PDA's still evolving

see attached pdf with photo gallery - my PDA history
"I’ve spent an embarrassing amount on PDA’s over the last 20 years. In this time personal organiser equipment has been evolving and here I am still funding development. What’s driving this note is whether my philanthropy is finally paying off.

An HP ipaq 5450 running Windows Pocket PC has fingerprint recognition, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN. It can play music and video. It could run as a Sat Nav or handle email through the phone or wireless network. But as I do this never before have I confirmed so many actions or reminded this PDA what it’s supposed to be connected to. Playing a tune is no casual exercise. It will remember your contacts for as long as its battery lasts: if you forget to charge it it’ll lose all your friends. And since a Sat Nav really needs to work in desperate moments, I wonder how much one dare rely on it. Windows Vista didn’t care to talk with it. I conclude that the most highly evolved PDAs have decided to give evolution a miss. Someone please find me something that fits in my pocket and has text entry; phone connectivity; email and a library of photos, video and music.

A field course - version 2 - Mill Street, Killarny, Ireland

A field course - Mill Street, Killarny, Ireland

30 teachers, 50 dataloggers, 100 sensors, 5 Segways - July 2007

From Animoto who service your photos. No need to say more.

HP Photosmart 3310 All-in-One Printer Scanner Fax

Here is a printer with networking features to the hilt. Its network link lets any machine connected to the network use the unit to fax, scan or print. Go to the printer and press scan and it'll ask 'to which machine' and then you can scan away, saving files on that machine, as if by remote control. Uploading pictures from a Pictbridge camera or a Flash card reader similarly asks which computer should receive the files. Alternatively, since a drive icon shows in My Computer, you can plug in the Flash card reader, go to your computer and browse the card as if it was a drive.
It has ethernet for wired network printing as well as wireless ethernet and amazingly it hops between these transparently. Disconnect the cable and the wireless takes over.
Really nice is a 10 x 15 cm photo tray which automatically bursts into life when selected by the software driver. No catches or buttons need pressing to hop between A4 and postcard size prints.
The software driver package is a hefty one with a slow install, however, bear with it because the result is a hec of a lot of function.
One small surprise was its Bluetooth capability if you bought an HP Bluetooth dongle. This lets you print a picture from a PDA or phone. Being too mean to buy the HP dongle I plugged in a cheap one made by Bluetake and this immediately started working! I think these BT things must use the same chips!

The HP 3310 was bought to replace a HP PSC 950 which scanned, faxed and came with HP Director - very capable software for its time. Bought in 2002 the build quality of the PSC 950 wasn't up to the hammering we gave it. The new HP prints really fast, feels good and strong enough from the start and it's one I'd care to recommend.

0870 - 0845 National numbers

Good news this month as the telecoms industry move to help telephone callers estimate what they pay when they dial a 'national rate' number beginning 0870. Currently you can pay a wide variety of anything and since very few people on the planet can understand a BT telephone bill, I'll wager that most people will continue never to know this. At around 8p (15 cents) a minute, an 0870 number doesn't cost that much to call but with landline calls now costing almost nothing to call, beside this they look pretty dear.

I still find it a touch alarming that numerous (but not all) businesses actually profit from you caling their 0870 number and are given 2p a minute on each minute of the call. I doubt if they're getting that wealthly but to be congratulated are those who devised the scheme where a business pays for a 08xx number, and consumers pay more for their calls as a result.

I've dabbled with the idea of getting 08xx numbers for myself and finally succombed. However it's taken a while to realise that if anyone offers you such a number you're obliged to keep it or else no one in future is going to be phoning you. An 0870 number (and an email address) is not just for Xmas, it's a commitment for life,

Plusnet, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) offer a free Fax2email 0870 number that sends a fax to your email box. It's a brilliant service until you put the number on your letter heads because Plusnet have the evil practice of disconnecting the number at random and giving the number to someone else.

Another firm, Robotelecom in Hemel Hempstead provide local call '0845' numbers. I signed up to one on their promise of "no fees to pay forever". This bunch too are truly fickle if not on the fringe of dishonest. Without notice Robotelecom decide to levy a £50 per annum fee for the number. That's not being trustworthty, to the nth degree. They claim that they were taken over by another firm called 'Virtual Effects Ltd' who had different terms so their promises didn't have to be kept. If you hanker for an 0870 / 0845 national number, you're going to pay one way or another. Friends tell me they have a more predictable time using companies other than robotelecom.co.uk.

Oneforall Wireless Telephone Extender

Spending sixty pounds for a telephone extension takes a bit of thinking about but after a couple of years dithering it was time to realise that life is too short for that kind of silly. People need phone sockets for their Sky box near the TV. My need was to get the telephone answering machine where it was needed. The fact that it's a DECT wireless system you can use anywhere made the need to spend £60 just a touch bizarre.
The 'One for All' Telephone Extender puts a phone socket where it's needed by sending telephone juice through the mains cabling. You can then pick up the phone signal at another mains outlet. Numerous reports from those with Sky Boxes were very positive but for straight forward phoning the solution was very hit or miss. First impressions of its two white boxes with mains leads and plugs suggested it's a lot of wires for a wireless solution. Recent units however improve on this by making the boxes with an integral plug. In use you do need to choose your sockets carefully because for a couple of days we'd missed half our calls and getting a line was a touch hit or miss. By day three, when it was clear that caller ID was not working over the link, the unit was on its way back to the shop. The small print on the OFA support web suggests that all these issues are likely. The sales part of the site only warns that it'll not work on ADSL lines or via a surge protector. It not only needs some kind of gauge to tell you how good the signal is - it also needs a note on the box to say that as solutions go this really is half good.

