Latitude is restored

In an earlier post I bemoaned that my mobile phone had revolted and refused to communicate with the interwebs. Sort of a UDI - Unilateral Declaration of Interuption.

The first nice lady I spoke to at Econet Avondale told me everything was fine and suggest "some men by Herbert Chitepo Ave who do these things". Guess not.

Now I wouldn't take "yes" for an answer when the phone still says "no".
A nice man at Econet Borrowdale said "O/S corruption". Makes sense. How else could one get a POP3 connection for mail and no internet connection?
Solution: Reinstall O/S
Which practically means Hard Reboot.
So backup / sync everything in sight...
And it's worked.


Getting back what apps I want will take time. But any I don't want, I have "reclaimed" their space!

I have just got Google Maps and Latitude up, and the "Where's Mike?" feature on the righthand column of this blog is thus back online!

So...
Does your HTC P3400 have a pathological fear of the internet?
A workable solution a hard reboot.
At least, it worked for me.

Do your backups!

Current Location Unavailable

Nice idea.
Put a Google Latitude widget on your blog page.
Until your phone thinks that the internet is a bad place and refuses to go there. As you currently see, my widget says "Current Location Unavailable".

I'm leaving it there because one day (maybe soon) I will be back online.

BTW - anyone have any ideas on how a HTC P3400 can send and receive emails to a variety or email systems, but not want to play nicely with internet or related apps?
The nice lady at Econet says everything is fine.
It's not.
It's just weird.

(If you want to know, at time of writing, I'm in Harare.  At time or reading, who knows?)

Collective Blogging

And now for something completely different!

It was Thandi's idea. "Why not start a story blog where a whole bunch of people write the story, each writing the next section, and see where it goes?"

So we are seeing where it goes!

The blog is The Amazing Story

Thandi started, I've continued, and the story in my head is amazing.
Probably nothing like where we end up, however. That's the joy of it. That's the risk.

Come along. Take a read.
Better yet - join in!

20 minute interval and citizen journalism

Twenty minutes is too short.
I tried to blog the first half of the evening during the interval.
But ran out of time.
And afterwards...
Well, by the time I got home this morning, no, that was not the time for blogging.

But, in summary, a stunning evening.
Two excellent plays (not nearly as "dated" as some had feared) providing more than enough food for thought, however much thought one thought one might like to think
Two great casts doing fine things to them.
And then an evening of wonderful craic with amazing people who I am honoured to call friends.

Tired now
And the weekend is still a'comin in!

Happy birthday Tracey Garrard!  A day later, and many years younger than REPS, but also a very important part of our lives.

www.free-counters.co.uk

Still tinkering!

Now we have a Visitor Count thnks to www.free-counters.co.uk

All I need is some visitors to spin the turnstile..

New Blogger Layout

If you are used to the old layout of this blog, I'm surprised.
Gratified, but surprised.
You really are a regular reader here?  Excellent.
Thanks
Spread the word.

Oh yeah.  Do you like the new layout?
Now I just have to figure out how to get things like "hit counts" back.

So, how does Mail2Blogger work?

I love the idea of being able to post to the blog from email.
You never know, I may even get round to posting more often!

Having recently been given a Smart Phone, email is now firmly "anywhere" - and so too therefore is blogging.
And, as this little beast (HTC Kaiser, re-badged as an AT&T Tilt) also has a camera, you never know, I may even start posting pictures.

Time will tell.

SKYPE alert
OK, blame Mark Taylor.
You can now call me on SKYPE if you're a SKYPEr yourself.
My id is mikerjs
Technology, yes.

BTW, for those who want to know, Mark is definitely stepping up in the techno world.
Nothing like God moving a man from Harare to Horizon to play havoc with his "toys" fixation.
I offer you blogs of his mind (and politics) and heart.
You'll find links to the rest of him on one (or both) of these blogs.

(Hi Mark. Anyone who starts monitoring my BLOG is worthy of a mention and verbal abuse! Love and blessings to you and Rose)

Bored moment last night
In the depths of another driver download (the road from WinNT4 to WinXP is paved with red-eyes and driver downloads), I did a search for "Mike Southall".

One of those "Where am I? Find me!" moments.

For my money, the best search engine for pictures is still AltaVista. (I probably shouldn't say that on a Google owned medium, but hey!)

Well, most of the "Mike Southall" returns from AltaVista are unknown to me, but one was this Blog as seen from "The Ageless Project"
Reminding me that it exists.

So I thought I'd write something.

• Something

While I'm here, I've taken off the "comments" links. Boatloads of spam drowned any real comments that might have been there.

Next stage ...
Dunno. Let's see how we go.

See you next year I fear!

We-blocker and Blog Rings
It's an e-jungle out here. You know it, I know it.
What are you doing about it?
If you are strong enough never to go where you shouldn't on the 'web, I don't believe you!

At the risk of getting rev'ed for advertising, can I recommend We-blocker?
Much like other packages (CyberNanny, SafeSurf, etc), We-blocker acts to stop you seeing web pages that you really don't want to or don't need to see.
However, I choose We-blocker over the others for a few reasons.

Firstly - price. Free. 'StruasBob! You can slip them a donation (if you have a credit card and live in a country with a currency!), but it works fine for free with only a "one in every 15 clicks" pop-up to remind you who you have to thank.

Second - ease of use. This is unfair. I'm not an expert in the other packages so they could be as good. But I am getting to really like how easy and intuitive We-blocker is.

Third - user input. You find a site you don't want to see, you can do three things. You could try remembering the URL so that you don't go back there (yeah right!), or you can tell We-blocker to block it for your purposes or, and here's the good bit, you can tell We-blocker you think other folk might want it blocked too. We-blocker then review the recommendations, and roll out updates on a regular (and invisible) basis.

So today I stumble across a cesspit, and push the button for an e-heads-up to We-blocker. Tomorrow, you are spared the same trap. No more depending on a group of specially desensitised specialists to decide what to block. We're in this war together. I help you, you help me, and that's the way we go.

And sometimes we find some really strange things.
There used to be a couple of "Christian Blog Ring" links at the bottom of this page. Used to be.
Don't ask me what was blockable on the one "Christian" link, but it has started being blocked by We-blocker. I trust them. If it's blocked, I'm not gonna waste my time digging for why. I've just removed the links from the page altogether.
It's easier that way!

Make a comment!
I'm not sure if this is a good idea. This is the first time the "[View/Post Comments]" link has been attached.
It means that you can tell me (and the world) what you think of my blog entries. What a scary thought.
However, if no-one comments, it will be a bit of a downer, no?
So do this thing, OK?!