General - Clocks & Food and GPS

Don and I indulged in some liquid refreshment yesterday afternoon and I awoke around half 10 last night.  After pottering around a bit Steve and Karen came over and Pizza and ale were the order of the evening helped along with a liberal amount of music.  To think we’ve had countless evening/nights like that and at last they are coming to an end in Epsom as I’ll be gone in a few weeks.  

I’m taking dinner at the Riser such was its quality last  week so I’m rather looking forward to that.  I have another 3 days in the office next week and for two of them we have some German guests over.  The latest and final release build of Trekker and the v3 maps are now being installed to the PDA so the dog will take it for a test this afternoon.  The clocks went back last night meaning that winter is drawing in fast.  I only have a few weeks left at work  before my prolonged holiday in December but much to do and an important project round the corner.

Music - Bits and Bobs

What a year  for music so far and I am taking full advantage of it.  The new Seth Lakeman album Freedom Fields betters even the stunning predecessor Kitty Jay in my books and its been on high rotation for the last few days.

I was upset to find out that Cara Dillon is expecting twins, and I thought she would have waited for me too.  Oh, just while I remember, me mate Paul met her a few months ago.  Now she comes from a town called Dungiven and Paul asked her if she used to hang around that coastal point Dungiven Head.  Well it was funny at the time anyway.

Moving swiftly on to other styles the Evanescence album The Open Door is a harder rocking and more grandiose affair than the first and I’ll be exploring that in more detail this week.  The My Chemical Romance cd Welcome to the Black Parade is also getting nice reviews so I may pick that up soon after a quick sample of some tracks from the web.

Bat out of Hell III is less than impressive to these lugs and I just wonder why he bothered?

Whisky - Blackbottle Blend 40%

Black Bottle whisky has the distinction of containing malts from each of the 7 Islay distilleries and is an old but not known brand outside the west of Scotland.  Bunnahabhain is at the blends malt heart as it is a sister brand to the Islay distillery.

Nose:  A wif of smoke a sales the nostrils on opening the bottle but once in the glass sweet granes take over.  Oats and Laphroaigy peat immerge and let you know this is something a bit special.  Wait then Rice Crispy cakes come through.

Pallet:  sweetness set on a bed of grain withsmoky honey.  No harsh notes.    A nice smokiness cuts through the sweetness and grain.

Finnish:  like a good blend its reasonably short and encourages another sip.

Comment:  Something to sip on a winter evening and enjoy.

Score:  70% a cracking standard blend bettering Bells ETC but a bit more costly.

General - Old Friends

Boyed with the success of meeting a school friend from years ago the other day I emailed Claire a lady with whom I’d been at school more years ago than I care to remember.

The upshot of that is that I have two new/old contacts on Skype and had a lovely few hours talking to old friends from primary school.  Isn’t technology wonderful!

I went and did some work in Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) today and what an experience that was.  I always enjoy going in to government buildings and this imposing place in Whitehall was no exception.  Its now Friday evening so I will take in last orders and check out the first of the years Winter Warmer at my local Young’s outlet.

It should be a quiet weekend this one and one of the last solo weekends in Epsom. I am off to watch Kathryn Roberts in Claygate next week and am thinking of purchasing Karine Polwart tickets for the 15th of November though work may put the kybosh on that little plan.

I should also say that we have had our first shipment of Trekker3 cds from Canada so will start the long process of distribution to customers next week.

General - Town and Country

Wednesday started with a tramp through the lashing rainfall within the fields of outer Loughborough.  I donned a good quality pair of rubber boots provided by my host for the occasion and felt like a proper country type sloshing through the cow doings and mud.  It really gave the new free mode within Trekker 3 a good test and I was pleased with the results as was the gentleman I was demoing too.

We then took a drive in to Loughborough town and toured the streets with Trekker and eventually when the wetness of outside had taken its measure on us we adjourned to a nice restaurant above a shop called  Wheelers  I had a lovely beef stilton and mash pie home made on the premises and washed it down with a dark Belgium ale.

I then took the train to Nottingham and met an old school friend who I hadn’t seen for years.  We did the dem and then went to a Nottingham brew pub called Fellows, Morton & Clayton The ale I had brewed on the premises was turned to vinegar but the Mallard bitter a hoppy golden stile as is the fashion at the moment was very nice, so good in fact we stayed until just before 8 in the evening and consumed a good few each along with some of the exceptional food at inexpensive prices.  This was proper gourmet  snap.

I got back to the travel tavern at 10ish last night and went to bed.  I wish all work days were like that!!    I am in the office at the moment about to start preparing a manual.

General - In the Office

Once more my weekend was full of food and ale with Dave and Clare along with Steve and my parents.  We ate on Sunday in the new Riser, my thoughts below.


