway, onto the exciting news. Though it has been talked about a lot if the iPhone would support Push type e-mail (email that is automatically delivered to you as it arrives. {a la Crackberry}), it has never really bothered me either way. Figuring in that most of my e-mail could be accessed by web browsers; and the fact that the iPhone has a great one. At the end of the day, it didn't phase me much. The only thing that kind of bothered me was the worry of having to constantly hit send/receive like the Palm Treos. Well worry no more!
"iPhone is the first phone to come with a desktop-class email application. So now your phone can display rich HTML email with graphics and photos alongside the text. iPhone will even fetch your latest email every time you open the application and automatically retrieve your email on a set schedule, just like a computer does."
This was the paragraph in the e-mail that freed me of all my iPhone-E-mail worries. I hadn't even conceptualized they would add a timer like Outlook or other e-mail programs have, to automatically check for mail. But as it turns out, someone at Apple did. Another strong function that is pushing me ever closer to the edge of setting up camp outside my local Apple store.

Well, just having sat through my early afternoon catching up on the WWDC keynote address via live blogs, I must say that it was fairly boring and not much was newsworthy.
To preface there were a few exciting items for OSX Leopard. I rather liked the new finder and iChat. Though finder's new found capabilities, or at least the shiny ones, are just going back through time and reusing an old idea; coverflow.
Steveo brought up a back-up program, called time machine at one point. He found it amazing but its basically a built in one touch backup software. Sure haven't seen any of those before. But the metaphor of the time machine was well and alive throughout the rest of his performance. It seems that audience reactions were meager, and the whole thing certainly left me not blown away. Much of what he debuted for the new OSX is just rehashing old ideas, a few new little morsels that were relatively uninspired, and a few cracks on windows, especially vista (a platform which in all fairness really just reinvented the wheel for itself unlike the new OSX). Which, I should point out, that Mr. Jobs sided back up to in hopes of raising Apple's minuscule stakes in the browser market by introducing Safari for pc's. Hooray. (Can you feel my enthusiasm? I can't).
Anyway, like this post's category suggests, I was in it for iPhone news, and he gave out 2 nuggets. Nugget, a fitting word for sure. First up, iPhone will release on June 29th, but instead of a 12am midnight bash or the normal path of just letting individual store's door's swing open for the morning and letting the awaiting line in, they are going with a 6:30 PM launch. Ok, well this will be a great idea! Your average working Joe Shmo can finish his Friday afternoon work, then stroll over to the Apple store or AT&T wireless and pick his iPhone up in as leisurely a fashion as possible. Hum dee dum! But oh, wait, that's right, by that time there will be a line a mile long of people who have been waiting all day, people who took off, or who don't necessarily have, or need to be at a job. And how exactly does this work when the doors would presumably already be open at all these institutions? Wouldn't people just be able to meander in? As someone who firmly believe in lines, and firmly believes most morons will disregard lines, and who firmly believes there to be an extremely large population of morons floating around, I can't help but wonder how they will keep order. Especially when you figure most contracts and phone sales take often over 30 minutes per person to set up. And thats a giving number when all I can imagine first day is "circus". This throws off my original plans, but the lucky thing is I happen to be getting off at 1PM that day, so perhaps I'll be at a happy medium. Not waiting 9+ hours, and not arriving only to stand at the end of the line either. Only time will tell.
Secondly, they announced that iPhone development will be done at least for now, through Web2.0 and Ajax programming. I would have liked to have seen the ability to build some non-web-based apps, but I won't complain too much either. Either way, I think they could have done better, but again only time will tell. There may be some ajax genius's out there who have some amazing cards up their sleeves.
Either way I was fairly un-impressed with this keynote, and I felt like it borrowed too much from the last WWDC's results.
On a final note, having used a plethora of live blogs to learn this information just mere minutes after it was announced, I have to say one site stood above the rest. Engadget did not have the so-called live and rapidly refreshing page that some other sites like Gizmodo or Macrumors did, but it didn't bother me either. Their site was the fastest, the most reliable, and conveyed not only the most, but the best information well above the others.
Macrumors was fast but every update had no more than a sentence and the pictures on the side were nothing to write home about. Gizmodo plain didn't work, it was supposed to automatically refresh and it would occasionally but for the most part, I couldn't get info to load as the site must have been just too bogged down to deliver. Engadget on the other hand divulged quotes, opinions and great pictures very rapidly, that just plain gave the info across in a much better way. Way to go Engadget, and thanks for your hard work on delivering the news ASAP!

