I have a few different email accounts and collect them from several machines. I get a bit confused setting up outlook, live mail, outlook express, …

One thing I used to do was collect the mail for all names at my freeserve address -

dave@myaccount.fsnetco.uk, davef@myaccount.fsnetco.uk, tat@myaccount.fsnet.co.uk .

That way the kids could give out their own names and all the mail turned up in the one account, I could fill in web forms with an address and then see if I got spam from it and easily set up rules to bin it and any typos from friends did reach me -
dave.f@myaccount.fsnetco.uk / save@myaccount.fsnetco.uk / d*ckhead@myaccount.fsnetco.uk (I think the last one was a typo, don’t see quite how they did that though…)

However, at one stage I must have re-set up machines and forgotten to do that - in fact I remember being aware I was missing some mail and not being able to figure out how to get it. Yesterday I did figured it out, set up the server account name as myaccount.fsnetco.uk not dave@myaccount.fsnetco.uk - I just picked up 3000 mails to various typos, dummy names, spammers random addresses…. Which included the comment notifications to this blog - I did wonder where they had gone (sorry about my slow response to comments but you can see why now!)

If you do do this you should be warned that your spam volume will increase!

In any case it doesn’t seem to work with all servers, my other mail server doesn’t let me log in without specifying a full email address. As ever, advice is always appreciated

My son has come home with a chart of poo types that he wants to display in the bathroom so we can all see just what we have “done” - I don’t think so.

However, we then got onto talking about iPhones and whether there was an app for that.

In fact an app that allowed you to photograph animal droppings and then tell you what kind of animal it was would be quite useful.

It would of course be called….

Faecal Recognition

You know me - or maybe you don’t, that is the nature of a blog - but anyone who does would know I’m fond of free stuff, love music and quite like gadgets. So,
http://software.aziraphal.com/Metronome.php is a site that make me very happy. A free metronome for any Java phone. A metronome is really useful tool for practising and should be to hand for professional musicians / serious students.

I have an old wind up proper soothing tick-tock job but modern ones run can be set for different tones on different beats and anyway my phone is more likely to be to hand than the metronome is - and weirdly enough the phone is smaller and easier to carry.

If you do any music and have a Java phone you should go get a copy. The guy who wrote it seems a nice chap too - he did say it should work everywhere (in theory) but unfortunately in most cases it’s not very reliable (especially on newer phones where J2ME is almost obsolete and not implemented very well) but I have had no problems just playing system sounds or beeps - midi and wav’s did cause a crash that meant a battery removal reset but I just avoid them now.

The author did give me some more feedback:
It works decent enough on older Nokia’s (most people who let me use their phones for testing had Nokias) that have built-in J2ME MIDP2 java support (as opposed to a client inside Symbian or some other “modern” OS) and was actually usable at slower BPM’s. Judging by some online reviews it was most disappointing to Blackberry owners.

Finally, although it is free it is described as albumware - if you like the tool the author asks you to listen to (and I guess potentially buy) some of his music. A whole new marketing ploy to me and although I probably won’t buy any as it’s not my cup of tea I enjoyed a listen!

Last blog I confessed to exercise, today I will confess to - no not dieting, ignorance. Have you seen books, articles, web adverts… for the GI diet? I have, I always assumed it was based on US Army rations (GI, General Infantryman). Only today did I get a mail from BUPA extolling the virtues of slow release carbohydrates and the evils of a sugar rush. All to do with Glycemic Index apparently.

That’ll be GI then.

Maybe one day I’ll discover while this Police Constable on my desk doesn’t like having a windows disk inserted…

I may not a mathematician but I know enough to be irritated by football managers and politicians exhorting us to give more than 100%. When we have given everything where is the extra 10% supposed to come from? Are we expected to steal it from someone else?

However, I did go training the other day (yes, I do some exercise from time to time) and the session ended with circuit training. Four exercises, press ups, narrow grip press ups, wide grip press ups and big dippers (a form of, can you guess? press up). I hope you can see a theme there. I did my best but wimped out a bit - but maybe I didn’t wimp out enough. Yesterday my triceps (the ones under you arm that extend it, opposite biceps that bend it) had stiffened up so much I was drinking my coffee with a straw and having to ask friends to scratch my nose for me - I just couldn’t reach it!

So, maybe I did give 110% - it was certainly more than I should have done

I’ve just bought a new mobile, I’ve never really got into mobile phones - they cost too much to do anything useful with apart from make calls. However, Tesco have an offer of 1000 club card points on every Tesco mobile phone. As 1000 points can net you £40 worth of tokens spending £15 on a phone seems a good idea. In fact I splashed out on a Samsung m150 at an enormous £25 (with 20p PAYG credit on it). I figured the extra tenner was worth paying for the camera, MP3 player, bluetooth and other goodies.

