This won’t work every time, but from my own experiences it has worked each time.  I’ve never personally filled a laptop with liquid or sunk a mobile phone (either I’m just more careful or really lucky), but I know a number of people that have done this.  So here is the advice I’ve given in all the cases an d it’s managed to work.  You must follow the advice closely and NOT try and rush the process!!!  I can’t say that enough, DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Here it goes.

The most important thing to be done when water or other liquid comes in contact with your tech toys, REMOVE ALL POWER SOURCES!!!  Forget what you were doing on the laptop DO NOT try and save your work, you’ll only increase the risk of damage.  Unplug the power cord and remove the battery (or just the battery if it’s a phone, unless you’re unlucky enough to own an iPhone, you can thank Steve Jobs for the inability to pull the battery out).  The killer of wet devices is power, plain and simple.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Next, for laptops, once you’ve removed all the power sources take out anything else that can be removed, such as the CD/DVD drives if they can be taken out.  Get the laptop turned up on it’s end towards which ever side has the cooling vents on it and give the laptop a gentle shake downwards to get the liquid to come out of vents.   Don’t shake to too hard as you don’t want to damage the hard drive by the excess force.  Water will generally move quite easily assuming your location is under the normal laws of gravity.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Get a small screw driver and take all the covers off the bottom of the machine, normally there are a couple, they usually cover the RAM DIMMS, hard drive, and other bits.  Getting these off will help to get some circulation through the machine and may even help to allow any trapped liquid to escape from the machine.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

You’ll need to get the machine warm, I suggest using an airing closet or if you haven’t got one then somewhere else that’s quite warm.  This shouldn’t exceed about 40-45C to you’ll risk more damage from the heat.  If you haven’t got that then get a fan and place the fan so it’s blowing into the keyboard and/or the open panels on the bottom.  If you’ve only got the one fan then alternate it blowing on each side.  All the time your laptop should try to remain on it’s end so water can run out of the machine, it can’t run out of the machine if it’s flat on it’s base, well not easily.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

In case you somehow managed to miss my warnings DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!! you should read my posting again. 

You should NOT attempt to reapply power or insert the battery for at least 12 hours.  After the 12 hours examine the machine as best you can for any signs of moisture, shake the machine gently again to see if there’s any more liquid coming out, if nothing then turn the machine around and turn it over to try and shake lose any liquid that’s still lurking inside.  If your not 100% sure if the liquid has been completely removed then return it to the drying process in front of the fan or in the airing closet for another 6-8 hours and check it again.

Only once you are 100% sure all of the liquid has been removed should you risk applying power to the device again.  Start with the battery first then mains power.  If the liquid was anything other then water it’s possible keys on the keyboard may be sticky.  This too can generally be fixed by removing the keyboard from the laptop and washing it in a bit of water (I know it sounds strange, but as it’s been removed from the device the risk of further damage is quite low.

I hope you find this helpful.   If you’ve had experiences of this and were able to salvage your equipment either by the method I’ve outlined or by some other method please feel free to post some comments about it.  I’d like to hear some other ways people have managed to save their gear after coming in contact with some liquid.

I must get some more pics of the girls with Minnie as well.. but she’s pretty skittish of the kids (and adults too really).

Continue reading to see about the trip to St Andrews…. (photos from the day are in Canada – 2010 – Group 3.

We’ve had a lot of rain here in NB, it’s the only thing that’s made the trip a bit tedious really.  It would have been nice to have some nicer weather and get out and about more.  There’s so much to see in NB but it really does want nicer weather, especially with kids.  On Monday (June 7) we took a chance on the weather holding at cloudy and a touch of drizzle to head down to St Andrews for some seafood.  The day turned out perfectly.  It was cool and windy when we got there but the sun was mostly out and the rain completely stopped.  It was great for walking around the town, not so good when you stopped to look though haha

