Just ore of the same general musings

This time I am writing on my Touch HD with my Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard. I should use this more often; it's so convenient and very comfortable balanced here on my lap tray. This phone does have everything one would need to get stuff done. I am currently typing into Mobile GBlogger but could be surfing with Opera or Twittering with PockeTwit, collecting emails with Flexmail 4, recording notes in OneNote Mobile or my current favourite - EverNote - notes that synch automatically with the cloud and any of my other computers. Yes a larger screen can be good but for grabbing some quick content or carrying out a swift action this HTC Touch HD can do it and do it well. (I don't subscribe to the Windows Mobile doesn't cut it school, especially when it allows me to do so much.) I'm off now to cook down some onions to go with the frankfurters and baked rolls for tea (or dinner, as some posh people say over here and abroad). I hope you have a good time with whatever you are about to do and thanks for stopping by.

A brief, if unexciting, catchup on what we’re up to

This is going to be one of those rambling-mostly-of-no-interest-except-to-the-writer blog posts.  I write it because I am fed up getting the urge to jot things one moment and then losing the desire by the time I get to the computer.  It’s sad really and entirely my own fault, since I have so many ways of recording my thoughts and posting to the internet.  I am going to try to avoid the whinging pom ppost in this, in tribute to my most excellent antipodean friends who occasionally peruse this site and whom it was great to see at Christmas.

First off is a look forward to we have in March.  I find that it helps in winter particularly to have what our friends Chris and taff call look-forward-tos.  We will be celebrating a special birthday with them and combining it, all things being equal, with a long overdue visit to Winchester, to visit the Cytronex bicycle location.

I had posted enthusiastically last year about sorting out an electric bike via the UK Government subsidy scheme. Cathy persuaded me that going into winter was not the best time to purchase a bike and I should wait till spring; an added complication was when I had the incredibly kind offer to purchase a car from a friend at well under market value.  It was the correct decision, as for the end of last year I had to make a load of trips to our North Cornwall office 70 miles away. 

We are going to have a day in Winchester while up seeing our friend and so I will arrange a trial ride. (I was also contacted via my post last year by a couple near Hayle who have Cytronex bikes and I haven’t ruled out taking them up on their offer to see the bikes in action.)  Recently the car has been off the road with a heater matrix problem and I have been walking the 30 minutes to the office from where the bus drops and the 45 minutes in the evening to the bus station.  I have enjoyed the walking but the bike will give me more scope.  I have joined Morrab Library following my visiting to take part in a genetic People of the British Isles but it takes a little over 30 minutes to walk there from work, not practical at lunchtime but perfectly feasible if cycling.

On Monday Cathy and I are excited to finally be going to archery classes.  We have fought shy of doing so in past years as the adverts we saw were for evening classes starting in Setpember and we would miss half of them through holidaying then but then we saw the advert for February and jumped at it.  I am not convinced that I will be any good but that’s what the 6 course is all about.  I like the romance of the thing but you won’t be seeing me parading about robed in Lincoln Green.

Our friends from London are down at the beginning of March which is always good and I am hoping we will get some good weather like the blue sky and sunshine of today.   Talking of which, I need to be off and in the shower as I promised to head out shopping wit Cathy.  It’s good to be able to get out after all the flu and chest infection (slept in a chair last night due to ciughing but hoping that was just a bump on the road to recovery).

 

Stay well kind reader and most of all, remember to have fun.

In defense of my vice: Internet use

My vice is the Internet, if vice is something that takes one away from healthier alternatives.

Today is the Day That I Happily Refuse to Purchase and iPhone by Tim Samoff (timsamoff)

I started when training at a training company. I couldn't help myself. It was just so easy to access.



i had always loved writing to other people and exchanging ideas with people outside of my social circle. I didn't travel that much so didn't encounter other geeks like me.



The Internet is my vice. I have no doubt I spend too long on it but I find it such a source of interest for my brain. I love learning as well as interacting with people who see things differently to me. I still live in the village I grew up in and my family live within doors of me; this makes for a great support network but isn't conducive to moving outside one's comfort zone.



My time on the net allows me to learn new stuff every day, to delve deeper into new things I might come across (I love researching things), to interact with people who have similar interests to me, to rediscover things that had meant a lot once but had faded out of my life.



I use a tablet PC these days and it enables me to be in the room with my wife and enjoy conversations but still be able to dip in and out of the net when she is otherwise occupied, say watching television. I am conscious of the need for social interaction in relationships so make an effort to be a part of conversations, see friends, etc. but I still get a special buzz from all that knowledge out there I can tap into within a few clicks.

