Yes, and in fact the 3G has a non-sh1t camera,

To be fair, the 3g camera is a heap of poo compared to a 4 year old nokia n95 camera. The 4g camera should be at least as good as the N95, probably a fair bit better (although it depends a lot on lens / sensor quality, which no one really is clear about yet). Maybe not as good as a Sony Ericsson phone, as some of those have pretty decent cameras (pity they are rubbish phones otherwise).

Joe

Android is growing all the time but the number of genuinely useful, good quality, stable apps is lower.

I don't think it's such a massive difference any more, I'm really surprised at the quantity of relevant, working and free apps for Android now. And I understand a larger percentage of Android apps are free or ad-supported if that makes a difference to you (I know I'd only pay for a really vital app personally).

I don't know how likely it is that Apple will have more applications in the long term, as Android has a larger number of phones being sold nowadays, and speaking as a developer, programming and selling / distributing applications for it is much easier than it is on the iPhone.

Joe

Oh and there's also 'The Art of Swimming', which is Alexander Technique based swimming. It works on roughly the same principles as Total Immersion, but explains them a bit differently – a bit more hippy, less training focused. I found total immersion better, but I did get to that first.

Joe

Swimming is about as gentle on your joints as any exercise can be if done properly.

Breaststroke is notoriously bad for joints if you do it wrong. If you watch in the pool, unless you're in a university or club training pool, 90% of people do it very wrong. Doing it wrong is also innefficient and slow.

Unless you've been taught lots recently, if you're working based on lessons as a child, you almost certainly don't know how to swim crawl, I know I didn't. For crawl / freestyle, get the total immersion book "Total Immersion : The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster". It is genius, and makes crawl pretty much as easy as breaststroke. They also do a breaststroke dvd (and I think there was a book too, but I can't find it). Absolutely revolutionised my swimming – I went from being able to do 2 lengths of crawl in a pool to being able to swim it in for miles in the sea.

Joe

I've had four personal dealings with the police.

The first was when I was attacked and unsuccessfully mugged in Nottingham, and they were okay, a bit slow to turn up, but to be fair, by the time I called them, I was inside someone's house and safe, although they would have had a much better chance of catching the buggers if they'd been quicker.

The second was when I was mugged in a dodgy area of London, and ran to a phone box and hid, called 999, took them half an hour to turn up, and then they left me in the middle of the dodgy area of London with no way of getting home until the first tube. Nice one.

The last time was when one of them threatened to arrest me under anti-terrorist laws, for doing high-line walking on a railing. They said that "Kids could see you doing that". The buggers refused to give me their numbers either (in typical London police style, they didn't have visible numbers on – and it wasn't even a protest day*). In the end I did get an official letter from the Met saying that they were very sorry, the officers in question were yokels hired in from Essex, and that they had been told off.

Oh, I've also had the flashing blue lights turn up to stop us playing frisbee in an empty car park on a Sunday.

So in summary, the police are mainly okay, but perhaps if they could lower the priority of rogue frisbee players and tightrope walkers, and up the priority of people being chased through dodgy parts of Wembley / Nottingham by gangs of thugs, I would have had a better overall experience of them.

Joe

*when there are protests on, the police at the protest typically remove/hide their numbers so they can't be charged with brutality – bastards.

I had this and it was a jockey wheel. Old toothbrush and lots of wd40 to clean it off fixed it.

Joe

Oh, and view ranger for OS maps. It costs money, but is well worth it.

The android 2.2 update for desire is.rumoured to be out end of June, but no official announcement yet. You can hack it on, but you lose the HTC sense user interface (the nice home screens and stuff )

I use endomondo. It has better sharing and exercise logging features than mytracks. Very easy to use, and a quite good web interface.

Joe

I don't see how you can argue there is no link at all between having an environment that generally supports art and creativity, and being successful at it.

I'd argue that linking all that kind of thing under the broad banner of creativity is a bit of a red herring. For example, how many people making computer games will have come from a publicly funded arts background? How many people playing rock, indie, pop music? How many people in advertising? Even when I am working with people in TV / film, where arguably there is significant arts council / commercial crossover, they are a completely different bunch of people to the people doing publicly funded art projects.

