Fantastic - I love Diarist

I didn't think it would matter that much if I couldn't post for a day or two; I didn't bank on the fact that investing the time in writing changed my point of view.

This is such a straightforward programme but aren't the best ones just that?

I downloaded the cab in about 2 minutes from finding the website, after Googling for posting problems from PPC to a blogger account. The installation took under 1 minute and I had a post up 3 minutes later. The programme even reports whether the post was successful a couple of seconds after posting - at least it does while I am connected to my wifi connection as is the case right now.

That's all I can ask for. When it comes to keeping a blog alive one needs to be able to post easily and this is aided in the first part by mobile blogger and second by the programme or method of getting the post out.

Photos need attaching from a URL, by the looks of it, but that's not too difficult as I now have a flickr account. I may be able to work out the coding to use to attach pictures from the PPC when posting, we'll see. I managed to close the browser that was on Kevin Daly's latest site but I'll dig it out again in the morning.

I just wanted to blog something as I am chuffed to be able to get posts out there again and also use my keyboard.

Diarist and Keyboard

I have a couple of minutes before going to bed and wanted to make an update on my progress with the keyboard.

But first here's a saviour programme of the old school. 34k in size yet fulfilling a vital purpose. I am posting this using the Diarist programme produced by Kevin Daly.

For some reason, none of my posts from either of my accounts, that I normally post from, have made it to the account. Neither picture nor text has shown up from today but nor have I had the "did not get through" message. More on Diarist later but I have to say how refreshing to find a compact programme.

Things are still going swimmingly. The keyboard makes surfing using the Axim a much more comfortable experience over longer periods. I have spent around 3 hours this evening with the Axim in it's cradle on the arm of the settee, while I had the keyboard in my lap, I shall refer to this in future as my favoured position. I have surfed, updated my contacts and sent email. With no strain or real difficulties.

I believe the one thing I do could do to speed data entry even more is to work out how to accept the predictive text that pops up by using the keyboard.

Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard & Dell Axim x51v

Stowaway Keyboard

Well it took a little effort to collect the keyboard.

Ordering was no problem, once I Froogled and found a set of sources I decided on the most rerasonable and ordered it.

As it was a Friday afternoon it didn't seem worth getting it next day delivery so, showing admirable restraint I opted to use Royal Mail delivery. I mistakenly put my main office of residence for the delivery address, forgetting that I would be away for the day at the county HQ. The postman had to leave a card requesting that I collect the parcel from the local sorting office, as there was no-one to sign for it.

So, a day later than it might have been I turn up at the office. I glanced at the card and noted the opening of the sorting office was 8am and closing was 6pm. I couldn't leave until lunchtime but then I dashed off to collect the parcel - to find that it had closed 45 minutes earlier and would not open till 4.10pm!! Imagine my disappointment.

Eventually I got a lift to the office and collected the parcel with no hassles; I even caught an early bus and got home 40 minutes early. I got tired today, can't shift this sore throat, so it took nearly e hours before I dug the package out of my rucksack.

Setup was amazingly simple. Having unpacked the keyboard I realised I had not got a computer to run the setup cd. I decided to see if I could go online and download the drivers - it was amazing. As the Stowaway site opened it had already determined the type of driver I needed. I didn't trust it so went through the mnanual selection process and came up with the same driver.

I downloaded the driver and it detected that a built in driver was running and gave me the option to turn it off. I turned off the generic driver and was up and away.

The keyboard feels very natural and I am already typing at near full speed. The action of the keys is responsive and I love all the built in functions. The key board has functions marked in blue to match a corresponding function key and a set of similar green marked function keys. There are functions for launching things like email, for opening a new email and sending it, appointments, calendars and a bunch of other of things.

I have already produced this email in a quarter of the time I reckon it would take me with a stylus - even if I inked it. This should make interacting with websites easier on the Dell, even if the site is a little tight to see.

