Saying Goodbye to Palm

It is with a sigh of sadness that I say goodbye to Palm. I've given up the struggle, and have gone, neither the iPhone nor the WinMob route; I chose a Nokia N78 running Symbian.

I took delivery of my little gem just over 2 weeks ago, and apart from sending a couple of things (notably mobipocket documents) from my Sony Clie TH55, I've barely touched that worthy old device since.

And I have been faithful! I've struggled for months, now, trying to get my aging device to run more modern software, accepting that I may notice a small reduction in speed.

I tried to upgrade to a better browser, following all the advice and instructions on the web. Sadly, despite every effort (I tried to install Java for Palm in order to continue on and install Opera Mini) I have been forced to continue my web browsing habits using NetFront. It's not even that this is particularly dreadful, unless you try using a site like YouTube, or even Google Calendar, neither of which will work on my old device. Pop over to either of them on the new phone, and you're in!

What I like best is that so far, with a couple of initial hiccoughs, the phone has worked as required. The obvious is there - I can make and receive calls (when Vodafone finally saw fit to release my number). I feel this is a pretty fundamental requirement for a phone of any type. Then there's the web access - a little shaky setting up the connection through my wireless LAN, but that's now set, and I can browse the web. In fact, I've not found anything I can't do on the internet - that said, I've not gone far yet.Google Maps, downloaded and installed, and works.

It will even work with my wireless home network, something I have trouble doing with the version on the Sony - sometimes it might just work, more often I'll be told that I need a data contract to run the program. Goosync works, similarly, either with the wireless network, or with the 3/3.5G connection, and I have my calendar synced. I like the downloaded version of Google Mail better than I like the installed mail application.

It's this whole "It just works" feeling I'm enjoying most. I unfold my bluetooth keyboard, press any button on it, and it's automatically connected. OK, it took me a little while to set up the web access, but I don't feel that a couple of hours investment in learning how to get the most out of my new device is time wasted. After all, I've been a palm fan for the last 10 years, The point is that while I could get my palm and the keyboard connected, it took a bit of a song and dance to do so. And then, when I’d finished using the keyboard, I’d have to remember to go back into the wireless keyboard program and stop the keyboard, before I was able to turn off Bluetooth.

There were all sorts of things which didn't work well – I was never able to get the Frogpad keyboard working consistently well. In fact, more often than not, it wouldn’t connect at all. Despite the claim on the Expansys web site that the Frog would work with Palm, the drivers were not included in the package, and on download they were flaky. There was an option to pay an extra £25 for a driver which would work, but I don’t know about you, I need to know that this will work before I’m prepared to fork out that kind of money on something which should have been included in the original package. Moving on to the N78 – once paired with the Frogpad using the wireless keyboard program, all I have to do is turn it on, and it’s connected. I feel an overwhelming urge to use the American “Booyah!” at this point!

On the, very slight, downside, the built in calendar program is a bit lame. I actually do want a calendar program which will allow me to create just one appointment, and repeat it weekly on certain days - I'd rather not be woken on Saturday morning by my normal weekday alarm! I'm sure that, upon searching, I'll find an excellent replacement. After all, given just how much money I’ve spent on Palm software over the years, it should be clear that I’m not averse to spending a little to get what I need.

There is another downside – the case is astonishingly easy to scratch, and the front, after being pressed up against my not-that-grubby-thankyou ear has a constant smear of grease over it.

In defence of Palm's legion software writers, there have been some astonishing pieces of software written for the Palm platform. For example, TCPMP is a superb piece of software, and genuinely plays videos with a level of control of which I can only dream on the Nokia. DateBk has exactly the right level of control for a calendar application, Filez is a truly excellent file manager, and FXPilot is wonderful for taking on holiday with the latest exchange rates.

So to the tireless, endlessly imaginative, think-outside-the-box, Palm software writers I give my thanks, for producing some of the most useful, inexpensive and brilliant software I've ever used. Can you see why I sigh?

Joys of the Open Road

You'll have noticed, recently, that the weather has been glorious. Indeed, I'm sitting here in a t-shirt, linen trousers and a pair of sandals. Therefore it won't surprise you to hear that I've been seeing a lot more motorcyclists of late. I'm too old, now, to object to the "fair-weather bikers" out there. I remember objecting most strongly when my mother called me a fair-weather biker on the day I'd biked through a huge storm on my way back from the other side of Oxford, had only just finished getting dry, and asked if I could borrow her car!! Nope, if they'd rather not struggle through storms, far be it for me to insist that they're not "real" bikers.

So, apart from noticing these bikers, more disturbingly I've noticed that many of them are displaying a lot of ankle!

