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p. At the weekend, I heard an interview with a family who make and use “bat detectors(Information about bat echolocation from the Bat Conservation Trust)”:http://www.bats.org.uk/batinfo/batdets.htm and rescue injured bats, on John Peel’s [“Home Truths(Just Plain Batty - listen to this segment again)”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/20031215justplain_batty2.shtml]. It reminded me of a field trip I went on when I was an undergraduate.

p. At Bristol, there were Botanists, Zoologists and Biologists (like me) all in the same department, but the Botanists went on different field trips to the rest of us. Their course T-shirts read “Botanists have all the best trips” superimposed on a picture of a marijuana leaf. This was something of a triple entendre—while the Botanists got to sun themselves in Corsica[1], we Biologists/Zoologists languished in the drizzle of Gloucestershire. We consoled ourselves with the idea that they had to spend two weeks staring at boring plants, while we would have exciting animals to look at, all the while entertaining the rebellious thought that it would be nice to look at exciting animals somewhere a bit sunnier.

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It’s a bit early for proper Wassailing (toasting the apple trees with cider in January to wish them good health for the season to come), but never mind. I love cider, and there’s nothing nicer on a cold dark evening than a crisp, dry strong cider. A note for North Americans: I’m talking about the stuff with alcohol in, not glorified apple juice. Boy, was I disappointed when I discovered that little cultural difference…

p. This “house(The Mushroom House, designed by Zube)”:http://www.themushroomhouse.com/ is completely wonderful—it would suit me perfectly. Ever since I was little, I’ve wanted to live in a tree. This house isn’t a tree, exactly, but it looks like one in all the important ways. And I love the fact that there isn’t a straight line in the place. The bendy balustrades and curvy mosaics reminded me a bit of the work of [“Gaudi(A biography of the Spanish architect, Antonio Gaudi)”:http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Antonio_Gaudi.html]. I look a bit like a hobbit, so why not live in a hobbit house? The Mushroom House if for sale, but there’s no price guide given—if you have to ask, you can’t afford it, I expect.

p. While I’m on the subject, I’ve noticed a very marked cultural difference between the UK and North America in how Estate Agents/Realtors present themselves. When travelling in the States, it seemed as if every advertisement for a Realtor had to sport a huge photo of the owner of the company, grinning inanely and trying to look trustworthy. I’ve never seen the same kind of advertising in the UK. This probably says something about the social standing (or lack of it) of the profession in the UK—they probably worry about people “hunting them down(…because of this)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000491.html with pointy things.

p. [via BoingBoing]

p. Damn you [“TidBITS!(The excellent Mac eZine)”:http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-708.html] If it wasn’t for your article on iPod accessories, I might never have known about the [“Scott eVest(More pockets than you could ever need)”:http://www.scottevest.com/v3store/30pfinetex_shell.shtml], and I wouldn’t have wanted one. Gah.

p. I love pockets, and this jacket has 30 of them (a long and embarrassing search if you forget which you put your mobile phone into), and—get this—a Personal Area Network! I love the idea of a jacket so geeky that you need a several explanatory videos to point out all the features. This would be a great solution for me. Womens clothes are—for some reason that I’ve never been able to fathom—woefully ill-equipped in the pocket department, which is why we are always forced to borrow the pockets of our menfolk. I also have a pathological aversion to handbags[1], so I have to carry an non-handbag type bag to put all the essentials in. This also has to be compatible with carrying a rucksack (with my laptop in) when walking, and with riding my recumbent (so it can’t be on my back). It’s not an easy brief to fill.

fn1. I would like to point out that there’s a world of difference between a ‘handbag’ and a bag that you happen to carry in your hand. ‘Handbags’ are only big enough for one key and a lipstick, unless they are of the ‘Granny’ kind, in which case they can contain enough supplies to keep a family of four going for a week, and also double as a handy weapon against muggers.

p. I’ve got a filthy cold at the moment, and I feel as if my swollen sinuses are pressing on my brain. Sinus-induced temporary brain damage can be the only possible excuse for the unreasonable amount of amusement that I’ve derived from “this simple song”:http://www.ducktapeclub.com/contests/roll/lyrics.asp?entryid=131 in praise of very sticky, very strong household tape.

p. [via BoingBoing]

p. This is the “third part(Outliner Use Patterns)”:http://www.atpm.com/9.12/atpo.shtml in an excellent series about outliner applications on the Mac on [“About This Particular Macintosh(AtPM)”:http://www.atpm.com]. I’ve always had problems “remaining faithful(Outliners)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000455.html to one outliner, as none of them seem to do everything I want them to. As a consequence, I’ve got more outliner-type things on my Mac than you can waggle a mouse at.

p. I can think of many software reviewers (and for that matter, manual writers) who could learn a lot from AtPM: rather then telling you what the software does, they focus on what you might want to use it for. It seems to me that this is much more valuable than telling you how something works, which—if the application is reasonably well designed—should be fairly self-explanatory with a little exploration.

p. This was the first Elliott Smith album I had ever listened to, and it’s still one of my favourites. When my brother lent me this CD, I’d never heard of the guy, but I was instantly hooked. This review is something of a belated tribute to Elliott Smith, as I’ve just heard this week about his [“sad death(Some very sad news)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000538.html].

