Nokia hates their users :-(

• The Memory card it comes with is only 64MB
• The 1GB I bought it corrupted. Literally dead within 5 minutes.
• The next one I bought it won't recognise (must be the wrong voltage, works fine in the Mac!

So I've bought a 4th! 4th time lucky maybe??!!

It doesn't appear as a mass storage device on the Mac, in fact it doesn't appear to be accessible from a Mac at all. Except through Parallels and the irksome Nokia PC Manager. The Nokia Music manager is so bad I shouted at my iMac for the first time ever. Windows is terrible, it really is. But Viewranger is great.

Here's something I want to do before this summer:

And this made me laugh:

Nokia N70...

So, after 4 lost auctions I finally got one, a Nokia N70 and a new one too.  I have wanted a GPS for a few years now. I was going to get an Etrex Venture cx, but the map on it only has major roads, river and lakes.  I wanted the GPS for my first cycle tour in September and that is almost completely off road.  I looked into Garmin's more detailed Topo map and that apparently is very expensive rubbish. I came to realise that the proprietary US/French created maps on Magellan and Garmin devices probably wouldn't do for me.* The usual solution is to buy software on your computer, make your map on that and then export the route to the GPS. The best software for this is on the PC, Memory Map with full OS Mapping, and on the Mac there is Route Buddy which has the (not so good for cycling) Tele Atlas Maps. But I don't want to leave my map behind on the computer and I don't really want to pay for 2 electronic maps one at home, one on the GPS.

Infact, I would rather take advantage of online maps when I'm at home, like Google Maps or Street Maps, or Multi Map, to create routes while I'm at home and focus on having the proper map on the GPS. This is possible of course, but most the options require a PDA, in most cases running Pocket PC. I do not, under any circumstance, want to run Pocket PC voluntarily, so I thought I was sunk. Then I found View Ranger. Viewranger runs on Series 60, has OS Maps, and can connect to a GPS via Bluetooth.

You can record your tracks, but you can also upload way points and routes to the phone. I tried out their custom map tool and I'll be able to buy OS maps of central Wales, London, bits of the west country and the south downs for about £35. I should be able to get a better bluetooth receiver than in the etrex for about the same again (£35-45). So hopefully I'll get what I actually wanted for rather less money.

*My intial decision was to get an old GPS, a Sportrack Pro and wait till an iPhone based solution to get digital OS maps in my hand appeared. It turned out that the Sportrack and N70 are of the same Vintage, 2005 models and around the same price. I suspect my wait for the iPhone will be rather more pleasurable with the N70 that it would have been with the Sportrack and my Motorola SLVR.

Bristol

I had a meeting in Bristol today and booked a late train so I would have time to finally visit Brunel's SS Great Britain. Unfortunately I was writing a long email after the meeting, eating up ship time, so I had to rush the visit into about 20 minutes, so I didn't have time to enjoy the museum which looked very well done.

Tsk! Never doubt Brunel.
Anyway, she is quite a ship.

With impressive detailing:

The ship is in a fantastic dry dock. The top is glass with running water, it looks like the ship is floating, but you go through a door and then I get a sinking feeling because you go down below the water and under the ship. Gulp.

But it's amazing, amazing how thin the hull is, and pretty scary thinking that this is all that's keeping back the river:

At the back is the technology, a balanced rudder and screw propellor providing easy maneuverability (and a prototype for modern steering and propulsion in ships).

Livestock were kept on the main deck, for food I guess?

First Class was mostly 2 bunks, and so very narrow!

On board barber shop - he must have been skilled and balanced, or the other guy reckless:

Others in steerage class slept width-ways in dormitories:

The ship was salvaged off the Falklands in 1970 and sadly will never sail again; too many too big holes:

But apparently you can rent out the dining room for weddings and bar-mitzvahs!


A great ship, precursor to all the cruiseliners we hate love today!

