Wowed by email!

When's the last time your email program made you say "holy crap!  That's impressive!".  (Or a less crass variant of same).  Well, Gmail just did that to me.  I wrote "I have attached" in my email, and didn't Gmail come back and say "you said you've attached... but you didn't attach a file, do you want to attach a file now?".  That's almost admin-assistant like material.  I was very impressed.  And I'm not easily impressed.  Especially by something as mundane as email.  Now I don't care enough about my email client to dig into the pros / cons of each system.  But then again, I've never cared enough about my email client to blog about it either.  Gmail might look as bland as a Goth chick with no eyeliner on the surface, but there's lots to like about Gmail, both on the surface as well as under the hood.

A few Bruce Lee "Did you knows"

I've been an avid Bruce Lee fan since I was a kid growing up in the back hills of Jamaica. But "fan" really just extended to watching all of his movies, not really digging into his life. But while reading the Wikipedia article on Ip Man (popularized Wing Chun) the other day, I of course stumbled on references to Bruce Lee, who is by far Ip Man's most famous student. So from that I of course started reading some background on Bruce, and came across lots of interesting info. For example;

- Bruce Lee died from an allergic reaction to Equagesic (a painkiller) that his friend gave him. Some go so far as to speculate that it may be the combination of marijuana leaves that he liked to chew, combined with the compounds in Equagesic that led to his death.

- Bruce had 2 children. Brandon Lee, who died on the movie set of The Crow due to a Darwin worthy (if it had happened to the moron who messed up) gunshot wound from a "blank". Bruce also had a daughter, Shannon. She also went into acting.

- He had a prolific movie career, with over 30 movie credits to his name (from infancy to adulthood), and also appeared in over a dozen tv shows.

- He was far ahead of the times in his control of his nutrition (cause of death notwithstanding), avoiding processed foods, and focusing on fruits, vegetables, certain nutritional supplements, and smaller, more frequent meals.

- Fitness:

• Bruce could single arm curl 3 x 8 rep sets of 75 lbs! That's amazing for just about anyone, but especially so for a guy that weighed in at 140lbs soaking wet.
• Lee's striking speed from three feet with his hands down by his side reached five hundredths of a second.[79]
• Lee could take in one arm a 75 lb barbell from a standing position with the barbell held flush against his chest and slowly stick his arms out locking them, holding the barbell there for several seconds.[80]
• In a speed demonstration, Lee could snatch a dime off a person's open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind.[81]
• Lee performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.[78][82]
• Lee performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.[83]
• Lee could cause a 300-lb (136.08 kg) bag to fly towards and thump the ceiling with a sidekick.[78]
• Also, according to the Intercepting Fist DVD, Lee would hold an elevated v-sit position for 30 minutes or longer.[77]

One of my favourite quotes of his, central to his Jeet Kune Do philosophy, is "Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it".

He left an amazing martial arts legacy, as well as a great philosophy on life, reminding his students to "be yourself". Easy to say, sometimes hard to do.

Quote of the Day

I Believe...
That either you control your attitude or it controls you.

Nice quote

This was sent to me by a friend of mine as part of one of those motivational "chain letter" emails. The bulk of the content was the usual hokey platitudes (I Believe... That either you control your attitude or it controls you.), but this quote at the end really stuck with me;
'The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; They just make the most of everything they have.'
So very true...

How's this for a powerful quote?

I got this from a motivational chain letter email. The bulk of the content was the usual hokey platitudes, but the quote at the end really stuck with me.
'The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; They just make the most of everything they have.
So very true...

BBM (Status Message) Haiku

I thought I'd create a new form of poetry specific to the Blackberry. I call it the BBM Haiku.
Its not to be confused with the BBM Haiku contests run by sites such as Crackberry, where you win a Blackberry for writing a Haiku about your 'Berry.
The BBM Haiku will be a art form structured around the Blackberry Messenger Status message.

The rules will be as follows:

No more than 64 characters long, including spaces (yes, I know, its kind of obvious).

12 syllables, regardless of the number of words. (approximately equal to the 17 "on" in traditional Haiku).

3 phrases.

Can be about any topic.

That's it! And yes, I know that makes it not a Haiku, but my creativity fell a little short of a more creative or fitting name. I'm open to other options.

Here's my first attempt:
Cold touch. Phone changes hands. Modern Intimacy.

What do you think (about the idea, that is, not the attempt)?

Quote on Confidence

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. (Marcus Garvey).