The beers are typical Young's and I enjoyed the RamRod.  Not having good Lagers is
just taking the Mickey out of the campaign we started.  Tom H new we didn't want
Stellar and Fosters yet it was ignored.  Oh, the Cider is shite too
They have over priced drinks when you consider other similarly positioned outlets
like the Foley Arms in Claygate   .as the bitters are around 30 pence more in Epsom!.

The food is top notch however but I don't like the attitude Young's have taken with
the drinks policy and wanting a new groupe of people in.
At the same time we have to recognise that should we not go in and stamp our mark
we will have no influence at all, .  Returning to the food everything was home made and the deserts sooo good.  They even did a top notch roast which Clare especially loved.

It was a most enjoyable but tiring weekend and it is nice to be in the office on my lunch hour for a change ‘as I don’t get across to Humanware Europe HQ as I would like.  I will be in Loughborough and Nottingham on Wednesday then working in London for the remainder of the week.  I am looking forward to a quiet relaxing evening in the Dog and Duck a pub next to the Premier travel Inn near Wellingborough station.  Oops, maybe that should have been the other way around?

General - Pulled by Horses

Dave Clare and my parents are in Epsom this weekend.  I met up with Clare and my parents yesterday in the newly opened Rising Sun.  The beer choice is typical for a young’s house as we had expected but the ales are kept well.  Clare Steve and I hit the RamRod apparently one of the last Wandsworth brewed beers in the system.  Ian Swanson of Young’s tells me that the brewing of this fine ale may stop now the company have merged with Charles Wells which is sad news IMHO.

I must have taken advantage of the free beer and food yesterday as I was definitely well refreshed once we left the pub.  Oh, just remembered, Steve and I cheekily asked for a ride in the cart parked outside the pub.  Let me explain.

As it was the official opening of the newly refurbished Riser under Youngs ownership, Young’s pulled out all the stops and sent along the two huge dray horses Bomber and Buster.  They were very friendly so as they were about to head back to Wandsworth I asked Harry the gent who’d looked after the animals for 32 years if we could have a ride.  He was happy to do this so Steve and I plus a few more were pulled through the streets of Epsom by these beautiful creatures and it was truly enjoyable.

It’s a weekend of birthdays so I’ve got food in and plenty of Banks’ Original I’m sure its going to be a cracker.

More soon.

Whisky - Talisker 10YO 45.8%

Talisker is the only distillery on the isle of Sky.

Talisker IS THE ONE THAT STARTED IT ALL.  I’d enjoyed BELLS OR glenfart or whatever before but not been captivated by malt.  I was sitting with an X GF one evening and had purchased a bottle of this for Christmas 2002 and we were both smitten with the smoky fluid.  Luckily my affair with the girl didn’t last and my love for whisky  did so all ends well.  

Nose:  burned twigs and lemons with a dash of TCP. Looooooovely  This could come from Islay.  Rugged.

Pallet:   bonfires, not as intense as I remembered but smoky.  Some kind of fruits.

Finnish:   lingering but
whats happened to the pepper?  I’m told that in newer bottlings from second fill casks its back.

Comment:  this bottle was a gratefully received gift from a customer.  It was purchased last year and newer bottles are said to have more pepper and the original oomph about them that I love.

Score:  83 but if it returns to what it was 87£

Technology - Trekker 3 now Available

Trekker 3 is now available and I have hugely enjoyed the beta process for this breakthrough in Trekkers functionality and performance.

Its hard to know how to start but the new features list would be a good place.

The new point of interest information for the UK is vastly improved with 138217. for England alone.  In the past the UK had around 90000 entries in total so this is very encouraging.

It is also possible to supplement the provided POI with other sources and I have written a small article on how to do this.

Route following has been improved and we can now have any amount of maps on a storage card.  Town names are available plus the ability to use free mode in an autonomous way is useful.  The upgrade is free but we will have a small admin charge for sending the maps out in the UK via cd.

The hardware shipped with Trekker v3 has changed slightly with the newer Royaltech 2001 receiver and the Del Axiom X51 PDA running the windows 2005 operating system.

Enjoy


Press release
New Features

Whisky - Longrow 14YO 46%

A whisky note I took last night.

The Longrow malt is distilled at the Springbank distillery and is heavily peated.  The traditional double distillation method is used and this particular expression is a mix of sherry and bourbon casqued spirit.  I’m doing the 14 year old first as the younger 10 version is much peatyer.

Nose:  milk chocolate  and animal vomit.  No its not my cup of tea but gets a little nicer with time. Hazel nuts?  Metallic.

Pallett:  chocolate and nuts.  A whole nub bar in a glass.  Something sweet puts me off a little but maybe I’m expecting too much?  Smoke but not as much as I had expected.

Finnish:  smoky and a little chemical with an off note.
Comment:  I had looked forward to opening this but am disappointed.  It is rather unusual and I’m afraid will not score too well with me.  Too expensive for what it is.