We decided to eat at the Harbour Front Restaurant on Water Street, just about 150m from the Pier.  We went here because of the big platter for 2 they had on offer.  Well, really it was just a platter for just one Yuki, but I managed to distract her just enough to get a few bits from it

Some photos of the seafood feast

The first basket is what I ate, the second is what Yuki ate .. the last photo is of the lucky ones that survived the feast

It was a great day out and everyone had fun.  I made Yuki drive back home as she needs practice driving in Canada, she’s going to help with the non-stop drive back to Ontario on Wed night.  I’m getting way to old to do it myself now hahah

I sat in the middle row of seats and enjoyed the ride and surfed using the pocket access point and USB rocket pictured above, it was bloody slow haha

Lisa was playing on her DSi (Thanks to Nana Carol)  the entire trip down and back to St Andrews, killed the battery completely on the trip.. she’s junky already.  Emma, well it was just all too much for her, she had to crash for the entire trip home.

It’s Tuesday now and I’m blogging this from the Chapters – Indigo Bookstore in the Regent St Shopping Mall, sip’n a Starbucks coffee.  The girls are all out getting their hair cut and ready for the Wedding on Monday of my Dad and Carol.  There will be plenty of photos posted from that

Well, just got a text, the girls are done and heading for home.  I’ll go and meet them and get yuki for a bit more shopping.  We need to get a few more things and get back and start getting stuff packed up for tomorrows departure.

On the Sunday we went for a 90 min boat cruise around Kingston and Wolfe Island.  Here’s a couple of photos from the boat with Emma and Lisa taking turns at the helm (before leaving port haha)

We’d stayed until Monday morning when we packed up the van and headed out for Burlington VT.  We planned to stop here and shop, but clearly we made some wrong shopping choices as we didn’t find much in the way of bargains or much of any thing really.   Here we are crossing the bridges at Cornwall Ontario heading for the US.

Here we are taking the ferry across Lake Champlain that separates New York state and Vermont.

After a good nights sleep, but a stupid early wake up for some reason (still a bit jet lagged I guess), we got an early start on the second leg of the journey to New Brunswick to see Nana Shirley and the family in that part of the country.  We’re pretty well shopped out now I think   The girls have been spending money getting all kitted out for the wedding back in Kingston on the 14th of June.  I still need a shirt and tie but other then that we’re all set haha

When we arrived in New Brunswick it was starting to rain, and it rained for the next couple days.  Today we’ve had dry weather but it’s threatening to rain again for the next couple of days.   Saturday (June 5th, our wedding anniversary) we’re hoping to get an early start to the day and get down to St Andrews for sights and seafood, Yuki is a seafood-a-holic if ever there was one.  However, the weather forecast isn’t looking good for Saturday, so that might get pushed off until Monday.

Tonight we took the kids around to my cousin Gregg’s house to play with their 3 kids (Chanse, Dakota and Kendall), they were great and our girls had an awesome time playing with them.  That Kendall is a real cutie.  The kids had a great time running around and playing games.  I hope their kids sleep as well as I hope ours sleep haha.

Like usual, all the photos from our trip will be on Flickr.  They’ll all be in the Canada 2010 collection.

I’ll try to blog more as the trip goes, I’ve been time sharing the computer with Yuki so I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like

I started with THIS recipe, with a couple of modifications.  Firstly I cut everything half.  The thought of destroying that much raw ingredients didn’t sit well with me, plus it might well have required a super heavy duty rubbish bin liner to dispose of it, let alone whatever the damage to the environment it would do haha

So, my mixture went like this:

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 pinches salt
• water, at room temperature

Plus I added some raisins to add to the sweetness and flavour.  The kids loved them, and I thought they were pretty good too.  Didn’t even bother with adding butter or anything to them, they were soft and moist enough without the butter.

