PigPog

It’s Sunday again. They soon come around. This one, though, is at the end of a week long holiday. It’s been fun. We visited my parents for a couple of days, took a trip around Hamsterley Forest and Teesdale with them, and had a meal out at the Moorcock Inn at Eggleston. I got my birthday present early – a Palm Tungsten T3. I’ve fixed a couple of nagging little problems on PigPog, and i’m just finishing off uploading more photos – from Teesdale and Hamsterley Forest. Quite an enjoyable week, on the whole.

…three toasters, a bread maker, a food processor…

As we were taking a drive through Hamsterley Forest with my parents, we passed a sign that read “Caution Cyclists”. I suggested we waited for the next one and warned them that they look a prat wearing Lycra and an odd shaped helmet in public.

I now have a Palm Tungsten T3. It’s a slightly early birthday present from my parents, who we visited this week (enjoyable trip – watch for new photos from Hamsterley Forest soon). I’ve had a Tungsten T for around six months now, and it’s been great – a very nice machine to use. Fast, nice screen, and hardwearing. I’ve been reading all the rumours for some time about the coming of the T3, and they seem to have turned out to be pretty much spot on.

So what’s different from the T? Well, the most obvious difference is the screen, as every review i’ve read has said. It’s bigger (320×480 resolution – enough to upset WinCE / Pocket PC / Windows Mobile owners), brighter, and clearer. At least one review i’d read disliked the slider, as it hides part of the screen, and they wanted the full screen there all the time – that doesn’t bother me at all – i find myself often using closed, for speed, then popping it open as i access something that’s a bit too big for the closed screen size. The slider means that a machine small enough to fit neatly in your pocket pulls open to a machine that’s just a bit more comfortable to hold, with enough room for that big screen and the pleasantly large five-way navigator. Some reviewers didn’t like the new shaped five-way navigator, but i’ve found it good – no better, but no worse in use, and it looks a bit more stylish.

Having the apps (VersaMail, Documents to Go, etc) in ROM was a great idea for saving space, but is probably less useful than you’d imagine – there’s plenty of RAM now, and there’s already been an updated version of Docs to Go, so if you want the newest version, you have to clog up your RAM anyway.

The updates to the built-in apps are nice. The addition of categories with colour coded blobs to the calendar has taken away the main reason I was using Pimlico’s Datebk5. Datebk5 still adds lots of extra features, but i try to do without additional software wherever i can.

The only problem i’m left with is that i can’t get VersaMail to sync properly with Outlook – it’ll mirror several folders from Outlook quite nicely on the handheld, but if i delete messages on the handheld, they just come back when i sync instead of deleting from Outlook. If i move a message from one folder to another on the Palm, it stays there, but in Outlook it stays where it was, so the folders are no longer mirrored. It’s kind of annoying, but i can probably live with it if i can’t fix it.

On the whole, i’m very happy with the upgrade.

The old Tungsten T? Sam‘s enjoying that

Update 2005-10-30: It broke, got sent away for repair, took months to get it replaced, then the replacement finally broke with the same fault – digitizer getting the pen position wrong at the bottom of the screen. Apart from that, though, it’s still working ok. Well, there’s a couple of screws missing, so we really should use some gaffa tape to stick it together properly, but why bother until it actually drops apart?

Last Monday, we (Sam and i) went to the Nottingham Playhouse to see Dave Gorman‘s new show, Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure. It was a lot of fun – a very entertaining show. If you get chance to catch it as it tours, it’s well worth seeing. It was just Dave and a Mac on stage, with a presentation on a screen behind, yet it really got the audience involved – quite a story. Anyone who wakes up on a new year’s morning, at Heathrow Airport, with his wallet, mobile phone, passport, a return ticket to Washington DC, a hangover, and no idea how all this happened, has got to have a story to tell. Though you don’t expect it to start from a collection of photographs of women and dogs.

A colleague: “Wow. That’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me here. I found a curry.”