No, I'm not a prude dressed in something akin to a burka, believing that a glimpse of ankle will get the opposite sex all hot and bothered. It's the safety aspect which bothers me. I know you have no intention of falling off your bike - this is why it's called an "accident". I just find it distressing how few bikers plan for the eventuality that they may hit the deck at some point during their trip. Let's face it, we know that more bikers are fatally injured than car drivers - it seems to help, having a metal box around you - and even if your accident isn't terminal, you're very much more likely to sustain some serious injuries coming off a bike, than poofed into your airbag in a car.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you're belting down the road at, say, 30, when an idiot pedestrian with a dog decides he hasn't seen you, so Rex and he are crossing the road - within your stopping distance. Even deciding that he and Rex deserve their fate, you're coming off. If you swerve, you've got a really big chance of coming off. If your brakes are particularly good and you haul them on - skidding, falling off - likely to happen. At which point, those unprotected ankles (and indeed most of your unprotected flesh) is at serious risk.

A few years ago, when visiting my friend in hospital, there was a young lad in one of the other beds in his ward. This young lad had come off his bike - and it wasn't even a really bad accident, he'd just slid off. Unfortunately for him his legs weren't protected (beyond that awesome protection that is denim), and at some point during his skid, all the flesh had been scraped off one leg below the knee. Not so bad, was my first thought, at least he didn't crush any bones. But no - you have to think about it, but when there's no flesh, or muscle, what holds the bones together? Well, nothing. So the poor boy ended up losing his leg below the knee, just because the weather is glorious.

So please, it means a lot to me - wear your Boots!

Fictionwise and the Little Niggles

Over the weekend I bought 3 books from Fictionwise, which is a very good e-book site.
The pricing of books which have been in print for a while is fairly competitive, but I cannot bring myself to pay premium prices for a newly "printed" e-book. I don't know about you, but if I'm paying top prices for a book, I'm going to expect it to come with a luxuriously bound hard cover and a jewel bright dust jacket.
But I'm not here to harp on about how you'll want paper and ink for your money. I'm here to chuckle over some of the "historical fiction". When I was young, my best friend used to read out excerpts from books by Georgette Heyer, an author noted for her historical accuracy. I'm not saying, by any means, that I'm particularly knowledgeable about High Society during the 18th and 19th centuries. I like that these authors can take a setting, using names of people who were, in fact, definitely known to exist in these settings at the time of their story, and have them appear, perhaps peripherally, in the story. Let's face it, while there may be a wealth of information available to help with research, adding some romance and intrigue harms none of this.
What I really can't stand is that not one of these authors seems to have visited the UK. Actually, it's not a "can't stand" - it's not their fault, and since there is this wealth of information, freely available on the Internets, they hardly need to be here to check it out. It's more of a niggle.
In the last one, the heroine wears a beaver hat. Here's the deal - beavers have been absent from England for about 500 years. Sure, it's possible that the hat could have come from the US, but it's not really the sort of hat a heroine
(especially not a lady) would wear. You know, you could just leave it at Fur.
In The DaVinci Code (oh god! yes, I did read it!) a huge plot point revolves around the London police surrounding the house in which a suspect has hidden, and shooting him before they could realise that he's not actually the guy they want. Happens every day in New York, I expect, but it doesn't happen in England. Oh, goodness I'm not suggesting that the British police don't make mistakes - I've no doubt they're just as misinformed as their American counterparts. The reason that this couldn't happen in London is that the police don't carry guns. IF (and it's a big if) the police have reason to believe that guns are needed, they tend to get specially trained members of the police force involved, and even then, the chap would have to be shooting before he'd have been shot himself. So, Dan Brown, that's a pretty big issue. It's also a bad assumption. And once again, the Internets could have helped. I just googled "do British police carry guns", and was rewarded with many informative articles.
In the other two "historical romances" I bought there were other, smaller, niggles - mostly the use of names e.g. Lord Petersborough - no, trust me he'd have been Peterborough, and Diccon - read A Secret Garden, the name is Dickon.
However, all that aside, I'm well into the third book I bought (all three for about $4.50 each - not bad value!) and I'm enjoying them immensely. I'm not about to let some Little Niggles stop me enjoying a jolly good romp!

Reddit and Parents

I joined Reddit a few months ago, quickly becoming aware of what a spectacular timewaster it can be. Especially if you register, filter what you see and start to comment on the stories. And I'm slightly ashamed to say that I really enjoy it. I've enjoyed reading some very intelligent comments from some of the users (although I have to say that there seem to be an equally large contingent of idiots, whose sole aim seems to be to downmod the noobz, and belittle anyone asking questions). In fact, most of my time is not spent on the actual "news" stories (after all, lolcats is hardly newsworthy, now, is it?) but on reading the, sometimes caustic, comments the items generate.

But today there was an article I enjoyed just for the story itself. It concerned a parent who sold her son's XBox after he'd deliberately broken her vacuum cleaner in order to avoid having to do any chores. So I quickly clicked the link for the comments attached to this story, only to find that while there were a number of replies of the "That'll larn him!" type, there were an equal amount of replies stating that this was a complete over reaction on the part of the mother, and she hadn't "won" the battle at all, in addition to which, this was just going to make her surly offspring even more surly. There were even some vague almost-threats, suggesting that the kid would come back with something more dreadful, and if she woke up to find that he'd knifed her in the night, it would be her fault.

OK - this is the question. And I'm not going to pose it on Reddit, where I'd get rude comments for being "dum" (sic).

