(no subject)

If I saw you at Whitby; you know how much fun it was despite being low on energy.

If I didn't see you at Whitby, I'm sad, and probably wish I had!

For some reason, I don't really know what to do as a Whitby write-up. It wasn't a Whitby of "events", but of "people and presences". Really wish there'd been more time to hang out with ashbet, missed a lot of people who do make "my" Whitby rock hardcore, and missed (due to said tiredness) some gatherings that usually make it good - generally my October "superperk" was lacking, but this also meant that I didn't get drunk at all, or seem inordinately bouncy.

Whilst I was tired, I may well have not spoken/recognised people, so if you tried to get my attention and failed, sorry!

Did get a visit from Sera Owner's Club Rich Cargill, who has a girlfriend with definite goth leanings - hopefully they'll be a regular visitor as they live in M'boro and had a good time! It was also nice to have a couple of parties, though NO MORE BLOODY STAIRS. Damn 3rd-floor apartments.

And I hate you ALL for booking everything for October (and April!) already. Bastards. I expect I'll find a way though. I'll sleep in your sodding cars.

I have hugs for certain people who need them, and now, I think I sleep.

(And the Ameo proved wonderfully useful, including dragging down 40MB of downloads to watch videos on the PowerBook. Windows Mobile 6 as a hacked upgrade on the SPV M5000 is also VERY VERY VERY useful and I can't wait to see it surface for the Ameo).

(no subject)

Suzuki Bandit 600S

I seem to fit it.
It's not weedy/two-stroke binary, at least technology-theory-assumption (without trying it).
It looks like they're not too expensive.

I may well have a high-ranking candidate for motivation to go do the DAS course!

(Even if they do need the odd push-start).

Arrested Development

Right, October Whitby cottage booked (and deposit paid). It's an expensive one; everything had been taken anyway inevitably (bastard goths! Greedy bunch), but the owner doesn't let to Goths (or not during the Goth weekend) - their moral standpoint was, however, swayable with cash.

Yes. I am the Devil, and I will buy your morals. I will also return your cottage in excellent order and hopefully get it for the normal rate next time.

It's now the second week of my T-Mobile Ameo - and it's seen a lot of use at Whitby. This Windows Mobile 5 device is a flagship "SmartPhone" which is more akin to a UMPC, but without Vista/XP and with 3G communications/telephony (HSPDA, as well).

Back in 1997, 1998, mobile computing was a serious interest of mine. Not as a developer or programmer, but as a consumer/user/marketing type, I looked at the hardware and thought of the Really Neat Stuff it could do. My machine of choice was a Jornada 620LX, a fully utilised 640 x 240 65,536 colour screen equipped 75MHz pocket computer with a fast RISC CPU and good storage and connectivity. With an Option One datacard and so forth, it was capable of different mobile comminications and I theorised how it could be used to transmit digital images and so forth. In the space of 18 months the Jornada 720 was out, with massive upgrades in CPU speed and memory, as well as improvements in the OS. Making calls with the card required a third-party app and a headset.

Skip to 2004, and I'm using an HP iPaq HX4700. 624MHz XScale, Windows Mobile 2003SE and 128Mb ROM, 64MB RAM. The screen is still limited to 65K colours and the architecture shares storage and application memory in the volatile 64MB RAM

Now in 2007 I have 256Mb ROM, 128Mb RAM (now all for applications, FlashROM being used for data storage AND OS, though it still seems capable of restoring to a "factory" condition so there must be fixed boundaries somewhere), 8GB Microdrive (whilst this is undoubtedly impressive, why it isn't Flash, or indeed, larger, is interesting. Flash is the most obvious choice over a mechanical device). Making calls on the device requires a headset and the 640 x 480 display spends a lot of time in 320 x 240 mode.

Moore's law seems to have hit a boundary with XScale, or indeed, low-power mobile devices in general. But moreso; software development seems to have stalled painfully in some ways.

Without knowing about developing for Windows Mobile or indeed, CE (I've always liked CE as a user, but some variants more than others), I wonder if people have stopped playing because the goalposts keep changing, but Steve Ballmer recently made a Bit Of A Tit of himself saying the iPhone would flop because it's a $500 subsidized device (it isn't. It's $500 or $600, no subsidy. Compared to >$1000 for the HTC Advantage) with a closed platform.

Of the apps on my Ameo, only TomTom navigator is a paid-for application that isn't restoring the sort of functionality WM5 should have anyway. Resco File Explorer just makes Explorer more complex and powerful. And looking at development, many games and apps haven't been updated since WM2003, which I think indicates that the paid market for these apps just doesn't exist to encourage development beyond the programmer's interest in creating it in the first place. So where do we go from here? Phone development is really down to MS and hardware manufacturers improving the speed and integration of their handsets (I've just bid on a US-market only LG Style-i "handset", which has number keys and will basically act as a TINY little phone connected to the Ameo), software... well... I see the Ameo as an entertainment, productivity tool and mobility device. Forgetting the standard keyboard, if I want to do proper work a full-size USB keyboard plugs in just fine and there are smaller ones out there without the limitations of the HTC layout. GPS works, it has car cradles/PSU adaptors, it does excellent web-browsing by virtue of having Opera built in... It is nicknamed "Ziggy" with good reason - extend the ability of MS Voice Commander to "Search " with preferences for using Google search engine and Opera, and speaking the first five hit summaries, and you have a true Personal Digital Assistant. Or "Make Appointment" (it will currently tell you appointments). It DEFINITELY has potential, and MS has the resources to do it - yet it doesn't seem to be happening.

WM6 - as I've been playing with on my SPV M5000 (thanks malcygoff for bringing the bits for it!) - definitely shows promise. It's prettier and uses the VGA display effectively. Phone operation is still slow, but I think that the "it's a PDA, it's a phone" paradigm will always have some issues. I personally think the Communicator from Nokia solves the hardware issues most effectively, but I really dislike the letterbox aspect ratio (and S80 OS, but that's more because I found third-party development on EPOC to be somewhat patchy and can't/haven't tried to write material myself). S60 will definitely improve the phone's abilities as a phone when it becomes the E90, but it will be a step back as a computer.

I can't help but wonder if a dual-screen arrangement like a DS would be feasible somehow.

I had big ideas for this post, but it's a bit all over the place isn't it! My magazine article will be more coherent, but I really do wonder why 2004-2007 has only seen more "stuck on bits", and not true improvement, on the basic Windows Mobile PDA high-end.