Mounting slim flat panel monitors - and keeping technology out of sight - click for full story

Pop into any computer room and you very often see LCD screens replacing the spaces that were once occupied by CRT monitors. In many cases, the space the LCD actually saves will be brought into question. Often you need to change the desking to reap a space-saving benefit.
Here’s my solution, based on an IKEA ‘Jerker’ desk, which also happens to be cheap. IKEA ‘Jerker’ desks have won fans and become a legend for the way that you can load them up with home office technology. You can for example attach power extensions (using Velcro strips) to the low cross beam. As of this moment mine has 20 out of sight power outlets for a phone, PDA, clock, lamp, computers, monitors, cassette recorder, speakers and external hard drive that have become part of this hilarious space called the home office. Designer Nicolas Cortolezzis deserves a prize… find out what we did (PDF = 250K)

Modified

Technology gone stupid - Jura coffee makers

Internet Connectivity Kit for Jura Impressa F90 & F9 Price £75
o download your favorite coffee recipes from the Internet and upload them on your machine
o You can check the status of your machine at any time. In this way you can provide the JURA service staff with important information so that they can help you with any problems.


Anyone in search of a coffee-maker that makes no compromises on quality will soon find themselves at the door of Swiss company Jura. Year upon year they win awards for best, most innovative coffee maker.
Winning industry awards on this scale is a sign of an active public relations department. Get yourself a fairly good product and a very good PR department and your winning a magazine award is a certainty. Enter more than enough products, spam every category and you can sit back and wait for a sympathy vote or the right mix of judges.
Take the Jura F90 coffee maker which a few years back was all the rage in the press. It has internet capability too which raised certainly my curiosity. What it can do is scantly documentated but having just now downloaded the software to see the features I'm amazed at what it does.

It is this:
1) allows you to customise a message that appears when it is switched on.
2) allows you to discover that you might as well take it back to the shop to fix it when it goes wrong
3) allows you to programme in a coffee receipe (adjust water / coffee) which would take about 2 minutes normally.
4) Connects to your PC with a serial lead. Whoopwhoop! How are you gonna get your PC in the kitchen?



Verdict: People who make coffee makers should stick to doing that.


Nearest competitor for dim technology: Sony Bluetooth DCR- IP7 - a camcorder that allows you to surf the net and send emails via your mobile phone when it's easier to use your mobile phone to do that anyway.

Finding a way forward with TomTom Go - GPS navigation

The world is divided into those who have discovered GPS navigation and those who have not. With a GPS unit you rarely get lost and the result is very, very relaxing.
The TomTom Go has a lot of well thought out software in the box – then again it still has a good few poweruser features that let you add POI’s (points of interest) to navigate to cash machines, petrol stations, speed cameras, Little Chefs, Travel Inns and more. (If I need to remember to go to Maplin, Halfords or ASDA I can tell TomTom to go 'boing' next time I'm driving past one).

The TomTom gives every feeling of being a fairly mature product: basically it kicks.

The TomTom 700 has an all Europe map which is a lifesaver for even occasional breaks away. If you haven’t ever been to another city and wondered where's the station, airport, hotel and so on, then you could save money and get a UK only map. However when you realise how good GPS is, you might well spend the extra money on the bigger map.
There’s a remote control - I use it, some people do not.
A Bluetooth wireless headset feature works well and lets you chat fairly safely on the phone. You can avoid needing to shout with a regular 3.5mm jacked mike – but it’s good to start with.
The traffic service is pretty good – the traffic service has the feel of a first generation product so you’ll have to contend with frequent ‘can’t connects’ and possibly even old information. However, when it helps me avoid any traffic, I’m a happy bunny. It’s hard to assess its effectiveness but there was no better way of avoiding a jam in an area I did not know.
Itineries can be set up – these are for your journeys with multiple stops. You enter all your way-stops and off you drive – though I’d caution on these. For example, if you stop short of a way-stop, you’re never logged as having been there. The result is that you’ll be redirected back to the stop. For these you have to be on the ball about telling the box where you’ve gone and been – I’d not recommend this feature to the whole world.
Favorite destinations – now these are fantastic: I recommend you prime the box with all your friends places and phone numbers. Then pay them surprise visits.

Issues to note:
maps - not perfect - I do get the occasional glitch (eg I’ve been directed to the back of the shopping centre, some roads do not exist and yet some are being built and appear on the map. Overall its better than good enough.
shape - this is fine mounted in a car but in your hand it is a bar of soap
phones - there is a list of supported phones and this is worth believing. Not being able to absorb the phone's phonebook (P910) or read SMS's was a trivial issue as all else worked.
don't 'use' whilst driving - if you buy a TomTom (even for someone not-so technowise) do them a favour and add addresses and POI's - download POI’s from tomtom forums and usb them over.
gprs - if you find you cannot set this up you may need to get O2 or Vodafone to let you have the full GPRS service.

Yesterday BBC’s Watchdog programme took on the case of someone who couldn’t use the TomTom and wanted to take it back. They'd been driving in circles with it in their home town. The shop refused and a fight ensued. Ultimately Watchdog wins because they have to – but frankly Watchdog could fight more deserving consumer injustices. Instead they rushed to rescue a consumer crybaby who wants the moon on a stick. The TomTom is a fabulous device, it’s imperfect but its every imperfection is worth working round.

Overall: best gizmo in years. Wife agrees, saynomore.

Camera Cards - Smart Media Flash - Recover deleted pictures - Recover from Card Err!

Having a recurrent Card Err! on your camera memory card? We tried a couple of ideas and this really sorted it.
1) Camera chooses not to be able to read the card it did two minutes ago. Solution: clean it. First clean the card slot by wiggle a few cm of Velcro hooks. The gritty surface helps. Next buff up the contacts of the Smart Media card - use a cloth and a few drops of brass/silver polish. Try, I hope it works for you.
2) Deleted some pictures on the card you thought were not worth keeping two minutes ago. Solution: You need a half decent unerase prgram. Get that from PC Inspector (CONVAR) - Google for this. It costs a very generous nothing. Heed all warnings about unerasing files of the hard disc (it can do this too - but there are reasons to be careful).