Yes 'creativity'* is all nice and lovely. But the creativity and art involved in making a computer game are no closer to publicly funded art than the creativity and art involved in building a car, or making machine tools. Art is good because it enriches our lives in general, not because it allows us to churn out more game developers or advertising copywriters.

Joe

*although in this statement (and also in the general 'creative industries' term), you're kind of implying that the arts have a monopoly on creativity, which is in itself obviously bollocks, it is just that people in the arts sector often believe it, as they don't understand the creativity of scientists, engineers, (or even accountants!).

Swimming is all well and good as long as you don't get cramp or hypothermia, or have a heart attack or something. I believe that's where most of the problems occur in still inland water.

I think part of why I'm very confident in flat water, is that I know that I can swim a km with legs or arms only, so even with cramp, I'd get out.

Hypothermia is a pain, and you do have to avoid it, but to be honest you'd be surprised at how long you can swim in pretty cold water without getting it, as long as you keep swimming. You do have to be slightly careful, and pay attention to your body. And also be aware that the really high risk point is when you get out into the cold and wind and stop swimming, at which point it is a good idea to get into any dry clothes you have handy and do a little dance until you're warm again!

The only time I've had any cold water worries, was filming this youtube vid – because it was white water, there were a fair few pauses to stand on rocks and check the line on the next section, or just to get my breath back, so I did end up getting a bit chilly, and having to get out on a little beach and jog on the spot for 30 seconds, half way along. That river was dam release coming from the bottom of a big lake in the mountains, so it was jolly cold, although the weather outside was 25-30 degrees so it didn't matter much.

Joe

Not wanting to sound smug but no, I've always been able to avoid it, though one or two have been VERY close!

Me too – tens of thousands of miles – last 10 years commuting in London, Nottingham and Derbyshire, plus using a bike as my main form of transport between the ages of about 8-18.

I'm sure there is an element of luck, but there is also an element of assuming the worst of all the other drivers which I think helps a lot. Oh and not riding like a **** is useful too (not going through red lights / down the left of lorries, filtering when you can't see if there are cars on the side roads etc.)

The few times I've had close calls (I reckon about once per year / 3000 miles), whilst it might not have been 'my fault', I could see what I did wrong in not anticipating the idiot driver – for example deciding too late that I needed to stop at a roundabout, resulting in someone behind nearly rear ending me, or assuming that the person in the side road must have seen my 20W front helmet light pointing directly at him.

Touch wood obviously – hoping I don't get knocked off on the way home today now.

Joe

We could scrap the arts council for a start and just get them all out on the streets busking for funding.

Obviously you are aware that creative arts and especially the music industry is one of our biggest exports?

The 'creative industries' are supposedly a sizeable chunk of our exports. But what arts funding people keep very quiet about, is that that 99.999% of that is commercial music companies, advertising, computer games and film. It has bugger all to do with anything the arts council or other arts funders have ever gone near. In my experience, there is pretty minimal crossover between the two.

I don't think the arts council is useless, as art, performance etc. have an intrinsic value in themselves, and generally make the country a nicer place to live. I've worked on Arts Council funded projects myself. But to suggest that it is in any way linked to revenue generating creative industries is just rubbish that people come up with to justify funding bids.

Joe

In the world of unicycling, there's a simple convention about this –

If you get off the bike and stay on your feet, it is a dismount. If you didn't mean to do it, it's an unplanned dismount.

If you come off and have to pick yourself off the ground (like this guy did), it is a crash or a fall, whatever you want to call it.

Joe

On the ukulele, the only song I can play properly is the Tetris tune.

On the piano, the one song has to be Debussy's "La fille aux cheveux de lin". In terms of where the notes are, it's dead easy, but it has taken me probably 15 years to get to the point where I'm able to play it okay.

Although from a purely technical viewpoint, it would be pretty nifty to be able to play Weber's "Il Moto Continuo" on the piano at something faster than about half speed, although I reckon I'd need to spend an hour a day strengthening my fingers to get it up to speed, so that is a long term project (maybe when I retire!).