However, I can’t get the bluetooth to sync with Samsung’s PC Studio - it says try a new version but the update always fails to find the site

The bluetooth works as I’ve copied (using XP) some MP3’s on. I say “some”, with 20M memory and no support for an extra card you’re quite a lot short of a full album!

And now I can’t collect my emails. I created and tested (with OutlookExpress) an account on my server and on the phone I’ve set up a profile:

APN prepay.tescomobile.com (I thought it should be tesco-mobile but that gave DNS errors) tescowap / password 4.2.2.1 and 8.8.8.8 as DNS’s

and an account:

pop3 to my server though I can’t decide if it should be pop3.myserver.co.uk or just myserver.co.uk (OE just wants myserver.co.uk) The other thing I dither on is whether the account is mymobile@myserver.co.uk or just mymobile (OE wants mymobile@myserver.co.uk)

Anyway all I get is Email network fail.

If anyone has any hints feel free to comment. NB “buy an iphone” isn’t an acceptable comment unless you have on a low tariff PAYG for less than £25 - considering the M150 was effectively -£15 I’m not sure I want to pay £25!

I can update this, I changed the APN  to tescomobile222 and I get the same message - looks like my logon to tesco’s net is wrong…

I had a free month on Sky Songs ( http://songs.sky.com/ ) which was cool as basic membership allows download of an album a month as much streaming as you want.

With something like audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) you can record all streamed audio. I used to use Total Recorder ( http://www.highcriteria.com/) for that kind of thing but since I trashed and re-installed my PC I thought I try something new. My Total Record subscription was so old it was only valid for an ancient version (which never had a good MP3 output, I used to output to WAV and then convert later). Total Recorder was good as it lifted the commands from the sound card, audacity seems to record from the output of the sound card with a loss of quality and the added burden of having to set the sound levels right.

I used audacity to record a couple of old Christmas LP’s from vinyl. Using the latest beta I was able to use plug-ins to find silences and split albums into tracks, the labels can be exported to a text file and simply edited to correct names via cut and paste. The only short coming here was I used my laptop which doesn’t appear to have a line in socket - I used the mic which is (unsurprisingly) mono.

Of course I am not condoning stealing of copyrighted music - I think I am entitled to take a copy of my own LP’s! Recording from sky songs (or WE 7 which is free if you can tolerate the adverts) would I guess be illegal. However, it is a similar procedure to recording “pick of the pops” onto cassette (or reel to reel tape in my youth) - with the great advantage of being able to request what is played, not just waiting for Alan Freeman to get round to playing it. I doubt recording streaming audio would appeal to today’s youth as it is a bit fiddley, takes too much time and the results are less than a digitally perfect copy. You have to record in real time after you have tried a few levels and then mark out tracks and export to MP3, maybe an hour an half for a CD. Hardly the easy download - although for a single track it would be easier.

I know I always complain about shops being full of Christmas stuff in September but I havoc some sympathy with retailers. I’m only going to buy one cake / tree/ present for uncle Fred and if I buy it from shop X in September I’m never going to buy from shop Y later on.

What I can’t understand is people - I have already received one card and one parcel and yes the parcel does have Christmas paper showing through the torn brown paper. And I drove past a house with their lights on already.

It’s advent Sunday this Sunday, 4 weeks to prepare for the 12 days of Christmas - except we want Christmas over by Boxing Day so we can get to the sales.

What happened to waiting? I remember queuing for phone boxes and waiting for libraries but I’m old, I guess mobiles and Google are all part of the Now society.

Well sort of, there are a couple of wires but they are more easily managed than the usual. A cable from the mains to the pad and a permanently installed adaptor in your device (oo-er missus).

http://www.wildcharge.com/

I don’t know how new this is but it’s new to me. Anyone tried it?

I’m off on my hols next week and the place we’re staying doesn’t have internet access!!! Spooky, off line, no google to solve the crossword, settle arguments or to look up how to play that song I keep humming (I will be taking a guitar!). They tell me the local McD’s has wireless but my laptop is an ebay special, the battery doesn’t last through the lengthy boot process

Cold turkey for me then. I guess I can score a fix at the library or internet cafe but I’m not sure that I’ll visit any site that requires a password (the same, only more, could be said of McD’s open wireless).

Oh well, I guess I’ll survive, but will the world survive without a post on my blog?  Only time (or the patently obvious) can answer…