Score:  63%  

Technology - Importing External Points of Interest in to Trekker 3.0

Martin Roberts

Wednesday, 18 October 2006

The term POI  within this article stands for Point of Interest.  I have written this document as a result of requests from trekker users and this is not official Humanware documentation so the methods offered below may differ from any product literature or technical support advice and may not be supported by Humanware.  

I hope that the information below will be useful to other users and it is provided as a document prepared in my spare time so not endorsed by my employer.

This is my method for importing external sources of POI information in to trekker after locating it on the internet.  As yet the feature is rather new and for advanced users.

In Order to make downloaded POI usable with Trekker we have to perform a number of steps.

1:  Download the POI information you require from a web repository.  Examples can be found on the pages listed below.  Note these are UK based POI databases.

http://www.poidownload.co.uk/poi/index.php
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/tomtompoi.php
http://www.tomtomfree.com/

2:  download the free POI Converter tool from  

http://rjdavies.users.btopenworld.com/html/poiconverter.html

and install said utility.

3:  load the POI you wish to convert to Trekker format in to the POI Converter tool and append extra categories if required.   For example, you may wish to append vets and pet stores in to one file which you could save as vets and pets so that when you do a search in Trekker, you can select vets and pets from the list available in the source combo box.

4:  save the resulting POI information in Auto Route Pushpin format from the save option accessed from  the POI Converter applications file menu.

5:  Open the resulting .CSV file in notepad or excel and delete the first line as the Trekker import process doesn’t understand this.

6:  open up the map manager after connecting your pda and ctrl tab to the external POI tab.  Locate the CSV file on your pc and after selecting the ones you wish to add to your trekker, click the  install/remove external POI button to start the process.

Hints and tips

A:  Importing more than 10000 POI can take some time, just leave the unit to complete this task for as long as it takes.

B:  If you do import a large amount of POI you may find that the search dialogs in Trekker take longer to pop up and be usable.

C:  If you wish to quickly delete the external POI information from your trekker, connect to the PC and navigate to your mobile devices sd or cf card and the folder trekker/external and delete the external.sdf file.

D:  The imported POI may not have all of the information you are used to such as address and phone numbers  that you get when using the rich POI information Navtech supply within your Trekker maps.  These information databases are often created by other people and as such the accuracy of the info is not under the control of Navtech or Humanware.  

E:  When importing information in to the POI converter tool you must know the format you are importing and select this from the file type combo box within the POI Converter tool.

F:  The POI Converter tool is not a Humanware product.  As such Humanware will not support its use and questions should be addressed to the author of the tool.

Technology - W-E 6.0 Beta1

Window-Eyes 6.0 Beta 1 available.

After 10 months of testing and teath grinding on the part of GW Micro the latest Window-Eyes is with us in its first beta form.   I am rather pleased with the new PowerPoint support as nothing else can touch it, and the Outlook Calendar is now fully accessible along with other parts of the ap that didn’t work well in the past.

They have also improved Braille support meaning one can read a full document from start to end from the display with the advance key, plus half a dozen other new Braille features.

Help has been given a face lift making it more usable and controllable, plus they have added a key describer, tip of the day feature and simplified the learning time for Jaws users.

Skype support is much improved along with extra keys to get info on your battery and to quickly shut down the product.  Stability and responsiveness have taken another step forward and support for Office 2007 beta, Vista RC1 IE7 and Firefox 2X round off my favourite features.

Check out the readme file for more information.

General - Scotland and the Toon

This post should have been on the blog last Wednesday.

I've had a rather good few work days. Jaid Lucy and I have been showing Trekker 3 to people and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Unfortunately my PC keyboard has gone for permanent holidays in Glasgow so this will probably not get on the blog for a few days now MY Recollection OF THE EMAIL BLOGGER PASSWORD etc HAS FAILED ME.

GLASGOW WAS its usual vibrant self and it was made the more enjoyable by a good standard of inexpensive accommodation in Mclays guest house on Renfrew Street. I didn't stay with K and M as they had family over, we did take an evening to go for a drink though and I helped M with some of his malt.

We drove down to Newcastle on Tuesday after work in Ayr and have just completed a demo. I will go to Jesmand soon for more of the same then to the Waterford Arms in Seaton Sluice for the night before training it over to the north west tomorrow.

I'm killing time at the moment having tea and biscuits in the Royal Newcastle Hotel next to Central Station before the next bit of work. Nothing else of interest has happened yet but the week is only half way through and Clare and I will be in Preston in a days time.`

Technology - Many Updates Available Soonn

We have much to look forward to next week with product announcements from Humanware with Trekker 3, GW Micro with Window-Eyes 6.0 and Kurzweil Educational with the sensational Kurzweil 1000 v11.

I’ll report more on all these products over the next week or two as I’ve been involved in pre release testing for these companies.