If I had easy access to a helicopter, I'd fly to Oxford this weekend

Take me to the city of Dreaming Spires

I love the city of the Dreaming Spires. I get such a buzz standing in college quads and almost hear the neurons buzzing. The Bodleian Library is amazing and Oxford University's connections with people I admire sparks all sorts of ideas and imaginings.



I never made it there to study myself but I like to sit in a pub or cafe look at people and imagine what their life might be like, what it might have been like if I had made it there.



It's not just about the gown either; the city has some great shops and architecture but it is definitely the academic side that draws me there.

Trevarno

Regards

Phil Ferris

This message was Handcrafted on the HTC Touch HD phone

A Family Boxing Day

Regards

Phil Ferris

This message was Handcrafted on the HTC Touch HD phone

Blogging from the Touch HD & Stowaway BT Keyboard

I usually work through lunch to allow me to insert breathing spaces throughout the day. Sometimes I will go and look out the window, or pop down to chat with the people who make come by making/selling sandwiches; I went out today and found, yet again, that the day was really too nice to be spending it indoors at a desk. Today I decided to put some of the time aside to jot down a few lines for the blog. Nothing momentus, just a capturing of what's going through my head. My friend Alan has blogged int he past about how ideas come and ideas go, not least the ones that make for blog posts; these come at awkward times, such as when he's on the tube and unable to post. For me the problem is seeing great photographic shots but unable to capture them as I am in a stream of fast moving traffic.

Blogging from the Touch HD

This is a test blog post using my Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard. The 2710p is versatile but what I need sometimes is an altogether more portable and less power hungry option. When out for a stroll I would like to be able to stop and write up mmy thoughts. With this setup I can easily charge the phone back up, from the Expasys portable power supply I have, to give me a greater amount of useage; the 2710p will last a long time with the extended battery and, theoretically, I could charge from the car power outlet, but not in my pocket as I walk. I carry the tablet whenever I am out and have it with me, I don't leave it in the car for instance, I am used to the 3 or so pounds in a backpack or bag; still, it's nice to go light sometimes and still have the option to type more than a Twitter post. I find the Full Querty keyboard very easy to use and am impressed with how it distinguishes taps from my less than boysh finger tips. I have also loaded the Cailligrapher programme to be abe to wrte anywhere on the screen, from constant tapping on my Dell Axim I saw how it wore away on my screen protector. I have found it to work well though I use it most in character recogniser mode at the moment till I can get into the swing of writing in a slightly tidier hand. Another programme, or programmes rather, I have been experimenting with are SPB Mobile Shell and Pocket Plus. I have found I can run both and have a set of 5 small tabs and 4 larger ones on which I can hold all the shortcuts I need. One thing to note, there is a bug at the moment that prevents me choosing additional programmes on the phone screen; this means I have to run a small free programme to display my phone on the computer and then run down the list of available items that I can add to the tabs. I enjoyed using TouchFlow 3D for a day or two but it didn't give me enough control over it's display. - I found out I could edit the Weather Database and cities more relevant to me but the tabs were, on the whole, fairly rigid. The SPB software coupled with Pocket Informant and Flexmail 4 has given me a huge advantage in how I can quickly access and interact with information. I am finding the phone a joy to use, though the neat onscreen slider to answer a call took a little getting used to. Other software I am using includes CeBit for Twitter, a quick and easy option with reasonable displays of posts and extras like TwitPic insertion. My RSS reader is the inbuilt one. I seem to have corrupted eReader on the phone but also have Mobipocket installed so am OK for reading material. Windows Media Player works wella nd allows me to catch up on BBC programmes I have downloaded. I would like to thank Pocket Watch Software for their GBlogger software. I am using the free public version at the moment and will be buying my own copy of their Pro version next week after payday; I am very grateful that they have taken the free route as an offering for users, it has given me the chance of a proper trial of everything except picture inclusion, only available in the paid for Pro version of GBlogger. That's it for the moment. We turned in early and while Cathy caught up with the BBC 1 spy show Spooks on the 2710p, I thought it a good time to give the phone and keyboard option a try. - Posted using Pocket Watch Software Mobile GBlogger.

Versatility of the human voice - Flying Pickets

I do love the versatility of the human voice and a cappella singing demonstrates that

 

Yes, another Desert Island disc.

This is how an angel's voice would sound in the icy regions of Norway

I first encountered Sissel on a Christmas album singing with the likes of Placido Domingo and was immediately captivated.  I hope you will be too.