Joe

Yep I noticed that too, if you take the figures, ignore the obvious facts, change them, interprete them to suit your own argument they then actually fit with that argument. Amazing really who would have thought it?

Well, they certainly don't suggest that people who choose to go swimming in reservoirs whilst not drunk, and don't dive in are in any particular risk. Which if reservoirs were as dangerous as several people above are suggesting, would surely be the case no?

Even in the original figures you posted, without the breakdown relating to what people were doing to get there (i.e. did they go swimming, or fall in or whatever), 10 people died in reservoirs, against 7 in swimming pools.

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't treat water with respect, but idiots saying that anyone swimming in basically any open water is in serious danger of their life (or even in much more danger than someone going in a boat on open water) don't help anyone. It's just the same as the idiots who say that people shouldn't cycle on the road.

Joe

Is that pro rata, or just a meaningless statement you made up?

No it's absolute numbers. No one has an accurate count of how many times people go swimming outside for obvious reasons – although some estimates are surprisingly high

Absolute Numbers ?

That's interesting – if you look at the stats breakdown and just take the drownings of people intentionally swimming as opposed to getting drunk and falling in, or falling in for other reasons (from the ROSPA 2002 figures) you get:

Rivers (freshwater) 4
Lakes, reservoirs & canal 3
The sea 7
Estuaries & tidal rivers 4
Swimming pools 7

http://www.river-swimming.co.uk/stats.htm

which isn't that bad really.

Joe

Is that pro rata, or just a meaningless statement you made up?

No it's absolute numbers. No one has an accurate count of how many times people go swimming outside for obvious reasons – although some estimates are surprisingly high.

there, i fixed it for you.

Yeah.

Actually I believe that more people die in supervised swimming pools than die swimming in open water too. So be careful down the local pool people.

Joe

People die in reservoirs. Same as in the sea, and in other places people swim.

When they die or get injured, it is usually because:
a)people swim in deep water, and run out of energy
b)people jump or dive into shallow water and hurt themselves
c)people go into cold water in winter
d)people go into strong currents in rivers or the sea and end up swimming in deep water, running out of energy

all the other stuff, whilst in theory it might be dangerous, in practice is not something to worry too much about, it just clouds people's understanding of what the real dangers of swimming are, and how to swim safely. It is worth worrying about whether you are too cold, and whether you have the energy to swim where you're trying to go – those are the really relevant dangers, and why so often it is teenagers that get into trouble in water – as they have an over inflated idea of how far and well they can swim.

Many of them are pretty boring places to swim mind – there are almost certainly more interesting places near you to swim.

Joe

The overall per mile stats are useless, as they include motorways, which are very safe, and have very long distances driven on them, quite a large percentage of the total car miles. If you look at just non-motorway roads, I understand it gets much more comparable on a per mile basis, but I can't find any figures.

I've done tens of thousands of miles on the road over the last 10 years, and yet to have an accident involving a car. I've fallen on ice in winter, and on wet leaves on a semi offroad route, but not hit a car. Part of that is luck, but there is also an element of not riding like a ****, and keeping an eye on what is going on around you that really helps too.

Joe

I've swim in a few man made lakes, and a few natural lakes in alps, Scotland etc. I don't think there's much difference except that reservoirs are more likely to have signs saying no swimming. having said that, several of the big reservoir lakes in Wales, they let swimming happen, and there are also a few in England.

obviously don't swim right near water intakes, or jump in before checking the depth, or go in too quick when the water is cold, same as any other outdoor water you might swim in. be aware of hypothermia, wind, and be realistic about how.far you can swim if you're heading across a lake.

if there really were strong dangerous currents (in flat water lakes?) they wouldn't let people boat on them, and they'd be a whole lot more exciting to boat on.

Wherever you swim outdoors, people will tell you it is too cold, too strong currents, too wide, too deep, too shallow, too narrow or generally too dangerous in some way or other. mostly, people saying this are idiots with no knowledge of swimming, or the water concerned, you can spot these cos they'll warn you about dangerous currents in lakes, or about the water in rivers in summer never getting above 5 degrees c and other bollocks. if you're not sure about a piece of water, find someone who actually swims and ask them.

