Constitutionally incapable of making up my mind

OK - after the horror that was online dating, I've decided to move on to my first love - gadgets. Sure, men have their uses, and I'll probably pursue that avenue later, but at the moment, I've no time for dating, because the gadgets are calling...

I remember, some years ago, writing an email to PC Pro, telling them what I wanted, and asking why someone hadn't developed it yet. What I wanted at that time, was, essentially, a Palm, but with the ability to phone people on it, and also browse the web. I seem to remember my friend, Martin, telling me to wait 6 months, because he thought Palm were going to announce something which would seem to be what I was waiting for. Well, in the absence of any actual cashy money, I waited, and Palm, in due course, announced the Palm W. I do believe the W stood for wireless, and it's possible that it would connect to a wifi network. I'm not sure, because the reviews were not good, so I didn't look too far into it. And anyway, it didn't have a phone. I think I remember that you could get a "sled" for it which would allow you to shove a sim into it, and use it as a phone. The whole thing, then, would look rather like the mobile phone "bricks" from back in the 90's. The word "sled" was what I remember finding on a search of the interwebz for this device and its accessories.

I found this new device annoyingly underwhelming, especially as Palm had been so brilliant in the PDA market previously. And people like Sony had produced the P900, which, while expensive, seemed to have all that I wanted. So, the all in one device waited a bit.

Now, about two and a half years ago, I bought, at great expense, from eBay, a Sony Clié PDA. This second hand device cost me £150, which was at the top end of what they were selling for. Had I been more inclined (and less susceptible to the ghastly panic at the end of the auction) I might have waited it out, and managed to get something similar, but it would have cost maybe £30 less. The whole package, at the time, seemed like a pretty good deal. It did include the GPS receiver and all the necessary software for installing GPS on the palm, along with the car-cradle in which it would sit whilst you were driving. After all, I've got to be the only person in the whole Universe who doesn't have a GPS! OK - maybe there's a tiny bit of exaggeration there... But still no phone. However, it would pair nicely with my Nokia 8310 (using IR), and it had wifi built in. And yet Nirvana seemed just beyond my paupers fingers...

Moving on to 2009. There are at least 15 million devices out there which will do it all. Although they're usually phones which will allow a limited web browsing experience, there seems to be a bit of a trend to try to make this a less limited deal. Look at the Nokia N97. Although the reviews of it are less than glowing, it's certainly providing the all-in-one experience. The HTC phones are providing a similarly checked list of features (although I gather their keyboards are a little nicer to use). In fact, since I started this post, Nokia have been outed, with a large and embarrassing leak about the new Internet Tablet, which also doubles as a phone - so they had to announce it early. It's called the N900, and is, apparently, AWESOME! However, it's also going to cost upwards of £500 unless you get a contract for it. Not, I suppose, that this is such a bad thing - I've been pleased with the contract on my N78.

But I've rambled long enough. About 2 weeks ago I purchased, for a ridiculously small sum, a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. How ridiculously small, I hear you ask? Well, both Play.com and Amazon UK have the device available for just short of £130. Pennies short, I'll concede, but DAMN, how cheap is that?

So, the device arrived. I thought; it'll be just like a palm, it's got wifi but no phone, but maybe it'll browse the sites I haven't been able to get to on the Clié.

Turns out I was wrong. Oh, sure, I can browse the sites I couldn't reach on the Clié, and no, it doesn't have a phone. But it's NOTHING like the palm. Everything works. No messing, it just works. No installing interesting third-party drivers which cost a fortune, and aren't necessarily guaranteed to work, it just works.

This device (and the new N900) come with an OS called Maemo. Dumb name! But that's where the stupid stops. This is a little Linux distro, and thus you can write your own programs for it. Give me some time, and I'll borrow my brother's "Programming In Python for Dummies" manual, and knock you up a killer app. Assuming I can think of one which doesn't already exist.

