Random Rant

25-01-2010

It is going to be one of those assorted rants that contains about three different unrelated things.

Tech crap: Downloaded the new version of Nokia Maps (Ovi Maps?) the other day. The main reason I bought the Nokia 5800 was because of the GPS feature but Nokia being Nokia nothing was going to be free. The built in Nokia Maps was fine for finding your location, but if you wanted to use it for navigation about the place then you had to pay.

I don't pay for software (god bless Open Source) and I certainly won't pay for a feature on my phone that I feel should be free considering I paid for the device itself. So I went and found Garmin Mobile XT (which is basically the software that runs on a Garmin GPS device but designed for mobiles). Installed it, configured it and Robert's your father's brother (actually I do have an Uncle Bob as it happens) I have a GPS application on my phone that doesn't charge me to tell me what road I need to be on.

Fine and dandy.

Apparently at the start of 2010 Nokia realised the error of their ways and announced a new and improved version of Nokia Maps that did not charge for navigation.

Being a tech geek I downloaded it and messed about with it and on Sunday was able to give it a road test. I have to say I was very impressed by it, so much so that I think it may replace Garmin as my main GPS application. It had a very impressive and accurate map of the road I was on, speed limit warning complete with colour indication if you were approaching the limit or had gone over it. Even what lane you were in and what lane you should be in and what lanes were coming up but were of no interest to you.

Mightily impressive.

I won't delete Garmin just yet, in case Nokia decide that now everyone loves their application they can start to charge for it again. But so long as it remains free I will give it a try.

T-shirts: Nearly have my newest t-shirt design finished. Once I do images will be uploaded to the gallery. When I have that done and am happy enough with the end product I will be ordering it from Zazzle and make use of that voucher I have. I have two other shirts I want to order as well so expect some new photos of the finished products when they arrive.

Migraine: Had a migraine all day yesterday as well, one of those slow building bastards. Started off as a headache yesterday morning but nothing too bad (once you have migraines for about 15 years you start to ignore headaches for being so puny in comparison). Then as the day wore on and my stress levels went through the roof (long story) it built and built and just got really bad. Which destroyed all my plans yesterday. I didn't get any writing done, never got back to painting my picture (although people constantly wanting me to help them on my days off sort of eats into painting time as well) and ended up dunking my head and moaning a lot and then going to bed at half eight.

Half eight on a Sunday. That's the time you should be waking up from a Saturday night out, not the time you should be going to bed.

But of course come Monday morning my head is fine again. Yip-fucking-ee, just in time to spend ten hours in this hell hole.

So ends that meandering rant. Now back to my mind numbing job of going through a big long list of crap and manually matching them against another long list of crap.

Maybe if I trick myself into enjoying this work my brain will think "Oh no, we can't be having that" and I will get a migraine when I want one.

Blue_jester