Mike's musings

Nokia N910

Rather liking the look of the Nokia N900, but what about the upcoming Nokia N910? Well, it's got its own website, which is just a page, at the moment, saying "Maemo 6: Nokia connecting people". Well, so obviously that's the OS that's going to be on the N910, but what more information is there? I had a quick look at the page source, and though I can't find any suggestion that anyone else has noticed it, there's a description:
"Nokia N910 running Maemo 6 with a high performance 900mhz processor, 8MP Carl Zeiss camera and 48GB storage. Coming 2010"

Nice, yes?

And has noone else noticed this? Surely I'm not breaking this story, am I?

Labels: mobile, N910, Nokia, phone

Sleep, iPhone, cold, work

Yesterday's entry finished with a question: would the girls sleep in? The answer, of course, was a resounding "no". They woke up around 0530, though they stayed in their room till the statutory 0615.

So everyone was very tired. I was presiding at the 1000, and Mum and Dad brought the girls over for it while Moo worked. A good service, and I do enjoy delivering a blessing to Jo and Miri. Afterwards we went to Dickens Restaurant for lunch, and then Mum and Dad headed back home while Jo got very sad. We took the girls for a walk (sold mainly as a chance to jump in puddles), but not before we'd had some time to play together as a family: messing on the playroom floor with Marble Run.

The girls went down much better today, and I did a bit of work. A bit of a relief, as I got something finished which I wasn't convinced I'd manage to fix even tomorrow morning. Oh, and the iPhone? Dad's got a new one, so I spent a fair amount of time on the phone to Orange, whose number reallocation system seemed to have failed for the weekend. Lee knows that he's not supposed to allow Dad up to see us with technology that he's not yet mastered.

Labels: family, girls, phone, sleep

Car sound - and reading

(backposting) A few weeks ago, I had a bluetooth handsfree set fitted in my car. My previous phone had voice recognition, so when I had my bluetooth headset on and pressed the button, I could say "Home", and there was a good chance that it would dial the right number. However, my new one, nice as it is, is lacking this feature, so use of the phone in the car - if being legal - is restricted to receiving incoming calls only. So I went to Halfords, and got them to fit a bluetooth handfree set.

It's very good, and I'm very pleased with it. I noticed, however, that I was losing sound on the right front speaker. And then I'd go over a bump, or brake sharply, and it would come back. And sometimes the left speaker would go, and sometimes I'd lose both front speakers and only have the back ones. And reception seemed pretty awful.

So, as I was back in Huntingdon for a day (and that's where I had it fitted), I went in and asked them to sort it. As it was clearly just a loose connection, I was expecting it to take 2 minutes if they had the right tool to remove the head unit. They had, but it didn't, and after 35 minutes, I got a mate to pick me up. It took them a couple of hours, and involved removing most of the fascia. The guy who did it explained it to me when I went to pick it up spent some time explaining it to me, in the mistaken belief that I might feel confident enough to do it myself.

Bigger news - the reading

I don't often use a second heading, but this is big news: Jojo has suddenly "got" reading. Long words, sentences, full comprehension, rather than just single words. She'll try different pronunciations for awkward words until she gets the right one, and remembers "sight words" really well. It's fascinating, and I'm so proud!

Labels: car, jojo, phone, reading

Not debranding

I'm very keen to debrand my Samsung i8910 HD and take lots of Orange stuff off it that I have no interest in using and which apparently slows it down nicely. I'm not very well today - not yet man flu, I'm Just A Little Bit Poorly[tm] - and I have the day off tomorrow, so Moo has banned me from doing it tonight.

We're watching Outnumbered and laughing lots. It's just too like our family, and Karen (the little girl) has this relentless logic which reminds us scarily of Jojo. And the complete incapability of the adults to manage the kids without lots of bribery and compromise. That's us.

Oh: the diocese finally told us about the pre-priesting retreat today. It is on, after all.

Labels: illness, phone

Weather

The weather's been good, which is excellent. Went to get another gas canister for the barbecue (the last one ran out yesterday) with Miri when Jo was at ballet. And went for a bacon and sausage sarnie, obviously. And wandered around Clare church, which Miri loved.

Lunch, bikes in Clare Country Park, Si, D., Morgan and Boo around for a barbecue this evening. Good to see them all, and sardines in the garden is a whole lot more fun than with just 4 of us. Particularly when Miri keeps shouting, "hiiiiiiiiiiding! Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!"

Got "MikeCamel" as a username for Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MikeCamel. I've had the same nick for around 14 years now, so it's nice to keep it. Moo doesn't see the point: neither does D. Si does, natch. Oh, and have you any idea how difficult it is to find a (working) Bible reader for an S60v5 phone? Dull.

