You’d think that I would have mastered the art of making a sandwich by now. After all, I have used an entire loaf of bread to make the second biggest sandwich in history among many others.

However, I just made a fatal mistake during the contruction of a relatively average ham, cheese and coleslaw sandwich. I placed fillings on both slices of bread - as seen in the photo above - which meant that in order to close the sandwich (thus completing the construction phase) I would have to perform some kind of previously unseen manoeuvre on one of the slices to prevent any filling-spillage.

This was not easy, but I managed it. You can see the final result here.

So I’ve had my Nokia 7280 for just over 2 weeks now. I loved it at first - for about two hours - until I decided to write a text message on it. Dear God, it was awful. Took me about 10 minutes I think, because it has no number or letter keys on it! You have to use the scroll wheel (or Navi™ Spinner as Nokia like to call it) to scroll back and forth along a row of letters on the screen, selecting the ones you want as you go. I hated it so much I considered taking it back and changing it for a 7260. At least that phone has buttons on it.

This has all changed now, though. I am becoming a master of the Navi™ Spinner. The predictive text on this phone is a huge step up from that of all the other Nokias I’ve had. I’m currently able to write a message at about 50% the speed compared to when I’m using a ‘regular’ phone. The thing which slows it down is when you write a relatively uncommon word, or words which aren’t in the phone’s dictionary (especially abbreviations). You then have to type out each letter - choosing them from the entire alphabet - as opposed to just whacking the centre button repeatedly.

As for the other features, it’s pretty much packed with them. It’s got the latest version (I think) of the Nokia XHTML browser, infrared connectivity, Bluetooth, EGPRS (whatever that is), and all the other regular things like an integrated FM radio, voice recorder, MMS, polyphonics, voice activation (ok I guess that’s not regular) and a cleverly integrated telephone (who’d have thought!). To top it all off, it’s really fucking small. The only disappointment is that it hasn’t got video recording, though it has got a supergroovy zoom on the digital still (VGA!) camera to make up for it :)

Intro. Nuclear war, yeah. Nuclear war, yeah. Talkin’ about, yeah. Nuclear war, yeah. It’s a mother fucker! It’s a mother fucker! Don’t you know! Don’t you know! Talkin’ about, yeah. Nuclear war, yeah. It’s a mother fucker, don’t you know, they push that button, your ass got to go! Talkin’ about, yeah. Nuclear war, yeah. They push that button, they push that button, your ass got to go, your ass got to go! It’ll blast you! So high in the sky! Gonna blast you, so high in the sky! You can kiss your ass goodbye!

Yo La Tengo - Nuclear War » 7.2 mb MP3

This song is groovy, it’s weird (ie. it wouldn’t get played on daytime radio), it rocks, and it’s nearly 8 minutes long. Yay! Go get it people - then check out Yo La Tengo on Epitonic.com!

I’ve forgotten how I came across it initially, but this self-portrait of sorts by Lane Collins is wonderful! I wish I was as photogenic as she is. I think I am in love with her :P

Update: The picture was on Licka - The world of tongues!

This is what I needed. I’d completely run out of ideas for layouts, designs, headers, etc. for JohnBlackbourn.com, so I got myself a superlicious new domain name and decided it would become my new blog. I’m not going to import all my old posts like I did when I moved JB.com from Blogger to WordPress. This will be a new start. A new horizon. A new bloginning.

In case you were wondering, my old blog ran from July 22nd 2002 to April 6th 2005, and I posted more than a thousand posts. Just short of three years of complete crap. Not bad.