Today was my car’s third birthday. So, happy birthday to it. It’s done 20550 miles so far in its short life.

The unfortunately, it also means that anything which breaks on the car now are my own problem as the warranty has now expired. Oh well. Oh, and I now have to join the AA as a personal member as well.

On other fronts, I had a rather nice dinner last night at the Bear and Ragged Staff pub/restaurant in Cumnor last night. The meal started with a rather large bowl of lovely, creamy soup followed by a “Barnsley Chop with crushed vegitables in a port sauce.” Yum. Again, the portiton was most generous, which meant that I couldn’t handle the desert course.

Tomorrow evening I’m off to Reading to meet up with Grim, Holly, Nobby (who’s just returned from S.Africa) and others for a meal and then The Matrix: Revolutions.

Tuesday evening will be spent in various pubs and a curry house in Oxford celebrating a friend’s birthday. I then have 3 nights off before Saturday when it’s another friend’s party.

OK, so it sounds as if I have a packed social life. Well, not quite, just like buses, you wait a long long time and then they all turn up at once. A point in case is that I got a second invitation for a night out in Oxford to see the last Matrix film on Monday but had to turn it down. However, I have no other social occations after next Saturday for the rest of the month, or indeed until the Christmas party season.

Oh yes, before I forget, I splashed out on a new domain name for my home systems on Friday… lingula.org.uk. All I have to do now is find out how to assign an address to it! (Oh and build and install a web server on my SPARCstation 4, build a web site and reconfigure my router.)

Having cycled in, I can tell the sinus attack is still ongoing, though reduced in ferocity, as my balance isn’t fully up to snuff. Oh well. Maybe I’ll be able to shake it by the end of the day.

This weekend was supposed to include a nice social event at on of the lecturer’s houses. Unfortunately, my body decided that it wasn’t so keen.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling fine. I had a lazy morning then went shopping as usual (and picked up The Matrix: Reloaded in Sainsbury’s). I was looking forward to the social event in the evening.

Anyway, half way through watching my new DVD I started feeling pressure above the ear on the left side of my head.. the sure sign of a sinus headache coming on.

Suffice it to say that by the evening the headache had built and even popping paracetamol tablets was making very little difference. I did go to the dinner as planned but by 9pm I was feeling far too ill to carry on. It took my maximum concentration to be able to drive home and tumbled straight into bed as soon as arrived home.

Yesterday was mostly spent trying to shake the background headache. I did manage to go to Wickes DIY to buy a couple of backs of limestone chips to continue the path installation. If I continue this every week, in 10-12 weeks time the path will be complete.

I saw some telly last night from my bed.. such as “The Theory of Everything” on Channel 4. I wonder if they’re going to put forward the views of the phyicists who disagree with the strig theorists. Oh, and after that “The West Wing” on E4.

This morning I believe I might have got over the worst of the sinus attack, but I’m still not fully sure it’s gone.

Today was spent working on replacing the fence between the garage and the house with a sturdy gate with the help of my Dad.

Well, we managed to get a very strudy gate and reused the planking from the fence on it. However, due to a minor mis-calculation about the thickness of the gate and the distance of the hinges from the wall (which can’t be increased without adding a second post) the gate won’t open fully. It opens wide enough for most tasks, so that’s OK.

When I say sturdy, the frame of the gate is made from 3″x2″ timber and has wrought iron hinges designed for garage doors. Add to this a nice big bolt and the fact that the door only opens outwards and can only be opened from the inside, it should be reasonably secure.

I’ve a dodgy tummy this morning.. At least I’m getting fit running to the loo.

Well, it’s been 5 days since I got my Handspring Treo 600 and I’ve been using it quite a bit since then. I’ve not really used the phone other than to contact Orange for some help setting up their e-mail system. Anyway, here are the good and the bad points so far:-

Good points

1. After getting used to it, the keyboard is pretty easy and quick to use. I can type on it about a third to a half of the speed of a normal keyboard now. This is far faster and more accurately than ever I could with Grafitti.
2. The screen is bright and easy to read. Some would not think that the 160×160 pixel screen was good enough, but I prefer the long battery life to a higher resolution one. It is easily ample for what I need.
4. The device is small and light. It’s small enough to fit in the trouser pocket.

Niggles.

1. The built-in midi player only handles files up to 64K and they can only be put onto the machine via e-mail. They can’t be transfered via HotSync!
2. The e-mail client, although pretty decent in most ways only allows messages up to 100K to be downloaded. This can be a little annoying.
3. You can’t play MP3’s on the supplied handsfree earphone.

As a Palm device with a phone attached, it works well overall. Only a few niggles. I’m definitely looking forward to the day I can buy a belt-clip case and a HoySync cradle. The supplied HotSync cable isn’t really up to the job.

Events since my last real update..

My parents arrived for a week and a half’s visit on Thursday. On Saturday afternoon and evening my Uncle and Aunt from Enfield arrived for a family meeting, seeing as my parents are pretty rarely up this way. Lots of family gossip ensued.

Sunday was mostly spent working out how to convert the fence which joins my garage to my house into a secure gate. As part of this we visited a number of DIY stores to review the matterials available. Whilst out I popped into PC World and picked up a multi-format memory card reader so I don’t have to connect my camera or handspring to the computer to transfer files.

Today’s been a pretty non-descript day, really. I’m now having to write down how long I’m spending on non-general items at work. ie. any work which is specific to a certain group within the department I have to note down. This is going to be initially for a month so as to gauge how much time each group is using as a way to determine a charging structure for the research groups. For doing this, my new Handspring has been very useful, just as my Palm Pilot would have been, but the keyboard does seem easier to use.

Tomorrow’s going to be a very boring day. The morning’s going to be taken up with writing reports followed by an afternoon of meetings. Oh well. Such is life.

I now have the Treo 600. It arrived at lunchtime and it’s all nice and registered with Orange.

My first thoughts after using it are:-

Thank goodness! Orange haven’t diddled with the software much.. one splash screen when you turn the phone part on or off, some set-up options for e-mail and that seems to be it.

The keyboard is a little fiddly to use but OK for me. I doubt someone with larger fingers would be able to use it easily, however.

Although the machine doesn’t have graffiti entry for text it does for menu options! :-/

It’s smaller and lighter than my Palm Pilot Pro except for the protruding aerial. The screen is crisp and bright and can be seen well at high angles. I don’t mind the relative low resolution of 160×160 as this is the same as the Pilot Pro I’m replacing.

Oh, and the camera takes OK pictures and Orange supply a 32MB SD/MMC card which is a pleasant surprise as it doesn’t mention this in the package contents when you buy the machine.

Methinks Handspring are getting Motorola to build the machines for them. Not that there’s any give away’s to this relationship other than the power-pack is a Motorola one and the device is manufactured in Mexico. Oh no, no evidence at all.

After pulling the Pilot apart and just blowing on it it’s started working again. Weird.

My Palm Pilot Pro just upped and died. :-/

I was about to check something I’d put on my Pilot before I went home and found that it wouldn’t switch on. “OK,” I thought. The batteries were down to about 50% a few days ago so they may have just run out.

However, when I got home and swapped out the batteries there was no change. I tried hitting the reset button.. nothing different except the backlight came on and stayed on. And that’s as far as it went.

Let’s hope the Handspring arrives tomorrow so I have a working Palm device again.