In a beautiful turn of events, Paris Hilton is being shipped back off to jail.
So lets first take a few steps back first and allow me to discuss my thoughts on Ms. Paris.
Forgetting all the other dumb stuff this bimbo-among-bimbo's has accomplished in her relatively short and spoiled lifetime, she managed to get herself on the wrong side of the law. Now I started hearing a while back, as I'm sure you did as well, about Paris breaking her parole not once, not twice, but three times for driving after her license was revoked via a DUI charge. Three times too many, and at least two times more than most other offenders would receive. Anyway, time goes on, she gets sent to court and the judge, (a wise, wise man) decides it’s off to L.A. county jail for 45 days for the Hilton Hotels heiress. Not all that bad of a sentence. Maybe a little much for the charge, but after all, she has been given two free passes and continues to disregard not only the law, but her own safety and worse of all other people's safety by driving around drunk. Of course, she may not have been drunk the 2nd and 3rd time she was pulled over. But it is my understanding that she was driving erratically. Perhaps trying to juggle her dog, cell and cappuccino. Who knows? But regardless, she’s an inch short of being too dumb to remember to continue breathing, if you ask me.
Anyway, I was ecstatic to see the front page of the newspaper advertising her prison id, despite her incredibly glamorous prison photo. If you're getting thrown in the slammer, might as well look good doing it, I suppose. And she's had plenty of practice in front of all manner of cameras as many of us I'm sure have witnessed, night vision and all. Of course, I was fooled, because I actually thought she’d be in there for her 45-day sentence. Well, the Sheriff’s office decides poor Ms. Paris is, ahem, sick from stress. Forgetting the hundreds of other similar offenders who might have children at home or actual diseases, Paris manages to get the Sheriff’s office to send her home with a pretty new ankle bracelet instead.
Meanwhile, the judge hears that his ruling, which specifically states she will not under any circumstances be allowed to serve the term out in her Beverly Hills mansion, has basically been thrown out the window. Not only that, Paris goes on public record saying that she is so happy to be out she’s going to throw parties and get drunk etc, probably would have ended up driving around and disregarding her house arrest too. But the judge wasn’t going to let that stand. So this morning off she goes back to court, and while whimpering and shaking and putting on a grand show, gets herself sent back to jail again, permanently this time (yea right, for now anyway). All the while whining about how she’s being treated unfairly (The saddest part of which is that she actually believes her own drivel {getting ejected into the REAL world can sometimes be harsh}).
All right, fine. So she’s back in jail tonight and all is right in the world, except it sticks with me the thought of this one getting shoved in the cop car, image above, and crying how she’s being treated unfairly. And first thing this morning while getting ready for work, I was watching Good Morning America where they had two specialists on opposing side of the issue. And the woman defending her said the same, that she’s being treated unfairly and put in the spotlight, and given a much bigger term because of her celebrity. So… Let me get this straight. When a celebrity walks around getting their picture taken and making public statements about how they feel about this topic and that, it’s fine. When celebrities use their sway to endorse products or politicians or whatever, that’s all fine too. In fact celebrities are basically held as a shining example of our American culture. They are fine when people, especially people like Paris, have young girls looking up to her and imitating her dumb bitchy attitude walking around yelling, “That’s HOT!� (A statement that coincidentally, I hear Paris is trying to trademark… stunning). But if a celebrity commits a crime, potentially endangers herself and others, gets away with it multiple times, and then actually gets a slap on the wrist it’s not fair? This is where I lose any respect I might have for Paris or any other human being celebrity or not. And people are actually crying out about this! I personally can’t understand it. I believe in shades of gray between the black and white, but she committed a crime and is not being punished fairly for it within full jurisdiction of American law and basic common sense.
End of the day, she is now properly serving her time for her infraction. And I’m happy about that. Well, only partially so, because I’m sure this will lead to much more media circus, just like in the Anna Nicole case and so much more.
It’s an odd thing, situations like this. I can’t stand hearing about them, but I can’t help but get heated over them and write rants like this at the same time. I guess I’ve fallen into the same trap as everyone else. But damn, seeing that picture up above just puts a sheepish grin on my face that I just can’t make go away.