Because this is where the stupid steps in again. Nobody knows that this device and OS exist, except a bunch of geeks who don't seem to mind it being a secret. Nokia, apparently, didn't advertise the Internet Tablets very much, and anyway, since Nokia make phones, I'd been perplexed as to why these tablets came with no sim socket. After all, there's not THAT much wifi available in the UK. I wasn't, clearly, the only one perplexed at this omission. These are some of the reasons I was able to get my fantastic new toy at such a great price.

So, the device here, fully charged, connected to my wifi and browsing the web. I'd asked my brother (also has an N810) which apps he'd recommend for download, and he'd started me off with FBReader - "Google it!" he ordered. And then, without meaning to, I'd clicked a link on the desktop of the gadget, and found myself at a site called Maemo.org - Wonderland! It was like discovering that the last 7 years of Palm idiocy had all been a dream, and I'd woken up to find that they were still the leaders of the PDA world (you guessed - I'm a bit of a Palm fan). I browsed through their catalog of, as far as I can work out, completely free apps, written by the fans for the N800 series, and downloaded a handful of applications which seemed interesting.

Oh, there I go, rushing ahead of myself! I'd connected the keyboard to the N810 with the same ease with which it had connected to the N78. In fact, the N78 connected with ease to the N810, allowing me to use the 3G capability of the phone, should a wireless lan be unavailable (as so often happens in my brother's house!) This is why the tablet didn't need to be able to connect to the internet via it's own 3G - you can just use your own phone. Yeah, early adopters would have found this a rather expensive route, but since I've had my phone for a year, and the N810 was so incredibly cheap, it's proven a sound financial move. Well, sound in as much as any gadget I want to buy will no doubt have my mother's eyes rolling, and her favourite phrase popping out "You don't need it!"

Favourite applications for Maemo? I think, at this point it would have to be a combination of Nokia 770 Video Converter (on the PC), teamed up with mPlayer on the tablet. Then there's Numpty Physics, a frustrating game I can't work out how it's supposed to be played. I did get a copy of something very close to Bejewelled, a sudoku game and a minesweeper game. Oh, and visit garage.maemo.org, too.

And do you know what? This wonderful experience has shown me that I don't really want an all in one device after all. I love the portability of my phone - it'll tuck into bits of my clothing (although not quite as invisibly as the 8310), and I love the huge screen of the N810. While the N900 looks like a really exciting machine and the internet buzz being so enthusiastic, it's a chunky beast and so I think I'll stick to my duo. It's a far cry from connecting the Palm and the 8310 with infrared and using a GPRS connection to send emails!

Real Security Online

I'm really pleased that my girls are both quite security concious. So when Lottie asked me, "Do I trust this?", I bimbled over to her PC to take a look.

I did suggest the password she gave over...

The conversation went something like this.

» do you want a free makeover?

» i just need your password. u can trust me, i wont HACK you i know what its like. tell ur mum i wont hack you.

« lol u want my passwod??? It's "GET ORF MOI LAWN!!!"
« lol
» what?
« i can't answer im laughing so hard!!
« Come on, what do you think I'm 11?
« Oh, hang on...

» what?
» i'm 14
« I'm having fun!! You asked me for my PASSWORD!? Do u think i'm stupid?!

The Shift key, and all its uses, many and varied.

I'm sorry - it's been quite some time since I popped online to rant at you, and I'd have to forgive you for thinking that I've fallen off a cliff or joined a bizarre religious sect.

Neither of those things could be farther from the truth, as it happens. I've been busy, and anyway, nothing has popped up on which I felt passionate enough to have a go at. Oh, that's not, strictly speaking, true. I did start a couple of posts, but got rather side tracked, and they ended up going nowhere. That was pretty bizarre in itself - it's odd to lose momentum halfway through a piece, and realise you've lost track of where it's supposed to be going.

However, digression over.