Manchester + Snow

Just finished a clean up in my living room. This was to coincide with gettting my new Ikea desk. Only £30

and it works great in the little corner I have put it. It's an egg shaped Vika Manne. I particularly appreciate the white legs. All that's missing now is THE REST OF THE DECOR to go with it. LOL! That will come later this year, after the next thing which is another round of gardening. This time it's boundaries and levelling the ground. I'll have to ask how far along we are, I'm worried it will never end!

In other news, I went up to Manchester early last week and to my surprise there was settled snow on the ground. See here from the train:

I finished up there early and went walking around the Arndale Centre, and lo! I found the Apple Store. Rather more fabulous than I had imagined, all along the inside are illuminated walls with images of young people living the iLife. So, a very much brighter store than usual.

Nice. Sort of opposite the store was a very nice Waterstones where I bought Josie Dew's new book: Long Cloud Ride, about her jaunt around New Zealand, and then went into HMV to get Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A film I've wanted to see for a while, and I watched it on the train back. Fantastic.

Lunar Eclipse

Blurry Pic, but definitely visible from my house.

Worlds Collide

This is Windows 2003 and Meridio 4.4 running on my iMac using Parallels in Coherence mode. Coherence mode makes the windows desktop transparent allowing Windows programs to intermingle on the Mac Desktop as if there is nothing wrong. And it was fast, very fast indeed. Much faster than any real PC I have used recently.

Everyone should watch this

Rageh - Inside Iran - BBC4

Wisdom teeth - out!

I had my lower wisdom teeth out today at Guys Hospital (great view of London from the 23rd floor!). 

Anyway I wen through to theatre and I was on the table starting to feel some cold in my arm and then I was having a dream, thinking, 'I've got a toothache again, I must make an appointment to see the dentist in the morning'.  And I thought, oh no, it's only a dream, I'll be ok when I wake up.  Then I opened my eyes and 'oh no, it's real'.  

So, I had a headache and jaw ache.  But I could feel my front teeth, lips and jaw, so no nerve damage.  Russ accompanied me home and I had a little soup.  I'm going to sup liquid, rather than using straws - straws are too much trauma right now.  I'll have to blend the soup - too many bits.  Bleeding hasn't stopped yet (it's not heavy though), I'm meant to mouthwash with salt (not tonight though, I want those clots to form fast - too much information?)

I have 4 sets of pills to take: paracetamol (500mgx2); dihydrocodeine (30mg); ibuprofen (400mg); Amixocillin (500mg).  Complicated, but no pain!

The consultant told me that 'They didn't want to come out!  But we got them out'.  Eek - good thing I was asleep.

Trekking Bars

This arrived through my letter box today. Yes, my letterbox!

What will these look like on my new bike?

Here's a bike with trekking bars

And here's a video of a bike with one

Toilet Brush

Believe it or not, £14 from John Lewis

Baaaaack!

Um, so I got a new computer and Rapid Weaver lost its sense of where the photo albums were, so I just left it, but now it's fixed, although RW has put a pixel of white at the top of each picture now. Pfft - a bug I guess!

So my new iMac lets me do this:

That was Vista RC1, and it was/is dog slow, but I only have 1GB of RAM, so that was not unexpected. There was nothing compelling or new in Vista that I saw though. As per the screen shot I also got Ubuntu. It runs nicely, but nothing compelling there either. I wanted to install that NeXT interface, but I couldn't figure it out. Heres a direct comparison of Vista and OSX:

Hmm, Vista text is lighter but Mac OS X text looks more...real. What else is new? I've got one of these on order:

Over £1000 of TSR, but with custom components and a custom fit. I'm super-excited, as they say. I have three words to say about the people I'm buying it off (Villiers-Velo): SERVICE SERVICE SERVICE - it is excellent!

Speaking of Moultons, you can barely see it, but I went on a Critical Mass last Friday and saw a Mark 1 Moulton with a beatbox on the back rack - very trendy.

And today, I was on strike for the first time ever. As I said to my boss, it's not about the money, I don't think the efficiency drive in the service at the moment should lead to compulsory redundancies. Simple as that. Hopefully that'll be the last time we're called out.