Weekend - phone, bike, mother's day, beer
Friday I received my new work phone, the shiny Nokia E51. It does more e-mail than you can shake a stick at, has 3G, wireless, infrared and a 320x240 screen. I'll miss the nice keyboard on my old 6820, but the upgrade was too much for the equivalent model. It also has built in FM radio, so I can listen to Radio 4 on the move :).
Downsides found over the weekend are : the camera is crap in poor lighting (no flash), the battery life is awful if bluetooth is left on continuously and wifi is played with, and the interface is a bit more confusing than previously. Still, seems like a fun and usable piece of kit.
Some black marks to Nokia's PC Suite, however. Whilst the backup and restore feature works flawlessly, it doesn't pick up entries off the SIM. This was especially irritating because I'd put my most important contacts onto the SIM, so that if the phone failed I could just swap it over! I resorted to using infrared to send about 30 entries over.
On Saturday I nipped to Scan to buy a guest USB keyboard (some people don't like a hardwired Dvorak keyboards, amazingly!), a 4GB USB stick - upgrading from my 1GB, and 1GB microSD for the phone. The phone now has ScummVM and Lure of the Temptress installed - it's utterly unusable given the interface, but still technically impressive. I'll also see if there's an RDP client for remotely accessing work's servers. I wonder how difficult it would be to port Exult to Symbian S60..
There was nothing terribly exciting on in Manchester, so I decided to go for a ride up to Lead Mines Clough from my doorstep. This was good fun - I got rather muddy and rained on, but was snug with a proper cag and other clothes, even if it did make my legs twinge a bit.
I spodded around reading Blogging Ultima by Ophidian Dragon - going through each of the Ultimas. Also visited was a site with samples of all the Ultima music - even now, the soundtracks played through a LAPC-I (MT-32) or SCC-1 (Sound Canvas 55) are highly impressive and superior to some existing games. I should resist Sound Canvases on ebay..
Anyway, some pubbage, then Sunday I nipped over to see my mum. She liked the cake I'd baked for her and card, I got foisted with yet more of my old stuff, then went back home.
Of course the sensible thing to do after having slightly twingey legs after a ride the day before is to go on *another*, longer and harder ride. I went all the way up to the top of Aglezarke Moor (by the ridge going to Great Hill), up to the tower near the top of Winter Hill, then down the other side into Horwich. This was, to say the least, knackering, and extremely hard on the arse (it's very rocky on several paths). I did dismount and walk the bike up some of the more vertical of slopes. Once I hit the downhills again, I gained back a bit of energy and tried to power home. The effect was only slightly spoiled by my leg muscles locking solid, and having to sit on the grass 5 minutes from home and manipulate my legs until they recovered..
Still, I'm ok today, and my arse hurts much less than after the ride the other week. I will be going over to Buy a bike to purchase a better headlamp though - the one I have is just about ok for seeing the path, but not good enough to identify mud, etc.
Finally, I'm pondering one of those more serious decisions : changing my local. The Old Original Bay Horse has been going steadily downhill, and although there was a recent improvement in service it's not been sustained. It's a bit sad, really, as it's probably due to the landlady's alcoholism getting the better of her. The favoured alternative is The Bowling Green, where the beer is 50p cheaper (£1.50 a pint!), better, with attentive and fun staff.
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syllopsium) wrote,
