HTC Desire Annoyances

Make no mistake.  The HTC Desire is a great phone.  The annoyances are real, but they detract very little from the overall experience.
I will add to this post, the most recent comment was made 14 January 2011.
I am using Android version 2.2 (software number 2.29.405.5)

Calendar.

• When on a month view, you swipe from left to right to move forward a  month, and right to left to move back. When on a day view, it is the other way round.
• On a day view, it displays the date, but not the day of the week.
• When selecting which calendars to display the option is three clicks away (Menu > More> Calendars). It could easily be two clicks (Menu > New Event) is not needed as each screen has a "+" button, and could be one click, as Agenda and  Month each have a title called "Calendar" which could be a button.
• Event details show the date, but not the day of the week.
• Events would be better to have a "Edit Event" button in the same way that contacts have an "Edit Contact" button.

Contacts (HTC People)

• The best feature of the phone, being able to start typing a first name or last name and getting all the partial matches, is not available in the contacts, which is a shame. You have to scroll up and down, the option of typing (say) P to start viewing part way down just is not there. (Oh yes it is! Just hit the find button)
• If the address is long, you cannot see the whole of it. it is cut short, so you cannot see the postcode, the part you most likely need to look up. Clicking on it does display the whole address, but only briefly, as it makes a Google map search. The best way of seeing the postcode is to select edit.
• It is a good feature to click on an address and see it on the map, but beware addresses with house names.  My brother's house is called "Cornerstone" and instead of searching on the postcode, it searches instead for businesses called Cornerstone in the surrounding area.
• When looking at the list of contacts, it is not possible to see contact type, or which contact book they belong to, (with some reason, as it may be a composite of two linked records of different sources)
• When looking at an individual contacts, the contact type is shown, but immediately overwritten by the link icon if the contact is already linked, or has an non responded to link suggestion.
• When editing a contact, there is no indication of the contact type. Taking the last three points together, it is quite confusing.

Phone

• The call history shows name number date and time but not duration.  Duration is available when viewing all calls made to a contact, but not calls made to all contacts by date.
• It is very easy to make inadvertent calls when viewing call history. Tap and hold will give you a choice of actions, but tap and hold for not long enough will start to ring, as will a gentle brush of the finger.

Entering Text

• The screen is very responsive, so that many keys are registered inadvertently. But then again, that is probably better than the alternative, plus you know when it has happened thanks to the vibrate while typing feature.
• The autocorrect feature is either off (it offers no corrections or auto-complete) or on, in which case it not only offers corrections, but automatically selects the highlighted one. So you type palmhouse, and you then have to select the option you typed, or you get the one offered; farmhouse.
• One of the most annoying things that can happen when the suggested words overlay the screen behind, is to miss hitting the suggested word and hit cancel instead. If this happens toward the end of entering the detail of an event, it all gets lost in an instant.

Last Sailing

It was a beautiful day on Saturday 20 November, sunshine, a steady force 2 breeze, a wonderful day for sailing at Killington.  There are just two things that might have made it better.  I was the only person sailing at Killington that day, and it is usually more fun with someone else on the lake as well.
After a very enjoyable couple of hours, I brought the boat in and was intending to tie it onto the jetty. Thinking that I had come in a little too fast, I came alongside the jetty but then started getting pushed back along its length.  That would have been alright but I had forgotten about the pulley, and I ended up with the main sail pushed back against the pulley. I could not sail away, and I could not lower the main sail either.  Eventually I did get away with a tear in the main sail, but then the wind was taking me past the slipway to the weir, and with the main sail lowered I could not sail back upwind. Happily I was able to jump out into shallow water and drag the boat back to the slipway.  A sad ending to an otherwise enjoyable days sailing.

