I started writing this, stopped, started again and never finished it. I’ll let it go as is and do a follow-up shortly.

I’ve mentioned over the last couple of posts about a few of my more recent acquisitions. These purchases, along with a subscription to Netflix, have opened up a whole new avenue for entertainment. 3 of the devices I have connected to my TV (TiVo Premiere, Playstation 3 and Wii) are able to stream instant movies from Netflix, with varying levels of utility. I’d be able to stream them to my Macbook too if I was willing to install Silverlight, but I’m not. As of a couple of days ago, I’m also able to stream this content to my iPhone.

I decided to try this new form of convergence out. I downloaded the app to my iPhone and started watching a movie. It worked fairly well and would probably be a decent way to kill some time if I found myself at a loose end somewhere. I noticed before that I was able to pause the movie on one device and pick it up at the same point on another, so I decided to check that out with the iPhone. It worked just as it had with the other devices. With this feature, I’d be able to begin watching a movie at home and continue watching it if I had to leave and go somewhere (obviously under someone else’s steam – attempting to watch a movie while driving is not advisable in the slightest). Essentially, I’m not tied to any one place. I’m also not restricted to watching movies on a palm sized screen should I find myself back at the house with my TV at my disposal.

Yesterday I did something that made me think I was living in “the future”. You know, that nebulous time/place that we all thought of as kids. I mentioned it briefly on Twitter, not that there’s really any other kind of twitter mention, but I’ll expand here. That thing was to make a FaceTime call to my brother.

Video calls are nothing new. I’ve used Skype before and there have been plenty of phones with front facing cameras and video calling capabilities. What’s new about FaceTime is how easy it is. I opened my contacts list on my iPhone, picked my brother’s contact details and hit the FaceTime button. We spoke for a bit, he showed me what the weather was like in Dublin and I showed him what it was like in Roseville.

Like I’ve said many times before about many different things, Apple wasn’t the first to do this, but they did it right. It felt normal to make calls this way. Before this, video calls were cumbersome. Both parties needed to be signed onto the same service and in front of whatever device they were using. I guess this is still true to an extent, but the device is a phone rather than a computer and the service is built-in and doesn’t require a conscious effort to connect a client to it. This removes the effort needed to make video calls, which will result in more people doing it. Furthermore, the protocol will be available to others who want to offer their own solutions.

So there we go. Video calling has just started to hit the mainstream. Next up, flying cars, food pills and teleporting.

Finally, after all these years, I have entered the world of HD. Despite working with LCDs in the 40 or greater inch range on a professional basis for the last 4 years, my TV at home was a 10 year old Sony CRT in the 30 inch range. It was probably as deep as it was wide and incredibly heavy. Finally, we upgraded to a 46 inch Samsung LCD capable of displaying 1080P. As a result, more devices needed to be upgraded. The TiVo DT we had just wouldn’t cut it anymore, so a Premiere was ordered. As a result of this, the cable box is being replaced by a cable card and the IR repeater we used to connect the two is also going away.

Since it was the combined birthdays of my clone and me, a Playstation 3 was bought for us as a gift. This, of course, enabled the viewing of BluRay movies and displaced the dying DVD player. The Wii will remain, as it fills a different gaming niche, and the PS2 will also still be around, but will probably not get as much use as its newer sibling.

So far, I’m liking the convergence of it all – being able to replace multiple boxes with single units. It also helps that these pieces are being amassed together as part of a conscious decision and not being added on bit by bit over time. I can imagine picking up a better sound system at some stage, but the TV’s own internal speakers are none too shabby.

Somewhere around a year ago, my wireless router took an unplanned shower. Fearing the worst, my wife went out and purchased a new router – a Linksys WRT54GL to replace the older Linux powered WRT54G that we already had. Until tonight, the old router sat in a kitchen cabinet. That was when I took a notion to install the Tomato firmware on it, assuming it still had life in it. Thankfully, it did. I performed the upgrade and configured it to replace the one that I had in place.

Since the upgrade went so well, I upgraded the other router and set it up as a wireless bridge to improve the signal on the lower level of the house. I found this tutorial, which made it nice and easy. My current setup is the original WRT54G (named Nitrogen) upstairs acting as the host or primary router and the WRT54GL (named Oxygen) downstairs acting as a bridge. I’ll write about my naming scheme at a later date, but it’s based on the periodic table.

Despite the relative ease of the whole process, I did run into a snag. The upgrade kept failing with the delightfully Engrishy ‘Upgrade are failed!’ when I tried it from Safari (on Snow Leopard). Once I switched to Firefox, it went through first time.

Over the last while, I’ve noticed a distinct lack of anything resembling proper grammar on the internet, specifically Facebook and Twitter. This has irked me and I’m finally to the point where I’m going to write about it. These are probably my biggest peeves, but they are not the only ones:

• U is not a word. Similarly, Ur was a city in Mesopotamia.
• There is an indefinite article specifically for words starting with vowels – an. In English, we say “an orange” because it flows properly, not “a orange”, which has an awkward pause between the vowels
• If someone doesn’t care about something, they couldn’t care less.  Saying “I could care less” means that the person actually does care a measurable amount about the subject.
• Please use some punctuation. adding a period/full stop every once in a while and the odd capital letter where needed really does make reading easier.

Like I said, this list is by no means extensive, but these are the things that bug me most. What’s unfortunate about this is that people I care about and respect are guilty of some of the above. I guess it’s just not considered important enough to worry about anymore.

To clarify my position from a recent post (which was technically a tweet, but shows as a post here), my reasons for thinking AT&T could do better is the lack of MMS and tethering for the iPhone when the 3.0 software is launched. As MMS goes, I’m not likely to send many of the things, but there are some who insist on sending me the horrendous beasts and it would be nice to have an elegant way of handling them. The current way with AT&T is to visit a site and enter two streams of characters into text boxes. Why this can’t be simplified into a single clickable link is beyond me. The lack of Copy & Paste up until now (or until the 17th to be more accurate) is a further source of frustration with this exercise.

What I am not upset about is the pricing. If you don’t qualify for an upgrade because you are still under contract, then tough luck. This is the way it has always been. Those who bought the first iPhone were given automatic upgrade qualifications because they purchased it outright without any carrier subsidy. Luckily, one of the lines on my account qualifies for the reduced pricing, so I will be jumping on board.

Some people are also upset that the difference between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S isn’t all that great. At no point before WWDC, which is the Worldwide Developers Conference, were we told by Apple to expect a new iPhone. For some, the difference between the two phones isn’t a big enough jump for them to justify spending the $199 and certainly isn’t enough to justify the unsubsidized price. The current iPhone 3G will remain in one incarnation – the 8GB version for $99 on contract. This is still a fine phone, one which I use every day. With the 3.0 firmware update coming out later this month, it will be even better.

For some, AT&T is a deal breaker. For me, it’s almost a necessity. I travel back and forth to visit my parents in Ireland and to other European destinations on a somewhat regular basis. For this reason, I need a GSM provider. Once we all move over to LTE, life may be different. Until then I’ll be propping up the blue beach ball