Joe

The problem I've found with long routes is navigation. If you don't know where you are going and you are planning a 50+ mile ride you need to allow quite a length of time extra for map reading etc. I was surprised that on a recent 60 mile ride we spent 7 hours riding, about an hour navigating (the difference between my computer timer which only counts when moving and my watch) and about an hour fixing one fairly serious mechanical and a couple of punctures. So unless the navigation is easy or you know large sections of the route then it's tricky to get them in in one day.

On new rides, I use either a gps (and make sure I have enough batteries), or I've done rides with paper map print outs – that 50 miler above took 4 a4 sheets, printed them out from bikehike.co.uk for free. Fold up the paper, stick them in your jersey pocket in a sandwich bag – only takes a second to get it out then, saves loads of time over getting out the big OS map, I think I can't have spent more than a few minutes navigating on the bits of route I didn't know already.

Joe

i could take you on several around scotland BUT i would never want to have an event like keilder on them……

surface cant take it – you really have to be selective about when you ride certain trails in scotland otherwise you really leave your mark !

Yeah, I wasn't thinking about events – that White Peak route I posted would be a nightmare as an event – lots of tight tracks that would be a pain for overtaking, a few sections that would be quite likely to have walkers on etc. More just as an interesting set of challenges for people to go out and do for themselves, like the South Downs Way is, and that West Country Way that Dibbs just posted.

Joe

joemarshall, thats nothing we were talking about doing 300miles in a day linking up the Dark Peak and some of the 7Stanes..

Yeah right. That isn't possible though, whereas my two routes are a normal days ride of about 7.5 hours and a crazy but possible 16-17 hours of riding, which would be hard, but doable by any fit and determined rider.

Joe

The route in the v-graphics book is a bit short, and that loop isn't the best bit of riding in the area at all – I think it makes much more sense as part of a decent long ride. The route I link below is a bit more like it – proper good ride, and happens to have the best bits of several of the v-graphics routes in it, and some other nice trails.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?lnk=http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/Long_Matlock.gpx

One day, probably once the kid is somewhat older and lower maintenance, I will manage to take a whole long day out and do this one – 100 miles into the White Peak from nearish to my house, taking in most of the really good legal* riding in the White Peak.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?lnk=http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/White_Peak_Long.gpx

Joe

*It'd be easy to make it 150 miles with the naughty stuff that it passes, but I kind of wanted to keep it legal somehow.

Viewranger does it. It is very good, and getting better all the time as they port over the features from the symbian version. Bad news is.that you have to buy the maps for viewranger, you can't just use memory map maps that you have already bought.

I have a bunch of polaris ones. Good quality, plain blue, decent pockets, comfy. I have 6 and wear one most weekdays, and they're perfect after 2 years and a bit.

I got em cheap though with some help from unicycle.com and polaris, when I was doing a big race, so I dunno if they're expensive.

Joe

I have to use a powerpoint because i want to show people screen shots etc…

That is the perfect kind of thing to stick in a powerpoint presentation – don't use a template and stick loads of crap around the edges, just stick in the screenshots full screen and talk about them. If you're talking about a picture, anything other than the picture is wasted screen space, especially when you're giving a large presentation, where people at the back will want to see the pictues too.

each bullet point should prompt you to speak about the topic

If you are using the bullet points on the screen as prompts, just put them on your prompt cards, get rid of the bullet points. As long as you speak clearly, people will listen to you. There's actually evidence that sticking text on your slides that you then talk about has been shown to decrease the amount people remember compared to just using pictures on your visual aids.

If you are using a laptop to present on, learn how to setup dual screen mode, and powerpoint presenter view. That way, you get to see a screen with a small version of your slide, notes for each slide, and most importantly a timer showing how long you've spoken for, so you can pace well. Don't overrun your time – it is rude and shows a lack of respect for your audience, and also you inevitably lose the audience as they are looking at their watches, and nothing goes in. There is nothing wrong with going short on your time though – if what you have to say can be said in 10 minutes, don't make a 15 minute presentation, make a 10 minute presentation. Remember, whilst you're asked to do a presentation for a bunch of people, the questions people ask afterwards can really be useful for you – as a presenter, the most important bit is the questions, if you present too short, you get more of the useful stuff (or everyone gets to go to the coffee break early, which makes you popular).

