My New Blackberry

One of my Random Writings

I've been given a new phone by work. It's a Blackberry, so I can get spam sent directly to me now, wherever I am and whenever it arrives. Very convenient.

It was initially suggested that I not bother to set up the email connection facility, but since it's work, and since they know I have the Blackberry, the day will come when they forward me an important email, text me to say they've sent it, and then phone me to check that I've got the text. If I then say I can't collect the email, they'll be a little disappointed.

So I've enabled the email. Still, that's cool. No doubt the alerts in the middle of the night telling me there's a new spam to read will be useful for something.

But still, there are some good things. I've reduced my transient note-taking because I can take photos of things rather than copying them down, and when I download my photos I can transfer the information to where I need it. That's handy. It's also nice to have a camera always to hand in the single device so I can take snapshots on the move.

The texting is also convenient, especially the way it threads the individual conversations. It's less convenient that all the imported contacts have come up as "Work" even though they were clearly classified on the previous phone. And even less convenient is the way the carefully crafted and classified numbers for each contact have now been inported as separate contacts, each with a truncated and distorted contact name.

But still, I can find most of them. There are some that didn't get through the import process - no idea why.

Including the phone numbers of my work colleagues. Hmm, that's a little inconvenient. Hey ho.

But now I've just hit a bit of a wall. I've found the "memo" application, and used the depressingly-small-as-compared-with-the-size-of-my-thumbs keyboard to enter a blog post. Not bad really, and the spelling checker/corrector has done a halfway decent job of fixing the majority of typos. So I tidied it a little, and connected the device to my Linux laptop with a USB cable, ready to word-craft, copy-edit and upload.

Can't find it.

In fact, this is becoming a bit of a theme. I've put in a few calendar entries, and a few tasks, and a few memos, and a few emails. I can't access any of them via the USB connection. I've used "grep -ir" on the entire drive as it appears to my Linux laptop, and I can't find anything.

Except the photos. So that's OK. So long as I just take photos of things I can export them.

Just don't write anything, or arrange anything, or organise anything, or talk to anyone.

Sigh.

Quotation from Tim Berners-Lee