It is Sunday 26th September by this time next week the Hamfest will be over – except for the cleaning up. I am here to check the building before we start the set up, so I thought I would post a photo of the hall empty – just add one Hamfest.
The National Hamfest 2011 – Sunday Read More »
The WordPress app for iPhones updated today and it has been greatly improved.
The page/post editor now has formatting buttons and adding a link is also on a button – in the previous version I had to google to find out how to add a link. Although the editor is not wysiwyg – it just puts the code on the page for you – it is easy to pick up the basics. Still no horizontal line though.
The app now includes a reader for WordPress sites you follow and shows the “freshly pressed” WordPress blogs.
One thing that has not changed, is that images are always inserted at the end of the post – it would be better if they were inserted at the cursor – it would save much cutting and pasting.
I use the iPhone app not only to write my blog but to write posts and maintain pages on the Octagon Technology and the National Hamfest websites.
am really pleased with this update – and it has come just in time before I go and walk the West Highland Way when I plan to blog a lot, so family and friends can see out progress. A little formatting will help the clarity of the posts.
Other engineers and staff at Octagon use Android phones/WordPress apps to contribute to the site – when I am back at work following the National Hamfest I will check out whether their apps have also been upgraded.
WordPress iPhone App Updated Read More »
Lincoln club hosts national festival.
The National Hamfest is next Friday and Saturday – so this Monday morning I am off to spend a week camping at the Newark Showground, to co-ordinate the Lincoln Shortwave Club and it’s friends in organising and running the event.
A big thank you to all those people who help out in any way, in making the National Hamfest a success.
Octagon Technology, for the third year is a major supporter of the show.
Lincoln club hosts national festival Read More »
BBC News – TalkTalk tops UK complaints list.
Read this – you have been warned!
BBC News – TalkTalk tops UK complaints list Read More »
With only two weeks to go until we start the West Highland Way, I thought I would walk into Lincoln this afternoon, rather than use the car park near the office where my meeting was.
More Practice Walking Read More »
Like the rest of the world I have had to listen to how perfect iPhones (insert Mac, iPod, iPad etc as required) are. We have watched Steve Jobs preach and perform hardware miracles on the stage at the launch of the next product. There are Apple Stores, bright, shiny, modern, complete with “Geniuses”. We all want one.
Even me. Let me declare I love my iPhone, I would count myself as a geek and a power user when it comes to my iPhone, I use it all the time for business and pleasure. Whenever asked I will promote iPhones to my clients to help them with their businesses.
BUT… Apple is not perfect.
They have big problems – magnified all the larger when you rely on the gadget to run your business.
Last week the screen went black. Pushing the two buttons, available, had no visible effect. Remember the iPhone has no “on” LED (a design omission!) or reset button. So I am looking at the most expensive brick I have ever owned – with no way to access that days appointments or phone the office to ask for help – and my clients could not call me. Add another “gotcha” to all of that, because the iPhone does not use a standard size sim card I cannot even transfer it to another phone.
This issue apparently fixed itself!
A couple of weeks back – no audio on the phone – read more here.
This issue apparently fixed itself!
Today, as I went to leave the office, I checked my mail on the iPhone and found this.
There was mail there when I checked it over breakfast. There was mail in the mailbox online. As ever the iPhone provides you with little feedback to diagnose the problem. I deleted the account on the phone and put it back – no difference. I ran out of time to do more so I left for my meeting, when I got the phone out at the meeting the mail was back!
So this issue apparently fixed itself as well!
For both of the first two issues I searched Apple.com for answers but I could not find any useful help or explanations. I have tried the almost standard Apple support answer – reset and restore the phone. It hasn’t helped.
The Apple Support Communities and Forums are useful but sometimes offer conflicting or worst, complicated sequences of things to do, “which worked for them”.
Everyone knocks Microsoft – however ask any support engineer how useful Microsoft’s TechNet is when sorting out a problem with MS products. At Octagon Technology we use it all the time.
I did not have the same issues with my old Windows phone. Yes it crashed and I used the reset button to fix it. The green LED told me it was on. But there is no going back the HTC Pro was good in its day but technology moves on.
Android? Nothing wrong with them but it does not run Memory Map.
I would not change my iPhone – even with the issues – and I will just have to worry that it will fail me when I am away on holiday or during an important project. Should I buy a second as a spare?
It is time for Apple reality.
(Written on my iPhone 4 using the WordPress App – told you I use it all the time.)
Back in the summer I wrote a post on eBooks and readers. Using the iPhone app Stanza I went online and found a free pulp science fiction eBook – The Penal Cluster by Randall Garrett. For the original article look here.
Now I was impressed with the cover, and Jeremy was not impressed that I chose a book for it’s cover! Well I have now finished the book and I can say it was a good pulp fiction read.
It had all the elements, a hero, space rockets and ray guns, a heroine in distress and even “aliens” taking over the Earth… and at the end there was an unexpected twist to the plot.
So if you want to try out a free eBook I’d recommend this one.
A wide selection of pulp science fiction is available today, because being mostly copyright expired, it has found it’s way into electronic and online libraries and collections. I am not sure that when the authors wrote these “pulp” books that they would ever had believed that copies of their work would be so widely available in the 21st Century.
These collections also include many classic science fiction works from authors you have heard of, HG Wells and Jules Verne to other not so well known authors. Try Olaf Stapledon’s “First and Last Men”, as recommended by Amy H Sturgis. Tony Smith at the StarShipSofa has podcast a number of copyright free stories from Gutenberg in the past as well as being the home of Amy’s “Look Back in Genre History”.
The new podcast Journey Into… is replaying old radio shows, covering a wide variety of genres, all of them “pulp”, as well as new recordings of both older and contemporary stories. I was listening today to a Hornblower story, that was first transmitted on the BBC in the late 1960s. It is the mix of material that Marshal Latham is promising us that has quickly made his podcast one of my favourites.