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p. I’m sorry about all the messing about, but I’ve finally managed to improve the switcher without breaking anything[1]. I’ve also rolled it out to all of the main pages, so nice titles should work everywhere (or not work everywhere if you’ve got it switched off). I’ll stop messing about now…

fn1. Yesterday I left out a set of parentheses in the JavaScript, which was what caused all the problems. D’oh!

p. I finally got around to seeing “Finding Nemo(Pixar website)”:http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/nemo/ today, and was really stunned by it. The quality of the animation—as always with Pixar films—was breathtaking. Every second, you could see weeks of painstaking animation work and rendering just flashing by in the background. I got the feeling that—as with the “rotating cube effect(You can see the effect here, even if you don’t have Panther)”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/fastuserswitching/ for fast user switching—they just did it because they could. It was very funny (with plenty of jokes for both adults and children), and the plot raced along at a tremendous pace. What I didn’t really expect was that it would be so educational. I’m convinced that you could probably learn a fair amount of marine biology and dentistry from watching this film. I mean, how many other animations have you seen that include the phrase [“sub-oesophageal ganglion(Huxley’s diagram of the crayfish, 1879)”:http://www2.biology.ualberta.ca/palmer/thh/f/cf12.htm]?

p. Sorry about the disappearance of the ‘Nice titles’ switcher in the sidebar on the right. I was trying to improve it by changing it into a radio button, which would also show the current state, and—well, I broke it. And I didn’t make a backup of the file before I started.

p. This is what happens when you try writing JavaScript when you’ve got a heavy cold. I’ll endeavour to get something working when I’m feeling a bit better. By the way, does anyone know how to test a script involving cookies offline, without having a web server running locally?

p. My brother told me some sad news today; it seems that neither of us had heard that “Elliott Smith(Official Fan Site)”:http://www.elliottsmith.com/ had “died of an apparent suicide(NME)”:http://www.nme.com/news/106511.htm in late October of this year. He was 34—one year older than me.

p. We are both big fans, so this was quite a shock. His music sometimes reminded me a bit of [“Nick Drake(A review of An Introduction to Nick Drake)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000466.html], which—given that they both met a similarly sad end—seems somehow appropriate. Goodbye, Elliott—I’ll miss your music.

I promised a review of the Treo 600, and I try not to break my promises, so here goes. First, a word or two about why I decided to buy another phone/PDA[1].

A year or so ago, my old phone died, and I decided to switch networks to take advantage of a good offer on the Sony T68i at the same time. I hoped that with the PIM features on the phone, and the ability to sync with iCal and Address Book, I could stop using my venerable old Palm IIIx glance and therefore slightly reduce the number of gadgets I have to lug around with me (finding an ergonomic and stylish bag to carry it all around is a whole other story). Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out like that. Using a PIM on the phone—-even with predictive text—-was a bit awkward, and the Sony’s applications just didn’t have the same usability as the Palm versions. I also missed other things like reading books on my Palm while waiting at the bus stop, so reluctantly I went back to lugging both the phone and Palm around.

At the same time, the signal strength on my network (Singlepoint) deteriorated to the point where there was almost nowhere in Oxford where I could get enough of a signal to make or receive calls. Obviously, that made the phone a bit of a white elephant, and—-to cap it all—-my Palm finally died. It wouldn’t keep the date when switched off, even with new batteries in it (not a useful attribute in a PIM), and the touch screen refused to accept taps most of the time.

I saw that Orange were doing the Treo at quite a good price, and thought that by switching networks I could solve both problems at once. I’ve passed the T68i on to Mr. Bsag to replace his prehistoric plastic brick, so that wasn’t wasted either. I’m really glad that I did—-the Treo is great…

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A rather literate graffti artist has been making his or her presence felt around Oxford recently. In case you can’t read it, this says, “Sois réaliste demande l’impossible”. I get the gist, but if any Fracophones have a decent translation, let me know. It’s written in chalk, not paint, so the person responsible has some respect for the buildings.

p. So, you probably noticed that I posted my first mobile blog entries yesterday and this morning, and wondered what was going on. Well, I was prompted to embark on this adventure—further freeing myself from the tyranny of cables—for the following reasons:

• I got a “Treo 600(Handspring Treo 600)”:http://handspring.com/products/communicators/treo600_overview.jhtml;jsessionid=WP2V4ATWWKPM5QFIAE1CFFGAVAATKIV0 Palm-based phone a week or so ago (a long story which I intend to tell in the next few days, as well as reviewing this brilliant bit of kit)
• Via a discussion thread in the comments of an entry on [“Dan Gillmor’s blog”:http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001543.shtml#001543], I found a service called “Mfop2(Which apparently stands for Moblogging For Other People Too)”:http://new.bastish.net/cgi-bin/mfop2/index.cgi?rm=about which lets you upload entries via email, once you have registered your details. If you attach a picture to the email—the Treo has a typically poor, but nevertheless serviceable camera built in—then that gets uploaded too

p. I don’t know how often I’ll actually blog on the move, but it is quite fun, and using Mfop2 was much easier than writing a custom script[1]. Even with a keyboard on the Treo, typing long articles isn’t easy. And it may not always be obvious in the end product, but I do like to put a fair bit of time and thought into what I write, which isn’t really compatible with blogging on a handheld. Still, it’s nice to have an alternative for when I’m feeling spontaneous.

fn1. Once I had hit my forehead in frustration after realising that the new entry was not showing on the index page because I hadn’t included the new MoBlogging category in the template.

This is one of my offices - the much nicer one. The ceiling is ridiculously high, but the windows are lovely. The photo was taken at the end of a long, hard day.