Anyone who is tech-savvy enough to read this blog has undoubtedly heard about the “Apple Maps debacle”. The press has written lots and lots about it – some justified, most over-simplified link bait, as follows:
Apple hates Google ‘cuz they copied the iPhone
Apple wants Google off the iPhone so it created its own Maps, got rid of Google Maps
Apple Maps suck.
The reality is, of course, much more complicated. Since their negotiations happen behind closed doors, all we can do is use what we know and speculate on the rest. My take follows.
The trailer for Man of Steel is now up. As most of you know, a new Superman movie is A Big Deal so I had to post it here.
Hard to say if it’s going to be good. There is barely a glimpse of the villain General Zod (played by Michael Shannon) and he looks nothing like Superman 2’s Zod. Henry Cavill really, really looks the part. And Superman actually throws punches in this movie, not like in that all-but-forgotten Superman Returns POS.
Director Zack Snyder is really hit or miss. He’s got very good movies, but he also has terrible movies. But John Williams’ theme song appears to be missing.
There is a scene in The Bucket List where Jack Nicholson is making some of the most expensive coffee in the world in a complex machine. He explains to Morgan Freeman that the beans go through the digestive track of some animal. I thought it was all made up for the movie. Turns out it wasn’t.
On our recent trip to Indonesia, we went to a small farm in Bali. In there they made Kopi Luwak. This is known to be the most expensive coffee in the world, sometimes sold for $50 USD or more a cup. Thankfully, if you don’t factor in the cost of getting my butt to this place, the coffee ends up being no more than your regular cup of Starbucks Iced-Venti-Mochachino-Espresso-Latte-Double-Skim-Vanilla with whipped cream (hold the sugar).
This is what a Luwak, a.k.a. Asian palm civet looks like:
A caged Luwak is probably not a happy Luwak.
Turns out these things like to eat mature coffee beans. But they can’t digest the beans. So they poop it. The final product looks just like my poop after eating lots of corn:
Luwak shit is the shit.
Alone, these would make excellent biscotti replacements. But in Bali they take it further. The coffee beans are thoroughly washed – supposedly (and I certainly hope so) the beans are perfectly fine for consumption – but their chemistry is altered due to the animal’s digestive juices reacting with the beans. Then they are traditionally roasted, ground, and prepared as normal Turkish coffee. Yummy!
So how is it? Honestly, it’s very good. Yes, you can tell the difference. It is less bitter and less acidic than your usual coffee, yet it tastes very much like coffee. I wouldn’t pay $50 USD for a cup – maybe I’m just not rich enough. But I was able to afford about a pound at Balinese farm prices, I had an outstanding cup of coffee, and I get to blog about rat poop drink. All in all, undoubtedly a worthy investment.
Handsome tourist.Handsome cup of Luwak coffee.“Hmmm… doesn’t smell like poop.”
One day last May I bumped into an interesting thing on Kickstarter: Twig: the amazing ultra-portable cable for your iPhone.
Clever thing, really: a short iPhone cable inside a flexible rubber casing that transforms itself into a small kick-stand. Smart, simple. Not to mention amazing and ultra-portable. I really like amazing things. This is what the 3D computer render looks like:
Nice, huh?
I am pretty skeptical of Kickstarter projects in general, not because I think the people behind said projects are out to rip me off, but because all sorts of unforeseen things tend to pop up during product development and I don’t get the feel that the people behind these projects take those into account.
But heck, this is no Bluetooth enabled e-ink watch. It’s a freaking cable inside a rubber casing. How hard can it be?
Quite hard, it turns out. Almost six months later, I finally received my Twig. Six months. Never mind that between my “pledge” and the Twig actually arriving I upgraded to a new phone that is incompatible with it. Never mind. Never… mind.
So how is it? Well, this is it:
Basically, it’s what you’d expect the offspring of Gumby and an iPhone cable to look like. An obsolete iPhone cable, that is. One that doesn’t fit my phone and is barely stiff enough to hold the phone’s weight.
When I was backpacking in Europe back in the summer of ’96, Jovanotti, one of my favorite musicians was touring his home country. Things didn’t work out back then – I had to “settle” for a Luciano Pavarotti.
Fast forward to 2012 and Lorenzo Cherubini comes Austin for ACL 2012. In Italy, I’d be standing behind 30,000 tall Italians. In the U.S. however… well, just look closely in the left bottom corner of the photo at the handsome guy with the hat.
I have my new Sprint iPhone 5 and I had to travel to Mexico. I obviously wanted to use my prepaid “Amigo Telcel” SIM card.
These are the steps:
Call Sprint, ask them to provide an international unlock.
Some carriers will sell you an unlocked iPhone, meaning that it will work with any GSM-compatible SIM card in the world. Most won’t, they will sell you a phone that is programmed to work only on the specific carrier’s network. Some carriers will, however, unlock you iPhone. In the US case, Verizon iPhone 5 comes unlocked, AT&T will unlock it once your contract is up, and Sprint will sometimes unlock it for international use only assuming your account is in good standing and some secret set of circumstances are all fulfilled. The way they do this is unclear to me, but basically you call them, they ask you for your phone’s IMEI code, and then they do something (tell Apple to unlock it?) on their end so that your iPhone is unlocked.
If you are on a different carrier, then you need to research whether that carrier will unlock your phone. The easiest way is to contact them directly. Multiple times if needed.
Back up your iPhone.
After some indeterminate amount of time, the request Sprint places on Apple goes through. Connect your phone to your computer, open iTunes, and back it up.
Restore your phone.
This takes a while, and in my case, there was no “Congratulations! Your iPhone is now unlocked.” message. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps because what I got is not a full unlock, rather an international unlock, which means I can use it with any cellphone company outside the US that has SIM cards, but not with AT&T nor T-Mobile. The lack of message made me nervous that the phone did not get unlocked.
Get a nano SIM.
The SIM card in the iPhone 5 is smaller than the regular ones or even the iPhone 4/4S microSIM cards. This is where you may need to get crafty and cut down your SIM card. Be careful! Left: nanoSIM for iPhone 5 Right: microSIM for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4SAfter my handy work, the former microSIM is now a nanoSIM. I was nervous about the metallic edges shorting on the aluminum iPhone 5 SIM tray, but everything worked fine.
I had access to a nicely equipped soldering station for my SIM operation, microscope included. You may not be as lucky, nor as handy. Be careful!
Use.
Once I arrived to Mexico, I popped in the “new” nanoSIM and it worked like a charm!
Yep, that’s a real iPhone 5 screenshot taken in Monterrey, Mexico connected to Telcel.
Verizon iPhone 5 came fully unlocked for some reason, and AT&T will unlock them at some point. I’d love to hear other people’s experiences.