This quote is also credited to Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Duplicity - Merging the work and home masks

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
I came across this quote on what appears to be a Porsche forum (I didn't want to take the time to look further) while looking for a good family lawyer and was so entranced by it (the quote, not the site) that I had to blog about it. As a Gemini, and someone who once upon a time struggled with duality in his own personal identity, this quote really resonated with me.

The quote actually reminds me of a particular incident that took place at a diversity event when I worked at the Comfy Green Bank. A British immigrant of East Indian descent (hereafter referred to as "Buddy") asked a question of the bank's US head (of East Indian heritage, let's call him "Barry") - his question went something along the lines of "how does he manage the series of masks that he has to wear between his (presumably East Indian) home self, vs his work self, in order to allow himself to succeed in North American Culture. Well, Barry shot down Buddy in a hurry, telling him (in a tone that said, "what are you, a frigging idiot??") that this whole wearing of masks thing was pure horseshit, and that Buddy better figure out who he was and be it if he wanted to move up the proverbial corporate ladder.

In my mind, Barry was a bit harsh. The truth of the matter is that you absolutely have to be yourself. Your values, your morals, ethics and all the stuff that makes up the essence of you, has to be consistent, has to carry through. Think of yourself as a drink of water - sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes frozen, sometimes in a bottle, glass or other container, but no matter what, you're still H2O.

Here's hoping Buddy's got this figured out.

Peace.

Is the Blackberry the safest smartphone?

I read an article yesterday on how RIM is in trouble because of the triple threat of IOS, Android, and Windows7 Mobile (ok, ok, so it was really only a double threat). I'll provide a source for the article later.
Well fast forward one day to the entry of 2011, and what do I see? An article talking about a "malicious trojan" that could compromise data stored on Android powered smartphones. This follows on the heels of an article I read earlier in the year about a virus that affected Jailbroken iPhones.
So I started this blog entry all set to crow about the safety of my beloved Blackberry over other smartphone OSes, but of course like a good analyst, I needed to back up my theory with research.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for me to change my blog entry title away from something trumpeting the virtues of Blackberry OS, to something a bit more even keel.
So is the Blackberry OS susceptible to viruses? Well, apparently not so far. While there have been a demonstrated couple of exploits, one dating back to 2006, none of these exploits have been able to replicate, which is a key feature of viruses. But the Berry is definitely susceptible to malware - malicious software written to compromise a user's smartphone in some way. The difference is that users have to consciously download malware, and run the application in order for the malicious code to run and wreak havoc. This includes a trojan that can send out SMS texts to premium rate numbers. You can mitigate many of the problems that could come up by either blocking third party apps, or by restricting what third party apps can do within your security settings. Mind you this is more of a probability on BIS, since I would image that most IT departments shut down 3rd party apps on BES.
So what about Android? Is it susceptible to viruses? I'll go with a resounding "Yes" for final Jeopardy, Alex! The first Android virus was found back in August, and did the same thing as the aforementioned BB virus, namely sending out SMS texts to premium rate numbers. The most recent virus does not so nice things like Send location coordinates (fine location), Send device identifiers (IMEI and IMSI), Download and prompt the user to install an app, Prompt the user to uninstall an app, Enumerate and send a list of installed apps to the server. Fun times.
So what about IOS? I mean by now I'm sure we've all heard about Rickrolling - part of which refers to the Iphone virus that installed Rick Astley's pic as the wallpaper on jailbroken iphones, and changes the ringtone to "never gonna give you up". Not exactly a very serious virus, but a virus nonetheless. Plus as my pal Sharon just pointed out, there was another iphone virus that came out at pretty much the same time where a Dutch hacker was able to send a message to people with jailbroken iphones.
So what's the conclusion? Perhaps not surprisingly (considering its open source), Android seems the most vulnerable to exploits, followed by the iPhone and Blackberry. In fact, if the iPhone is not jailbroken, it actually seems to be the safest choice. Sort of throws a bit of a different spin on things. At the end of the day though, regardless of your smartphone of choice, clearly a few "safety first" object lessons apply;
- Only download apps from trusted sources.
- Familiarize yourself with your phone's security settings (passwords, application rights, etc) and make sure that you've made the changes that need to be made (e.g. change default passwords!).
- If your phone is capable of multi-tasking, make sure you are aware of all applications that are running, both in the background as well as the foreground, and that you know what they are doing.
Any other thoughts or comments? Happy to hear them.
Peace.