Labels: friends, phone, weather

Bit hazy

(backposting) Trying to remember what I did today. A bit hazy. Moo's coming to terms with her new phone, I guess. Hmm.

Labels: phone

A very good day

Lots of things I can't really blog about today, including some pastorally sensitive ministry-related activity, but it's been a really good day. We also had our first parents' evening for Jo's school, which was exciting at one level, and administrivial (is that a real word) on another.

Had a good walk, too, and Moo's got a new phone, the sim of which will be activated over night. She has a day at home tomorrow, so she's quite excited.

Labels: ministry, phone, school

Walking - and the rest

What have I done today? Lots and lots of things. These include:

• walked to Sudbury (10 miles)
• managed to get _very_ cool GPS app (AFTrack) working. It's very impressive indeed, and apparently works with the lovely Openstreetmap, though I've yet to try it out.
• deleted about 800 emails that I should have processed over the past 12 months or so
• chose the readings for my 1st Eucharist (St Peter, transferred: Ezekiel, Acts and Matthew)
• enjoyed watching the girls playing outside: colouring, splashing in the paddling pool, etc.
• played sardines with the family (great now we've cleared more of the garden)
• barbecued sausages, corn on the cob and foccacia
• ...

A good day - and I really enjoyed the walk.

Labels: family, phone

A good day, a bad day

So, Plan C is out. If I become unemployed in the next few months, I don't have anything definite lined up. This is a bad day thing. And then I started to wonder whether or not to keep my new Samsung i8910 HD. I really need VoIP, and there's not SIP stack on the phone. There are some other things that I'm not particularly happy about, too, including lack of decent GPS apps and the difficulty of uploading photos to flickr, and I wondered about sending the thing back and getting a Nokia 5800 instead. In the end, I discovered that the Nokia doesn't have a SIP stack, either, but managed to get Fring working with AQL (my SIP provider), and all's looking rosier. Took some doing, but I've found some OK GPS apps, too which I'm trialling.

And I had some possible job leads, in case things go a bit Pete Tong on the employment front, which they may, so that helped too. I finished up the day with an hour's hard walk, listening to Finzi, Duruflé and Poulenc. Now sitting in front of the TV, trying to work out how to disable the Orange Photo app on my phone.

Labels: geekery, job, phone, walk

A new phone

(backposting) Today a got a new Blackberry Curve from work. I'm getting my head round it and it's pretty good, I have to say. Clear screen, generally easy to use, and fast. I've not used a full qwerty keyboard on a phone for a while, and it does a good job, and the trackball is simple to use and responsive.

Labels: phone

New phone

Yesterday I got a new phone: the Nokia N82. Liking it, I have to say. Also wrote up an internal report and tried to work through some other stuff.

Took Buster for a (very wet) walk at lunchtime, which he enjoyed.

And upgraded my laptop to Hardy Heron.

Labels: linux, phone, work

A big Daddy day

Jo and I went out together, leaving Moo to have a quiet day at home. We went to Colchester Zoo, and had a lovely time, then to Colchester, where I got an upgrade to the lovely Nokia E65, which has a Blackberry client on it. We then had coffee and cake, went to Sainsbury's, and spent some time with Si, D and Morgan. Buster's had a bad wrist for the past few days, which has meant that I've not been able to walk as much recently. This hasn't helped.

All-in-all, Moo feels that she's not appreciating me enough, I feel that I can't do enough, Jo feels that she's not getting enough attention (though we're being very careful here, and she's doing pretty well) and Miriam just feels that she's not getting enough milk. But that's the case with all babies that I've known, so no worries there.

Today, I got round to reading the lead article in the Church Times on religion online. SecondLife was dealt with - and provided the picture for the front page - but rather cursorily, and I'd like to respond via the letters page.

Labels: Jo, phone, zoo

On holiday - just

The third post in a row with "just" in the header. Well, given how useful the meeting was yesterday, I was left with some serious work to do today, the first official day of my holiday. And, of course, to _really_ urgent issues came up on top of that. I managed to finish it all by 1300, with the exception of my expenses, which I left until Moo and Jo had gone to bed, and have just finished.

Then took Jo swimming while Moo had a sleep and relax at home, for which she seems much better.

On a different subject, one of the *cough* disadvantages of the job I have is that I end up with some hardware given to me from time to time for demo and testing purposes. One such is the (rather nice) M600i from Sony Ericsson, one of our customers. It will sync with Blackberry Enterprise servers, and so I'm trialling it as an alternative to my rather bulky Blackberry 8700. So far, so good...

Labels: phone, work