domdavis.com

I don’t know what was going on today but for some reason my phone decided that for most of the journey into London it was going to have no signal. Not just poor internet connection, no signal at all. For someone who spends most of their journey into work on the internet this is somewhat of a disaster. It must have been the weather (it was pretty poor this morning) but it seemed like the range of all the mobile masts has been cut to a few hundred meters. I’d have signal for a few minutes, then nothing, then signal again (generally when I was pulling into a station), then nothing. If I’m lucky I can usually get a connection all the way from Liverpool Street to home, and even when it’s being bad it’s normally only dropping connections at Stratford (God I hope the olympics results in lots of new masts being built there), Ingatestone and the last bit between Marks Tey and Colchester where the population is about 10, and then only if you include sheep.  You’d have thought a major line like that (it is the mainline to Norwich afterall) would have the phone companies clamouring to make sure that all their customers could be phoning up and shouting ‘I’m on the phone!’ no matter what the weather was. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part but it has made me come to hate the words ‘No Signal’ with a passion.

When I first got the iPhone I got the big fifty quid tarrif as I used to spend a lot of time on the phone. My usage changed and when o2 revamped the tarrifs I moved to the 35 quid tarrif which gave me half the minutes, half the texts and seemed to constantly cost me more than I was expecting. I managed to sort all that out (bolt-ons from my previous contract and unneeded insurance) all was good. Of course I’ve increased the number of friends I have since then and I’ve started sending more, and longer texts. Doesn’t help that I can email and IM from my phone and I forget there is a limit with SMS. Anyway, my bill started going up again and it was the texts doing it at 12p a pop once I’d hit my limit. Not to worry, I’ve bought the unlimted texts bolt on which they’ve applied for the rest of this month. They have pro-rated the cost and the number of texts in the allowance for this month… Yes, I spotted that too so enquired as to how many texts unlimted texts is pro-rata. I got told that I would only get the texts for the remainder of the month and not get the first 3 days worth. I tried again saying that surely 28/31ths of unlimted is unlimited? Apparently not, the number of texts will only be for the rest of the month. Seeing I was getting nowhere fast and that it probably wasn’t going to make a difference I gave up, thanked her for her help and hung up. Since then I have been texting with gay abandon (which, to be fair, is no different to how it used to be). So now I have all I can eat data and texts. Apparently this thing also supports voice comms but I’m not sure it’ll catch on

The iPhone has a little menu bar at the bottom of the Home Page that gives you access to 4 applications regardless of what page you’re on. I can’t remember what the default is but I always have (in order) Phone, SMS, Email, Web. Top right on page one of the Home Page is the iPod app. Now you can download and add new apps I’ve got quite a few pages on my Home Page and I find myself scrolling about a lot. I think I may need to face facts and swap the phone and iPod functions over. Given I never use all my free minutes, send so many text messages (and send essays that span more than one text more often than not) that I’ve had to upgrade to unlimited texts, get upwards of 50 emails per day, do an awful lot of surfing and listen to the iPod for up to 10 hours a day sometimes I think we need to come to terms with the fact that the whole phone thing is secondary to everything else. Voice comms. It’ll never catch on

I know a lot of people complained that there was no summer but we did actually have a typical (and quite nice) summer this year. Helped that I was off for the whole of it as many of the nicer days were weekdays. OK, there were no major heatwaves lasting for ages, but you’d all be whinging about it being too hot anyway.

What we haven’t had is autumn. The trees are just turning and yet we’re getting cold, crisp nights that, combined with the smell of wood fires, put me in mind of bonfire night and onwards into winter. It’s cold, wet and miserable. I’ve got my first cold (although that’s going to be more a function of commuting and being in a big air conditioned office again), I’ve closed all the windows in the house and the heating is likely to come on a month early. I even had the bathroom heater on this morning. Is it too much to ask for the gradual decline into winter that we usually get rather than this whole ’sod it, summer is over’ rubbish?

There is a big unmarked grey warehouse type thing (king of thing where you’d expect to find a large Comet, Homebase and the like) by the side of the track just outside Norwhich on the Sherringham line. It’s got large black double gates to get in and out, black double fence surrounding with barbed wire and two loading bays that are always closed. Nothing seems to be parked outside it ever and the only people you ever see are security patrolling the perimeter. Sounds very secret basey to me

I got a call today from a friend I’d not spoken to in ages which was great. The timing was perfect as I was stuck at Norwich station for 45 minutes and I had time to talk and catch up. During the conversation my phone went beep to tell me I had a text. Fine, probably my mum just replying to my text about being late and the new time to collect me. 5 minutes later beep again. And again 5 minutes later. Hmm. I’ve confused the phone as it was on hands free and it isn’t any more so the screens locked and I can’t see who’s texting so incessently. Thinking it’s my mum asking where I was because shed got to the station when I was supposed to arrive I cut short my conversation and go find out what all the fuss is. Turns out it was only one text. I keep forgeting the latest version of the Jesus Phone software keeps bleeping at you when you get a text until you aknowledge it and it gets me every time. I wish you could turn it off because sometimes I just read the text as it’s flashed up when I receive it and don’t do anything else. 5 minutes later it’s beeping and I’m thinking I’ve got a new text. If anyone has worked out how to stop it fe doing this please let me know.

Spent some time last night actually tidying the spare room and finishing plugging in stuff so it’s now tidy enough to take photos off. So, my new setup

I hate the fact that in OSX 10.5 when applications have installed they make the same sound as the iPhone does when it gets a text. I keep thinking I have a text, get my hopes up and then realise it’s just the computer telling me MySQL is insalled

I do a lot of typing at work. Behind sitting on my butt, talking to other people, surfing the web, using MSN, popping out for food, emailing people and reading it’s probably one of the largest portions of my job. Of course, with much typing comes the risk of RSI which is why I use my own keyboard. Unfortunately my old logitech keyboard (which was very much like a laptop keyboard) seems to have died on me so I had to get a new one. I went for a similar one (the diNovo Edge) which again has laptop like keys but also has many nice things like a built in trackpad (if I knew it would work with my mac mini I’d get one for home) and shiny chav lights. Ironically enough, if I was sure Apple keyboards would play nicely with work PC’s I’d have probably got one of those instead since they also have nice keys with very little travel, and they’re a lot cheaper Hmmm… perhaps I could take in the Apple keyboard to work and if it works I could bring the diNovo keyboard home and try it on the mini…

Much as I am enjoying my job there are down very real downsides. It’s a small company so a lot of the ameinaties you’d expect from a larger company just aren’t there. For example, while we have free cans of soft drink and a water machine, there is no chocolate dispensing machine. This means that at 7pm on a Wednesday with a code freeze looming the next day and absolutely no clue how I’m going to write what I need to write (turns out it was impossible so I didn’t have to in the end, which was nice) as the stress levels are going up there is no way to get chocolate (vital for coding in these types of situation) without leaving your desk, heading out of the building and finding some form of chocolate vending establishment. I would keep an emergency supply in my desk but I’d just eat it