The Toys Have Arrived

Both of my recent eBay wins arrived today by express post courier. Just like christmas!

Some first impressions seem to be in order. First, the web camera.

What a little beauty. It installed in a couple of seconds, plus a minute or so for the software. Well ok, the installation wasn't exactly very involved. It went like this:

1. cut open courier satchell and open packaging box
2. take out camera, remove from plastic bag and unravell cord
3. place camera on top of one flat-topped monitor
4. plug the double-ended cord (very neat) into the USB and microphone ports

Then XP wanted to install the newly (instantly) found hardware. I put the driver CD-ROM into my DVD drive and clicked my way through the XP dialog and it was done. Fully installed.

Naturally I had to test it, so I fired up Netmeeting and sure enough, there I was looking at myself on the screen. Too easy.

The next bit of fun was the MP3 player. (I'm not really sure why it's called that, since it does 5 things, only one of which is play MP3 files - and that's not even the only format of music files it plays. I guess "MP3" is marketable.)

Well this proved to be a slower toy to master. Where are the "kids" when you need them hey? My son would have had this thing through all its paces in mere seconds. It took me a good deal longer.

Mind you, I was not helped much by the printed manual supplied by the manufacturer. It is written in what I call Chinglish. I mean no offense by this; I admit to being monolingual (regrettably) and I have considerable admiration for non-English speakers who learn our language. It is quite a challenge to learn English from Chinese too, since of course, it requires a whole new script. However, I think that the ready availability of translators with technical writing skills means that manufacturers who don't ensure that their manuals are polished by someone with the necessary skills, have really sold themselves short. Pitty really.

Here's just a couple of examples. (It's a 12 page booklet in fine print!)

1. Please cut link when you copy file and the PC clue on stop.

6. It was not lockup of HOLD when you open MP3.

Now I still have no idea what the above mean. However it wasn't all so mystifying. Here's an example that I could easily decipher.

3. Do not use this device in the extremely thermal, cold, dusty and watery circumstances.

Good advice I reckon - I'm not too fond of those circumstances either. Anyway, I worked it out and managed to verify that every function was fully operational. And what a great little device it is. The advertising material claimed that it produced especially high quality sound. We've all learned to take such claims with a grain of salt, and I certainly wasn't expecting anything too fantastic. Gosh, was I pleasantly surprised. It actually produces simply brilliant sound quality. Just amazing!

Well, I must get back to playing with my new toys now.... bye!

w.bloggar Tool Test

I am experimenting with the w.bloggar tool. It is supposed to offer a very convenient interface to develop blog posts with a few more features than the already quite good Bloger tool and then to make it simple to make the actual post to the blog. We shall see.

Perhaps it will enable creating posts as effectively as one might with a web development application and also posting as easily as one might with an email application. I certainly found it useful to be able to reformat previous posts quickly in Frontpage and then post them simply by email. If this tool combines those functionalities in a single and simple application then it may be quite useful.

Let's see, purely for the sake of experimentation, this could be summarised as a list like the following.

It simplifies:

• creation of marked-up text


• posting direct from the desktop

Well, there are some little bugs to watch.

1. It doesn't auto insert subsequent list item markup on enter


2. It doesn't auto complete by adding a closing tag when an opening tag is typed

This is just a sample link to my Primary Health Care course.

This is marked up as a blockquote. I guess the next thing to do is just to post this entry and then see how it looks.

New Look

OK, so I went a bit radical and changed my template completely. I was using minima, which was ok, but very, well... minima.

This is the blue version of tic tac. At least I think that's the one I chose.

Anyway, now I have to re-edit the template to remove the unwanted image frames. Here goes...

Sorting Out Blogger Qwerks

There are definitely some qwerks with blogger's performance. I won't call them bugs out of respect for the good folk who provide this incredible service for free.

Actually, some of the drama relates to the use of a style sheet template for the blog. With simple text posts (the planned use really) there are no problems. The template provides rules that result in the text being marked up and displayed in the expected and chosen fashion.

There are problems however, when posting preformatted text. Whatever the formatting is, becomes overridden or reinterpreted to some extent by the rules in the template (ie in the style sheet characteristics). So, for example, when I post by email and send preformatted HTML, it becomes distorted by the template-imposed style characteristics.

Yesterday, when I emailed my post with the web camera details, it screwed up my whole blog page. The block was just too wide for the template to handle and it forced a misalignment of the columns in the template. On spoting this I deleted the post and reformatted the material before sending it again. Sure enough, by forcing my emailed material into a table to constrain its width to 400 pixels, the problem was solved and the page template worked again.

However, that was not quite the end of the learning curve. At first the page was fine. But today when I again looked at the emailed post, it was microscopic! The template style imposed new percentages to the text size, relative to normal page text size as set in the template. This made the text way too small to read. I fixed this (at least it appears fixed enough for now) by editing the HTML for the post and replacing all the 85% sizes with 100%. This still isn't up to full size, but it will do for now. I figure that it may well "break" some more yet, so I'll watch and see what happens.