Out of Office Autoreply Toilet Break

I am away from my desk for ten minutes. I thought you'd need to know. Normally I am here all day answering your letters and thinking I am indispensable.


Action: Send to all
When: When I'm busy
But suppose: no one cares? Yeah right.



We guarantee to not to ever send one of these but should this happen, here's what to do in Outlook
1) Right Click on the message
2) Choose "Create Rule". Choose conditions eg 'autoreply' in the subject line.
3) Uncheck 'from'. Choose 'Move message to ..'
4) Choose 'Junk mail'

Networks are about power fer goodness sake

John Naughton makes an interesting comment in The Observer about school’s “restrictive broadband networks designed by clueless local authorities”. He clearly has inside information though the piece goes on a touch about the Tony Blair government being in on the act.

School networks ARE kind of yuk – most networks are. Maybe you can't put files on your machine or access Google images on yours. School networks are worse than many. But here's a real history to the restrictive network and it pre-dates Blair and even Thatcher. The history goes back to the dawn of civilization.

This is what happened. At the beginning there were people who studied and learned to understand the heavens. These people were the high priests, they were yesterday’s scientists. They could predict events. Knowledge was power. They knew cool stuff and pretty soon they gained an unholy amount of power.

This happened in schools too.

Fast forward to just yesterday when power in schools went through a comfortable era. Schools were run by the knowledgeable – basically the head of maths, head of English and head of science. Oh and the head.
But one day along came the computer. And someone in school learned to work it. Pretty soon their knowledge put them in power. They had found a fast career track. They got promoted to deputy heads in charge of ICT and i/c regional networks.

So I can't blame any bit of government policy for what's going on. Sure the government could fix it and I half think the Observer comment is helping. The cause of duff networks is that they don’t meet the needs of the users. The people in charge can’t find a way to change this even when they want them to.

Techno Palsy - Technopalsy

TECH'NO'PAL'SY n. s as z. to be fully relaxed and use a machine without reading a manual or even thinking.
When technology continues to be as half-well designed as it is, a certain about of nouse; intuition or rough intelligence is required of the user for the working thereof.
Thus persons with technopalsy are to be found mostly staring at a piece of ABS plastic in puzzlement. Not all such stares are indicative of the full-blown version of the affliction.

The most useful test, called 'Frost's you-really-blown-it-now test', is conclusive proof. The test is based on the fact that many gismos [ibid] have hidden key presses to reset the device or put it into maintenance mode or go where it shouldn't.

To the most ordinary geek-type person, these key presses are hard if not impossible to find without a manual.

On the other hand, the confirmed technopalsied will find the correct key combination within a few minute's use of the device. Hence a Windows PC will be 'accidentally' made to start in safe mode; or it will lock-up trying to download a large file; a digital clock will hop between date-view and time-view; a television will retune itself and seek new channels; an ipod's software will crash; a coffee machine will discharge coffee pretty much everywhere.

Definition from Roger's Dictionary of the English Language, 2005.

The colour laser printer

Have you been thinking about selling your printer? Looking at
today's prices for colour laser printers I wonder what I'd get for a 2 year
old Epson Acculaser C2000, original costing £2000. It's powerful and meaty
but the price of consumables hasn't dropped. So I've already spend £1400 on
consumables for it and in a couple of refills time, the running costs exceed
the printer price. Today you can buy an equivalent model for £1000 which
ought to get you a Duplexer, Heavy build quality, Postscript 3, two large
Large Paper trays and most importantly memory. Whatever you do, don't buy a
page printer(ie a laser printer) that might not have enough memory to hold
a page. If you've a printer with 32Mb, and the PC isn't sharing the load,
you may find the printer goes into a coma when you ask for a full page
photo. I'd like to hear that's not so but the C2000 has 160Mb and I can't
recall it ever stalling over a print job.
Other printer buying tips: > Buy a really popular printer as there's a
greater market for consumables. Also, like car buying, check the model's age - you can get discounts on old models a few months before new models arrive in summer.


Colour Laser Running costs Update 2006

Today the transfer belt, a very big consumable part of the colour laser needed replacing so it was time to take stock of how much the laser has cost to run. Here for posterity are the figures.

Purchase price Epson C2000 with all the trimmings £1500 ex VAT December 2001
Consumables bought to May 2006 = £1540
Value of consumables in hand (not used) £320
Net consumed £1320
Pages printed 21500 colour; 6000 black; 27500 total
Average cost per colour page excluding paper: 5p (or 10p including the hardware).
Annual cost = £500 (incl hardware)

Dell Dimension 5000 - buy a PC, forget DIY building

With January sales causing a drop in PC prices, I succumbed and bought a new Dell Dimension. It has loads of USB sockets and a network card but the killer feature is that it's probably the quietest PC I've ever bought.

As the fifth Dell bought over fifteen years, I had stopped buying Dells 5 years ago after they sold me one that never went wrong. This Pentium 3 - 550MHz chugged along nicely for months on end. It was rarely switched off. What helped was thar I'd Ghosted the OS partition at its zenith of reliability and once a year I'd refresh the OS - usually this was after some application misbehaved. Over time I added a video card, a hard disc and some memory to take it through the Windows 2000 and XP eras. The XPS T550 was fairly quiet too but for heavy duty jobs like video editing I used a series of self build PCs .

