When I was younger, my usual travel routine would be to pick up a copy of New Scientist from Smiths at Heathrow. It was my reading material of choice for those long haul flights. Somehow, unnoticed by me, over the next couple of years and many air miles later, I’ve completely forgotten about it until today. These days, I don’t have much of a departure lounge ritual apart from checking Facebook and sending out a tweet or two. If I’m to catch up on the recent developments in science, I’d just check my iPhone. Back then, print was king, now, you can just read it off the iPhone or if you’re feeling a bit flush, subscribe and read it off the iPad app.

Whether you notice it or not, things are changing, albeit slowly at times.

Opened the package, phone in excellent new condition eventhough it’s a refurb, connected to iTunes as per instructions and restored the backup from my 3GS to 4. While that was going on, I contacted O2 via webchat and conversed with “Charles”. I asked him where he was based and surprise, surprise, India! Asked him to remove the bar on my account and activate my SIM. He did as he was told and said that I needed to wait up to 2 hours for my phone to connect up to the network.

Three hours later, back on webchat I went and this time chatted with a “Benjy” who went on to tell me that “Charles” lifted the bar but didn’t activate my SIM. So he went and activated my SIM and told me that I now had to wait a further 2 – 24 hours until I was able to make and receive calls. About 30 minutes later, I get an email from “Benjy” telling me that my SIM was for a different number and that I would have to go into an O2 store to sort it out. Unfortunately, all the O2 stores near me shut at 5:30pm – 6:00pm so that wasn’t an option.

I didn’t trust “Benjy” so called up O2 and spoke to a real person, can’t remember what her name was, probably a Jane or Janet or something. She made no comment about my SIM problems (I just asked to activate my SIM), gave her my mobile no. and SIM code and that was that. A few minutes later, yay! I could see “O2-UK” on my phone. I thought all was well, but I couldn’t make or receive calls from it! A few minutes later again, I was able to make and receive calls, but now I didn’t have data access!! In the end, I manage to solve the data issue by reconfiguring the cellular data settings. It was just one palava after another.

To add to these connection woes, iTunes kept crashing during the photo optimisation process when I tried to upload my photos to it. Lost count how many times I tried. Some googling revealed that iTunes 10 has a bug and you have to deselect “include videos”. I’ve managed to circumvent the lack of vids by using the VLC player app which unfortunately has been pulled from the app store.

Shiny, shiny goodness

While the iPhone 4 has more features, I still prefer the shape of the 3GS. For me, the most striking difference between the two is the retina screen on the 4, it really is noticibly sharper than on the 3GS. Text is really crisp and images vivid. Those blues and turqoises from my Seychelles pics really pop! Speaking of which, I got a Case-Mate Pop case in red for it.

For those who are going to ask why I didn’t just wait for the iPhone 5, well, I would’ve been iPhone-less for a few months. Cant’t possibly be having that.

I had my phone when I’d left the car, checked my phone for a text when I was in the store by the veg section. It wasn’t until I’d returned to the car that I noticed I was an iPhone lighter. Went back in, retraced my steps asked Customer Service if anyone had handed it in but nada. I raced back home and was quickly on the computer to O2  to bar my SIM and phone. Just last week or so, I was thinking of leaving O2, it’s just as well I hesitated since my contract’s up and I’m due for an upgrade. It’s still pretty annoying though, I’m having to shell out for a new phone at a financially inconvenient time.

I’ve been without a smartphone for almost 24 hours now and it’s so bloody annoying. I can’t read my tweets or check Facebook conveniently when I’m in bed. Sometimes I like to check the weather when I can’t sleep or read the news, but I can’t! I wonder how on earth I survived without one before. At the moment I’m having to use my old dumb phone, it’s so small in comparison. While I have internet access on it, it’s not quite the same on a diddy, low res screen.

I hope my new iPhone 4 arrives soon. It’s suppose to be here today or tomorrow. I feel so naked without one.

I’ve enabled XML-RPC publishing protocols in the settings already, the URL, Username and Password are all correct but I keep getting this pop up -

This is unacceptable.

I’ve spent the best part of the afternoon fiddling around with the xmlrpc.php and .htaccess files as suggested by the forums and others but no luck.

*sigh*

Some people are really missing out. :-p

What was a usable app has become craptastic. I’m most displeased. A wander over to the WP iOS forums shows that I aint the only one with such WordPress woes.

*Sigh* I preferred the app to signing into my blog through Safari.