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Here's an interesting one for HRM locals. There's a weekend event coming up June 8/9 that opens the doors to a couple of handfuls of buildings and places of worship to the public. Similar to London's Open weekend, though on a much smaller scale, many of the buildings are already accessible to the public but either not regularly or not without appointment. There's a couple of old office buildings downtown I'd like to see including the Dominion Building and maybe the Khyber building but the one that's really attracting me is the Little Dutch Church on Brunswick Street. If i get over to see anything it will be that one. This tiny old church is not usually open and I've always wanted to see inside. All the other venues are mentioned here.  Saw an ad for it in The Coast, the free local weekly newspaper.

The Coast is great! It's irreverent and it's the best place to go for all the local clubs and entertainment notices. This week's issue has the results of the annual readers' poll for Halifax Best Of, mainly regarding food and drink. Using the website is better because they don't publish the addresses of the establishments in the newspaper. No room, I suppose. Always interesting to use to find a new place, lots i've never heard of.

It's been overcast, foggy and rainy all week. Going to be all weekend too. Ah spring in the Maritimes.

Adventures in Smartphoning

I took the plunge.

A few weeks ago i jumped into the Smartphone-iverse and bought a Nexus 4, the new phone that Google is sponsoring though it's made by LG. I'd kind of been looking at the Samsung, though not the newest one out and the guy in the Telus store showed me his Nexus. It's all integrated with google of course, which can be convenient. All your phone stuff gets backed up to the google-universe.

The main selling point of it though, was that they're sold unlocked. That means I can get a local SIM card in the UK and use it there. I don't have to use it for data there, just on wifi if there's a hotspot and Graham has wifi at home as well. I always have a phone for when i'm there for texts and calls but my phone is getting old and the battery is going. I don't know whether i can keep the same number but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't even really matter if i just throwaway the number each time though i may still keep it topped up. TMobile won't let me register my credit card online though as it's not a UK card so I may flip to a different company. Doesn't really matter. What matters is i can use it there or anywhere else i happen to be with a local micro sim. I can't use the same Sim that's in my current UK phone because this phone uses a micro SIM not a normal sized one.

I had the phone for about a week. Figured out a lot of things like how to load up "apps", how to use some of them, found some settings to re-set, made a call, used wifi, even sent a text. Then it rang. And i couldn't figure out how to answer it! hahahahaha!!!! Yeah. Read the effing manual. Got it. So little by little i'm figuring out things i can do with it.

Today i was reading a magazine and noticed those black square barcode style things you can scan with your phone and get information or go to a website. Ohhhh.... Hmm... taking a picture of it didn't work or do anything. Go to Google. Ah....you need an app for it. Right. Downloaded two of them! One does pretty much just scanning but the other, Google Goggle, will let you take a photo of something and it will search Google for you. It doesn't work with everything but will work with things like well known paintings or for something like a photo of the Eiffel Tower or other famous sight. It's not sophisticated enough to search to identify a plant or bird yet. I wonder if it would work if i took a photo of a celeb LOL! It will scan a business card or address and let you phone the number or add it to your contacts. You can also scan something in a foreign language, like menu information for instance, and Google translate it. That might be useful. It also does bar codes.

I learned how to do a screen shot of what's on the camera and it saves it as a photo. I learned how to use the panorama feature on the camera which i wish i'd known about in New York on the cruise we took. The camera is pretty good but not great for zooming as it's just a digital zoom but for straight pics it's not bad at all.

And i can make and answer calls!