I look back at this era of DIY PC building as my misguided years. Every building project has been frought with assembly, dissassembly and system hiccups. It's best left to people who have a well-stocked workshop and time to kill. Any money saved has to be balanced against what's involved - even if it is easy and educational. In fact a small fortune was spent on quiet PSU's, new fans and silent flower-style heatsink coolers. On one PC alone that came to £150 ($250) . After deducting £150 for a Dell FP monitor, the near-silent Dimension 5000 cost £250. This was Dell number 5. A zealot I've become.


History
No 1: Dell 486 - ran on Windows 3 - reliable - left running for months.
No 2: Dell Pentium I - 133 MHz - Windows 95 - fairly good - ransacked for parts. Heatsink is now a business card holder.
No 3: Dell Pentium II - 266 MHz - Windows 98 - never happy - used as a music server
No 4: Dell Pentium III - 550MHz - Windows 2000 - still going 2005

Online shopping - cuts service to unacceptable levels

Online shopping dissolves half of the hassle of shopping in town - when the object of desire is rarely in stock and thus the goods are hard to find it's plain crazy not to. And then you can choose from all the competition, not just the stuff on show.
And because you can hop from site to site researching details, prices are keen. Prices are keen because there's no shop to pay for, or staff to answer a phone or now in most cases, hardly anyone to deal with an email. The online shopping world is evolving. Who do you think is going to survive? Will it be the shops at the bottom-dollar no-service end of the market ... will these shops win customers as fast as they lose them? Or will it be those with a more blended good price - good service offering ... who will build a loyal following?

If you really want to remove the hassle of buying things online, look for these features:

• There's a phone number where you can sort out problems.
• Delivery charges are fair, for example they go up reasonably with how much you buy or they diminish altogether.
• Offers are what they say they are - not eye-catchers with small print
• Emails are replied to within an hour or so.
• If the item's not in stock, you're given options as to what to do.
• An apology for a messed up order (wrong things delivered) is an apology with money eg a free gift / free delivery next time. In other words the shop guarantees its service as well as it goods
• Copious information on the product and its applications.
• Customers reviews

Duff shops that need to shape up or shut down

• ebuyer.com; dabs.com - offer cut into the bone service; there is no telephone number that answers. For instance what is the point of asking "where's this morining's delivery" when it takes few days to reply to an email . Or see what happens if the item's out of stock.
• neat-ideas.co.uk; simply.co.uk - there is general dimness across the organisation which leads to mistake upon mistake.
• unbeatable.co.uk; hughes.co.uk; dell.co.uk; northerntools.co.uk - slashed prices but delivery charges at their most ridulous

Star players

• maplin.co.uk - has not forgotten it service pledges; if it's in your 'basket' the item isn't removed because it's gone out of stock.
• phones4less.co.uk - home-phones.co.uk - they know their products; they help; they offer solutions
• amazon.co.uk - great website, and they haven't goofed up to reveal anything's not brilliant.
• johnlewis.com; viking-direct.co.uk; diy.com (B&Q) - fantastic ... these are here to sell you stuff well by any means and not cut, cut.
• er.. that's not that many in this list. Your recommendations are welcome

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Familiar noises from the inkjet printer

Dear Roger, I hope you can help. When I turn on my inkjet printer it repeats a deep, familiar sounding noise. The heads chug into action and at one second intervals, it is as if it were playing the opening chords of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. After the warm up procedure the heads come to rest, and just as I'm expecting Jim's lead guitar to wail in. It does leaves me wanting for the rest of the song. Is this normal?

Dear Dave, Since Jim's untimely death, many people imagine these sorts of things so I would probably say this is normal. People 'hear' all sorts of familiar things and this part of a natural desire to make sense of the world.
For example, in the same song JH sings 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky...'. But you'd probably hear it as 'Excuse me while I kiss this guy'!!! There's a whole web site devoted to hearing the wrong things and it's named in honour of Jimi: www.kissthisguy.com. Anyway, in future I'd leave the printer on and just play the record instead. Best Roger.

Seven wonders of the shopping world

1. DVD player - £40 at aria.co.uk
2. VHS video recorder - £59 at Argos
3. NTL Broadband - fast, well-priced, never failed and never turned off since September 2003
4. Wireless networking for Internet, printing and file sharing
5. Windows 2000 - rock solid & no need for XP
6. Pentium III 550 MHz - works faster than I think. No need for a 3GHz.
7. London Buses and Congestion Charging - a sea change in getting around London

Memory Stick Duo - small size, hefty price

Sony's 128 Mb Memory Stick Duo has arrived in the UK (June 03). The current wheeze for data storage in Sony Ericsson mobile phones, Memory Stick Duo lets you carry photo albums, video, games and music on a slither the size of a thumbnail. It's not that regular Memory Stick wasn't small enough, but here's another physical format to follow Compact Flash, SD, MMC and the rest. It's hardly surprising that people baulk at the thought of buying into, or becoming a slave to any format. The makers would reply that this gizmo fits phones like the SE P800, massively increases its memory and so long as you can copy stuff onto it the job is done. They're pretty much right since it only matters what shape it is when you want to exchange stuff with others.

Costs more than gold
The real issue is what this costs - tax inclusive: on the US Expansys it costs $160 compared to $65 for a regular Memory Stick. In the UK Expansys sell these same for 110 and 67 UK pounds. At the Sony Style website you have a bargain where the 128Mb Duo was last seen at $104.
Incidentally, it weighs only 1.75g and thus at its best price, thus costs $60 a gram. Compare this with 24 carat gold which retails at around $24 a gram. Still that's cheaper than a bag of Loose Diamonds (tiny ones at that) costing $8000 a gram. (For the record, a one carat diamond weighing 0.2g has scarcity value and would set you back $15,000)

Copyright copy wrong
While MSD lets you store any kind of material that fits, it also features Magic Gate protection designed to protect data from being copied all over the shop. The idea is that games or music files you buy over the 'net will be tied to the MSD and not copiable or useable elsewhere. Hear anyone going wow over this?