I also had to edit the template to remove the borders it placed automatically around every image. I found them distracting and unhelpful, so it was an easy matter to simply remove them. That's a benefit of using a style sheet of course. Instead of having to edit every image or page or post, a simple adjustment to a line or two in the style sheet and all images are how I want them.

Now, back to just one more bug, errr, sory... qwerk that I want to sort out.

My New MP3 Player

BRAND NEW 5-in-1 1GB MP3 Player MP3 + WMA + Digital Voice Recorder + USB FlashDisk + Built-In FM Radio

Don't buy just any mp3 player! This device is ultra small and produces superb quality sound. Runs on SAMSUNG flash memory which is fast, reliable and backed by local warranty. Memory mechanism has no moving parts hence shock will never be an issue. This player is packed with many features: Play MP3, WMA and WMV songs & WAV/ACT recorded files Tune into the built-in Stereo FM Radio Record via the built-in microphone Store photos, files, etc via built-in flash memory.

Features

SAMSUNG 1GB flash memory (approx. 250 MP3 songs @128k) MP3/WMA playback Internal FM Radio (built-in into player, not earphones) FM radio recording ; preset 20 channels ID3 supported (Displays title and lyrics) Supports 8 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Czech and Chinese 7-mode EQ:pop/rock/jazz/classic/normal/soft/DBB (Dynamic Bass Boost) Voice recording (WAV/ACT, up to 140 hrs of recording) Built-in microphone. Can be used as note taker Plugs straight into USB port, no batteries or cables required Fast data transfer. Store photos, music, documents, etc for quick access Seven changeable colour backlight Low power consumption Many other features including power saving, repeat mode, introduction mode, etc...

Package Content

Gift box 1GB MP3 Player 1 set of stereo necklace earphones USB extension cable User manual One AAA battery Installation CD (for Win98 only, Not required for Win 2000/Me/XP)

MP3 Player - Another New Toy

Well I did it. It feels like I'm catching up with the times. I am now awaiting arrival of my new mp3 player. This was another successful sortie on eBay.

These gadgets are pretty sophisticated aren't they? I must admit that being able to play some mp3 based music with such portable convenience is pure bonus for me. The name of the device notwithstanding, what I wanted was a USB portable "drive". My new toy provides 1GB of storage space, which is really quite a handy amount of space. Hey, it's better than floppies, right!

Actually this little device has a few nice features. The inbuilt microphone and voice recording capability will also come in handy. Rather than list everything in this post, I'll email the details to the blog. I "won" mine at auction for AU$99.

My New Web Camera

1 YEAR MANUFACTURERS WARRANTY

Now you can meet face-to-face online with live video calls. Or make your instant messages come alive by adding live video to your MSN® Messenger or Yahoo!® Messenger. Or set up a webcam to share your world. Or snap and send photos and video along with your e-mail as easily as you send text. All you need is Liquid Pro 5000 and the Internet. Bundled with recording and motion detection software this camera works as a video and security camera! Normally retailing at $119.95 this Auction starts at $1 no reserve! Get closer... instantly! Use webcam software to view video footage live streaming from the Pro 5000 Add video to your instant message chats using MSN® Messenger Make live video calls Shoot high-quality videos and photos at up to 640x480 resolution. E-mail video and photos easily. Video-chat online using Windows® Messenger, Yahoo or Microsoft® NetMeeting Broadcast live video and audio, and set up a webcam Connect quickly and easily with USB cable Easy to use and simple to setup - install the software, plug it in and start shooting

Video capture: Up to 640 x 480 pixels Still image capture: Up to 640 x 480 pixels Frame rate: Up to 30 frames per second (with recommended system) Video broadcasting software Webcam drivers Click Photo Button Inbuilt Microphone

Windows® 98, Windows® 2000, Windows® Me, Windows® XP Pentium II 300, Celeron™, AMD Athlon® processor, or higher (Pentium III 500, Celeron, AMD Athlon processor recommended). 64 MB RAM (or minimum OS requirement whichever is higher). 200 MB free hard drive space Available USB port CD-ROM drive 16-bit color display adapter

In box brand new and unopened includes: Webcam Webcam software on CD Gift Box

Over $200 Software Included

And this is it ...

Web Camera - My New Toy

Isn't eBay fun? The excitement of childhood christmas available 24/7.

I just won an auction after a few days of monitoring price trends and buyer behaviour. It's definitely worth waiting to time the buy. I made a few bids for a webcamera but finally just let it go, unwilling to get totally caught up in the thrill of the chase.

