Tags: photography

Tags: photography, music, eigenharp

1. I’d give it 7-8/10 for the most part, so not nearly as bad as many critics suggested. And I certainly didn’t sense any of the long periods of boredom which I had been led to expect. But…
2. 6-7/10 for the way they ended it. I thought the book told the end of the story much more powerfully, whereas the film rushed it somewhat. I do wonder what someone unfamiliar with the story would have made of the film’s end.
3. I thought the plot got in the way of the story. Which is to say that I loved the telling of the backstories, and the  “someone’s killing masked vigilantes” thread seemed rather uninteresting in comparison.
4. Oddly, it really didn’t work particularly as an IMAX film. There was one scene in which I felt a wonderful, sudden sense of vertigo flying over a cityscape, and far too many scenes in which the screen consisted entirely of one or two people’s faces talking. On IMAX a giant talking head is the wrong use of the medium.

And I took some photos of our trip to the South Bank. Here’s one of them. The rest, as usual, are on Flickr.

Tags: photos, imax, watchmen

Tags: snow, snowman

I should say it’s heavily influenced by what I did and didn’t have available, so your mileage may vary.

Contacts

1. Save contacts as an aba file.
2. Import to Palm Desktop 4.1.4.
3. Export all as vCard format.
4. Convert this to Google Mail CSV format using the converter at http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/. (Update 13 Jan 2009: You will probably need to massage/rearrange the output of this CSV file. In particular I found that a Section called “Home” didn’t generally work when it sync’d back into the iPod, but if you renamed it “Personal” it did.)
5. Upload into Google Contacts, which is part of Google Mail

And that’s it. However, I’ve since found that quite a lot of my contacts have had their Work and Home numbers mixed up, which is annoying to say the least. So I’m going to need to check them all. But at least checking them is less laborious than rekeying them. And as I mentioned yesterday, you can use the URL http://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager to access the Google Contacts screen directly.

Datebook/Calendar

1. Export the Palm’s datebook as a dba file (datebook format, not calendar format).
2. Process this file using palm2ical, at http://code.google.com/p/palm2ical/.
3. Upload the resulting iCal file into Google Calendar.

However, this is all much more difficult than above, for several reasons…

• Palm2ical is a PHP script, so you need to upload it to a server running PHP. Since this blog runs on WordPress (which is PHP) this was easy for me, but may not be for you.
• I needed to hack palm2ical to get the timezone right. This isn’t too bad if you’re used to hacking scripts.
• I needed to hack palm2ical to better flag the recurring events it couldn’t convert. By default it just inserts the binary data. I wasn’t going to change that, but at least I could put something in the output file which allowed me to find that binary data better and either strip it out or fix it manually.
• The resulting file was eight years’ worth of appointments (yes, I know I’m crazy to try to keep them all, but I’m sentimental like that) and Google Calendar didn’t accept such a large file. So I needed to split the iCal file into many smaller files.
• Google Calendar has the annoying trait of telling you how many appointments it didn’t import but not telling you which ones. It turns out that (for me) it was only due to duplicate appointments — but it took me a while to isolate this.

To do list

I just re-entered that data manually.

It might have been easier if…

All that took a full day. I was using a Windows desktop (and a Linux box) but didn’t have access to a full version of Outlook, so if you do then you might find there are much easier ways of migrating. But for me this worked, and now I am operating fully in the cloud.

Tags: palm, gtd, productivity, gettingthingsdone, google, migration

• tsmarsh’s iPhone snap of computers;
• tsmarsh’s goodie box;
• Paul Carvill’s tagged Flickr photos;
• My Flickr set;
• These last two (and possibly more in future) in a Flickr group.

Tags: photography, kingsplace, guardian

Tags: photography, kentishtown

• A salesperson asked if I needed help. I said I was interested in the G1, and he asked what in particular I was interested in. In the Apple Store I can walk in and play with any of their gadgets without having a reason, but in the T-Mobile shop I had to come up with a reason before I could be directed to a G1. I shouldn’t have to work for this.
• Having given a reason to see the phone, the salesperson said “I’ll just go and get one for you” and disappeared behind a door. What? You mean they’re hidden away in a back room? Don’t you want to encourage them out the door? This is your star product, dammit — you should have a dozen of them proudly on display. (Actually, there was a G1 on hands-on display, but there was only one there, and the salesperson didn’t draw my attention to it. I noticed it only as I was leaving.)
• The salesperson returned with a phone and kept it to himself for the duration of a 2 minute run-through. Please, put the product in the customer’s hand as quickly as possible. Make them feel like they own it so that they will want to own it.
• I opened the browser and tried to load a web page, but it didn’t work because this demo phone didn’t have a SIM card set up for a 3G connection. Great. I’ve been given a phone which has been hobbled so that it can’t show off its most basic functionality.
• I asked about tariffs as I was confused: there’s a £40/month option and a £35+£5 per month option, which kind of sound the same to me, so I wanted to know the difference. The salesperson explained these were actually a £40/month option and a £35/month option, and they both required a £5/month addition for the 3G. And — he said — there’s a £30/month option, too, which means I can get it for £35/month with the 3G bit if I’m happy with fewer minutes. But that’s definitely not what the T-Mobile website says — it only gives me two options with both total £40/month. Now I’ve just ended up more confused.

So, will I buy the G1? Well, I really wanted to find out if I could feel comfortable with the keyboard, but since I had a salesperson hovering over me waiting for his phone back I couldn’t spend any time finding out. So, no, I’m not encouraged to by the G1 right now.

People do need to be “helped” with their purchasing decisions, so having sales people is good. But people also need to get used to playing with a gadget so that they can feel like they own it. Please, T-Mobile, polish up your sales act. You’re not helping anyone if you continue like this.

Tags: g1, t-mobile, sales, android

Tags: photography