Why is Nokia still so crap at developing backup software for its phones?

I just backed up my E66 twice, once to SD-card and once to the PC, installed today's firmware update, restored from backup - and then had to spend an hour or so hunting out and reinstalling almost all my apps, because the &*^%^&% Nokia backup software is unable to find its arse with its own hands.

OK, so PC Sync is reasonably good software now, but really, backup software that doesn't backup everything?

Idiots.

My watch stopped. Usefully, it said on the back what battery type it took, so I ordered some via the Web and when they arrived I went to fit one. Fifteen minutes later I had only gouged myself slightly in levering the back off - there is a little slot for levering, but it is so small that nothing larger than a knife-tip will fit, and they ain't good for levering with.

So I fitted a new battery, saw that the second hand was now ticking, and went to replace the back. Of course it is such a tight fit that there was no chance of getting it to clip in place with bare hands, so I did what I've done before - sandwich it with something protective and then clamp it together in the vice.

That worked fine, except that somewhere in the process the watch stopped ticking, and even after removing the back again and trying two different batteries it doesn't want to work again. Sigh.

Fortunately it's not my only watch, but... Argh!!

Finally I’ve got connected to the free Wi-Fi in JD Wetherspoon - for half the afternoon all I could get was the standard Cloud landing page, with the “Buy airtime” link.

The last time this happened, I emailed JDW to ask why the sponsored Wi-Fi no longer worked. The reply was:

I can confirm that during September all our pubs had a new WiFi connection. To connect a customer will need to create his own username and password and this can be used anywhere, not just in Wetherspoons.

However, all I was seeing was the opportunity to pay The Cloud several quid for an hour or three’s use - its website does not offer proper name-and-password subscriptions, only the usual time-limited rip-offs.

Oh, and the landing page doesn’t half make The Cloud look incompetent. The “free content” link to music.nokia.co.uk doesn’t work, the “Win a netbook, complete our survey” link results in “Thanks for trying! Unfortunately the survey is no longer available”, and the link behind the ad for Frost/Nixon is broken.

Anyway, I dug a bit more deeply through The Cloud help pages, finding a page that told me the URL I needed was “servcie.thecloud.net”. A tired smile later, I’d corrected the spelling - and got “Oops! Something odd just happened. Let's go back to the Homepage.” Argh!

Still, I clicked the Home button - and at last I’d found my way to the right login page. And yes, all you need to do is log in with an email address and password for free access.

But, dear gods... Why did it have to be so awkward?!

We got back from the honeymoon - which was wonderful, even the massive thunderstorms were spectacular! - to find both tricks and treats waiting for us. The tricks were courtesy of my new in-laws, who had obviously taken great delight in booby-trapping and generally untidying the house while we were away.

Pride of place went to my air-soft rifle, which had been taped to the banisters and rigged with string to the trigger so it fired when the front door was opened. Once past that there was - still is - confetti on every carpet, the bedroom was full of balloons and the beds were full of blacy-eyed beans, thankfully they're dried ones... Oh, and pretty much every mirror and picture frame has either lipstick or marker pen on it. Hmm.

On the treat side, we still have lots of presents to open, far more than we ever expected. (-:

...or Santorini, as the blasted Crusaders renamed it.







The first four are from Ia, the fifth from near Fira - if you click through you can just make out the four-masted super-yacht Windstar tacking into the setting sun. All taken last week.

If we already told you, perhaps because you caught us in a tipsy moment, please don't spoil it. :-)

Shred and steam (=microwave) a chunk of white cabbage, chop and fry some onions and bacon in a big hunk of butter, drain the cabbage and add it to the pan along with a couple of big spoonfuls of sauerkraut. Fry the lot together until the cabbage is just browning at the edges here and there. Serve. Eat - in our case, with a couple of grilled bratwurst and a dunkelweiss.

Oof, full now....

So the other week I was flown to Munich and then driven out to the former Benedictine abbey of Kloster Seeon, not far from the Austrian border. It's not had any monks for two centuries but somehow my room still felt like a monastic cell, tucked away as it was under the eaves:



The view was great, however day one was a little grey:



On a good day though, the area is gorgeous. This being Bavaria, it is notably Roman Catholic with rather a lot of churches - here's the parish church:



Sadly the abbey brewery has gone along with the monks, and the beer now comes from a small commercial brewery nearby. Nice though! The place has had a varied history since the monks left - a stately home for a while, and then in the 1930s a training school for the Nazi SA - though I've no idea what sort of schooling a brownshirt thug needed. It's all a lot more peaceful now as a cultural centre, art gallery and hotel/conference centre.

The abbey church has been restored, and is really quite beautiful inside:





What is it though with Roman Catholics and dead dudes in glass cases??? They really are quite bizarre.

Our pet spider is back, this time outside the kitchen window where I hope s/he (probably she) will catch and eat a goodly number of the flies that'd otherwise head indoors. I'll hide the pic ( behind the cut )

Just lately, whenever I'm on a plane I always seem to get one of those bastards sitting in front of me who tries to put his bastard head in my lap one minute after the captain switches the seatbelt sign off. And 30 seconds after I unfold my laptop and manage -just- to get it far enough away on my lap that I can actually type. How the hell is that - is there a gang of these bastards following me around?? Bah.

At least the experience of being the very first passenger aboard LH4762 from Munich to Heathrow was merely odd. I'm not quite sure how it happened - I wandered up to the gate a few minutes after boarding was due to have started, there was no queue and just one bloke at the gate trying to figure out how the 2D barcode scanner worked. I quickly scanned my boarding pass and overtook him on the walkway without even trying - and then realised the staff must've only just opened the gate and presumably hadn't yet have announced the fact!