I joined an online dating site. I wondered if it was possible to find a similar geeky person, so about 36 hours ago I put myself out there (plentyoffish, if you want to go and have a peek at my profile...) and joined up. You know what I'm looking for. I want a geek; someone who shares a fair few interests with me, but maybe has some of his own. I'd like to be able to have a regular movie partner and someone to talk gadgets and Manga/Anime with. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to find someone geeky on the net - after all, it's where we all hang out.

Within the last 36 hours I've already had one proposition, and meet a nice man with a GT550. Sadly he's put down that he's an occasional smoker, so the girls have rejected him. I've had a ping from an accountant with absolutely nothing in common, who wants to meet. And the number of profiles I've read where even the most rudimentary grammar has been completely ignored is ridiculous.

Would someone please tell me why it's SO difficult to remember to press the shift key at the beginning of a sentence? There seem to be a huge number of men (I didn't check out any of the female profiles - if it's not Nigella, I'm not interested) who don't know where the shift key is, and can't find the full stop or comma keys. They're completely ignorant of what the apostrophe key is for, and probably don't know where to find it anyway. And how many people tell me they've got a degree of some sort, and still can't work out the difference between your, you're and yore (OK, I'm exaggerating - no one has used any sentence in which yore would be correct). But I think the most appalling thing is the inability to properly capitalise.

Now, while I can understand that you might leave off capitals when you're chatting online with someone (after all, unless you're a touch typist, you're probably picking over the keys with a couple of index fingers) and you're in a hurry, I find it a lot more difficult to understand writing your whole profile in lower case, with incorrect/no punctuation. While I find it quite difficult to forgive the inability to differentiate between your and you're, I can understand it.

And the saddest part is that I read a profile of a guy who said all this, but he came across as an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who I didn't want to contact! Actually, I decided I didn't want to contact him because he detailed a couple of unsuccessful dates - who does that? If it's unsuccessful, move on and try to leave the poor girl with some semblance of dignity. Just because you found her a scrap overweight, it's rather insensitive to put it up online.

Easter Traditions

At the Hawley Place Easter Garden Design competition, open to all year groups, I think I've found the winner.

Please note the use of two different colours of heather, sturdy evergreens, and not forgetting the traditional Easter dinosaur.

Snow Days!

A few weeks ago I woke to find the world had turned white overnight.  Much of the South of England was covered with the deepest snow I could remember since my childhood.

Quickly phoning the girls school, I discovered that the headmaster, Mr Pipe, had already been up, and left a new message on the school's answer phone, telling us that the school was closed for the day.  It took me a bit longer to find out from my boss that our school was also closed for the day, but then the girls and I got into the serious business of enjoying our day.

We walked over to King George V playing field, because it's the nearest public area with a good slope, and tobogganed for an hour or so.  Since I didn't want to drive in the snow, we walked everywhere that day, and fell into bed, exhausted, in the evening.

Only to discover, upon waking, that another Snow Day had been declared!

After 2 glorious Snow Days, it was quite a disappointment to return to school, and see the, once pristine, snow melting, greyly in the carpark.  However, I was cheered and amused to read in my free computer magazine, later that week, that many people had been able to work from home due to the advances of modern technology.

Do you know, not once during my 2 enjoyable days out of the office did it even begin to cross my mind to occur to me to log in from home and even take a peek at the server!

Prince Caspian

My neighbours, enticed by the promise of a roaring fire and chocolate, came over the other night, with a film from their DVD rental place.  They've given up on Blockbuster because of the surfeit of scratched and damaged DVD's, and have started renting from Tesco.  The DVD's come by post, and they can rent as many during each month as they want, on condition that they have no more than 3 out at any one time.

Which is why, just a couple of weeks ago, we settled down in front of the afforementioned fire, to watch Prince Caspian.

And now I'll tell you just why Disney decided to drop the Narnia series like a hot brick.  Their official reasons contain the words "budgetary and logistical reasons", but that's complete horsefeathers!