I love my Internet router

For most folk a router is something to pass by and not least because they seem complicated and costly. I'd remembered them from the days of ISDN for Internet access - where businesses told tales of their router dialling up needlessly and incurring scary phone bills. But now, with cable and ADSL and with routers costing much less than before, this is the way to go.
For example, if you have ADSL on the line you'll have a DSL modem connected to a PC. If you have a couple of machines (and maybe a ethernet linked printer) you also need a hub or switch to wire them together. You could connect a wireless LAN access point to the hub or switch - this allows a laptop with a wireless LAN card to join in the fun so you can surf, transfer files and print from around the building. The cost of this a year back was £120 for the modem; £60 for the hub and £120 for the wireless ap plus the fact that the computer with the modem has to be on the whole time. Enter the Netgear DG824M at £140 and you're really flying. The price is good, the result is tidy and setting the system up is fast and elegant. The Netgear DG824M plugs into the ADSL part of the phone line and a network cable (supplied) goes from the PC to this modem/router. Insert the CD and a utility helps your PC to find the router and configure it. This worked exceptionally well - setup runs through a clear browser-based wizard built into the router. The jargon is explained in the same screen, the dial up settings are remembered by the router. Thus left and ignored indefinately you essentially have a unit able to deliver Internet as if it was electricity. Plug a PC into the router with an ethernet cable, tell the PC to use the LAN to connect (it'll then use your Router at 192.168.0.1 as the Internet Gateway). This makes a peer-to-peer network where you can share the Internet link, transfer files and share printers. The DG824M has ethernet ports for three other PC's - if you have more than this you can link to another hub or switch.

You can connect wireless clients (eg a PC with a Wireless LAN card) to the router to pick up the Internet. What you can't do is connect to it using another wireless access point. In other words, two wireless access points can't normally talk to each other. I put it down to the stupidity that was built into networking.

Alpha Males

Our vegetarian correspondent Peter F writes: "I decided today that human males split into two types -- alpha males and alfalfa males."

Micromark mains halogen light fitting proves to be a trojan horse for light bulbs

We've heard it said that an inkjet printer is a trojan horse for inkjet cartridges - the printer is sold cheap because the manufacturer makes the most money on the sale of inkjet cartridges. After all, if you use them to print stuff, you can expect to pay for the ink. Applying the same sense to home lighting hasn't worked for us.
From today we expect to save a lot of money on light bulbs. Our last Micromark GU10 Mains Halogen lamp expired in a pop today and we rejoiced. At nearly £10 each these bright and allegedly good value bulbs allow you to use halogen spot lamps wherever a transformer would be out of place. Often called simply 'mains halogen', and more succintly in this house 'a disappointment' they enable us to use some awesome hi-tech light fittings. The running cost however is another matter. In the space of a year a four-lamp fitting costing £90 has cost as much again in replacement bulbs. But now, by simply removing a few screws, the Micromark spotlight track can be dumped in the attic. This technology may one day find its moment, but just now we'll keep the fitting as a reminder. Micromark are at www.micromark.co.uk but there's no advice here. If you are similarly afflicted, cheaper replacement GU10 bulbs can be found at Argos and Ikea.

An earthquake shakes the south on curry night

M&S curries are the business. Although Brick Lane in London is the home of a good Bengali meal it is still 20 minutes away. Just two minutes down the road, Marks & Spencer's wins on time saving.
Last night's curry meal had the edge. Our meal was followed by a rare event in the UK: an earthquake in the Midlands actually shook people in their houses. A friend at the epicentre in Dudley thought that it was an attack on London. He waited anxiously was hours afterwards thinking that another tremour would arrive.

Here in London we thought nothing of the sort. We thought it was the curry.

All of which reminds of the contempt I have for seismologists. After failing to warn of that event, and more serious ones to date, you have to ask: what are seismologists for? They can tell you within minutes of a tremour what's happened and how high it measured. But that's it. When thousands perish in Turkey, I rate seismology near the daft end of science. I vote they be banished from the community. "Seismologists save lives". Pure tosh.

When you can't smell burning from the kitchen, you know it's salad night
Today we feel it's time to run against the grain: help us please with half a reason to like salad.
TBC

Grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces

A bag of chips
Today we went to look at a propective school in Edmonton, North London so surfing took a rest. The event required the measure of spiritual lift that only a bag of chips can fulfil. To order fish or a pastie alongside it would nullify the effect - chips alone will do. North London is a reliable place to find chip shops - Hackney has one (Faulkners), Islington has a couple in Upper Street and here's another in Edmonton: traditional = no kebab + pickled eggs on sale. They will sell you a huge bag of chips. At 90p this complete meal (just add salt/vinegar) represents incredible value for the best rush of cholesterol you can buy. Flavours available: cooking oil, fried chicken or fish. Whathehec we needed cheering up after this:

How to pass a couple of hours and feel miserable
Edmonton, North London is home to a state funded grammar school that parents clamber to get their kids into. For the reasonably well to-do, Latymer is a no-cost option to a private school. The school open day was packed, its organisation shambolic and the atmosphere seething and tense. To suffer this is the price you pay to come here. Without reflecting on the quality of the teaching that takes place, we came away that free brings its disadvantages. Hec if they're this good at marketing, just imagine how you're going to be treated as a customer.
The school's incredible popularity has generated unusual rudeness towards parents. While teachers was only too pleased to explain their craft, the school admin are off-putting, discouraging and blatently rude. The message: you're very unlikely to get your child in here, we don't need the business, go away. And this is what my taxes pay for. It's embarrasing - it reminds of the TV celebs who got carried away with their brilliance and became despised in their later years.
Hilariously, this school which clearly spends very little effort or money on marketing pleads poverty. They insist on a payment to handle each application for a place. The price is a book of stamps or an asked-for shamelessly two pounds. And they're quite rude about it! Contrast this to annual school fairs in Islington and Hackney where some schools are happy to press a few pounds worth of glossy print in your hand. Because of an imminent move we're not able to consider these schools, nevertheless they left us with a good feeling about state schooling. The Latymer School sadly shamed it. I hope the PR improves.

