Steve

Birthdays – How are you supposed to celebrate them?

Yesterday was my birthday… Happy Birthday to me etc…

I was born on my fathers birthday all those years ago, and yesterday would have been his 85th birthday, but sadly he passed away back in 2003, so no more shared birthdays for us.

But how is one supposed to celebrate ones less significant birthdays? Going back to when I was 25. It was similar to this year I suppose, I was in a foreign country celebrating my birthday, back then it was Cyprus, now I’m in France.

But there are some common things. I’m most probably listening to the same music as I did 27 years ago, I have Steely Dan playing on headphones as I type this, back in 1984 it would have been an LP or a cassette on my ‘new’ Sony Walkman in my pocket… today it’s my iPod touch in my pocket, how technology progresses. Now I can carry around in my pocket my full music collection, un-thinkable 10 years ago… ok make that 15 years ago. The iPod hit the streets in October 2001, my iPod Touch is my third iPod!

‘What would you like for your birthday?’ I never know how to answer that question, I can always think of expensive things… who can’t!!! But when it comes down to everyday items I get stumped for what to suggest. Even if I want to buy myself something I find it difficult to choose these days, we almost have too much choice in some things. It’s the same at Christmas as well.

The other question I dread is ‘What did you do on your birthday?’ Quite often in the past it’s been a normal working day for me. Yesterday was fairly routine, but I was pacing myself, a bit of work, a bit of relaxation, a bit of work. Listening to lots of music I like too.

I had lots of nice best wishes messages on Facebook, which I suppose is becoming the modern way rather than sending cards. The post being as unpredictable as ever… when do you need to post a card to get to France… 2 days 6 days…. or 3 weeks! I don’t get sad if someone forgets my birthday or doesn’t send me a card these days. Why just have one special day in the year when there are 365/6 days when you can also be nice to your friends and family.

I also had a surprise post by my friend and co-conspirator Laurie on Philofaxy, and even more birthday wishes, so it turned out to be quite a special day in the end.

Thank you everyone for thinking of me, it makes me feel even more wanted, your thoughts and best wishes are better than any birthday present I could ever wish for.

Written by hand – I’ve been tagged

Robin over at ‘So very Robin‘ tagged my friend Laurie at Plannerisms, who in turn tagged loads of us… so here’s my entry in this chain.

I’ve always had problems with my handwriting and until recently I didn’t know why. But I think it’s because I don’t have stereophonic vision(I’m more or less blind in my right eye), so my ability to being able to put the point of my pen back on the page between letters/words is always a bit hit and miss.

I hate filling in forms especially those ones where you have to print in to boxes. My signature is also hardly the same twice, although it’s roughly the same each time.

Like Laurie I will spare your eyesight by supplying you the questions and answers! The following page was written Uniball Eye fine tipped pen on a sheet of fan fold tractor feed Filofax paper, yes it’s old. But without a tractor feed printer I still use the paper! Click on the picture to see it in more detail!

1. Your name/blogger name : Steve Morton aka Temps Perdu
2. Your blog name/URL: Philofaxy http://philofaxy.com as well as this blog and a few others!
3. Write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
4. Favorite quote? ; The radio spectrum is already packed and unfortunately they’ve stopped making any more of it.
5. Favorite song? Peg – Steely Dan
6. Favorite band/singers? – Steely Dan amongst many others.
7. Anything else you want to say? My handwriting has got worse, but I now know why, I think…. see above!

Now it’s your turn! Post your version of this on your blog, and please post a link to it here in the comments.

iPod Touch Apps – Ones I’m using – Part 2

The following are some of my less used apps on my iPod Touch, see the rest in Part 1 of this post