Old entry from 2003-02-22…

I had a rather splendid dream last night. Sam and i were visiting the RSPCA, and they had a bit of a problem. They had some frogs there. No-one wants frogs, so they were having them put down. The problem was that they had no-one able to take the frogs to the frog-putting-down-centre. Or wherever they do that. (Perhaps just send them to Hale and Pace’s place with a cricket bat?) Anyway, they wanted us to take them, but the place wasn’t open until the next day, so they wanted us to take the frogs home, and look after them overnight. This, i realised, was a cunning plan. Take ‘em home for a night, and see if you can take ‘em for killing after that. Still, we got talked into it, so we took them home. The strange part is, though, that these were strange sort of cat-frogs. They were furry, just like Lucy, and had faces just like Lucy, but they were frog-shaped. They were cat-sized, cat-furred, and cat-faced frogs. Very, very cute. So we got them home, and discovered the real problem. They were cat-frogs. They could leap like frogs, bundled with the size and, well, curiosity of cats. The buggers jumped about everywhere. Just as we were concluding that we just couldn’t possibly keep them, one bounced over next to me, and nuzzled me in a friendly way, and we realised there was no way we could take them to be put down. We had just adopted two pet cat-frogs.

Maybe that bump on the head (when I crashed my car) did do some damage.

Old entry from 2003-02-22…

Well, yesterday was a fun day. Did you catch the sarcasm there? Did you? Gooood. Glad you spotted that. Go on, sit through the boring texty bit first, there’s pictures coming up… Instead of my usual day at work, i was out at a customer’s site, doing some installation work. Things, unfortunately, went quite badly, though progress was made, and we have some idea of how to make everything work now, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip. I got to drive under the humber bridge too, which is a pretty stunning sight from on top, but even more impressive from underneath. I didn’t get any pictures, though, i’m afraid. I had intended to try grabbing a few on the way back, but with all the problems, i didn’t leave site until after six, and it was dark and misty. Almost home, though, things got notably worse. I always hate driving in the dark, and now i hate it even more. I got dazzled by the lights of a car coming the other direction, and when i could see again, i was already halfway over the white line. I tried to pull back a bit too quickly, skidded, and lost control. The car spun, bounced off the road, and stopped by slamming fairly firmly into a car waiting to pull out of a junction on the left. Fortunately, no-one was really hurt, though i did smack my head quite hard on the driver’s door window. Both my car and the other car suffered badly dented wheel arches, but were just about drivable for purposes of getting home. The most worrying part is that when i called my insurance company Churchill, they couldn’t approve my claim immediately, because i’d failed to inform them that i’d changed the registration when i got the personalised plate (P16 POG). Fortunately, they called up nice and early this morning to say that there was no problem, and they’d get everything sorted out straight away. Quite a relief, and good of them to call quickly. Anyway, you’re not interested in that, are you? You just want to see what i did to poor Barry (yes, the car is called Barry).

Here goes…

(Sorry, pictures lost whilst migrating software.)

So. That’s the damage. Two battered cars, a bruised head, and a pretty big chunk of inconvenience. Plus i won’t get any no-claims back next year, so my insurance will stay more expensive for years to come. On the whole, i really don’t recommend crashing into other vehicles. Still, it’s better than crashing into other people – this way, all involved still have lives to be inconvenienced in.

Old entry from 2003-01-10…

At home, because i’m on late shift – start work at 14:30 today. Finish at 22:00. Fun. Anyway, after taking Sam in to work, i stopped off at Safeway. We needed bread. When i got to the checkout, the guy in front of my was in the process of purchasing six cabbages, and 24 each of two different types of Cornish pasties. (Note for anyone in a country that lacks such items – a Cornish pasty is a pastry filled with a mix of meat, potato and vegetables. They’re quite nice, really.) The amazing part was that the girl working on the checkout managed to keep a straight face, and didn’t ask him about his dietary habits. I was impressed. Once he’d gone, i said to her “I thought i liked pasties, but he had real commitment.” She said that she assumed he was buying them for his business, whatever that may be. I said that much as you’d like to think that, i really preferred to think that he just really liked pasties. I prefer to think that when he got home, he was going to close the curtains, and watch bad science fiction films for 18 hours straight, whilst stuffing himself with pasties until he throws up. Then, for the rest of the week, eat nothing but cabbage soup.

Old entry from 2002-11-13…

The cat shat on the mat.

…and on the bed. And on the carpet. And in a cardboard box. And on the other bed. And on the kitchen floor. And under the workbench in the office. Pretty much everywhere. The funny thing is – when you have a cat with the shits running around the house, leaving a trail of stinking liquid shite everywhere – when it’s your bed dribbled with stink-toffee… …it’s really not all that funny. I know. It is funny. It’s fucking funny. Yet somehow – i didn’t laugh. Even when touring the house armed with a 4D Mag-lite, a roll of Bounty, and a cheap copy of Febreze. Maybe i’m losing my sense of humor.

Addition… She’s done it all over again. At 04:00. And it still wasn’t funny.