It should certainly be easier to add items to this blog. Now to test the Send function button.

Porthleven Old Cornwall Society AGM night

If only more AGMs could work this way

Normally I dread things like AGMs - unless I want to catch up on sleep but this one is different.

Arranged around the room are books of cuttings gathered by Recorders of Porthleven Old Cornwall Society. There is so much information contained within them from hundreds and hundreds of newspapers.

Having looked through the books l was in a much better mood for the meetlng

Shout it from the rooftops

I think it must be "Rarely Heard About Day".

Please read the following with this in mind: I live in the UK, where we are quite used to paying prices for IT items by replacing the dollar sign with that of the British pound - straight swap. Even with this in mind, there are some things that seem to be even more out of kilter.

For quite some time, a big bugbear of mine has been the huge costs involved
with Wifi hotspot access in the UK.

So many sites seem to want to charge premium rates of £6 [$9 - 10] per hour!
While surfing through the wifi related website (BT Openzone) of my IP (BT
Openworld) I find that they offer their customers like myself 500 minutes
per month for the same amount!

So where is the publicity material for this? Where is the advertising? When were they shouting it from the rooftops?

Is it only me who wants to spend the odd 10 minutes or so grabbing emails, topping up on podcasts and maybe the occasional Skype? This useage pattern ensures the monthly or daily subscriptions available are not financiably viable; that leaves the 1 hour voucher, even if I can spread out the use, it means a minimum of 10 minutes per connection will be used up at 10p a minute.

Now I can go online for the briefest of periods without severe dents to my wallet. If I only had a laptop I might not be sure I would use the minutes up, (they do not roll over), but I have this Dell Axim x51v.

It was the same when they upgraded me for free, from 512k to 2GB (yeh I know
there's plenty of people with faster), no big splash but it's worth a lot to
me.

So I doff my hat to BT, an oft maligned organisation but maybe, just maybe, a diamond in the rough.

A definition of success

I felt I had to pass the following quote along:

He has achieved Success who has lived long, laughed often, and loved much.
Who has gained the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men,
and the love of little children.
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task.
Who has left the world better than he found it,
whether [it be through a lovelier poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul].
Who has always appreciated the earth’s beauty and never failed to express it.
Who has always looked for the best in others, and given the best he had.
Whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

--This definition of success was written by the wife of the Superintendent of Instruction in Lincoln County, Kansas, which won the prize offered by a newspaper for the best definition of Success written in one hundred words.

Posted by: Victor Panlilio | Apr 18, 2006 12:57:10 PM


I  came across this in the comments on the Creating Passionate Users blog http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/; in it's own words: ( http://headrush.typepad.com/about.html )

The Creating Passionate Users bloggers are all authors of bestseller Head First books (http://www.wickedlysmart.com)--a new brain-friendly series from O'Reilly.

They're all passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially--how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Oh yeah, and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques to get you to do something.

Not a bad thing to aim for.

FW: Fwd: A visit from Celtic Cousins

For some reason a picture & subject text plus body text is being rejected as "application/octect stream is not accepted" but the picture and subject text below got through, as did my Where is post earlier. Strange. Here is the text that should hhave come with it.

Just my luck isn't it! The email client says it's sent but it didn't arrive. Here's attempt two.

Visiting Falmouth with friends and had a great surprise - a French market. Even better there were Breton dancers and musicia's.

I love to hear ethnic music and Celtic music has a special appeal.

Above is a grabbed picture of the event as it happens. Thanks to GPRS it's on the way to this blog while they are still dancing.

Handcrafted on a Sony Ericsson P910i

My mobile blog - lowjib7.blogspot.com

Breton dancing in Falmouth

Where's my post gone?

On Saturday I came across a dancing exhibition by a group of Breton dancers visiting Falmouth.

I thought it an ideal opportunity to capture the event live for this blog. I used the 910i, as the camera and handwriting recognition make it very easy to compose and send an entry.