Why is it considered unacceptable to punish a teenager for willful destructiveness? This kid broke an expensive piece of kit, just so that he wouldn't have to use it to help around the house. The comment about someone whose friend's mum had made her vacuum the house 3 times a day is probably not relevent here - possible, but not really likely. After all, if she were that anal, she probably wouldn't have let him have an XBox in the first place.

I don't believe that smacking a child of this age would work. Few mums can smack hard enough to make a difference, and anyway, there's a whole world of possible complications involving the law, and whether you're allowed to smack children anyway. And don't get me started on how much it hurts to be smacked with a Dr Scholl sandall - remember those wooden ones? Therefore, some punishment which shows the child the cost (I wont say value) of items would seem to be appropriate. I'd say that an XBox for a Vacuum cleaner is a pretty equitable exchange. OK, it would have to have been a fairly pricey vacuum cleaner...

I think that one of the difficulties faced by parents, specifically of this current generation of young louts (and I do speak as a parent, you know), is teaching them not to waste money. When I was growing up I felt the lack of "things" - one year for my birthday I'd requested a Sony casette player so that I could listen to my stuff. I got a cheap alternative, and I can't even remember what make it was. Another year I'd requested a Braun curling tong , and received the very much cheaper model from Boots. You get the drift. I suspect that I'm not alone amongst my peers in feeling this lack. Pennies were tight, and my parents were tighter. In those days, just paying the mortgate and feeding children were sufficient to take pretty much all the earned cash. So, here I am, with consumables cheap enough to deny my children little, the memory of those "cheaper" alternatives still strong in my mind, and I don't WANT to deny them the things that they say they want. But how am I to teach them to value the things I have bought for them?

A few weeks ago my youngest broke something of mine (not so much deliberately, as without thought), and when questioned, suggested that it was "OK - you can just buy a new one!"

And here's the big problem - I don't want to lose my rag, especially if the item in question is a not-very-valuable trinket. But sometimes even a not-very-valuable-trinket can have some senitmental value. Or a rarity, because you don't know where to get another one, and you REALLY liked the one you had.

While I suspect that I, and my parent peers, are in the large part responsible for this kind of behaviour, I'm pretty convinced that we also hold the key to its solution. Where smacking no longer works, maybe hawking our childrens' goodies on online auctions could be the way to go.

Lord of the Rings

I was hugely amused to read in the Daily Mail an article acusing us Britons of being rather dumb, illustrating the point with a number of humerous anecdotes taken from radio phone ins or television quizzes.

One of the snippets was a question from Ulrika Johnson, to a hapless contestant:
UJ: Who wrote Lord of the Rings
Contestant: Enid Blyton.

At which point, I'm afraid to say, I cackled. And not, because of the poor contestant, who, thankfully remains nameless, but because of just how cool LOTR would have been had it actually been written by Enid Blyton!

For starters, there'd have been a hell of a lot more ginger beer!

Just a bit obvious.

Conversation from the back of the car this morning...

"Lottie! Use words so I can hear you!" - crossly.
"I'm doing it without sound so you can lip-read, silly." - patiently.
"That's unfair, you know I can't read!" - incredulously.

And I call myself an IT Guru!

Well, it's finally been confirmed to me. Like hairdressers, IT people are more concerned with the health of their family's (and friends) PC's than their own. And you know how I know this? Just this...
Last night, as I was chatting with my brother on the internet, and popping away for a second or two to secure a fresh gem to my party frock, I became aware that my PC was thrashing quite a lot, and was rather slow. Now, for those of you NOT styling yourselves as IT Guru's, thrashing is when a PC is swapping the contents of the memory onto the disk and back into memory again, in an attempt to be able to use more memory than is in the machine. It can also occur when trying to run programs on a particularly fragmented disk, because the software has to search all over the disk to find all the pieces of the file you're trying to run.
So, machine thrashing, very slow. I thought, I'll just see if it needs a bit of defragmentation (there's software which will put all the pieces of files back together again - quite neat really!)
So I right-moused on My Computer (yes, still XP), and chose properties. Can you imagine my horror when I realised that I'm down to the last 10Gb of disk space? This is a massive 120Gb disk, and I've manage to stuff it nearly full (oh, I remember my first ever hard disk - a whopping 5Mb, that I thought I'd never fill).
I quickly checked the size of my video folder - but this is only 42Gb - yes, that's a lot, but this is video we're talking - I'm still unsure of where nearly 70Gb space has gone.
At this point I decided to see what's installed on the machine (I hear you - since it's my machine, surely I'm the one who installed it, and therefore should know what's on it - you'd think, wouldn't you?) which is where it becomes sticky.
When supporting my father (who installs the entire contents of the PC Pro disk every month, as far as I can work out), I happily wade through his installed programs, pruning as if preparing the garden for winter. Seems I don't do this to my own PC.
Until last night - I spent a very happy, rather late, half hour divesting my computer of all that stuff I'd installed, thinking how useful it would be, but never got round to using. All I need to do now is work out how to completely get rid of AOL 9.1, which seems to think that uninstalling it means you still want it!
The Blog of a very shamefaced computer support person...