We went to Elgin today – to see Elgin Cathedral. Diana had been there when she was six or seven and had been very impressed by it, so we were going back to have a look.
As we entered the town there was a sign saying it was an “Historic Cathedral Town” – and that was the the only sign we could see for the Cathedral. We parked and tried to find the Tourist Information – there was a sign for that and we followed it, but we could not find the Tourist Information. There were a number of information sign posts – showing where the post office, town centre and other things were but no Cathedral sign.
So out with the PDA, Memory-Map and the GPS unit – the cathedral was marked on the OS map and the GPS took us there. (See here for my mobile tech kit.)
There was sign for the cathedral which we found eventually, and if we had been coming in from the other side of the town we would have seen it – of course we would have seen it if we had given up, got the car and left Elgin to go to Aberdeen instead – as we were leaving the town!
Come Elgin council get your act together – it cannot be hard to put a few signs up – where the tourists can see them.
The Cathedral was impressive – we shall go back next year and have a good look round. The Biblical Gardens next door to the cathedral were excellent and well worth visiting Elgin for on there own.
Although I forward my business calls and refuse to do my email, the moment it appears on my Blackberry, whilst I am on holiday, there are times when a small problem at the office dealt with now stops it being a big problem when I get back. So I do need some computing device with me.
Now my wife brings both of her laptops with her and a bag full of paperwork she plans to catch up on. Meanwhile I like something a bit more portable – my Dell X51v PDA, with six gigs of storage in it and six gigs in the PDAs belt pouch, and a portable bluetooth folding keyboard,
Dell X51v PDA
So what can I do on the PDA
I synchronised it to my Vista laptop before leaving so I have the most up to date copies of my Contacts, Calendar and Notes from my Outlook, and the last two weeks email including the attachments. I also synchronise a folder of my most important work and personal documents (including a list of thing we want to do on holiday). This gives me access to both personal and business information I may need whilst away – in my pocket.
I have used ereader.com for many since I was first introduced to it when I had a Palm handheld – and I use my PDA to read book all the time. I purchased half a dozen books for the holiday – and I have about twenty other books stored on the SD card. I have used eReaderPro for many years as my book reader of choice. For large text files I need to read (help files for programs etc) I use ELFView.
I have some software that converts DVDs to a format that I can use on my PDA – so I loaded Series 5 of Star Trek “The Next Generation”, three movies and a documentary about the “Coast to Coast” Walk onto one of the compact flash cards.
I have several hours of Big Finish Dr Who stories and other various audio books and podcasts.
Lots of music stored on CF card.
I use TCPMP for watching and listening to things on my PDA – I have a very good set of in ear headphones in my PDA pouch.
Whilst away I have gone online, at various hotspots, and have downloaded a number of new podcasts to listen to – I use BeyondPod for this and as my RSS reader.
I have SoftMaker Office loaded for Word and Excel – and have been putting the final touches to my “Coast to Coast Experience” document.
I have XnView Pocket installed this allows me to review my digital photos on a larger screen.
Memory-Map is one of my essential applications add to that a bluetooth GPS receiver and a waterproof bag and it is a great navigation tool. The Memory-Map database contains walks I want to do, places we want to go t and notes about places we have been to in past – our favourite cafes, campsites and attractions.
Bluetooth GPS Unit and AquaPac
I have not got an FTP program loaded on my Asus EEE Linux laptop – so I used Total Commander on the PDA to ftp the photos for my blog up to the internet.
For fun I have a Star Trek web site (don’t look for it on the web it is stored on my PC at home) and I keep a synchronised copy of it on my PDA CF Card – I use PocketHTML to add to it and tweak it.
My son uses it to play Space Trader and I have Vexed installed.
The PDA has wifi so I can get online with it, browse the web and check my email, use Skype, RSS, get weather reports etc.
As this is such an important tool both for business and personal use the night before we left I used Sprite Backup to make two copies of the device which I put on two different SD cards just in case. In the past I have had my PDA crash when away and the Sprite Backup has allowed me to rebuild the PDA.
Life Venture PDA Case with accessories – headphones with pouch, spare PDA battery and cover, PDA charge plug and adaptor leads, spare stylus, memory cards, Swiss Card and a Victorinox pencil
Security
I have a password set on the unit and it locks itself after a very short period of inactivity. The backups are password protected and no sensitive information is stored on the CF or SD cards. If the PDA is lost and then hard reset to clear the password protection then all the sensitive data is lost. If the unit is synchronised to a new computer the password is again required.
A Real Job
I had a call from one of our major clients – and unfortunately I could not get anyone in Lincoln to cover it as they were all committed. So we found a McDonalds – free internet for 24 minutes for the price of a coffee and a bap. I used the Remote Desktop application that came pre-installed on the PDA to access their server. A call to the staff member with the problem, I changed some passwords and provided the help needed.
Now one small disadvantage is the size of the Dell X51v screen – it is a bit small so server screens are displayed with very small fonts (of course let’s remember the size is also its strength, I always have the device with me). I have a folding magnifying glass in my work kit so I can use that to see the server screens, as they are displayed on the PDA, better.
This is a small media case given away free in Amateur Photographer a few years back. I use it to carry some essential accessories for work – but they are equally useful when away.
Power
I have two spare batteries for the PDA, a standard and a high capacity (I have a high capacity battery in the Dell all the time). I carry the spare standard battery in the belt pouch.
High Capacity Battery – Dell X51v
To charge the Dell as I travel I have a mains charger and two battery back-up chargers. For the camping part of the trip I also have an in car charger – I use a USB plug and a Dell synchronisation cable for this.