Personally, I write notes for presentations, but I don't actually practice them – I think the best presentations are ones that seem like they're off the cuff, but are concise, entertaining, and include all the important points and no filler. Having said that, I've done tons of them in my time, and a fair bit of stand up in front of people type performing of other kinds too, which really helps. The best practice I ever got for doing presentations was doing juggling acts in front of large numbers of people, which I've done a few times – compared to that, standing in front of a bunch of people telling them about my work is pretty easy – I mean you hardly ever drop all the balls and make a fool of yourself!

I guess thinking about it, how I do a presentation is:
1) Know what you're talking about, back to front.
2) Work out a list of things you have to tell people.
3) Put the list of things in an order as if they were a story and group them (you've already done this with your 3 headings I guess).
4) The way things group up in some way relates to the slides you have, so make a visual aid for each group.
5)Talk about each slide in order. Keep an eye on the clock.

Joe

I think some of you are missing the point that this is a research poster, which is a particular genre of poster that most professional design people will not have any experience of. Assuming it is aimed at an academic audience, there is a particular way in which things need to be presented, which is very hard to get as a non practitioner, I know it took me a couple of years of academic work before I could make a decent poster, coming from a background where I'd done bits and pieces of design and print work for spare cash (posters, leaflets etc) over the previous few years, so had an okay idea of how to lay out a page so it was readable, attractive, quite polished writing skills, basically I had competent although nowhere near professional design skills, but even so, it took a lot of work to get into the genre.

to answer the original question – I don't have a copy of indesign any more (or even pagemaker, which I used before.that). I usually use openoffice draw for posters. it is easier to get something looking good than in PowerPoint, as it is actually designed as a page layout tool. It is not perfect, I'd much prefer indesign, but the price is right (free), and it does the job. just whatever you do, use guidelines, or the align tools and make sure things align nicely, it makes posters so much more readable somehow.

Joe

Nick there are various schemes involving the government ,private housing associations or (nown again) new build companies. You basically go 50 50 on the ownership therefore requiring half the purchase price, and in turn a much lesser deposit. You would be in a strong position being able to show previous rental payments, council tax etc. Only downside is less profit if you come to sell but a great way to get started if things (no offence) are a bit tight.

According to the money section in the paper the other week, you have to be very careful about these, as they often involve over valuing of the houses, as they know people going on these schemes can't really shop around or negotiate. Not to mention that they are almost all new builds, so you have instant depreciation the moment you buy them (in the worst case, you have flats like in Nottingham, where they went from tame, developer friendly surveyors valuing them at 250000, down to 175000 when they came back on the open market.)

Joe

Guessing this might not be for a family, but depending on how wild campingy you are, I understand that there is limited camping allowed in Shining Cliff woods near Ambergate, before you get to Matlock on the A6 (from the south). It is run by Grith Pioneers who are some kind of wacky old charity. You have to sort it out through them in advance. No facilities as far as I know, just a very nice woods. I think they charge something like 50p per person. Can't find the phone number online, but found some email addresses: jill.mike1@btinternet.com or helen@twitchen.co.uk.

Oh and I'm not sure, but I imagine you'd be parking about a mile or so from where you can camp.

Joe

Joe, don't suppose you have a link for this? the only ones I can find are 30 quid a month for 24 months. I'm with 3 at the moment on a sim only after my last contract ended and I'd like to stay with them as they are a pretty good network to be on

Bugger, can't find it on their site any more. Maybe it was a special offer last month or something, I am certainly on it (17 quid for 24 months), so it wasn't a mistake.

Cheapest I can see where you get the phone free now is £25, on Orange, vodafone and t-mobile, with various large amounts of minutes, and internet (I just looked on uswitch).

Joe

use open and manipulate Office files

Ooh, what app is it for that? I only have an office file reader, not anything that can edit them.

I don't understand why anyone can 'dislike' iTunes. What is there to dislike? It catalogues music and you play it.

If you have a mac, itunes just works. If you have a PC, it is a bit buggy and nasty, and takes over your PC a bit. This is because Apple, being a very mac focused company, don't employ any decent PC developers, so their PC software is rubbish (Quicktime is pretty bad on PC too).