Latymer grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces

How to while away some time: try digital video

Here's a tip you'd easily miss. Buy the very latest greatest digital camcorder and then put it in the cupboard for a few years while computers become fast enough, and the software gets good enough to edit digital video. Be sure to do this on a PC rather than a Mac because this ensures a level of usuability we're looking for. Better still buy a Sony Camcorder in the MicroMV format range, open the box, find the recommendation and information on where to buy Pinnacle Studio 7 DV Editing software and of course buy it. You should then discover that Pinnacle have a facinating marketing dept that lets it's imagination rip with their product's capabilities. Were you into using up time, you may experience massive disappointment to find it worked - but that's not the case. Next email tech support and wait for no answer. Wait and do nothing for a year till Studio 8 is released and now works with Sony's MicroMV. Get this and pass the time with error messages that say 'Capture error'. Puzzle further, peruse tech support to find that it didn't work on release. Nexr realise why the person on the box shot is smiling. She got Pinnacle to refund her money and got herself a life and an Apple Imac. I use a PC and must therefore cheer myself up with food.

Update
Sony need to take the blame for inventing this format in the first place. The Sony (Memory Stick) Company is known for inventing things that connect only to Sony. To be fair it was brave of Pinnacle to try to build a bridge between the format and the rest of the world. There's hope as today Pinnacle's US Product Manager agreed that there had been a delay in the compatibility with Sony MicroMV and it is being rectified right now.offers this statement to explain things: "While MicroMV support was planned for the initial release of Studio 8, unforeseen difficulties were encountered in supporting this new format. We are working closely with Sony to resolve these difficulties, and a free Studio 8.3 update with full MicroMV support should be available on the 15th September.".
The patch didn't arrive. As Pinnacle's webboard shows us, setting a date does not make things happen.

Pic: You'd really smile if you got your money back

Mmm... Squares

Today it's a break from the weekly bag of doughnuts. Squares, once a sweet chewy mass of krispies and syrup have been upgraded to Chocolate Caramel Squares. TBC




Pic: Chocolate Caramel Squares - excess with frills on

The mouse has to go
Just a moments break from the computer for refueling and what do we find in the kitchen? A mouse, yes but not any mouse - it's the mouse that comes to visit every September when the weather turns down. This fair weather mouse goes to live in the same cupboard, run the same routes and cause the same screams every year. It falls on me to deal with it even though I do the screaming. Clearly it's unsharing and uncaring of me, but a trap will be laid. The bait is chocolate which I'm told is better than cheese.




Pic: How sad: Death by Chocolate

Breakfast cereals and a point of law
An incident today reminds of a riddle from school days: Farmer A has a hen that strays and lays an egg in Farmer B's field. The two Famers squabble over the egg. Who does it belong to?
Back from a sleep-over, my son tells about a like squabble over breakfast. He was filling his cereal bowl with Nesquik Chocolate Rice* when a plastic Flingon landed in his dish. (There is a free Flingon in every MIB 2 branded packet). Naturally he claimed this was his by right. The host friend did not agree. And they still don't.
I want to take this seriously as there's a legal precedent here. Furthermore these youthful disputes are the stuff of tomorrow's wars. My client had been offered breakfast and thus the contents of his bowl was a gift. Would he ever have been asked to return the cereal, just because his friend wanted it back? I think not. And why should a piece of plastic be considered more valuable than his loving gift of food? Quod erat demonstrandum. The toy is his. We'll see about that tomorrow after school.

*Crunchiness 5*

Oven chips
Much as you search the cookery books, it's impossible to find any recipe, advice or serving suggestions for this the king and queen of foods. Delia, Nigel and the River Café have missed something surely, and left the market wide open to us here. Chip connoiseurs might helicopter over (for that is how one gets there doesnt one) to the Priory Bay Hotel. At this up-priced hotel they'd heart attack over the servings of chips - four potato sticks arranged in a square on the plate. Goodness me. The steely atmosphere of this place is something to behold: customers eat in fear of the staff feeling perhaps that they found England at its best. Our meal ended cheerily: we'd ridiculed them so much they rushed us the bill to get us away. I'll never know why the bill didn't include all the drinks we'd had. I hope it was because they had just forgot.





Pic: Fries need no introduction - a junk food cliché.



If chips are hot, Terminal Services are cool
Windows XP Pro (and Windows 2000 Server) features a neat way of connecting to a computer remotely and using them from another machine. If you've a network, with a network point in the kitchen, you can operate your main computer with quite adequate performance as your chips are being cooked. If you've a wireless setup (eg an access point plugged into a hub and a wireless card in a laptop) you can even do this from the bathroom. And if you've a CE machine (eg big screen types are best - Jornada 680; Samsung Izzi Pro, Compaq) the result is so much more awesome: here's a tiny machine controlling an XP desktop.


'Remote Desktop Sharing' (also k/a Terminal Services) is very good value when the controlling computer (or client) is very low spec. If you have a Windows CE device, you 'run' Windows XP, and all that sails on it. Put the wireless card in the device, launch the Terminal Client and log on. (The client is pre-installed on HPC 2000 devices such as the Jornada 700 series. Others like the HP/C 3.00 will also work but they just need the client to be installed first). Launch IE and you're surfing the net or checking your bank account. Even scripting, Java, and Shockwave work a treat.