Click on the photos to see the full size original photos

What they shipped me was in the box to the right, I’ve used a pen for size reference.  I was quite impressed with the size of the box to say the least.
	Inside the box were two bags, one with the charger/torch in it and the other has all the various bits to fit a multitude of mobile phones.
There is an extension cable that allows you to plug the adapters for the phones into the charger, which is nice, it suggests that perhaps in the future they could simply offer new tips to fit other devices (and not only mobile phones?)  The back page of the manual identifies the tips and the phones they fit.
	You can see how truly small the charger device is in this photo.  I don’t have the biggest hands around it’s fair to say, but I can nearly conceal it in my hand.

Continue reading for my review

First impressions: Firstly, looking at the product in the box and out of the box I’m most impressed with the size of the device, however, at the same time it also made me wonder how well suited for the job it would be.  I was surprised at how well it fit my hand and I was able to operate it.  As simple as it may seem to just pick it up and turn a handle, that’s not always the case.  With some crank devices I’ve tried I found I was bashing my knuckles or scraping fingers because of how the mechanism worked.  This device does work quite well for me, someone with massive hands might find it harder to use due to the small size.  Weight wise, it’s lighter then my Nokia N97 by a fair bit, the phone is 150g, this device is around 70g?

Practical usage: I had no problems winding it; holding it did get a bit tiresome due to the small size, fingers were cramping up a bit after 2-3 min of cranking it.  I had my 6 year old crank it for 1 minute.  She did alright but kept wrapping her fingers around the small case and kept bashing her fingers on the crank, not surprising really; ever try to tell a 6 year old anything these days?    The one page manual that comes with the device doesn’t give any indication about how long you should crank to get what approximate amount of usage from the light.  One minute of erratic cranking by my 6 year old kept the light on for about 5 min.  One minute of the suggested speed of about 120rpm gave just over 30 min of usable light.

Using it to charge a phone would be a very tiring prospect that’s for sure, there are much better Nokia N97 Chargers available that’s for sure.  I had a lot of problems actually charging my Nokia N97   There seems to be a connection issue somewhere in all of the connections between the crank charger and the plug to the phone.  In all there is a plug in the crank body to the 20-25cm extension cable, plus the connector needed for my phone to the cable and then finally into the phone.  Whilst cranking the handle at the suggested rate of 120RPM my phone was constantly flapping between charging, not charging and eventually would just give up and stop taking a charge or perhaps it wasn’t getting any voltage out of the cable and connectors.  The type of plug/socket used on the crank body is not the best choice for an object that’s going to be moving around as much as it is when you’re cranking.  There are more stable and secure connectors that could have been selected, but perhaps the ones used were due to cost rather then reliability.

Conclusion: Would I carry this device with me out camping or around in my gadget backpack?  Yes for sure.  As a windup torch it’s aces, as a phone charger it might well work when the chips are down and you need a few more minutes of talk time or just to keep it topped up, but it’s not without the need of some fiddling.

The manual is quite simple, just a single sheet doubled sided, let’s face it, there’s not much to know to use this.  Crank the handle, turn it on or plug in phone and crank the handle

It was a decent enough few days.. the weather could have been better but at least it didn’t rain the entire time. I did manage to get 3 Geocaches in while i was up there too.  Nice easy ones.

We went to the Metrocentre Shopping Centre in Gateshead, besides just walking around looking at the huge number of shops we also enjoyed the entertainment area there .. they had loads of those “grabber” games where you have get a prize out of the machine plus a number of other games of luck/skill/chance where you get tickets if you win and you can exchange them for crap.. and I use that term in the most loving way possible  

The other thing they had were dodgems (bumper cars) .. Lisa was bugging us to let her go.. being too small to go alone I went with Lisa.. man I tell you, I’ve never seen a kid laugh so much and so hard for so long.. I was dead certain I’d have to be yelling “clean up in dodgem #10′” haha she had a great time.. I had to operate the “gas peddle” as it was out of her reach, but she did most of the steering and the ramming of others out in on the rink or whatever you call it.  Yuki took Emma out as well in another car.. Emma had an OK time but she is just a little too small and got chucked around too much.  Lets just say it’s a good thing the cars are well padded including a 6-8 inch thick patch on the steering wheel haha she hit that a lot.. but she survived.  I think Lisa and I ended up having 3 goes on them.