I had an initial problem with rogue characters in the smtp setting, from earlier experimentation due to problems with Orange's email handling. Once I corrected the smtp anomaly the photo and text went from the Outbox to the Sent. The strange thing is, over the following hours that day, I saw no response in my inbox to say the post had reached Blogger; I checked the blog itself and there was no sign there either.

Yesterday I resent the entry and still there is no sign. I will now transfer it from my phone and see if sending from here has any effect.

First though, I will send this entry to check that something can get through.

Register of birth, marriages & deaths

I need to get to grips with Phatnotes on this Pocket PC; there are lots of bits and pieces I want to record for future reference.

I need something like Evernote or Onenote, though I suspect Phatnotes could work if I just knuckle down.

For the moment I am going to use this blog to record items, here's the first.

The whole of the UK National Birth, Marriage & Death indexes, from the official start in 1837 to 1983, can be accessed free at www.ancestry.co.uk. On the homepage of that site you click on the England & Wales, BMD Index (Beta) - (just below the box marked Exact Search) - underneath More Collections, then follow the provided instructions.

Holiday weekend starts here

Well, that's it for work today.

Here in the UK it's the start of the Easter weekend. Friday and Monday are days off work for the majority of office staff. On Sunday that very rare event occurs , where even superstores shut for a whole day!

We are meeting up with friends and seeing family but staying pretty much locally. I always feel that we should have booked a holiday somewhere more exotic, to take advantage of the two days leave we are given - we never do. There was a report on the BBC news today, highlighting the high prices involved with vacationing at this time of year, that eases my concerns. Go later, stay longer, pay less has been our method when visiting Corfu over the last few years and I can see the merits of sticking with it.

Test from orange account via bt

Orange email trials and tribulations

OK I normally only have praise for Orange - both the mobile phone service and internet account.

That was until the email I received advising me that I would need to change my username from the word or combination of aphanumeric characters I currently used.  The email instructed me to replace the original username for my phonenumber@orange.net.  Quite straightforward one would think - but therein lay my downfall!

Once I had changed my login I could not access my orange email.  I ran tests using the feature in my Outlook and it reported that it could find both pop (incoming) and smtp (outgoing) servers but that the incoming did not respond.  [I could check ie download emails if I connected via GPRS on my phone but not on the computer - laptop nor pocket pc].

So where does one go for help?  From hunting around I found the choice of phone call at 50p per minute or email form.  I chose the email form and got an automated response the next day to say that I needed to phone the 50p a minute number to solve my email problem.  This grated with me and I was spurred into trying things not instructed in the email, in hindsight maybe I should have been pessimistic and started with this.

1/2 hour of frustrated attempts and I came up with the solution but that's not my gripe.  Why should I have to have come up with the answer - why was there no recognition on the Orange site about this problem?  I cannot believe I am the only one to follow the email and have problems.

So what was the answer?  For username ONLY put your phone number.  Since I did this Outlook reports that the Incoming Server responds!  I have put the settings into my Pocket PC and seen all the Outlook test emails and some of my own come flooding in.

If you came here by googling for Orange email problems or orange incoming server error or pop server 2006 not responding I hope that this has helped you.

Pocket Blogger Test 2

That was actually far easier than I expected. I just need the programme to remember the login, so I don't have to re-enter all the time.

Pocket Blogger Test Post

This is the test of pocket blogger. The blog already has a really straightforward way to post mobile blogs so I will take some convincing.

One fine day

OK I might feel like something the cat brought in, but one a day like this how could I not walk down to the harbour?

The shy is dear blue, the tide might be out but the sun still clears the hill on my right. It is warm ansi am loding out on a Cornish fishing village in spring - I am fortunate.

Oxford to win to the 2006 boat race

Just wanted to log my opinion before the race is run.

I'm tempted to go further and say by 1/2 length but, with a significantly lighter Oxford crew and only one rower from last year, I think it will be tight.