Getting away from it all

I recently went on a holiday down Yorke Peninsula way with some other recent Engineering graduates. A good time was had by all, OK a good time was had by most. Unfortunately some members of the party didn't enjoy some of us delivering a brilliant serenade of 'Free David Hicks' to their window at 3am. It wasn't our fault that they took away my iPod after the 10th play in a row. I'm just very passionate about this issue- not the freeing of Hicks, but the promotion of the catchy tune that Peter Combe has delivered. The people in question still weren't committing themselves to the rhythm, and we vowed to continue until this happened. I'll let you know when it does. In the meantime I suggest that the best part for serenading (provides less words to be remembered) is to go: bridge, final verse, chorus, bridge,final verse, chorus, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then change windows to another person and repeat the process.

When packing to leave my house for the rendezvous point, a friend of mine and I quickly debated whether or not to take his laptop. We eventually decided to chuck it in the boot along with other more traditional holiday items (e.g. frisbee, cricket bat, duct tape). Upon arriving at the location with others still finishing up their own packing we realised that we were very under-prepared. Already packed in their cars for this 1 week trip were the following: Desktop PC, external hard drive, 68cm TV, AV receiver, Two 1m floor-standing speakers, another laptop, and I'm sure I've forgotten something. Oh yes, then one of our party 'almost forgot' to take along a WiFi antenna so that he could try and find an unencrypted wireless access point to 'borrow' some bandwidth while we were 'getting away from it all'.

My question is this. With all the hubbub in the press over the new Apple iPhone, some asked the question, "Will people use all the features?". The answer that I think my recent trip shows is that that will have no bearing on the sales of the device. The new generation always want more gadgets, so whether or not they use them is irrelevant. The more the better. Once a device can incorporate all the things we took on our trip away I'm sure we'll want more anyway. And this demand is only going to continue. Younger kids are going to grow up having never lived in a house without DSL.

I say this is awesome. On our trip I didn't get the chance to talk to anyone because I was busy watching Clone High and The Office. With only so many hours in a day, who wants to spend them walking on the beach when you can be laughing together in air conditioned comfort?