The song Pie Jesu has been perhaps over performed  given the large number of people who have produced versions but I think that it does justice to her voice.

Another singer who is on my Desert Island disc list.

If I was to marry someone for a particular attribute it would be Eddi Reader for her voice

Eddi Reader is a woman who can make my hair stand on end (no easy feat if you've studied my Twitter profile picture), can reduce me to tears and have me laughing all within a few notes.  Her concerts are amazing, a study in how the human voice affect people on so many levels.

This song is from 1994, Eddi has much brilliant stuff that comes after this but it is a particular favourite of mine.  If you're not sure about the video production remember that it was 1994 and it is tweaked for YouTube and close your eyes and listen to the music.

 

A contender for my Desert Island disc to rescue if the all others were to be washed away.

Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward

Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds has been a favourite album since I first heard it.

In particular is this song that summed up my teenage angst years.  I had them but most of it was in my head and I didn't go through any sort of rebellious period.  (Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I can see now how many times "Doing what I thought was expected of me" or "avoiding potential embarrassment" stayed my hand and caused me to miss out on what I know would have been wonderful times - even for a little while).

 

This is the third of my Desert Island discs.

Fur Elise has a hold over me and I am transported to when it was played for me once

It was just a front room and was played almost casually, but the image of the person playing and the time spent are some of the most vivid I have of anything.

This video is presented as a tribute to that memory. (I do not know the person playing, it's just that the piece is nicely played and the jeans remind me of that time).  Thank you for playing it on YouTube Tinaw19.

This is one of my Desert Island Tunes.

I cannot get over how much I am affected by Pachelbel's Canon in D

Here is a great version from YouTube

This is one of my Desert Island discs.

This is a test post from my HTC Touch HD

I am trying out Mobile GBlogger to post and see it does. Here's to it being excellent. This is the free version. The Pro version lets me insert Pictures. - Posted using Pocket Watch Software Mobile GBlogger.

A Touch of Heaven Definitely (a geeky stroll through the phones of my past and today)

I took the plunge on my birthday,  18 months after I received my Nokia N95, the most versatile of all my gadgets and one that I carried more places than this Tablet (and it goes virtually everywhere. 

In what I call doing a Miller I ordered a phone just coming onto the market.

Not just any phone at that, no sir-ee, it had to be the HTC Touch HD.

In the UK the phone is exclusively available via the Orange network until 2009, except...

Expansys UK have a great scheme whereby they will sell a SIM free i.e. an unlocked phone and sell a coresponding mobile contract.  By using this route I have been able to obtain the phone on a T-mobile contract and pay no more for the phone than I would have to when (I feel sure) T-Mobile added the phone to it's line-up next year. 

The purchase from Expansys UK was fairly straightforward, I say fairly straightforward for no reason on their part, just that the theft of my wallet complicated things unnecessarily. Having ordered I received a series of clear emails talking me through the various checks that the network makes and clarifying what the order tracker would display until my order was despatched.

Being an impatient sort of geek, I kept checking the tracker on the Expansys UK site on a daily basis.  Initially I was horrified to find that my expected 5 days to delivery suddenly shot up to 18 days but 3 or so days after this it suddenly said shipped!  I clicked on the very clear link to their chosen transport firm, in this case ANC/Fed-Ex UK, and saw step by step what was happening.  The very next day the phone arrived in the village and I collected it from my parents after work.

I have owned in the last few years, a Sony Ericsson P800 followed by the P910i and latterly by the Nokia N95.  Each of these phones has been a revelation and joy to use.  With each one improvements in technology was very noticeable and I found that they enabled me to work in a more mobile and eficient manner.  I did miss handwriting recognition when I first moved from SE to Nokia but a Dell Axim x51v filled the gap.  Handwriting recognition became an extremely quick way to enter data and I I eventually got up to dictation speed using the P910i in meetings.  The Dell was ideal, but for one thing, it didn't have a camera. 

The P800 and P910i were a great opportunity to bring me back to photography, something I had enjoyed in the past.  Being able to take photos and quickly and easily add them to my computer or email them was a clear boon for work.  I could make up directions to offices using photos of the locations, copy items of interest and email them to interested parties, photograph problem areas such as building damage or equipment issues and email them to support staff.

Moving to the N95 was a big leapt in photographic terms, one that compensated for my giving up the touch screen.  With high capacity mini-SD cards available I could snap away at the full 5 megapixels and not have to worry, trimming down the size when necessary but having the ability to choose.  Quicker wifi and features such as AGPS meant that I could start using the N95 in place of solutions such as the Axim and TomTom. 

