Friday, July 29, 2005
So how weird do you have to be to drive to the pub with your wife, get three pints of beer, carry them to your car and then sit in it and drink them?
This weird apparently:
Flickr
John Roberts, medical officer for National Air Traffic Services, conducted a medical on six foot ten inch Ben Sargeaunt-Thompson and says: "On conducting the medical it was apparent to me that Ben was extremely tall"
For those that are interested, here's a couple of quick snaps of the building work going on here:
Rubbish
Garden turned into pile of rubbish
Spare bricks - may become a barbecue?
Attic (poor shot)
The rubbish is just from the attic. They're not finished up there and then there's the bathroom and kitchen to start on. What is amazing though is exactly how big the attic looks with just one of the walls pushed back further, with the other one done it is going to be huge. I'll take some better pictures later.
I've never seen tidier builders (not that I've seen that many). We'd fully prepared ourselves for a fortnight of chunks of brick on the stairs, rubbish everywhere, inches of dust and all the tea and milk being used up. These guys are excellent, very little mess and they put their tools in a neat pile and then tidy up and Hoover after themselves each day. No inconvenience at all so far.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Having been on the Orange 3G trial and decided that 3G is an expensive technology for the sake of it, rather than anything that the man in the street wants/needs from a phone, it was time to upgrade my old handset - a Motorola MPx200:
I loved that phone. It ran Windows SmartPhone, it worked well and was a good size. It felt well constructed, which is hard to do in a flip phone - I find the hinges tend to feel flimsy. It did all the basics very well. Sadly, he was beginning to look outdated, the absence of Bluetooth and camera making it look old hat.
So what to go for next? Well, I thought the prerequisites were camera and Bluetooth. Then I realised why I've liked the Microsoft Smartphone platform so much - ActiveSync. Microsoft's ActiveSync allows phones and PDA's to synchronise information with Outlook on your computer. This means that if you set up a Contact in Outlook, his or her details are transferred to the phone when it next connects. Anyone who has spent hours entering names and numbers using a mobile phone keypad will appreciate the benefit of this. Additionally, email is synchronised, meaning that you can read and reply to emails on the move. True, the 3G handsets from Nokia and SonyEricsson that I've been trialling claim to be able to do this, but (in my experience) not without a massive amount of faffing. In fact, Nokia's PC Suite was such a faff that at one point it deleted all of my contact information from my PC. That was not a good evening.
So the path seemed clear - stick with Microsoft Smartphones.
Two choices appeared - the Motorola MPx220 (the successor to my much-loved MPx200):
or the Orange SPV C550:
The MPx220 seemed the logical choice. The problem is that it has been around for nearly two years (a very long time in the Smartphone world) but has yet to see a decent launch on to a UK network (although the Yanks have had it for a while). I'm deeply suspicious of this - the MPx220 was supposed to be exactly what I wanted, an MPx200 with Bluetooth and camera. Why aren't the UK networks touching it? It must be flawed. I've read the T-Mobile and Vodafone are now offering it, but not in any big way. I decided to steer clear. About time the Yanks learnt that getting something first isn't always a good thing.
The SPV C550 appeared worth waiting for. The first of a new generation of Windows devices. The various Microsoft Windows versions of Pocket PC, Smartphone, Mobile, Pocket PC Phone Edition and CE are being rolled into one - Windows Mobile. All mainstream portable devices will run this operating system. The major bonus of this? Well think of a PDA, the screen is much bigger than a phone and hence has a higher resolution. Microsoft have decided that QVGA (320x240 pixels) will be the standard for Windows Mobile. So what? Well this means that a phone running the latest Windows Mobile has to have a 320x240 resolution screen, albeit smaller in physical size. Essentially, it has to be ultra-sharp.
The new screen, combined with ActiveSync functionality swung it for me and I ordered an SPV C550 as soon as they were released.
Oh dear, as soon as I ordered it I had a bad feeling. Ordering new gadgets on the internet never seems to go right for me. This was to be no exception.
I placed my order with www.onestopphoneshop.co.uk on a Sunday night. I figured it would be shipped Tuesday or Wednesday. By Thursday I'd twice been told that they had them in stock and it would be shipped within 24 hours. On Friday I was told that they had never had any stock ever, but they had arrived that afternoon and it should arrive on Monday at the latest. It arrived Tuesday. Without the Bluetooth headset that was meant to be supplied (and on the invoice). Arse. Several more phone calls/days/emails later and my enquiry is currently the subject of a "weight check" as their records indicate that they sent the headset out. I KNOW their records indicate it was sent out, it was on the invoice, just not in the parcel. Still, I shall wait for their response to my latest email. I've stopped short of death threats, but if you ever speak to this company you'll appreciate that it's very hard to resist the temptation to get in a car, drive to their offices and insert various pieces of furniture in their bodily orifices whilst loudly proclaiming that next door's cat would do a better job at customer service than they.