Google Mobile App – Free from Google it features all the usual Google apps such as Gmail, Calendar, Search engine, Buzz etc.
iBooks – Apples own Kindle app.
Kindle – lets you read your Kindle downloads on your iPod touch useful if you don’t have a Kindle… yet! I haven’t really used this one much yet, but text is very clear on the iPod, although naturally the screen is some what smaller than a Kindle.
~~Panorama – a simple app that lets you take panorama pictures by joining together multiple pictures taken with the built in camera, and it is Free~~
Flickr – Access your Flickr account to share and view pictures
Remote – This app lets me control iTunes on my iMac from anywhere in the house, not worked out why I would want to do that yet!!
Skype – Like the desktop app it lets you have voice calls and now video calls with other Skype users on PC’s, Macs, Linux platforms.
TV Guide – A free UK TV programme guide, a miniature Radio Times if you like.. and it’s free
Wikipedia – a great free app for looking up the answers to quiz questions, or the details of an actor whilst you are watching TV!
WordPress – Useful for updating WordPress Blogs like this one, you can edit posts and create new ones.
Radio Player – a great free app for streaming UK radio stations to your iPod
~~Fon Maps – This application is supposed to indicate the location of FON WiFi hotspots, but it doesn’t appear to work – Failure~~
Heart Pal – I use this free app to track my blood pressure, it shows the highs and lows and an average figure too. I have a BP monitor that I take the readings with and then feed these in to the app.

Don’t hesitate to ask me for more information if you need it on any of the apps listed.

iPod Touch Apps – Ones I’m using – Part 1

I got my iPod Touch back in late November last year. It has proved to be a very useful bit of kit. I don’t really use all of it’s functions, but I’ve been discovering new things most days/weeks.

There is a huge variety of apps available for the iPod Touch, some of them work ok, some not so ok because they are really intended for the iPhone which has a slightly different feature set.

So here’s what I’m using, most are free unless I indicate otherwise.

BBC News – Essential for keeping up to date with World and UK news and it’s free
Camera + – A much improved camera app compared to the standard one, this one lets you do some limited editing and adjustments to the pictures before you save them, share them by email, Twitter or Facebook. Sadly the resolution of the iPod Touch camera is a little limited, I don’t use it often compared to my small compact. And for £0.59 this is a must have app.
Dropbox – I’ve been a Dropbox user now for well over a year, can’t be without it so it makes sense to have it on my Touch as well. It’s a great way to always have your files, photos etc available on all your devices and PC’s
Facetime – A great video conferencing tool, works great, better than Skype in most respects. It’s simple to use and great on the Touch because I can go walking around the house with it and show family and friends what is going on here. Free to download and free to use.
Facebook – Easy to use, although I would like to see them include some extra features in to this, such as managing friends.
Road Trip – I use this to record how much fuel we are using in the car and for our oil fired boiler!! Lots of apps available, after a lot of false starts I discovered the free Lite version of this which can cope with my requirements of entering things in litres, paying in Euros and still getting a Miles Per Gallon figure. Having satisfied myself that this app could handle my slightly unusual requirements I bought the paid version which can handle more vehicles including the boiler!! Which is just a bonus really.
~~Target Weight – Tracks my feeble attempts to loose weight, nice and simple to use, basic graphics and stats but it is free and works quite well.~~
Tumblr – I’ve only just started my Tumblr blog, but the app on the Touch makes it very easy to add posts on the move and adding pictures and quotes etc.
Twitter – Just the standard Twitter app, it works for me.
Week Cal – The standard calendar in iOS only has Day view or Month View, or a list view. Why they missed out the most obvious view… Week View I don’t know. This one is a paid for app, but it seems to do the job ok, although I still use my Filofax for everything calendar related!!!
Battery Master Free – a simple battery battery level indicator, the iPhone 4 has a simple indicator in the status bar showing the percentage, something that hasn’t been shared with the iPod Touch yet.

iOS Apps a flaw in their design

I have had an iPod Touch for a few months now. Great device and it does most things I want.

However, this morning I discovered a flaw in the way some of the apps interface with the basic settings. I was looking for a simple app to log my car fuel consumption, what could be more difficult than that? Plenty of apps to choose from in the app store. But so far I’ve not found one that does exactly what I want… and here’s why.

I’m English, but I live in France. So I prefer my language settings on my iPod to be in English, but I also set my regional settings to UK, otherwise the calendar is in French….
I buy fuel in litres, but I like to know what my car is doing in Miles per Gallon, but set some of the apps to MPG and they ask for the cost of fuel per gallon.
Living in France I’m paying in Euros, but most of the apps, are using the regional setting to display my costs in GB pounds.

What I need is an app that has currency, quantity, cost, and units etc independent of the device settings. Anyone know of such an app?

In the mean time I will stick to my own spreadsheet, it copes with all these different units, language demands very easily!