HTC Desire Again

Tuesday Morning Leaves

So, what our my impressions of the HTC Desire a few weeks on?
We have annoyances, disaster, confusion, and a good experience.
Annoyances

Wednesday Morning Rose

The main annoyance is with the keyboard, hitting the wrong key.  I have sent text messages before I finished them, and cancelled entries without trying. The software helps, and corrects obvious mis-keys, but instead of offering corrections, it automatically makes the highlighted correction, so you type palmhouse but get farmhouse. It might help to have a prompt to save when you switch away from a partially entered contact or diary item. It is not good that the keyboard hides the save button, so you need to scroll down or hide the keyboard to find it, but it is worse still when it does not hide the save and cancel buttons, and they get overlaid by the typing correction offerings. If you miss one of these and hit cancel by mistake, it can be quite annoying.

Thursday Morning Rudbeckia

Disaster
After a few days there was an update to the system software that you could download and install, from 2.1 to 2.2. After I did this the WiFi stopped working and the installed programs were lost. HTC explained was because it was not a UK unit, but supplied for T-Mobile in Germany, so the company that supplied it agreed to replace it with a UK version. It was still good for calls and texts, and I could have reinstalled the lost apps using mobile broadband, but instead I reverted to my old Motorola KRZR.  (I bought this cheap on Ebay, and all the spelling prompts were - German).
Eventually the new unit came and all is well.

Friday Morning Nasturtium

Confusion
The calendar and contacts will synch with a PC, to Windows calendar and address book on my Vista PC, as well as Outlook.  They will also synch with Google calendar and mail contacts.
But it will not de-duplicate them. Instead it retains to independent records, which you can link so that they appear as one on the list.  Then when you create or edit a contact, you have a choice whether to edit the PC synch record or the Google record.
You can synch with two different PCs but it does not distinguish between them. So it is that I ended up with all my personal contacts on my work PC, and half my diary on my PC and half on Google calendar. Confusion or what?

Saturday Morning Beech Tree

I am now very happy, and I knew how I wanted to set up the new device when it arrived. You can choose in Contacts and Calendar which data sets you want to view at any time. PC synch is my work calendar and contacts, and Google is my personal ones.
A Good Experience
So now I am happy. I have my work and personal calendars in the same place, and I can choose which to view or both. Similarly with contacts.
I have a bible, to-do list, Amazon Kindle. I have started using imap for personal email, so what I delete on the mobile never gets downloaded to the PC. Who knows, I may even do the same for work email, but then, I did choose not to opt for a blackberry.
Possibly best of all, between finishing breakfast and getting out of range of the home WiFi, I have taken a picture and posted it to Facebook for the last five days.

29 October

The canal runs north of Lancaster through Carnforth, and then touches the village of Capernwray and Borwick before running closer to the M6 again.  I joined the towpath by the Old Hall Farm, in Capernwray, heading towards Borwick, and stopped to read about the aqueduct built in 1797 which takes the canal over the river Keer. Further on the canal divides in two as it is split by an Island. I ran half way along the island, and the turned back.

a pink pig guarded the entrance

You get a much better appreciation of the gradient when you are running than when driving the car.  Old Hall farm is on one side of a ridge, while the road to the caravan park of the same name is just the other side.  After that the road drops down, running close to a row of whitewashed cottages dating from 1697, and over a bridge across a beck, which I reckon is called Swarthbeck, from the name of the house with the Oriel window just by the bridge. The road rises sharply after the bridge, but I could see the board advertising Capernwray House B&B, that comfortable Bed and delicious Breakfast that I had decided to divide with the early morning run.
The thought of heavy half term traffic at Ambleside, and a leaflet advertising the Linton gallery, dissuaded us from our tentative plans to visit Keswick, and we decided to return to Settle, to see the things we had missed the previous day.
We had not gone very far before we made our first stop. The forestry commission have land on the ridge between Capernwray and the Lune valley which is known as Lord's Lot. We did not walk very far but we did  admire the way they had enlisted the support of a pink pig to guard the entrance to the land.
Our next stop was close by as well, being the bridge over the River Lune between Gressingham and Hornby.
We parked the car near the bridge and walked across, enjoying the views up and down the river from the triangular recessed areas above each of the piers. We walked along the path up river a little, and found a stick with some interesting markings on.  On the way back over the bridge we admired the way the water swirled around the piers.
We stopped near another bridge. after missing the turn to Bentham found ourselves on the road to Ingleton but turned back to Bentham at the village of Burton in Lonsdale. After taking a few pictures there, and admiring the trees that seemed to be fir trees that turn yellow in Autumn, we stopped again to admire the view from a high vantage point looking down onto the river in the valley below.   It was very lovely and restful.
Our next stop was Clapham, which we had bypassed the day before. This looked very picturesque with the river running down the middle of the village.  Ann bought some wool in at Beckside Yarns & Crafts, we enjoyed toasted tea cakes at the Croft cafe, and we bought a scarf and blankets from Richard Sexton & Co.

We then drove on to Settle, and I would recommend anyone arriving from the South to drive along the bypass and approach it on the road from the North.  It is very beautiful with cliffs to the left, and the valley to the right, sweeping round in a wide vista in front of you.
We had seen quite a bit of Settle the previous day, and while we enjoyed the exhibition at the Linton gallery, we thought that we might enjoy the next one more.  Whether we will visit Limestone, Sandstone and Millstone remains to be seen, but we travelled onto to Skipton, stopping at Gargrave, where we visited a shop called Dorothy Ward and had lunch at the Swan Inn.

At Hornby we spotted a stick
with some interesting markings

Skipton was populated with sheep, in the same way that Liverpool is populated with penguins. They are dotted around the streets with different decorations. We got to the market just as it was closing, we saw the high street branch of the Skipton Building Society, and were impressed with the public library building.  We left visiting the castle for another day.
Ann spotted the The Coffee Mill, in Otley Street, where they take their tea seriously, and make some seriously good cakes.