.. to take offense to the lack of space to hang danglie things off the iPhone, and Do Something about it.

In fact, they did (at least) three things about it:

option one: stick it in your headphone jack

option two: stick a button on the back

option three: screw a bar on the bottom

Soon after I wrote my review of the iPhone 4, I went on an internet hunt for a solution. I stumbled upon Strapya World, a website from Japan dedicated to all things meant to hang off a cell phone. I was entranced – I might have wet myself a little – and I quickly placed an order for all three iPhone charm holder options they had. They arrived today, so it was time to start dangling.

The first one I tried was the easiest of the three; the one meant to go in the headphone jack. It does exactly as advertised – holds a danglie thing – but then you can’t listen to music. What good is being awesome if you don’t have a soundtrack to go along with it?

super hello kitty is here to save the day

Option number two is the stick-on button. It too works well enough, but it sticks out a little and seems as though it would be easy to rip off when shoving your phone into a pocket. I haven’t tried to take it off my case, but I’m worried that the sticky will leave goo. Not a big deal I guess, but it kind of ruins the overall sleekness of the phone.

good for rainbows

Okay then – let’s try option three. The third one of the bunch took a little more work: use the included tool to remove the two small screws at the bottom of your phone, attach the plate, and use the two included screws to put it all back together. It sounds simple, but took a surprisingly long time to do – the longer screws were a giant pain in the ass to get in all the way, and because the bar lies flush against the bottom of the phone you can’t use it with a case.

anti-ninja hangin' around, being not stealthy at all

I had high hopes for this method, but it turned out to be my least favourite of the three: too damn fussy. It would also interfere with any sort of dock you use, which gives it an immediate fail – at least with the headphone jack option you can take it out when it is time to rock.

All three pieces do what they’re supposed to, but to my disappointment none of them were quite perfect:

the most innocent threesome you'll ever see on this site

Still, it’s really nice to have the ability to add one of my many (many many many) danglie things to my phone. The stick-on one is there for keeps (until I change the case, anyway), and I’ll use the headphone one because I enjoy plugging holes. Besides, I can never really have TOO many charms on my phone – I’ve gone from zero to 2, and that pleases me.

Next up: MORE!

that's about the right number of phone charms to carry

I feel .. better. Not quite human, but definitely more Morlock than shambling undead. I’ve stopped taking the zombie drugs and have since moved on to a relatively harmless cold/sinus formula that seems to have stopped the spigot and brought a temporary sense of calm to my morning. This is good. I can handle this.

We are likely getting a PVR this week – hooray! I’ll be able to record TV shows and not watch them! So handy. I’ve been bugging Ed for a while now to upgrade our digital box thingie, but he resisted because he hates giving into my requests. Last night though, we both spent a very long time trying to order the NHL Centre Ice package through Shaw only to discover that we can’t because our box is too old. Shaw told us to bring it in, and they’ll swap it out for a newer one that will just happen to have PVR capabilities if you plug a hard drive in. I have a 1TB external drive sitting on my desk acting as a paperweight, waiting for this exact scenario – so I get a PVR! I may have to try to use it for more than Simpsons reruns and Glee!

I wish I could taste things. I hate this part of having a cold.