Of course, I'd stupidly forgotten to check in online from the hotel that morning, which meant that - just as on the flight out - I not only had that bastard in front trying to recline his head into my lap, but I was wedged into a middle seat with minimal elbow-room. At least my fellow passengers were friendly, and one was even chatty, which hasn't happened for a while.

How very odd. I zeroed my cycle speedo as I was starting the 6-mile round trip to Richmond, but half-way home it was telling me I'd cycled 34 miles at an average speed of 40mph.

Please don't anyone tell the traffic preventers - sorry, I mean planners at TfL, or they might drop even more badly-phased lights, poorly laid-out junctions and other pointless impedimenta on my route.

This hard-working fellow managed to string an impressive web right across the front garden - it was at least five or six feet wide. It proved too ambitious though, as moments after I took the photo the dog walked through two of the anchor-strands and the whole thing collapsed sideways. Ah well.

This drinking fountain's tap has long since been removed, and some misbegotten jobsworth has filled the basin with concrete, but the plaque underneath still reads "Pure filtered water donated by the Grand Junction Water Company" and the plaque above still gives thanks to...



...Almighty Cod?

So it was over to Isleworth this evening for the Red Lion's bank holiday beer festival preview, and all I can say is if you're in the area, get yourself there!

As usual the theme is Champions, and they've got six medal-winners from this year's Champion Beer of Britain to headline the event. We tried two of those six, of which the outstanding one was Dark Star's American Pale Ale which is a stonkingly good beer. I'd recommend you try a few others first though, as it is so hoppy that it will knock your palate for six, and it may take a few moments to recover.

One or two of the beers we tried weren't quite ready yet, but most were very good. I'd particularly recommend Bank Top's Barley to Beer, the Old Hemp from High House Farm and the Wolf Golden Jackal, three hugely flavoursome beers that are all under 4%.

If you prefer something with a bit more kick, the Well Blathered from Rudgate (whose Champion Beer of Britain, Ruby Mild, is also on sale) is rather good, as is the Four Grains from Twickenhan Fine Ales.

So today we went to an Asian wedding. The happy couple are a Hindu and a Sikh, we missed the Hindu ceremony yesterday but this morning we were at the Gurdwara at the time on the invitation. We were way way too early... As we were repeatedly told as the morning progressed, these things run on "Indian time" which seems to be one to two hours behind everything else.

Having never been to a Sikh temple before, I found it interesting. Fortunately they provided projected translations of the hymns and readings, as well as headscarves - along with leaving your shoes by the door, both men and women have to cover their heads in the temple.

After the ceremony - the bride and groom's third, if you include the civil one - we dropped the dog at home and headed into town for the reception. I found a parking space in a back street and once again we discovered we were rather early... Eventually things got moving. There was food, dancers, drummers (good ones!),speeches and 300+ guests, until at 6pm we decided it was time to head back and walk the dog, said our goodbyes, and went outside to find... no car.

That was when I realised that the "Private Property" signs on the adjacent hoarding didn't refer to the land behind the hoarding, but the roadway in front of it. In fine print they said it's going to cost nigh-on £400 to get the car back - and of course while they'll cheerfully tow your car away on a Sunday, you can't get it back until Monday, which they charge extra for.

I know I'm not the first to get caught out by these scum, these semi-legalised thieves and blackmailers, but I don't want them to get away with it. Any relevant advice is therefore very welcome. At the moment, "poor signage" looks like the main grounds for suing for a refund. I guess it'll be small claims court, perhaps via the CAB.

A number of traditions have evolved around the GBBF, and in particular the staff party, which happens late in the evening after the festival finally closes.

One such is tabledancing. This being a beer festival, after all, this is involves dancing with a table - preferably one loaded with glasses of beer....

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is going down a treat with the GBBF crowd tonight, thanks to numbers such as an acoustic (and ukuleles...) version of Teenage Dirtbag, and an acapela version of Pinball Wizard. Great fun!



Sorry about the poor lighting. They've finished their first set and are due back on stage at 9.

We stopped off the other night in the Packhorse & Talbot in Chiswick. I'd not normally go there, but we fancied a break in the journey, and there's the chance of a table outside. However, while we were sat inside and waiting for an outside table, we realised we had company. Here it is, in the middle of the photo - apologies for the crap camera on my Nokia:



Yes, it's a cute little grey mouse, and it ran when the flash went off...

Yes, we should have gone to the George IV instead - better beer and fewer small creatures, in the pulbic area at least!

The afternoon of day four of the Great British Beer Festival 2009, and with an evening and an afternoon still to go we're already running low on festival glasses. No doubt there will be some cashed in later this evening, so there should be a few available tomorrow, but it shows how popular the festival's been this year.

Admissions are around 10% up on last year, beer sales likewise, or so I hear - I also hear there's been extra beer orders placed, so hopefully we won't run out tomorrow, though you may have to drink it out of last year's glass!

I managed to get a nip of this year's draught Fullers Vintage Ale - there's one cask a day and it sells out in under an hour - and very nice it was too. It also made me realise it's time I had a bite more to eat. On the way back from the A4 Tesco, I bumped into lproven and david_devereux, both of whom are also volunteers here, which was nice. They too were in search of munchies... suaveswede is working here too, last seen on the foreign beer bar, Bières Sans Frontières.

We arrived on site Tuesday evening and got the camp up without too many problems - apart from having requested a space 7m by 9m, and been allocated one about 4m by 16m... Still, we moved a few things around and got all the canvas up. More ( behind the cut )
Now we're on the way home, visiting with psychedk again - and looking forward to another nice evening. (-: