Last night I had a perfect view of the conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury, but only a phone. Tonight I had a more obstructed view, but I think the power lines ended up making it a bit more interesting than a plain photo with this camera would have been.
It’s also astonishing how quickly Mercury moves. No wonder they named it after the god of speed.
A few days ago, when I tried to post about the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre photos from my phone, I ran into a few problems getting Swype to recognize the Bard’s name. It came up with the following:
It’s bothered me for a long time that movie studios seem to think the only story worth telling about a superhero is the origin. You get a trilogy if you’re lucky, then back to another origin take. It would be like only ever running the pilot of every TV show even though they’re designed to set things up for an extended run. Or, I don’t know, remaking the prologue of Les Misérables over and over again without ever going further with Jean Valjean.
The other night I had to take the MacBook into the Apple store to get it checked out after a toddler-related spill. I got there for my appointment and waited…and waited…and waited….
Killing time with my Android phone felt a bit weird. If I hadn’t needed to stay close to the Genius Bar I could have at least browsed the gadgets and played with an iPad or a newer laptop with a Retina display, or something. There’s only so long you can spend looking at boxes of headphones and cases for devices you don’t own. I briefly considered reading the new Flash comic book I’d picked up earlier in the day, but thought to myself, “Nah, I bet this isn’t supported here.”
Then I saw this on the wall:
Well then, I guess it’s supported after all!
I’m a bit late to the Shakespeare love floating around online today, but I did track down a few pictures from a 1999 trip to London. I had a few days at the end of a tour to wander around, and having just graduated with a drama degree, I had to visit the reconstructed Globe Theatre. I mean, seriously: Shakespeare.
I also stopped by the Criterion Theatre, where the RSC was presenting — no, the other RSC: The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s “Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).
One of these days I’ll track down the negatives and get a better scan.
BoingBoing explains why SMS messages are more likely to get through than phone calls or mobile data during a large emergency. (Short version: They’re async, so the phone or tower can retry later, and they’re momentary, so they don’t tie up a channel like a call would.)
The article doesn’t bring it up, but I’d add the magnifying effect of social media. If that SMS message happens to be a status update to Facebook or Twitter, you can tell a lot of people outside the area that you’re OK (or not) at once, even over congested airwaves or wires.
Update 2024: I wonder how well RCS fares under the same circumstances, and how well it falls back to SMS. Especially since it looks like fallback is an app feature, not a service feature, so I can imagine some third party apps forgetting or not bothering to implement fallback.
Also, the social media aspect no longer applies now that the networks have discontinued post-by-SMS.
