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Archive for October, 2005

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Cursed Wednesday continued (COR 8)

Thursday, October 6th, 2005

There are days when you should just give up. Go back to bed. Delegate where you can. Go to the pub. Any effort to make things better will only make them worse. Luckily, these days are few and far between, but they do tend to coincide with PMT, and its accompanying sense of stubborness.

The Wordsmith upgrade did not install properly on the Palm. I don’t know why; the version number seemed right (certainly no longer a pre-millenial version) but there was no VFS support which I needed for my SD cards. The nice people at Blue Nomad mailed me another file which to all intents and purposes was identical to the one on John’s harddrive, and that worked. I have no explanation for this. But while I’m slightly vexed, I don’t mind inexplicable things so long as they work.

What really gets me down are things that inexplicably fail to work.
[read on]

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(COR7): Cursed Wednesday

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

I really could scream. Nothing is going right today. I had to wait an entire week before John could find the time to use his Windoze laptop to hotsynch the latest version of WordSmith onto my Palm this morning, along with some other upgrades. The good news is that now the 64MB Proporta Probackup card works—it did require the copy update which was not installed together with the desktop support package—and that means that the data on the card were not corrupted after all. Nice. And now I have two backup cards.

This would be spiffy if only I had a working version of Wordsmith as well. The one that came with my clearance-sale Logitech keyboard pre-dates the turn of the millenium. The later versions all have Virtual File System support which means that they can save documents directly onto SD cards. Or so they claim.

I got so carried away with reading the manual that I paid my 30 dollars registration fee with no further hesitation. So today we uploaded the latest, shiny version onto my freshly re-vamped Palm. Thank God I did not download the registration key as well since John had to rush off to work: when I opened my sparkling new version of WS there was no VFS support anywhere in sight. I’m back at square one: my Palm is still a dumb device that can’t do anything without being wedded to my husband’s Windoze machine.

I want to take the damn thing half-way around the world, damnit! I’m sick of it. I’m chucking in this writing game!

Posted in computers and gadgets | Comments Off on (COR7): Cursed Wednesday

Ebay ripoff: join the club!

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

For the last couple of days I woke up in a stinky mood. It isn’t just the subdued, grey autum light which makes me unfailingly grumpy; it’s when I remember the laptop.

Don’t—ever—buy a second-hand laptop on Ebay.
[read on]

Posted in computers and gadgets | 2 Comments »

Flights booked (!)

Sunday, October 2nd, 2005

It always comes back to Ebookers. So why try anything else? But watch out: they tried to flog me a £180-odd travel insurance policy (for 86 days)!

29th November is sneaking into peak season; an earlier departure is cheaper. So I’m leaving on Monday 21st November (that was a typo; but I don’t think it matters anyway what day of the week you pick for long-haul flights outside weekends), at 16:25 and return Tuesday 14th February at 14:45 with Royal Jordanian (via Amman—never been there, but then airport stopovers don’t count). I have a 6h stopover on my way back ( hope they’ll have showers…), but I got it all for £ 468 inc. taxes and mail, and taxes were £113.

So: Is it a bargain? Eeehh; read these comments and think again!

Never mind, I’ll get to Thailand. And, as a backpacker, I might as well get used to bedbugs, greenhouse temperatures and inadequate loo facilities from the start (I kid you not—read those comments!).

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Flights booked (?)

Sunday, October 2nd, 2005

My heart is beating a staccato rhythm. Beads of sweat almost form on my forehead as I stare at the screen (it’s a cold day). My fingers shake as they hover over the keyboard. They haven’t done that in a long time.
[read on]

Posted in SE Asia | Comments Off on Flights booked (?)

General update (COR6)

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Yesterday I spent a little time with my Wordsmith manual, playing with the program, and I must say I’m hooked. WS offers all the usual word processor formatting options, but it is optimised for display on Palm’s tiny screen (it is easy to switch to full screen mode when typing and recover toolbars as needed). Particular useful features for writers: comments and bookmarks can be inserted ad libitum (very useful for plotting!) and the switch between ‘edit’ and ‘view’ mode happens at a tap on the button. In ‘view’ mode there are three different scrolling options, each with variable speed, and it is also possible to jump to paragraphs or bookmarks. In short, it is a thing of beauty and even the newest version will fit smugly onto my Palm. I’m off to register, it’s worth the thirty bucks!

Today, my Palm backup card arrived (16MB, brand new, from Ebay) and it works like a dream. My entire palm can now be backed up at a tap and restored just as easily so I can relax about battery changes (i.e. use the backlight, invest in a games card or read some ebooks: the m125 for everyday—not just for work but also play!)

I’ve just ordered a Highlander ‘Voyager’ mozzi net. I have also looked at travel insurance policies (for the over 40s), but it turns out that I need exact dates, so book flights first. This is getting serious!

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