My non-technical pasttime this winter has been learning to Snowboard, with a couple of trips to different mountains in NZ completed so far (and I'm off again tomorrow). There was no chance of me leaving my gadgets behind though, especially not my iPhone 3G. I've become quite attached to it since I queued for it back on the launch day. (In fact most of my colleagues at FINAO have also become iPhone users since then - it's practically our corporate phone standard).
My biggest concern taking the iPhone Snowboarding was smashing it (I was only learning, after all) so I had to get a decent case. The morning I flew down to Queenstown I headed to Magnum Mac in Albany and picked up my Griffin Nu Form case, which was pretty much the best they had to choose from at the time. And while it did protect my iPhone during some pretty crash-filled days at Coronet Peak in the weeks after I returned it cracked and broke - becoming pretty much unusable (easily slipping off).
It wasn't from me dropping it or anything either. My colleague Mike has one too and his has also broken in exactly the same spot. It's obviously a weak point in the design. I took it back to Magnum Mac but they wouldn't exchange it or give me my money back, so I had to buy another one. From a different manufacturer of course. I definitely won't be recommending the Griffin Nu Form iPhone 3G cases to anyone that asks!So my new case is a Contour Design 'Fusion' for iPhone 3G. It's a much more 'rubbery' feeling case but it doesn't seem to have the same weak points as the Griffin case does, in that all the accessory switches are moulded over rather than cut around. It's also quite a nice deep gloss black - much like the phone itself - so doesn't look as cheap as the other one. We'll see how well it protects the iPhone Snowboarding tomorrow and Friday at Turoa skifield on Mt Ruapehu.
The other thing I've found interesting iPhone/Snowboarding related is the excellent Snowreports iPhone app, from www.snowreports.co.nz. It's been really useful with quick checkups of the conditions on the slopes days (or even weeks) before we headed to Coronet Peak, Mt Dobson and more recently Turoa. I have to say that I've still been falling back to the Metservice website for more details, but the iPhone app is very cool. I'm looking forward to new features in time for next year's ski season. In fact there may even be time left this year with Boxing Day skiiing already on the cards for Mt Ruapehu, due to the huge amount of snow we've had this year!
As soon as we're done Snowboarding (that's assuming the weather holds out and the wind goes away and we actually get out there) Jon & I are heading to Taupo to watch my cousin Dale racing in the first round of the New Zealand V8s Championship motor racing.
I've recently completed an update to his website, reflecting his new team colours, and I took the opportunity to move from a static HTML site which was hard for me to update to one based on Joomla. Although Joomla is free I sprung $50 for a professional site template which was quite nice, but other than that it's been a low-cost high functionality return. Administering content with Joomla is a breeze, and its been quite fun figuring out just what it can do. I'm not much of a programmer or web developer so it's nice to get quite a dynamic site without too much pain.
I'm always on the search now for new Joomla modules that I can play with, and possibly add some life to my own website.
Anyway I'll be blogging away this weekend (technology and Vodafone NZ 3G coverage willing) at dalewilliamsracing.blogspot.com. I really do need to hack my iPhone so I can use it as a tethered modem. It really sucks that AT&T won't let Apple enable that functionality. I really relied on that with my Nokia E61s (and earlier). Maybe my next Laptop (possibly a Toshiba Portege M700) will have to have 3G data built in. Will have to spring for _another_ $50 1GB monthly data charge then though! :-(
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