AA Cell Emergency Charger
More About Charging
I have a bluetooth GPS receiver, an iPod Nano and a Blackberry all of which I charge using the same mains unit with a USB socket – I just need the right lead – and in the car I use a plug with a USB socket and the same leads.
Accessories, cables and chargers
The flat rectangle in the bottom right hand corner is a 2Ah rechargeable battery I got from Maplins – which I can use to recharge my devices.
Other Stuff
The Life Venture pouch I use is great for carrying the essentials (including, money, bank cards, business cards and a pencil) and protects the PDA. It has a very secure belt clip and a shoulder strap can be added if required. It is not waterproof so when I am walking I put it in a zip lock plastic bag to protect it.
The downside of the bluetooth keyboard is it uses batteries reasonably quickly so I carry several sets of AAA cells. The usefulness of having a full sized keyboard when I need to write or input a lot of data out weighs the battery use.
Other Backups
I have an eight gig memory stick with me which has copies of the installation CDs of company and personal software. I have my Outlook PST file stored on a CF card (it is password protected) and my collection of 50k Memory-Maps is backed up onto a DVD.
I also have my PortableApps memory stick on my key ring – I can use it on my wife’s laptop if needed.
Asus EEE
Since the beginning of the year I have been been using one of these laptops for support work – it is a lightweight and capable machine. I have the 4 gig model with an eight gig HCSD card for extra storage. I wasn’t planning to bring it with me but at the last minute I packed it – and now we have wifi in the timeshare house I am glad I brought it. I have uploaded photographs to Flickr and watched several things on iPlayer – things that I cannot do on my PDA.
If there is one problem with the small laptop is the small keyboard, for long documents it is hard work – but that’s why I have the full size keyboard for my PDA.
So we have been away for a week – and we have had some great weather and very bad weather. Put the tent up in the rain, took it down in the rain, put it up in the rain and took it down again in the rain. But we are now here at our timeshare in Aviemore – where it does not matter if it rains. But of course it is nice weather.
Something new at the timeshare this year is we have secure wireless internet in the house. No more looking for coffee shops with wifi or going to McDonalds or Starbucks, we now have it in the comfort of our house – so watch out for posts each night. I have my Coast to Coast Experiences to post as well as uploads to Flickr as I go.
Glad I decided the Asus EEE at the last moment – so I can make use of the wifi.
Anyway check out www.clivecatton.co.uk for new pictures.
Everyone has had the experience when you have forgotten to charge your phone and you realise it part way through the working day.
I have.
So I bought one of these from Maplin – a Battery Powered Emergency Mobile Phone Charger. It uses a single AA cell battery to put a useable charge back in your device. I experimented with it this weekend and it put a charge back into my Blackberry when it was completely discharged.
I then got my soldering iron out and made a cable up so I can charge my Dell PDA as well. This gadget will also charge my GPS receiver when I am walking – a good safety device.
I finally got around to sorting out my photographs I took whilst walking from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. See our blog here http://www.octagontech.com/category/coast-to-coast/. I didn’t carry my Canon Powershot S2 IS with me every day – I heeded the warning we were given on Day 2 when we were soaked through walking from and the camera case had let water through and although the camera was damp it suffered no damage after carefully drying it. On bad weather days I used the perfectly functional camera on my Blackberry Curve for snapping the journey. However if you carry your camera with you in the bad weather see what happens here http://www.rkwinternet.com/category/coast-to-coast-walk/ – however the insurancecovered the loss and Richard now has a new camera. Richard has also posted an epilogue to the walk – I have also written about the experience and plan to post it in sections whilst I am away on my next holiday, when I have time to proof read the entries.
We are having trouble at one of our clients with their ADSL service and it has now got to the stage of getting a BT engineer out to check the line. Outside the office is a lake and whilst we are waiting on BT to pick up the phone and reset the service the water skiers are making ski jumps in the sun shine.
The down side of the whole ADSL not working thing is having to get BT involved. I had swapped all out network equipment as soon as there was an issue to eliminate that as a cause of the problem. I then called BT Tuesday afternoon and explained the situation to them, they carried out some tests and passed it onto engineering. Late in the day on Wednesday I got a call and had to explain the situation again and was offered an onsite engineer visit between 8am and 1pm or 1pm and 6pm Friday – I opted for the early slot and that was confirmed a few minutes later.
So Friday morning I am at the client’s site at 8am, at 9am staff arrived so I went off for a coffee and I eventually got a call at about 10.30 am to meet the engineer onsite.
Now I know BT will have good operational reasons for booking appointment times as they do (I do not really consider 8am to 1pm an appointment more like an intention to come) but I work with many support companies both large and small and BT is the only one to do this to me.
Anyway the engineer turns up – and after a few tests discovers we have a serious problem. He has trouble contacting various departments he has to speak to – and then he tells me about the system that means he has only two hours allocated to this job and if he cannot solve it in that time then he will leave and a new job raised and another visit organised (and I expect it will be either in the morning or in the afternoon). The even better news is that if that visit does solve the problem in two hours they will leave and another job will need to be raised! You can see where this system is going. Somewhere at some senior board level in BT or OpenReach they think this is good or even acceptable customer service!
On the up side each person who I have spoken to or dealt with in this system has done a good job, is polite, knows what they are talking about and are very helpful. As I write the engineer is down a manhole checking wires and testing at a furoius pace trying to solve my problem. The issue I have is with the system.
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