How to do it
On Windows XP Pro, right click My Computer, go to Remote and make sure you've allowed Remote Sharing (two items to click). If necessary install the Terminal Client (hpcrdp.exe from microsoft) on the CE device. Active Sync will start and do the install work. Log-off to the XP sign-on screen because XP will only let you run one instance of itself. Launch the Terminal Client, enter the network name of the XP machine (or more reliably on older CE, its IP address) and enter your logon details. Smile - your computer, and your chips, are ready.
Windows 2000 Server has had this for years. It has the serious advantage that you can be logged onto the server machine and the CE machine at the same time. Either that's true or we're clever by fluke.

Today the computer has a rest
Thanks to some woe at the ISP, much of the day's work was blitzed. Life has come to a halt. There is niet, nought and nothing to click on. There is niet to eat also so this nietness is complete. All that's now deemed edible is on the larder baking shelf - and this Plain Chocolate flavour block quickly won the battle for my attention. A bag of Ground Nuts was envious. The Glace Cherries were gutted.
After all that, and a few bites later, this bar has never seen chocolate. It may have briefly looked at some but it learned nothing from that. It's taste and texture cannot be recommended to readers. This cooking chocolate is to chocolate, what Windows XP is to anything else. It's a cosmetic covering to hide whatever's beneath it.




Pic: Cooking chocolate - cure for chocolate addiction

Play shopping for shops on the web

If you buy technology on the web, the firms pretty soon sort themselves out into good and less good. Give yourself a budget of a few grand and award points to the shopping sites using these criteria.

Point one is for the site with all the information you need to buy. Dabs.com do this excellently and get a deserved point here.

Point two is for whether the site shows a genuine stock level and do actually deliver. A few firms have done this excellently. Award negative points if a firm says it’s in stock and then, when you've ordered, sends a whingy email reinterpreting the meaning of 'in stock'.

Point three is for how well they split orders when things are in or out of stock.

Point four is whether they do anything at any speed when you click Checkout. (Order something from cclcomputers.com, wait a few days and then cancel and go elsewhere. Dabs.com win awards for their site but what they mean by next day delivery is measured by the days on planet Pluto. Dabs always disappoints. Ebuyer never disappoints as long as you realise that the firm really wants to go out of business. This this they do by messing up often.

Point five is negative marks for all the excuses you will get when the wrong things are sent, things don't work.

Point six is for a customer helpline that's effective. Several firms (e.g. Dabs, Ebuyer) have 'virtual customer helplines' meaning that there's a number but the response time is a ridiculous seven days.

I’ll return to this later, but first there’s money to be shed

What to do on the web: Play the signup game:
Here's a game for two if you have a friend, through you can still play and gain a thrill on your tod. To get started, go to a website which features a 'register for free' service and sign in. After you register you'll receive a confirmatory email (which you can have sent to your barely-usable Hotmail account). You use the info on the email to sign back into the site.

How the scoring works: Every site you successfully sign into gains you two points. Every site that rejects you, despite your checking that email, gains you TEN points. To get the high scores you really need to sign up with a pay as you go ISP where you'll get rejected trying to dial up via a modem. As well as winning points, the cost of the calls adds a lot of tension, and fun to the game! Places to start include Tiscali where you can sign up for a £15 a month deal, try to change it later but have your 'sign into the account' rejected repeatedly. You gain loads of points for that. At some point Tiscali will change the log in procedure without telling you such that you will need a completely different User ID and password to the one you have been sent. This means only one thing: you win that game, no problem!


I decide it's time to do a cookery course?
If you too could barely scrape a pass in toast mangement, you'll be wondering if there's a way to a brighter future though learning to prepare food well. There's the prospect of a chunk of your leisure life becoming pleasurable balanced against the pleasure you'd gain learning things on the web. If you've been following our progress todate you'll appreciate this latest discovery: there are cookery sites on the web and it's taken me this long to find one.

More bread
Look what we found! The last of a packet of fairly instant herb, garlic and olive oil bread. It's foreign I know but the ingredients are very local. This instant variety, you'd never guess, is great for bread machines and what's more it's even quicker than yesterday's (below) brilliant time saver.



Pic: Focaccia: easy to make, hellish to spell.


What you need for Garlic & Rosemary Focaccia
500 g packet of above from which 250 g of bread mix has previously been used. (This saves time weighing)
155 g water (use a balance, it's faster than a jug) 40 g Olive oil. Chuck the above in the breadmaker. Set for a light crust and press Start.
Surf the web for four hours before peeping.


Garlic & Rosemary Focaccia - variation
This variation is perfect if you're going to visit your parents. Add the ingredients exactly as above and chuck in the breadmaker. Set for a light crust, press Start, surf the web for four hours, remove, dust with flour and place in the boot of the car. Drive to Mum's, discuss how the Internet is more a good thing than a bad thing. Enjoy.


What to do: register your email at some shopping sites.
To make sure the shops keep you informed, be sure to tick the boxes marked 'Check the box to receive our newsletter'. You'll receive loads of mail and inspiration as a result. The only exception to this is if you have an account with Hotmail where 'loads of mail and inspiration' goes to up to another level and you don't need to register anywhere. Till I got Hotmail, I had no idea there were so many ways to help older gentlemen. Every kind of stiffening device is available here. The Hotmail account is just a habit. Is there a way to chuck it and keep Messenger?

Making bread - how scientists do it

[page 1]

[page 2]

^^^ Instructions to print ^^^

When you're too busy to leave the PC, it's hard to get fresher bread than the stuff made at home. And with the nearest bakery over five minutes walk away I reckon I can save time by doing it myself. What's more you get it even fresher if you take it out of the oven before it's cooked - and that's something you can't get from the in-store bakery.