Sorry, getting a little ranty there, Bud's kicking in.
Next stop was to order a bigger memory card. The SPV C550 is supplied by Orange in the Netherlands with a 512MB Mini-SD memory card, and by Orange UK with a 128MB Mini-SD memory card. I'm sure if I could be arsed that I'd find that's against some EU trade thingy or human rights. Assuming the Netherlands is in the EU. I'm not that clued up on European politics. Either way, I wanted a 512MB card so visited www.mobymemory.com. Terrific site. Ordered myself a 512MB card (with normal SD adaptor), a Bluetooth USB dongle and a mini-SD USB2.0 card reader (so that I can use the redundant 128MB card supplied with the phone as a pen drive - cunning, huh? And for £4.99 for the pen drive, who can argue?). Anyway, all of that kit duly arrived and was excellent. I'd already encoded Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Men In Black to 320x240 resolution in anticipation. The pen drive mini-SD card reader worked fine for about 10 minutes and then died. But do you know what? I wasn't that bothered - I rang mobymemory and the guy was nice as pie. No messing, gave me a returns number and I've sent it back and am currently waiting a replacement. I copied my files across using ActiveSync and then could marvel at how good the SPV C550 really is.
You have to see an SPV C550's screen to really appreciate it. It is outstanding. The ability to watch movies in full screen at that kind of resolution on a phone is awesome and has helped pass many a tram ride this week. True, you get some strange looks from some people as you stare at your phone with your headphones on giggling to yourself, but I find that faking a mild fit generally makes people need to stare at anything else than you.
Then the third problem - setting up an Orange email account. Another battle I am having, this time with Orange as their website won't let me set up an email address for this contract. In my opinion, Orange's customer service has gone downhill over the last couple of years. I've been told that because there's been an error setting up my contract (by Orange or by OneStopPhoneShop) that I can't use the website to set up an email account. So I need to ring 439. That'll be 50p a minute for 6 minutes trying to get it sorted. Only to be told that I need to ring back with my Orange customer account number that I didn't have to hand. A further 50p/min call went on for some 4 minutes before I was told "yeh, there's a problem with that functionality on the website that's been happening for months. I've no idea when they'll fix it". That smacks of my-shift-ends-in-a-minute fobbing-off to me. Still, he did give me the useful advice to "just keep trying mate". Oh dear mi'laddo, that'll be one nice big complaint against you in the pipeline. Well done.
As for the phone itself, well here's my good and bad list:
Not up to scratch
Many games and other applications don't display correctly as the new screen resolution causes issues. Developers will, I'm sure, conquer this soon. And I'm glad I've used the word "conquer" today.
The joystick takes a bit of getting used to.
You have to remove the battery cover and then the battery to remove the memory card. Fine if you don't plan on doing that too often, a bugger if you do.
It takes longer than my (badly in need of a format) PC to start up.
The headphones. Oh my god. And I thought the Motorola ones were a cheap afterthought.
Excellent
The screen.
The "feel" of it.
The LED's.
Battery life.
Camera (considering it's a phone).
Web browsing, its Pocket Internet Explorer running on a GPRS Class 10 (as fast as GPRS gets) handset. In my practical experience, it's faster than 3G. Oh, and because of the screen, it's far more usable than on any other mobile I've seen.
Good built-in apps - there's very little extra that one needs. Unlike the original SPV that lacked a great deal of inbuilt functionality.
Mini USB cable charging. Hooray! Carry one of the many spare USB to mini-USB cables I have and I can charge my phone from any PC (or PlayStation 2 I think). Beat that SonyEricsson with your proprietary-everything.
It synchronises with Windows Media Player, even displaying album cover art on the screen when playing MP3's (apparently - being an iTunes man I've not yet tested this out).
Orange have given up (poorly) writing their own manuals for the Windows Mobile phones - the SPV C550 comes with a large manual written by a third party. That should cut down on the calls to Customer Services about documented features that don't exist etc.
It is very cool.
It looks good in an iPod sock.
In summary, I've bought an SPV C550. It is a truly excellent phone. I am having trouble with customer-service-type people.
I'm now off to take some pictures of what the builders are doing in the attic for those that are interested.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Now 48cm high and a-battlin' with them aphids. Still no chillies though...
I've not been feeling too good this week - bit of tummy trouble that won't seem to go away. Not as bad as this, but a bit of an inconvenience (no pun intended).
The worst bit is that doc has recommended I avoid spicy food and alcohol for a month. A MONTH?!? What am I going to do?!? This just isn't fair.
I guess I could sit and watch Live8 again on my Sky+ but, oh that's it, the beeb decided to keep changing the schedule whilst it was recording, the box didn't know what to do and crashed about every hour. I shall download it instead. All in all, not a good few days.