When I was young, I loved the Narnia Chronicles.  I didn't actually get into them until I was into two figures, but once there I stayed, reading and re-reading the books for years.  I remember the sense of wonder I would get with each new book, which would remain with me for many of those re-reads.  I haven't forgotten the feeling of despair I experienced when I read the last page of The Last Battle, knowing there would never be any more, and all I could do to recapture the magic was to read the chronicles again.  I remember my intense conviction that if I could only find the right door/wardrobe, I, too, could visit Narnia.  The enchantment of the books has never left me, even though, when I try to read them to my children, I find that, in comparison to modern children's literature, they're are, in some places, quite stodgy and slow moving.  

Take, for example, the begining of Prince Caspian.  The story starts, quite well, with a chapter about the Prince and his upbringing.  The cousin is born, and Caspian's life is suddenly in danger, and there's a midnight escape.  So far, so good.  We cut to the children in England, returning, rather downheartedly, to school, about to take separate trains from a small station in the country, when they are suddenly "pulled" back into Narnia.  While it takes them little time to realise that they are, once again, in the land they ruled over for so many years, it's quite some time later that they begin to suspect that they've arrived back in Narnia a very long time after they left, and that things have changed a lot in that time.  This confirmed, they set out to find out why they were drawn into the land, while also trying to find some civilistation and proper food!  Again, excellent story telling.  And then it gets rather awkward.  Having rescued a dwarf from the Telmarines, he proceeds to tell them the story of Prince C, and how he was given, and blew, Susan's trumpet in order to summon help in his time of Greatest Need.  So the exciting story of how Caspian came to blow the trumpet is reduced to a second hand tale.  Despite that, it's still a very good story.

So will someone tell me how Disney managed to make it into an unnecessarily long pile of poop?  I'll let them get away with making Caspian a dark haired man, because the Telmarines were mostly dark haired in the book, and it wasn't illogical.  But why on earth did they have to insert a completely unwritten section about an attack on King Miraz's castle?  There's quite enough material in the book for it to have been an utterly charming, if somewhat shorter, film.

And there's the crux of the matter.  The film is 150 minutes long.  And to translate that, it's just 10 minutes shy of 3 hours.  I complain about my girls' inability to sit still for a whole film, but because the flow of the movie was so turgid, I felt myself becoming restless, as looks lengthened needlessly.  Certain scenes were drawn out far too long, telegraphing the plot just in case we blinked.  Remember the part where the river raises up and breaks the bridge?  Just how many "meaningful" looks can we exchange with Lucy?  All that build up would have given the Telmarines plenty of time to evacuate the bridge before it became match-stick soup.

I know, since The Lord of The Rings was made into 3 superb 3-hour films, that longer movies have become somehow de-rigeur.  But there's a reason the Harry Potter and LOTR films have reached such lengths - the source material is incredibly long to start with.  There's a lot to be said for a tight little 90 minute film.  Especially if you're going to aim it at children.

I'm quite prepared to have a numb bum if the material demands, but with the best will in the world, none of the Narnia Chronicles can scrape together enough raw source to feed such a lengthy film.  People thought it was boring (Caspian notwithstanding) at the cinema, so they're not going to bother buying the DVD - after all, many films go on to become so called "cult" classics after a poor showing at the box office (remember Serenity?), but word on the interwebz isn't going to help Prince Caspian.  Thus a really expensive film (apparently it cost in the region of $225 million!!) is just not going to make back the costs, causing the studio to back out on the deal to make further films.

So THAT'S why Disney aren't going to make the rest of the Narnia Chronicles.

Mmmm - Bacon

Yesterday, as I was stumbling round the internet, I came across a gorgeous looking recipe on the Jamie Oliver web site, of red cabbage braised with apple, bacon and balsamic vinegar. It looked so delicious that I resolved at once to try it in the evening.

With that in mind, I persuaded the girls to go with me to the big Tesco in order to buy a red cabbage, in the sincere belief that I had a packet of bacon in the freezer.

When, on returning home and opening the freezer, I discovered the sad truth, I said, with some frustration, "Oh, I've got no bacon."

To which Lizzy replied, "Why don't you just use fish fingers?"