General - Do not go to the Alma

Clare and I went cheep for our first night in Preston on Thursday so stayed in a grotty place called the Alma. I must say that it’s the worse place I’ve ever slept in. I actually slept fully clothed such was the scut and horridness. We were out the door by half 7 the next day and had booked another place. The Alma was full of drugs prostitutes and down and outs. We told a taxi driver and he just laughed knowing what the place was like. On the up side they did take guide dogs with no problems. Clare found a little rubber thing under the bed, it had seen its share of action too. Absolutely horrible and really stomach churning stuff.

Our second hotel the DERBY COURT was lovely and on Church Street so near the pubs and our friends.

I’ve got a problem with my laptop so will not be able to post an earlier missive on my time in Scotland and Newcastle for a day or so.

General - MexiMixed Up

Clare and I had some quality time with each other this weekend and it  has made us both feel much better I think.  really.  We had a most enjoyable few days not doing anything to excess but watching dvds, going out and eating good food.  Her family from the land down under have invited me over so I guess I’d better keep in Clare’s good books now.

On Saturday evening we went to visit friends then took a quick detour to the Dove Street Inn and sampled a beer or two from the 19 on offer from cask!!!  before moving on to a Mexican restaurant called Mexi Mix.  The food was tasty but I thought it was a bit of a rip off with small portions, but the beer choice was good and the food cooked and presented well.  I shocked Clare a little when I told the owner it was expensive for the food I’d had and she must have felt guilty as I was given a free sweet.  That’s one thing wee are not so good at in the UK complaining if we’re not happy, but this time I had to say something.  The same money in an Indian would have purchased us a banquet.  Don’t get me wrong I’d go back in a shot but I felt a little unhappy with the amounts given.

We took the dogs out for a run on Sunday in the park and I slept for most of the evening as I had an early start today and am at the start of a long week touring the Lowlands of Scotland and the North of England.

More soon

Music - Screeming Trees Dust

Something about  the sound of the screaming Trees grabbed my attention 10 years ago when the bands lastt and best album Dust was released on to a grunge tired public.  We were spoiled for choice at that time regarding good grunge bands.  Allis In Chains had released Dirt, Sound Gardens Super Unknown, the anger of Nirvana's Inutaro and Pearl Jam's swaggering opus VS were and are still superb but very different styles and shocases for the mid `1990s music that would kill hair metal.

mark laneganthe creative force behind the Trees has a  whisky and bourbon soked voice which smokes over this track selection like honey mixed with gravel.  The albums themes of hope and spirituality  are set to a backdrop featuring a bit of  middle eastern instrumentation with some fine keyboard work that reminds me of 1970s progsters without the pomposity.  The melodies are wonderful and the production floorless with all instruments having room to breathe.  This is still a rather heavy and dark grunge style so don't let the descriptors put you off this classic work.

Album highlights include the brilliant All I know, Dying Days, Witness and the rest of the album really.  My favourite track has to be the acoustic based Sworn and Broken wwhitch starts off quietly then explodes..

  Lanegan would go to front Queens of the stone Age and this year take part in a project with Isabel Campbell the X singer of Bell and Sebastian.  This cd is really inexpensive at the moment so grab a copy before its deleted.  I never really took grunge music seriously before this disc opened my eyes to the myriad forms and good musicians within the scene.

General - Moving I

I have finally booked in the house move from Epsom to Ipswich for the 4th of December, at least that will be when those removal types pack my flat away.  The company will deliver it all packed and insured to Ipswich the day after, for those mathematically challenged the 5th of December.  I’m taking most of December off work as I’ve built up my days off just for this so will have lots of time to prepare for Christmas and move in with no rush, sounds perfect doesn’t it?  More on this as it unfolds.

I’m working from Ipswich today and have a pile of things to catch up on.  Clare and I had a quiet night just watching TV listening to music and chilling.  I’m not sure what the weekend holds apart from Sunday when I meat her family from Australia.  We may go out tonight with friends though.

Pub regular is ‘neigh’ bother!

Pub regular is ‘neigh’ bother!

#This from the Advertiser.

A North-East pub has become the favourite haunt of a beer-drinking, crisp eating
horse. Peggy, a 12-year-old cart horse, likes nothing better than a drop of bitter and some pickled onion crisps when she pops into the Alexandra Hotel in Jarrow near Newcastle.

Jackie Gray, who recently took over the Alexandra said Peggy was a shock the first
time she saw it but she is now a regular customer.
"She's no bother when she's in," Gray told Sky News.
Peter Dolan, Peggy's owner, used to tie her up outside but one day Peggy, on a rope
that was too long, followed him into the bar and he quickly learned that the horse
had a taste for bitter.

"Peggy's no bother at all," he said.
"Most of the regulars know her as she's been coming in here for years and for them
Peggy's a bit of a novelty.