On Tuesday we’d gone for a walk around the town centre, one of the places we visited was Castle Keep,  Pretty slick place and quite well preserved but it’s not had an easy go in it’s life that’s for sure.   Here are a couple of photos from the place .. check out the rest by clicking on any of the photos..

We also visited The Cathedral Church of St. Nicolas just up the road from Castle Keep.

Check out more photos by clicking on any of the above.

Devices that require power

• Dell E6500 Latitude (with 9 and 6 cell batteries)
• Nokia N97 (read my other blog postings for my opinion on this device)
• Zoom 4506-N 3G Travel Router
• Microsoft wireless travel mouse
• Jabber BT3030 headset
• Power adapter for laptop (travel adapter for use with mains, car and air plane (I’ve never been fortunate enough to travel in the right class where I can use it on a plane )

Devices that use power but leech off other sources

• Vodafone K3820 3G/HSDPA modem
• 500GB portable USB drive
• Numerous Flash drives of various capacities, some have bootable OSes on them some just for data

Misc items that I carry that don’t need any power themselves

• A number of 8cm CD’s and DVD’s with bootable OSes on them (all Re-Writable for reuse, and for those machines that can’t boot of USB, WTF?)
• A couple of sets of head phones (in case of loss or damage)
• Various cables to connect devices for data transfer or charging, most use the same USB cables so it keeps these to a minimum

All in all it’s a fair bit of gear slung on my shoulder.   The double batteries for the laptop are really just to make sure I can go for hours and hours..  One question I’m sure many are asking themselves – Is all that gear really necessary?   Of course the answer is NO, BUT it’s just become the norm for so many years now, not just with me but so many people.   I can do just nicely with only my phone in most cases.  I managed quite nicely last year to post very long blog postings while out camping.  However, it wasn’t as convenient as it would have been had I had my laptop with me.  I should put my normal “battle load” into my backpack and weight it.  I’m sure it’s the best part of 8KG, might be a  bit more.

The only reason I decided to write this blog posting now was because while I sit in the Starbucks here in Newmarket Road in Cambridge I pulled out my travel mouse to find the battery was flat in it.  That got me thinking about what else I have in my bag that might need a change of batteries.  Thankfully that’s really the only device that can’t be recharged (however that’s a bad thing too really).  By that I mean I can’t plug the mouse in to charge the battery, it’s just a single AA battery.  That in itself is a good thing really, I can get replacements anywhere for it, that however can’t be said for any of the other power hungry devices I carry.  They all have bespoke batteries, so they require having some sort of charger/power adapter (be it wall wart, USB cable or some such).

So, What do you carry with you on a day to day basis?   What do you wish you could carry with you but choose to leave at home for some reason?

We’ve all suffered through Christmas and of course New Years, so Happy New Year eh?

Well, that brings us to today now.  I’ve converted back to Windows (it was a sad day yesterday).  I’d finally had enough of Ubuntu.  It was a series of issues that forced me back to Windows … apps that stopped working, funny things happening since upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, that was a mistake for sure and generally speaking I just grew tired of missing functionality in Ubuntu when everyone you deal with uses Windows.  Oh well.  I’m not running Windows 7, 64-Bit, finally making full use of the hardware in my laptop.  The only “issue” I have right now is Win 7 doesn’t seem to support the ACPI power management stuff.. so, as a result when I pull the power and run on battery the only performance tuning that happens is the screen dims but the CPU’s run full out and thus drain the battery at an alarming rate.  I’m sure I’ll find the correct drivers for that issue at some point. 

Oh yeah, I bought a new car as well .. pics of the new motor here ..