Also, there are different ways to catalogue music, for example some people like to keep them just in folders on their hard disk – that way if you change mp3 player, or have multiple mp3 playing devices, all of them will work with it*, whereas with itunes, doesn't it bung your files all into the apple library, where it will only work with apple things that work with itunes.

Joe
*I've used the exact same music library to put music on all my 3 last phones, made by 3 different manufacturers, and I put music on in exactly the same way.

I find it incredibly accurate can point you to a few feet, tested it out in the wilds near fence lines and it had us bang up matching the OS 1:25,000 map precisely.

ah, cool, I've only used the 3g gps, and that really sucked. the desire gps is pretty much the best consumer gps i've used – very quick to get a fix, and very accurate. I guess the 3gs has something similar.

Although, if you really want to know how good your gps is, try it in a city with high buildings and narrow streets – out in fields or hills is the ideal place for gps, and pretty much any modern unit will locate you to a few feet accuracy, it is in cities where they find it hardest.

Also, if you are looking at the desire, check out the tariffs on the three website – I got mine for free on a 17 quid a month tariff, and there are ones with lots of minutes for 25 – worth considering a switch, you typically get much better deals for switching networks than you do when getting an upgrade. It is pretty unlikely that you'd need to pay 80 quid for it if you shop around a little.

Joe

I've used them both on work stuff.

I have a desire, because I write applications for my phone. If I had an iPhone, I'd need to buy a mac, then pay apple money, before I could even run applications I wrote myself on my own phone. Then if I wanted anyone else to be able to run them, I'd have to ask Apple nicely, and wait a couple of weeks before they could.

With the Android phones, I download the free development kit on any computer, write a program, then I can put it on my phone, or give it to other people to play with straight away.

Android is a lot more open in loads of other ways too – if you want to put music on it, you can use pretty much any piece of software, you're not locked to itunes, if you want to run a different web browser, a different sms application etc, you can choose to, whereas on Apple, you can only do what Apple let you do.

It'll be interesting to see how things pan out in the long term – in the usa, Android phones outsell iPhone currently, so potentially may end up with more applications also (especially given it is so much more developer friendly).

On practical stuff, the two are roughly comparable – both have only okay battery life, which is a pain. The gps in the desire is probably a bit better (it is very very good, the last iPhone I used a gps on was pretty inaccurate, that was only a 3g not a 3gs mind).

The android phones have widgets, where things like calendar, weather, Facebook updates, emails etc can be shown on your home screen, which apple don't let you do. They are currently a lot better for gps apps on the bike because iPhone doesn't support multitasking yet, meaning that if you get a phone call, the gps drops out.

From a usability point of view, both are pretty similar – decent web browsers, phone, email etc all easy to use. Much of a muchness really now.

I'm not trying to start an argument as so many do on here, but can you prove this as a quick google would say to me it is perhaps slightly more over there over a long time period and a far greater population.

Yeah, the tendency to shoot one's school mates in the us is way out of proportion to their population compared to pretty much any other country.

Lists of the worst ones here :
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks

If there were no gun laws, someone would have had a gun and shot him, thus saving several lives.

Yeah, like in all the US school shootings, where hardly anyone gets killed.

Oh, hang on, they happen all the time, loads of.people get killed, the killers don't get shot until too late. Bugger, maybe that is a stupid argument after all.

The US has third world gun death rates, in the richest country in the world. Are people like you really so sick that you want that in this country too?

Joe

Well, given that this kind of thing is so common in the US that it doesn't even make the state news let alone national news, perhaps people have a point about gun control.

Although I thought we had quite strict gun control anyway?

If I use Skype on 3 it does not use data transfer to connect the call, only to log on and use the chat. If You call someone it dials a local UK number and than it is just like phoning another mobile number.

Which also means you can't use it abroad without paying a fortune, which sucks, compared to proper skype over wifi.

On Android phones, fring does skype over wifi, so you can use it abroad for free, but because you have to go through two networks, call quality is not as good as using a proper skype client (the only skype client is the three one, which doesn't do skype over wifi either).

Joe