Wilgje.net » Funny/Interesting

Mobile phones, a history

Willow — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:04:02 +0000

Following a gajillion discussions on IRC over a long time, I started thinking about my history with mobile phones. This led to me googling for about 2 hours straight, because I couldn’t find my first phone ever. Until I did! It was the KPN Pocketline Wave 200, but almost none were sold in the Netherlands. Originally it was a Trium, and this took me ages to find out. On this picture the logo above the screen says Trium, on mine it said KPN. It was brilliant, it worked well and what I remember best were the sounds the buttons made (which I recall were impossible to turn off).

I also found all the other phones I ever owned. In a nutshell:
Number two: a KPN Pocketline Swing, which was my mom’s phone when I still had my first phone. I didn’t have this one for long, I only got it because my first phone broke and I handed it back when I bought the Siemens.
Number three: a Siemens A55. Dreadful thing, it unlocked in my pocket because unlocking only required holding one button, and it’d call people. Sorry everyone who ever received a phone call from me around 5 years ago! I took care of this one: I accidentally left it in my pants, which I then washed.
Number four: a Nokia 6230, which was easily the best phone I’ve ever had. It was easy to figure out, the buttons worked well and never broke, and it was a really sturdy phone overall. I bought a new frame for it once, and it was as new again. Drawback: the battery went dead in several hours at the end. Also, I was kinda bummed out about the fact that I didn’t have a 6230i, which had an extra button in the middle and more features/more storage etc.
Number five: an MDA Vario (HTC Wizard). I was tired of T9, and I’d decided that a phone with a keyboard was what I needed. I also found that Windows Mobile is quite versatile, even if it’s buggy and slow. Even if I had to reboot my phone every once in a while, I was happy.
Number six: an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II). So I figured, why not another one? This one was (a little) faster, had extra internet options, etc. Also, I got PocketScumm on it and I played Monkey Island ;)
Number seven: an iPhone 3G. This one pretty much speaks for itself. I went along with the big hype and got it too. Ny next phone won’t be an iPhone though; this one has WAY too little battery life and Apple is being an ass on certain things any other decent phone does offer these days, like tethering. But it’s cute none the less.

So there we go! I wonder which one my next phone will be ;)

RMB – Spring

Willow — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:05:30 +0000

My mind and my iPhone are in the nineties, and it’s spring time. This is where it’s taking me…

I can’t believe we were into that kind of sunglasses back then, although I can imagine this video would still do well today. The nineties are very underrated in that sense. In a related mood (imo), check Darude – Sandstorm.

In Alk Maar kunnen ze ook niet spellen

Willow — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:45:40 +0000

Hobbytijd

Willow — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:22:17 +0000

Tijd voor schaamteloze reclame!

Al heel lang heeft mijn moeder een (uit de hand gelopen) hobby: kaarten maken, en dan vooral 3d-kaarten. Toen er letterlijk om de hoek een pandje leeg kwam te staan en ze het aanbod kreeg om het te huren, besloot ze van haar hobby haar werk te maken: ze gaat een hobbywinkel beginnen. Donderdag 12 februari is het dan zo ver en gaat de winkel open. M’n moeder heeft het meteen goed aangepakt met een advertentie in het Langedijker Nieuwsblad en ze heeft haar winkel al gevuld met diverse hobby-artikelen. Hobbytijd bevindt zich op Dorpsstraat 691A in Noord-Scharwoude. Mocht je in de buurt zijn, kom dan eens kijken!

Mario 3 in Java

Willow — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:52:39 +0000

One of the greatest old-skool games I remember is Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES. I bet my mother remembers it even better as she actually beat the game before I ever got to :>

MacTijn stumbled upon the coolest thing since Mario on the NES: Super Mario Bros 3 in a Java app. Now you can play the game without needing to bother with emulators or the NES. Of course you can also buy it for the Wii if you have one, but this is a cute alternative. And another asset remains intact: you cannot save and quit the game, just like on the old NES ^_^

Annual hobby: setting stuff on fire

Willow — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:52:51 +0000

Last year my friend and me set loads of sparklers on fire. Of course we needed to top that last fire, so we decided to attach the sparklers to something this year. The thing turned out to be a toy police car, mostly because it was only 2 euros. Afterwards we figured it did look like a ‘fuck the system’ kind of move. Here is what happened when we lit the sparkler on the top…

And of course, here is the BEFORE:

And AFTER:

Nothing makes a new year as good as a nice, warm, fun fire ;)

iStuff gets you guys (or chicks I suppose)

Willow — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:52:16 +0000

In the train this morning I took out my brand new iPod, since I needed a good dose of metal to wake up with. There was this really cute guy sitting across from me, who kept looking at it. As I usually do when people stare at me (it happens, although it’s probably all in my head), I thought ‘what’s he looking at’ and turned away. Then he asked me if my iPod was the newest version, and he explained how he wanted one of those since he had an old one, and that he also wanted an inscription (mine says ‘Willow’ on the back). We ended up chatting for a little while, until the lights in the train went out, with the train still moving at full speed. Damn those trains.

Next time I think I’ll take out my Macbook and see what happens. Perhaps I’ll find myself a pretty cute iGuy someday ;)

YMCA

Willow — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:15:27 +0000

Sometimes my friends can be rather weird. My friend Sim has dedicated her time to positioning her kid’s male Barbie dolls in the YMCA-positions and taking a picture of that. I wonder what other strange hobbies she has ;)

Verkeersalarm

Willow — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:41:52 +0000

Alle autorijdende Nederlanders opgelet! Vanaf heden heeft deze Wilg haar rijbewijs, en zij zal hier uiterst dankbaar gebruik van maken!

Maar nu eerst: taart ^_^

Evil scheming (or just finding a place to live)

Willow — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:12:26 +0000

My friend Bram and me have been planning to move for a while now. Not like moving in with each other, just in the same area if that’s possible. As soon as I get a stable income we can put such plans into action, and since that won’t take too long anymore, we went to make some preparations.

We’ve decided on a couple of things. First of all, we don’t want to live too far away from the ‘inhabited world’, meaning Amsterdam basically. This is more a requirement of mine than of his, but he doesn’t seem to care, so we’re going with it. Also, we don’t want to live too far away from public transport (a trainstation mostly). The exact place we want to live in still remains a mystery to us, though. On some evil day, one of us suggested that we should simply get a map of the area in/around Amsterdam, put it on the wall and decide our place to live by dotting the map with pushpins.

Now when you see some movie in which a maniac has filled a wall with maps, pushpins and connecting wires, they never really show you how long it took to make such a wall. That is basically because making all that is extremely boring. However, both of us went ahead with it, so now we have a map of Amsterdam, Haarlem and Zaandam (and some other places) with the important trainstations on it, where we can point out nice places to live. We abused Google Maps for the map, and printed out several sheets that we stuck together on the wall. Mine is quite fancy: I stuck it to some cardboard and added a booklight so I can always see what area we’re currently planning our evil schemes in. Here’s some pictures of my creation ^_^