There’s not really much else to report I suppose.  As usual, check out the photos on our flickr account for new photos and videos. Such as this one, Lisa playing her piano..

I hope I’ll have some more interesting things to blog about in the future.. just sort of lost the desire to blog.. hoping it comes back.

The weather this past week has been brutal here with highs not much higher then 14C in the day time and loads of rain. I’ve been told this is not normal weather for this time of the year, especially since this is the summer time down here.

This weekends plans were a bit scuppered due to the weather but what can you do. I just hope we have better weather this coming week. I’d hate to think I brought shorts and didn’t have a chance to wear them, save for the first day I arrived.

I’ll try to get some pics and post them later, unfortunately the broadband speeds down here are less then desirable so uploading photos would be very tedious and time consuming.

I’ll post more later when I have something more interesting.

The trip to Johannesburg started with a taxi ride to Heathrow Airport in London. The trip was uneventful and actually quite educational. The driver gave me some great tips on alternate ways to the airport that avoided nearly all f the dreaded M25. As I will be going to Heathrow in Dec to collect my mum when she comes over it will give me a chance to test the routes.

Getting through security was about the easiest I’ve seen in years, well for me anyhow. Unlike most others around me (men and women) i didn’t need to take off my belt or shoes. A short wait on the secure side for the gate to assigned and opened, then about 90 mins ish in the boarding area. The flight was late owing to “catering and security checks”… Hmm security checks on the catering. On the flight I have seat 51J on a 747-400, flight VS601 with Virgin Atlantic.

The take-off was quite late. However it was announced the expected flight time was reduced from the original 11h5m to 10h15m or something, so this will make up for the later departure.

There weren’t many seats free on the aircraft but that didn’t put a dampener on all the people bent on moving around trying to find a better seat somewhere else. Speaking of seats, there several rows of some new fangled seat that Virgin is trialling to be the new economy seats. I wasn’t in one of these rows, oh well haha.

Shortly after take-off they started the ovens to cook dinner, I’m sitting right next to one of the galley’s and smell of dinner is starting to get to me haha… The last thing I ate was at about 12pm, its now 720pm.

Dinner was beef stew, roll, pasta salad and a small “Gu” chocolate thing.

This is the first time I have flown since all of my weight loss, and I have to say that flying is a hell of a lot easier now. Everything from simply sitting in the seats, no more need for a seatbelt extension but most of all just walking around the cabin and toilets haha.

Its now 00:49 Johannesburg time and currently we are somewhere over southern Niger. Extreme boredom is setting in. I’m in a middle seat so getting up for a walk isn’t easy. Curiously, as I typed the above House Of Pain – Jump Around has just come on the music player haha could the have been a more inappropriate song for the moment

I suppose what I am typing now should really fall under day 2 haha… I have arrived in Johannesburg. The rest of the flight was uneventful and breakfast was actually quite good. We has scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns and beans. There was a muffin also, that got eaten and a yogurt pot, that did not haha.

Passing through Immigration consisted of first looking into the FluIR camera to check for illness, a little late if you ask me, they should be doing that BEFORE people board the aircraft. Then it was my turn with the immigration officer. This consisted of me standing silent, her thumbing to a page in my passport and inserting a sticker and stamping my entry.

The only hitch of the day… No driver?!?! I call the hotel to enquirer. She informed me the driver had waited for me yesterday morning. Clearly they were confused about my travel arrangements.. So now I wait for my driver to get dispatched… Not sure if thats a correct term to use in SA or not haha.

I finally made it to the hotel, got checked, showered and changed. Then had to get over to another colleagues room to had out too a braai across town. That was very good. It was being hosted by one some of the folks from a business partner. It was nice to meet them and chill out eating great food.

I finally got back to the hotel about 7 I think it was.. had a bite to eat at the hotel then back to the room to chill out. It was a great day but was very glad to get back and get to bed. I’d woken at 7am Saturday morning UK time and finally got to sleep about 930pm Sunday night, UK Time.