Hello everybody,
I thought I'd take a moment to talk about what I'll be talking about. Anyone who knows me knows I have opinions on everything, and they're generally stupid, but fun. Many times have Ia started on sites like livejournal and things, but none of them have met my "medium standards". I've recently gotten very into podcasts. And I started thinking to myself, I have a background and education that would clearly support me doing such a thing. And I also realized there's plenty of things to talk about in this life, so why not let loose?
With that said, and you reading this, you're probably wondering, "OK, so where's the podcasts then?" Well, thanks to a lovely corporation called Alienware, whom I keep tricking myself into buying from, I'm without a proper computer to do recordings for the time being. But rest assured they will start soon.
And what about the contents of said podcast? Well, as I mentioned, I think it'll be ranting on all things relevant to me at least, but which will be relevant to a lot of others as well. After all, I like a lot of stuff that other people do, so there's hopefully going to be something of interest for everyone.  And hopefully I can make a few people laugh or at least cry in the process. So for now, it'll be these text blogs, but starting very soon, the PeteCast will be in full swing.
If you have any ideas or would like to contribute to the show, feel free to use the "Listener Feedback" audio recorder on the right side of the page to leave me a message, or any of the other contact methods I've listed over there as well. I'll be adding more in time including hopefully a phone/voicemail line.
That's all for now, have fun and enjoy.
~Pete

Let me start this by saying I've been following the development of the Apple iPhone for quite some time. And finding news on new developments has become a bit of an obsession for me. I'm readily awaiting it's upcoming release on June 29th. So in the meantime I've been indulging myself with the new series of four iPhone ads. During my time watching these ad's I noticed a few funny things. Perhaps slips of the ad agency who created them, or maybe little bits of thread Steve Jobs is dangling in front of us. Only time will tell. Anyway, the evidence is below. First up is a mysterious 12th button. In all the iPhone ads and demonstrations previous to these ads and even in the ads themselves there has only ever been 11 icons on the front screen to choose from. In a few frames during a close up shot of the hand model pressing the iPod button, it is visible that there are not three, but four buttons on the bottom row. Meaning? A new button has found its way into the space above and shifted all the other down or over one space. See the modified screen cap image below.

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Second involves an interesting thing dealing with the date. I noticed that at one point you can clearly see the date on the New York Times site. It lists October 2, 2006 12:59AM as the last time it was updated. This is visible in the attached screen cap I took. This makes me wonder if these ads were created as far back as then. The date displayed on the phone is clearly June 3rd, so does this indicate a cached page/image from October 2nd, 2006? It is obvious that the phone in the commercial has a full wifi connection, but as many others have pointed out in this and previous ads, the speed of the internet seems just conveniently too quick to be realistic. And further, what significance then does October 2, 2006 hold? Was this when the ads were actually created? Or is the date significant enough for some reason that someone would have cached the page back then for use now? Screen cap below with the date blown up for clarity.

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Lastly, in a very exciting turn of events, should it pan out, an adobe flash file was visible on the page. The New York Times site features a small flash video player about midway down its page, as well as a few other flash advertisements, but since the player has been a constant for some time and is visible now as you visit the site, that's what I'm going to focus on. The inclusion of the player on the page indicates one of two things in my mind. The more skeptical of the two is that the page is fact screen simulated or some sort of image file, or the more hopeful of the two; that flash will be working on the release of the iPhone. If flash weren't enabled, the space would most likely be empty or have placeholder text mentioning it would need to install flash, or flash isn't available etc. Screen cap below blown up for clarity and including today's flash player from the NY Times site for comparison.

Click for full size image