High speed preparation
Check this method for which a electronic balance is essential. The balance should have a tare button - ie it lets you zero the scale even when there's stuff on it. Mine, a laboratory model cost six hundred pounds, but the time saving soon makes pays for it.

Place the breadmaker container on the balance. Add half a teaspoon yeast. Press Tare to zero & add flour to 400 g. Press Tare, add 15 g butter: Press Tare add 280 g water. Add 1 tablespoon each of milk powder and sugar. Finally add a teaspoon of salt.

Replace the container in the breadmaker and cook to a light crust. Press Start to cook (4 hours) Take it out early if you're hungry. To save waiting 15 minutes for it to cool, set Outlook to a cooking time of 4 and a quarter hours.



Pic: Breadmakers mix, prove and cook in one shot and few surfers know this.

Prunes and cashew nuts

Writing this a few hours after a desperate rummage around the kitchen looking for food. I must have been asleep the other week to miss these two very easy to surf and chew items.
Though I don't feel too good just now, I can also report that prunes not only take a while to acquire a taste for, they take a day before they kick in and make the viscera churn.
(This is either because they're preserved with paraffin oil but that their syrupy indigestible sugars hold water and create bulk - just like roughage). Another anomally concerns the reason why these 'dried' prunes are so morish. It's not taste at all - it is their weird and juicy texture.
Similiarly, on some future occasion, I'm sure I'll enjoy a bag of soft dried apricots and again it'll not be because of their taste at all. It is because they remind one of chewing on someone's earlobe. Nibbling as we call this, was something people would do in the evenings, long ago before Broadband Internet caught on.

Caution on Cashew nuts -
As you're not bothered about taste while your surfing, get the cheaper cooking cashew in bulk. Forget the expensive unshelled type used to occupy guest's hands at dinner parties. The cashew nuts should not be eaten with prunes. Eaten together they form the explosive cocktail I experienced later that day. It reminded of the time when we were eating curry at home - we're just a couple of miles from the city - and a bomb went off in Bishopsgate. We didn't realise what the muffled noise was at the time, so we just carried on eating thinking it was the curry.

How to kill a little time
Visit technology stores like Technomatic - whose web sites not only allow you to check prices and delivery terms but they also tell you what is in stock. In this way you can make very precise buying decisions based on whether you're going to be in tomorrow. Next, fill your basket with a few items, click to checkout and wait a day or so to see if they really have it in stock or they were just enticing you to buy. You can then have fun exchanging emails with customer support. If you've time spare, check the shopping sites and compare the amount of detail they provide about the products being sold. The little said says lots.



Pic: Prunes in cute resealable bag: deliciously wet and chewy. Don't mix with cashew nuts.

Mmm doughnuts
Today was a doughnut day - something we do as often as we can. Greg's in Mare Street does them four for a sovereign. They serve you too so this is quite the bargain. Take them home as you eat one. Note how the thoughts in your head allocate one doughnut for breakfast, each member of the family or whatever. Pay no need to these ideas and eat another. Repeat two more times telling yourself that the family wouldn't have appreciated them. And so on. Till next week.

Chocolate
I was briefly bothered about my diet so after yesterdays overdose of 'befores', I thought I'd do a meal of afters today to balance my diet a bit. The scientist in me noticed that one of these chocolate bars has 35% cocoa and the other has around 70%. Not that I usually eat cooking chocolate but I couldn't afford the time to nip out so I went for what was on hand. It was this or tins of beans and tomatoes, both of which take a lot of preparation. Anyway, you'd think more cocoa is best but it's decidedly bitter. So today I learned that normal amounts of cocoa are best, and the other bar wins easily. Both are equal in allowing you to eat and surf. Again, I feel nauseous.



Chocolate - one of the most important materials ever created

Chaumes Cheese

I remembered being served a whole tub of this on a Ski Peak holiday. So here I thought was a neat way to get a good day's nutrition in one shot. Normally I'd put it in the microwave for a few moments, drip it out onto bread and carry that and the rest of the box to the computer for a most delicious instant meal. Today I put it on the scanner to warm slowly above its lamp and left it there for two hours by which time it was beautifully soft and runny. I keep a spoon handy with my pens for just such an occasion and scooped it out.
The slow bit was getting the shrink wrap off but after that you can scoff and not even have a plate to take back to the kitchen. It needs two hands to eat so surfing was interupted. I'm getting behind with reading web pages so I'll have to sign off. And I feel a bit sick.

Go to France on the web:
Visit French websites - look for the .fr at the end of the name - and then pretend you're in France on holiday. If you get to like it, book a ski holiday in a chalet because although you can use the web to shop in French stores, and visit the Louvre gallery, skiing is the only thing you can't do on the web. Also it sounds a bit like surfing which helps to cope with a week's web deprivation. The idea of sharing the chalet with others for adds intrigue to the week. I'll stop now so as not to spoil the surprises however I can say the people will not be French and called Pierre or Monique, they'll be called Emily or Victoria.




Chaumes Cheese - the trick's in warming it

Pasta - Cheese, Garlic & Herb
Marks was closed so I headed for the 7-11 Woolworth General Store. The place is perfect for crisis managed lives though it uses extra calories to cross Mare Street, dodging the open top BMWs that have bigger sound systems than I got at home. This Pasta was worth the risk of ear damage from subwoofers - though the rules for having a two-week-hence sell-by-date and labelling it fresh need tweaking. Nevertheless, with 4 minutes cooking time it all felt worth it. I used the four minutes to run a backup though I could have knocked out a couple of emails - I didn't see the point in argueing with myself over this. I was decisive and just went for it just like the doctor told me.
The flavour? Well as ever with pasta - or indeed any food you boil - the flavour is unbelievably subtle only a junk gourmet could spot it. Let's see how we did:
Journey to shop 10 minutes round trip; Cooking 10 minutes; Eating 5 minutes, but I