Monday was good at the office, got a fair amount done in the office so that’s good. Looks like we won’t be able to move the people in the office to new office until Wed or Thursday this week, so that means we’re a few days behind.

I’ll post more when I’ve done something more interesting

I’ll have to get some photos as well and get them posted.

I bought my NokiaN97 back in June.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I, like everyone else that ever ordered one of these devices, was excited like I’d never been about a phone.  The prospect of what was promised by Vodafone and Nokia was overwhelming the senses.  However, I very quickly found myself, like pretty much everyone else that has ever ordered this device, sad and disappointed to entirely new levels.

Where do I start .. well the device came shipped with the then current firmware level of 10.x .. right out of the box it was acting odd.. dropped calls, low phone signals levels where there should full signals, etc, etc.  The worst at the time was making and taking calls… you might be lucky and get a call in and you might be lucky to not have the device crash and reboot during or immediately after a call.  This was frustrating to say the least.

While the start of my relationship with my new N97 was rocky it was manageable .  Plus the promise of the much talked about V11 firmware and how it would fix a lot of problems, that and that alone kept me hopeful that we could make things work (me and the N97).  Firmware V11 came and went, sure, some problems were resolved, but entirely new problems were introduced.  Once again, we were on the rocks with our relationship.  I managed, somehow, to tolerate the device.  It wasn’t crashing randomly any more, which I suppose is a positive thing.  However, one of the new problems that came with V11 was a memory leak that slowly filled up my C:.  The first time it happened I received an “out of memory” error and the phone crashed and rebooted.  Upon reboot I was confused at first since the C: had about 18meg free.  I then noticed it would slowly fill as days went on and crash again.

Until now, I’ve not even touched on the other long laundry list of known issues with this device, including the much loathed Nokia N97 Self Harming issue where it scratches and destroys it’s own camera lense.  Mine has been no exception to this issue, the lense is nicely scratched and gashed, thankfully not directly over the camera’s optics so the camera is still very usable.  Others, however, have not been so lucky.

So, back to the story.. we last off with the tails of whoa over V11 firmware.  Well, it was many months before Nokia finally released the even more anticipated V12 firmware. It was even longer for UK contract phone owners since the UK carriers either refused to push it out to us or they blamed Nokia for the delay.  I don’t know where the problem really was or who was really to blame, suffice to say it sucked big time.   Finally, V12 was released and the world cheered, until they installed it and noticed yet more problems were introduced, for some it was more problems then fixes.  Some of my issues were fixed but my memory leak got worse.  I could now only run my phone for 2 days before the C: would fill and the phone would crash or I had to reboot it.

Well, here I am now in Nov.  After waiting for V20 to come out and then deciding not to wait until sometime next year I changed the product code on my phone by following the instructions on THIS PAGE.  That worked a treat I was then able to upgrade to V20.  That did not go well at all I have to say.  The process of loading the firmware was fine, however after the initial reboot there were loads of performance issues and lots of crashes.  After much Googling I’d come to conclusion that I needed to do a hard reset and rebuild my phone from scratch   That was the first time I had to a full rebuild.  Somewhat painful .. loads of apps to find and install, activation codes to find etc.  More annoyingly was I had to rebuild all my menus again for all the apps.  Very time consuming.  Fine, I accepted that, the phone is crap, the OS is crap and Nokia is crap, just one of the little joys of having bleeding edge hardware and Beta software.

Well, last night the phone acted up and needed a reboot.  This wasn’t the memory leak, that seemed to be mostly cured going to V20, I forgot to mention that above.  I pushed the power button, turned off the phone.  It did as it was suppose to.  Power it back on.. it sits at the white Nokia screen for about 2-3 mins.  This is NOT normal.  60-90 seconds boot time is normal for my phone.  I pull the battery, try again.  Leave it for 10 mins or so this time.  Still, no boot.  Bugger me.  I pull the battery, sim card and microSD card out.  Wait a few mins, replace the sim and battery and power on.  Nothing, just the White Screen of Death.  I tried all the “fixes” that others posted about, nothing at all.  I was again forced to hard reset and rebuild my phone.