Constant use and the rough and tumble of every day use meant that gradually gremlins started to creep in, the odd SIM not found or unexpected reset suggested a need to invest in a newer phone.  I saw the iPhone come and it didn't move me, the N96 was good but not good enough.  I thought it would be into Spring next year before I would find a phone that appealed to me; one that offered the best of both worlds from my phone past, a touch screen, faster wifi, gps, WM 6 to integrate with my other Windows devices,  at least a 5MP camera, lighter weight than the fairly hefty smartphones I had been using, a large screen area.  I saw a friend's Samsung Omnia recently and thought it a smart phone but wanted more screen space or a higher resolution.

Something caught my eye when googling the Omnia, someone mentioned or compared it to the HTC Touch HD.  I naturally did a search on the Touch HD and fell for the phone, (not sure how else to put it - geeks will understand, Apple Fanboys will comprehend).  It seemed to have everything, 5mP camera, the highest resolution touchscreen, agps, b & g wifi, Windows Mobile 6 (no, I don't think it as bad as some make out), light and with a decent battery.

It has arrived and I hope to take some shots of it and with it and do a follow up post but, for now I wanted to cover the background that brought me to this point. 

The phone came in the very robust and, I think, stylish box (see photos adjacent to this paragraph),   inside the sleeve that is shown at the start of this post.  The phone lay on top of a inner box that held cables, battery and 8GB micro-SD card.  In the bottom of the main box lay the manuals on CD and a trial version of OneNote 2007.

 

The phone is as gorgeous as i hoped and I will post examples in another post.  As a taster I can say that the things that impress me most at this point are:

• the way the stylus is grabbed by the phone when only a few millimetres are left to push in (sad though this confession of impression might be); this is a great feature as it ensures the stylus is fully seated and not liable to dropping out when put away in a rush. 
• The excellent display of the weather, though Microsoft please add cities to the choices, the nearest forecast I can currently get is 75 miles away! 
• The speed of the wifi, my network doesn't slow much now all devices can access at 54g minimum.
• The ability to use my fingers to type and that the keyboard can tell even though the keys seem (to my novice eye) too small. 
• The phone battery came partially charged so that, within 3 hours, I was up and running. 

Musings amidst man-flu

I began speculating on the chances of catching a cold when ouside work waiting for a lift the other night.  The mind is a powerful beast and by the next evening I was feeling lousy.  Things only got worse and I felt sorry for myself come Friday morning - "Surely no one has known a cold as bad as this" and other quotes to make my wife roll her eyes.  Sorry for myself until I bumped in to a friend from my childhood.

She was in the village because her father, a friend of mine, passed away this week.  Talking to her and seeing a gentle strength in adversity brought me a sense of perspective.  I told myself, in that internal dialogue one has with oneself [please don't write and say that this only happens to me] I had a cold, if that was the limit of my worries on that day, I was actually very fortunate and should appreciate it.

I also heard a melancholy episode that happened to a friend on holiday and this made me realise how really special our time away was.  We visited with friends, made new ones and had such a good time.

Another event that might have had me feeling sorry for myself, but for the above lesson, was the sudden delay in my HTC Touch HD Expansys order.  I spoke to a representative when ordering last week, who said that once I had got as far as passing the mobile carrier checks, I was guaranteed to get one of the first batch of Touch HDs they had in.  I paid by bank transfer to ensure there would be no hiccups but my delivery date went from 3 to 6 days.  I

am not a pushy individual but decided that, having paid, it would be reasonable to email and ask why the longer delivery estimate.  Bad timing I guess but 24 hours after my email I find my delivery date was now 18 days away - had I upset someone at the Expansys end, gotten my name on a watch list? Not according to customer service when I rang on Friday afternoon.  Apparently the extending of the delivery date wasn't because they had sold all the stock, despite the guarantee I had been given (yes, I know, a verbal contract is worth the paper it's written on), it seems there was a technical problem with the delivery of Touch HDs and they had to be sent back. I have Googled but can't see any mention anywhere of a problem with the first Touch HDs, commercially sensitive I suppose.  The late delivery of a phone isn't a world shattering event but noteworthy in my world all the same.                   

Luxuriating in mindmapping goodness - MindManager 8

If I thought it was a jump from MindManager X5 to 6 and that the develop from 6 to 7 was brilliant I had a big surprise coming with version 8.

What marks out great software?

When it not only enables the ordinary to be done more easily but makes the extraordinary seem simple.

It boosts your effectiveness in ways you hadn't previously considered.

Just a couple examples, as the fresh new Mindjet website with it's customer input and examples will illustrate better than I can.