Patience paid off. I made my "winning" purchase the next day for $30 less. The auction ended at 7:30 pm which was an unusual time. None of the others I had monitored over a week ended before 9:30 pm. For my auction there were 8 bids recorded before mine and I left mine until just a couple of minutes before it finished. To my relief, I didn't trigger anyone's latent higher bids and I won.

So what did I buy? I'll try the "publish from email" feature and see if I can post the details. Oh, by the way, I paid AU$43.

Wading Through the Hosting Morass

I'm in the process of trying to find a hosting provider for a couple of web projects. What a mess!

The hosting industry really needs a makeover. There is a massive diversity of services on offer and there's no shortage of places to let your domain call home, but sorting and sifting is clearly going to take time.

One real nuisance is the large number of affiliate marketers (commission sales people) who market somewhat dishonestly. I'm not suggesting they all do, but so many do that it makes it appear to be "the norm" for new entrants. What a shame.

Here's a couple of examples of what I'm referring to. No names though, of course.

One is the recommendation of a list of hosting services by marketers who pretty clearly have never used the hosting services themselves. So their recommendations are hollow, based not on experience but on agreements that they will be paid by sending people who sign up for hosting.

Another is the claim to be totally unbiased, technically capable of making judgements about hosting services, and posting a so-called detailed analysis of a comprehensive list of the "best hosts" (or labels to that effect). What a crock. In the first place, I'd venture to suggest that not one of these places is actually unbiased by a financial inducement. Secondly, their so-called detailed analyses bear a striking resemblance to the sales descriptions on each of the hosting sites. As for being comprehensive, that's the biggest joke of all. Nobody even knows how many hosting services exist, much less has a capacity to make a comprehensive review. Hosting services would number in the tens or hundreds of thousands by my estimate, so good luck to those who do want to be comprehensive.

Everyone it seems, has an axe to grind. So, I'm off now to do some research of my own. I'll let you know how I get on.

Online Primary Health Care Course

I have posted a link to an online course I developed and taught a few years ago for final year students completing a Bachelor of Nursing degree. It's in the Links section, in the column to the right of the main text.

The material is now a bit dated and I no longer respond to student questions (well, very rarely - sometimes I receive questions and happen to have a moment to spare so I dash off a quick reply). However, anyone may access it for free and it is still quite a useful resource for learning about the fundaments of primary health care and its practice. It is probably of most use to nurses and students of nursing, but anyone with an interest is welcome.

The server logs for the course show that people from many different countries use the course. The numbers fluctuate (probably with the cycle of student assignments) but somewhere between a couple of dozen and a couple of hundred people visit some part of the course each day.

No attempt has been made to make the course look pretty. It is functional and the page downloads are fast. Anyway, take a look if you're at all interested.

What's In A Name?

The name of this blog may seem strange to some... perhaps many... well ok, to most of you. What does it mean?

Well, you won't find it in a dictionary; at least, I couldn't. It is actually a deliberate misspelling of waffling. Why would I do that? Ah, that's an interesting story.

Let's confirm just what waffle means first. My trusty Pocket Macquarie Dictionary shows two words with this spelling, meaning quite different things. The first is a "batter cake with a pattern left by the hinged implement in which it is cooked". Nahh, not that one.

The second entry says waffle, -fled, -fling, [coloquialism] 1. to speak or write vaguely, to no purpose, and at length 2. lengthy, vague speech or writing 3. nonsense, twaddle. Yep; that's the one.

Now, it so happens that a couple of years ago I had the privilege of mentoring a group of young Australian military personnel through a fairly demanding course over 9 months of full-on effort. Of the 24 who started, 18 graduated to be some of the very best medics anyone could hope for.

Now understand that they were wonderful people and I grew very fond of them. I was commited to ensuring they had the best possible training under prevailing conditions and I certainly delivered everything in the training manuals, and then some. It was this extra that earned me the reputation of a waffler.

You see, as anyone associated with military culture knows, when it comes to communication, less is more. It should be minimised, short and sharp, to the point. The more I extended, elaborated and enriched, the more I confirmed my reputation as a waffler. At the end of the course they told me that I definitely won the waffling award.

So I have a label and a reputation to live up to.

Why then is this blog called Woffling On and not Waffling On?

Well, here's the thing. My speech was certainly lengthy and from time to time a few individuals may not have quite followed everything I had to say. But I was never really vague, I never spoke to no purpose and I did not speak a lot of twaddle or nonsense. Furthermore, the students themsleves were quick to point out that they did appreciate that I was generally well worth listening to, and they meant absolutely no offence by calling me a waffler.

In a sense, understood in context, I am very comfortable with the well-earned label. Especially since I know I was valued for that extra contribution. So I have accepted their label, but express it misspelled, since they never meant all that the dictionary reveals. If you like, woffling on is a positive spin on waffling on. If you wander back here from time to time, you may see for yourself whether I am justified in mangling the spelling.