This was the last time I ever hard reset my phone for no valid reason.  The next time the phone does this, I will hard reset it clear and format the internal mass storage and sell it on EBay for whatever I’m lucky enough to get for it.  That will be it.  I will also not be organizing my icons again or doing much else in the way of customizing my phone because of the hassles and time it takes, all to have it destroyed because Nokia can’t get it’s act together.

I would love to return the phone to Nokia for a full refund not to mention refunds for the software I’ve purchased for the device that will, on the next total lock up will become of no use to me since I won’t be using the device.

I am one very unhappy customer of Nokia at this point, the only good thing is knowing I’m no the only one.  There are 1000′s and 1000′s of people that have bought this phone and posted about their deep disappointment with the device and Nokia in general.  I hope, like me, they will all vote with their feet and refuse to by any more Nokia and Symbian based phones!  I think my next phone will be an Android of some sort.  It can’t be any worse.  No, don’t even think of trying to talk into an Apple i-CAN’T DO WHAT I LIKE ON MY PHONE-Phone.

If you are thinking of buying a Nokia N97 I would strongly encourage you to spend 2 hours at least Googling about the device and issues people are having.  Don’t take my rantings on here for it, see what everyone else is saying about the device.  If you have any sense you’ll see it’s not a good investment, and a very costly one at that.

This was the posting that provided the answers that worked for me

http://epongebleue.bluesponge.com/?p=154

Rather then using wp-cron to check for email, I’ve decided to use the
systems cron process. Less load on the server I think.

Thanks very much.

I’ve finally got the photos posted on Flickr now. The easiest way to see them all is by going to the Camping 2009 Collection.  You can see we had a great time

While we were away I was blogging using my Nokia N97 phone with the use of Wordmobi (WordPress Blogging Tool) and QuickOffice 6.  Entering text into Wordmobi is fine but there’s no spell check available in the tool.  So, the process I used was to write up the posting content in QuickOffice and saved as a Word Document.  Once it was complete and spell checked I’d copy the text and paste it into Wordmobi.  This then allowed me to post direct to the blog and add the tags and whatever I wanted.  All in all this process was very good and worked well for me.  I had my laptop with me including my datacard and power source but never once turned it on during the week we were away.  I was able to do everything I needed to using my phone.  Other apps I used were the Facebook App that came installed on the phone and my favorite Twitter App – Gravity.  I would have been online using Nimbuzz, but for some reason I just couldn’t get authenticated, but it worked fine from home, not sure what happened there.

I’ve received a lot of positive comments from people via various paths about my blog postings while away.  Thanks for the comments and thanks for reading them too!

I really must try to blog more often… perhaps with the new found process using my phone I will feel more like it.  Since moving from Windows to Linux full time on my laptop it’s not as convienent to use my one beloved Windows too, Windows Live Writer … truely a great application for blogging on WordPress sites.

Thank again for following our holiday and reading the site.

It was a bit of an early day again today, Lisa woke us by filling her sleeping bag again, rather then getting up to use the bucket we’d put out for just such cases. Oh well, hung everything out to dry on a line for the day.

Today we spent the day in Southwold. parked up at on end of the town and only paid £3.80 for all day parking, brilliant for a tourist trap really. First stop in town was the Pier. This was not like most piers in the UK… It had an arcade but was small and clean, but the pier lacked the usual tat and flashing lights and head pounding noises. It was very clean and tidy with shops selling decent looking products.

After that we headed into town and walked about 2 miles around the streets and looking in shops. We needed to get the girls some swimsuits or shorts so they could play in the surf. Once the new shorts were acquired it was time for food. This proved to be the most difficult task of the day… First it was 1425hrs when we started the quest for food. The first pub stopped serving at 1400, the next place stopped at 1430 (missed it by that much (insert any number of corresponding scene from “Get Smart”)), finally found a place. The timing was perfect, I was preparing to beat several sea gulls to death for a meal.

