Although the iPhone cannot send video or picture messages (except by email), I was curious about what would happen if someone sent me one. It seems reasonable to suppose it might be displayed using the phone’s built-in photo or video functionality, but in fact it isn’t - you get a normal SMS message letting you know that someone has tried to send you a multimedia message. A little disappointing, but it does direct you to viewmymesssage.com and provides a message ID and password with which to log in. This would be perfectly acceptable, except that I can’t get it to work. Neither of the ID/password pairs I’ve gotten with MMS messages have actually allowed me to log in and see the messages themselves. So for you other iPhone users: have you successfully used the site to view a multimedia message, or does it not work at all?

I have owned at least one of every Communicator since the brand arrived in the shape of the 9000 in … well it must be over ten years ago because I had one when I was making the film Wilde in 1996. I remember being upbraided for having it poke out of the top of my velvet jacket in one of the courtroom scenes.

Who knew Stephen Fry was a gadget geek? Certainly not me, although I did know he was a Mac user. I think I love him just a little bit more, now.

In honor o’ International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I’ve collected some pirate-related links fer ye t’ enjoy. Here’s a quick primer on talkin’ like a pirate, an’ an English t’ Pirate translator if ye’re in a real hurry. An’ ye can download th’ official TLAPD theme song fer free.

Ye can also grab th’ Calico Jack iPhone wallpaper I made a while back, or read a couple other older swashbuckler-related posts o’ mine on pirate supplies. In th’ meantime, I’ll be eatin’ me rum cake until ’tis time t’ go home and drink some actual rum. Arr!

In the decades since, copying has remained ubiquitous in the fashion industry. Fashion-forward but low-priced retailers like H & M and Zara have flourished, thanks to their ability to take designs from Milan to the mass market. Private-label designers for major department stores trumpet the fidelity of their imitations. And almost as soon as hot new designs appear on the runway, photographs and drawings of them are on their way to Chinese factories that can produce reasonable facsimiles at a fraction of the cost. Designers are as annoyed by this as their prewar forebears were, and so Congress now finds itself considering a bill, pushed by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, that would give original designs a legal protection similar to copyright.

From The Piracy Paradox in The New Yorker.

One of the first times I ever tried rum was in college, when someone was buying a round of drinks for me and my friends. I wasn’t yet much of a drinker and didn’t really know what to order, so when my roommate ordered rum and coke I asked for the same. I found it revolting - far too sweet and with an aftertaste that convinced me I hated rum. Shortly thereafter, vodka established itself as my liquor of choice and I remained faithful to it for a long time.

But recently, I decided to give rum a second chance, and asked the owner of my local package store to recommend something inexpensive (in case I hated it) but worth drinking (in case I didn’t). He set me up with a bottle of Cruzan Dark, which I drank with club soda and a squeeze of lemon and found to be pretty good. Since then I’ve tried a number of other rums of varying quality (my current favorite is Pyrat XO Reserve), but I’m looking for more. If you’re a rum drinker, what’s your favorite rum in each price range? And why do you like it?

Sometimes it feels like I spend all my time here complaining about stupid things people do, but the past couple of weeks have been so rich with stupidity that I can’t really resist.

Item the first: Last November, I bought Chris an Xbox 360 for his birthday. Less than a year later, it has died on us, leading me to spend an hour on the phone with Microsoft customer service. I don’t know if you’ve ever called Microsoft about a problem with your Xbox, but the whole experience seems clumsily targeted at teenage boys and fills me with murderous rage. The automated voice system has that sort of fake-cool tone you get in soda commercials, and the rep I spoke with kept asserting that various things were cool. The Xbox serial number, the color of the power supply light, my zip code: all cool. He also didn’t know what he was talking about. (“It sounds like your AV cables just, uh, died. I guess.”) In the end, we got an empty white box in the mail after about two weeks. It’s been another two weeks since we’ve seen the Xbox.

Item the second: FreshDirect delivery people are allowed to call if they’re in the neighborhood and want to deliver an order early, which is fine. But recently, I heard our doorman call up while I was unavailable to answer the house phone, about an hour before a delivery we’d scheduled. I figured the FreshDirect guy (if it was him) would assume we weren’t home and would just come back at the scheduled time. Instead, I heard our doorbell ring a few minutes later. Then, incredibly, I heard the guy jiggle our doorknob several times. What, was he just going to come in if it was open? It wasn’t, so he soon went away.

About an hour later, Chris happened to open our front door on his way downstairs, and discovered our food melting in a ninety degree hallway. Not only did the guy not care that we didn’t sign for it, he didn’t even bother to call and tell us what he’d done. After I scraped the ice cream off the carpet, I called and got a full refund, but I think we’ll still avoid ordering on Saturdays from now on.

Item the third: I placed an order on the Sears website a couple days ago. Later that night, a Sears rep called my house to ask what the shipping address for the order was. You know, the shipping address I entered during the checkout process. The one it wouldn’t have let me place the order without entering. I am without words.

I’m back in New York and back at work, after four days in Massachusetts for my cousin Edith’s wedding, and three days of miserable sniffling at home with yet another bad cold. It was, as always, great to unplug for a few days and spend time with my family, especially on such a happy occasion. And of course a trip to Essex also means top notch fried clams.