Sunday 21 November was a slightly colder day, but plenty of people around as they came for the Sunday racing.  I was going to go out in the RS Feva, but then a friend of Jack's said why not sail with him in his father's Lark. He was not very familiar with the boat, and we were still completing the rigging when the race started, but we were soon ready, and set off in hot pursuit. A minor part of the delay was adding a second extension to the tiller, with a view to leaning out.  However I was a bit hesitant to lean out too far as the boat seemed very quick to right itself when the wind dropped or was pointed closer into the wind. We ended up not pursuing the other boats, but just getting the feel of the boat ourselves.
The wind strengthened to a force 3 at times, and we had quite a lot of fun.  I had the helm for a bit, and I got the impression of a boat that was a little faster and a little more tippy than a wayfarer.  We could have started the second race, but I was a bit pressured for time, and it was getting a little cold. In the end it was a tug  of war between the cold, persuading us to go in, and the stronger breeze, persuading us to stay and enjoy the fun.

That turned out to be the final day's sailing of the year.  I was intending to come up the following Sunday, but that was when the cold weather began.

When I came back on the weekend after that, Sunday 6th December, the boat had two inches of snow, and the lake was frozen over.

It was very beautiful.

Now the seats and floor boards are stored in the shed, with the Jib, while the mainsail is still with Pete Lawson for repair.

Waterfalls & Icicles

We had a great walk through Sefton Park this morning, finishing up in the Dell, or Faries' Glen by the Iron Bridge.


Although it had begun to thaw, there was still snow around, and icicles. Because it had begun the thaw, the green plants were showing through, and the waterfalls were flowing.

It was all very beautiful. Click here to see the full set of pictures

Lancaster Castle

There can rarely be an hour or five pounds better spent than the guided tour round Lancaster Castle.
It is a place of superlatives, the oldest prison still in operation, the oldest law courts, oldest prison cells, the records go on and on.  Being a law court, taking pictures was forbidden, not as matter of policy, but as a criminal offence.
We did not see much of the very oldest parts, from the time of King John, as the castle holds a working prison.  It is a small prison, a specialist centre for drug rehabilitation in the northwest, with a good record for low re-offending rates.
The Shire Hall is the jewel in the crown, built in Georgian times to house the civil court, and still in use today.  It is spacious, with rows of benches for competing teams of lawyers, and a large area for the jury to be comfortable during the long trials.  These are arranged in a semi circle and round them is an even wider terrace of seating for all the members of the public.  It is built like a theatre, because court cases were indeed a public spectacle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  When not being used as a court, the hall is used to stage plays and performances on occasions.
The semi circular back wall houses shields for every King of England from Richard I to Queen Elizabeth II. There are also smaller shields for other offices, including the Sheriff of Lancaster right up to the present day. The men and women who hold this office, for one year at time, display their ancestral coat of arms, if they have one, but mostly they need to design their own especially.
The room is light spacious and very pleasant, and we spent some time there being regaled by many interesting facts and anecdotes. I have no idea who the person in the left of three portraits hanging above the judges seats is, only that when I heard he was the second, I wanted to ask but never found a suitable moment - who was the first person to grow a pineapple in England?
The criminal court was a different affair, built in the older part of the castle, but with an impressive set of oak benches and panelling laying out the court room.  Again there was terraced public seating, but this was in a long hall, and the whole layout was more cramped. At the back of where the jury sat was a small door, through which a chamber pot could be passed, so that there was no need to delay proceedings if one of the jurors was caught short. At the back of the court the branding iron, used to mark the palm of those found guilty was still in place, long after it had ceased to be used.
On the way in to the court we passed through the jurors' waiting room, where they had the choice of the library or Star Trek videos to pass the time.  This is a pleasant Georgian room, made in the site of the much older court room, the very place where the Pendle witch trials of the seventeenth century were held.
The room where the jurors consider their verdict is a circular room, in one of the towers. It faces out of the castle into the public courtyard, and was used for public hangings in the past. It was all arranged so that hangings could take place in the rain without the executioner having to get wet.
We went into another tower, passing through a passage way cut through the ancient three foot walls, and sat in a circular room, and handled the irons used to chain men prisoners on their sixteen day walk to London before being deported to Australia. This particular ancient tower had a Georgian dome at the top, so as to fit in better alongside the Shire Hall.
The tour finished in another circular room in a tower, complete with a curved door, shaped after being made to fit the room by Robert Gillow, the famous furniture maker. Each of the chairs in this room were made by him, with individual faces carved at the top of each seat back.
Much of what we had seen was very impressive, but the tour was equally fascinating on account of the wealth of historical information and anecdotes that we were told along the way.