Fed and watered it was time to get wet. We headed down to the beach. Its a very long and fairly well maintained and clean. It was very windy down on the beach and as a result we all ended up getting several layers of skin sand blasted off haha and people pay big money for that sort of treatment, fools. We spent just over an hour at the water I suppose. The girls had a great time and got well soaked and cold… Warm water my ass but they had fun blue lips and sand in places it shouldn’t be haha

Time to head back to camp, but first a stop at a Tesco first for a few more supplies. Dinner was bbq pork chops, boiled carrots and potatoes and a tossed salad.

Right now as I type this Yuki is in giving the girls a showered to get the sea, sand and stink off them

Next will be a short sit around the neighbours camp fire with them and roast some marshmallows and make some chocolate banana’s in the fire… Then bed time again. We were going to see about staying Friday night too but decided to pack it in tomorrow… The weather is suppose to turn tomorrow night and no point temping fate We’ve had a good run this week, no point pushing our luck.

Its been a great week away. We’ve had some great times and some not so great but all in all it was positive. Being home in my own bed tomorrow night will be very nice indeed. Cleaning all the camping gear wont be much fun but it needs to be done I guess. The gear will be packed away for another year (or in the recent case, two years as we didn’t get out at all last year).

The girls are all in bed now and I’m just finishing off this posting and having a cup of hazelnut hot chocolate, yummy. Then check some emails and off to bed myself. Time sure does fly these past few days… 10pm comes ever so quickly. Normally I’m struggling to stay awake at home this time of night, but not out here… All the fresh air is going to be sadly misses when we get back home…

Right, enough of this babbling, time to close the post, finish my hot chocolate, count some stars and then to bed.

Night all!!!

Oh yeah, once we are back I will be uploading heaps of photos… Got about 400 or 500 to sift though and see what’s useful and get them uploaded.

Posted by Wordmobi

Then it was up about 8am or so to get cleaned up, fed and packed up. Breakfast was some left over sausages and a hamburger and some scrambled eggs that were collected by the owners the day before, YUMMY!! By 1115 we’d cleared the camp site and were on the way back to Diss for the laundrette, thankfully it was open.

We arrived at the new site, the Orchard (IP13 0SJ). I assume at one time it was, there are still a couple apple trees around, not eating apples though. While Yuki and I got busy setting up camp the kids went off to play, they quickly acquired their new victims … Err found a couple of kids to befriend that are both sisters and only 6 months difference from our girls. Turns out they just down from north of Peterborough and arrived an hour or so ahead of us, very nice couple they are.

We didn’t feel much like cooking tonight so headed into a town called Woodbridge. We found a very nice pub called The Seal. The bar keep turns out to have schooled at Queen’s Uni in Kingston so had a bit of a chat about that.

Back to the camp site… We finished setting up the tent and all. Then it was over to visit with the folks we’d met earlier. The girls had gone go to theirs and were “helping” with the fire and roasting of marshmallows. stood around for about 90 mins chatting then it was time for the “glow stick shower”. Every Wed and Sat nights after dark they assemble all the kids/teens near the shop and after a very loud count down from 10 they hurled about 100 of the thin flexible glow sticks into the air from a couple different directions. All that can be said about what happened next is… WOW… The kids had a blast collecting what they could. After that was done they handed out the joiners for the glow sticks.

That brings me to the present… 2230hrs and I’m wiped… Again. Blogging this not from my chair under the stars but from bed. Our neighbours have also just returned, not overly concerned the others could be sleeping but never mind.

Time to post this and sign off for the night… No ideas yet for tomorrow… Likely head to Southwold to the beach or something.

Sorry for taking so long to post this tonight tata from Suffolk!

Posted by Wordmobi