Just a Couple of Advantages of Mindmanager

They say a horse is a camel designed by a committee. Trying to agree and tie up dates for parts of a particularly large or tight deadlined piece of work can be a nightmare when faced with a room of project workers in my job. With the Roll-Up completion feature I can get a few crucial dates/timescales prior to the meeting and it will fill in and update the Parent topics automatically, presenting people with a proposed timescale based on component parts will be so much more straightforward. (Don't let on to my Manager but it will also help me to prioritise and get a bunch of related tasks completed more efficiently.

One of my all time favourite programmes is Ken Hinckley's InkSeine (his blog gives a good idea) partly because it is digital ink based but also because I can do everything from within the programme, by that I mean make notes, search on the notes, view and open the results. MindManager 8 brings this awesome ability into my other favourite programme. Whatever I want to mindmap about and I mindmap everything from shopping lists to article ideas, blog posts and holiday packing, I can do so and develop my ideas without leaving the programme, the time saving from leaping between a complicated map can be immense. For businesses this can extend to their databases, in addition to planning this makes presentations much more dynamic being able to grab such live data.

As I say, you will find many more examples on the website and it's active community is always able to help with questions of how to do something new or discuss ideas. I haven't even covered MindManager Web for the cloud based workers out there!

If you don't believe me why not take up the 30 day trial? But be careful, once you have used something this powerful and this simple you will be loathe to put up with anything less.

MindManager 8 will spoil you for other mapping programmes, so why not spoil yourself and visit the Mindjet site today.

I would like to thank Mindjet for the opportunity to try out version 8 and be part of an exciting programme.

Count your blessings

Granny Ferris used to sing this song to me when I was a small child sitting on her knee. (I used to pester her, calling out "Tell me a story" and she would launch into the first line of a hymn "Tell me the old, old story" but that's a tale for another day).

No sooner had I begun to get into the doldrums (to use a nautical expression) than I began to look for the positives.

I have a new wallet, I had a great birthday with Cathy last week and at work a cake and card from a friends (thanks for choosing what was a really excellent cake K).  Also I have something that I saved up till me birthday as a present to myself, though it was actually a prize from a competition.

I have written in the past about how, on a sunny day with a warm breeze,  I can close my eyes and be transported back to Greece.  Now I have another way to that is just as evocative as what I refer to as a Greek Day. 

I am the proud reader and owner of a copy of Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece 

This book is a non-fiction narrative of time that the author Patricia Volonakis Davis spent living in Greece after being married to a Greek in the USA; this fact is important as it gives Patricia the ability to see life from both sides, the the incomer and the insider in Greek family life.  (The title is from an Italian sauce and not an indication of a book of dubious content). 

I am still only partway in to the book, as I save it for those periods when I can read uninterrupted and savour the excellent writing.  In the book there are all the emotions I associate with Greek life and the situations run from pathos to bathos. 

There are parts when I have said, yes that's how I thought Greek families would behave and others which I never would have guessed.

I have to declare something of an interest here, as I got to know Patricia a little on a blogging site before entering the competition; that said, I know a whole bunch of people who make or do stuff but I only promote things that I find special and this book is one of them. 

Christmas is coming and if you love Greece as much as I  do, I feel certain that you will enjoy the book. 

I will repost this tomorrow when I have had time to transfer a cover photo but I want to get the text online now, while it's fresh.

[In addition to the book, Patricia is the person behind Harlot's Sauce Radio too.]

Not my best day

I was going to write a couple of posts yesterday.

One was a thank you piece about a wonderful book called Harlot's Sauce, that I won in a competition. Events today mean that I will shelve that till I am in a happier mood.

The title I was going to use was Bastard's Cheek, (but I didn't want the association attached to this picture - which is just to illustrate my sadness), and would have been is a play on the book title I was going to write about. It refers to the so-and-so who pinched my wallet today at a local Tesco store.

Picture thanks to bbaunach

I had been generous in the past and espoused the theory that, if my wallet was stolen, I would look at it philosophically and say "Well, maybe the needed it more than me".

Now that it has happened to me I am singing a different tune. Tuesday was my birthday and I was carrying my birthday cheques and cash for paying in to my account when I could get to my bank. Probably the worst of it is that it will now mess up getting my new phone this week as there is no card to process the payment with for around 7 days. [Yes, if that's all I have to worry about life's not too hard but it has happened to me and that makes it personal, my blog-my rant].

We are fortunate, I need money for Mum's card and Cathy will lend it to me, all the same I would like to have taken it around to her now but that will have to wait until we have been to town.