Looking back

The word 'positive' has figured significantly in my reflections on Thursday's funeral. I was told, as I waited to go in, that the note in the newspaper had said 'no mourning', and began to feel conspicuous in my black tie. The only person who cried was a 6-year-old granddaughter. I think that the feeling was that the person who had died had lived a good life, her final illness had been mercifully brief, and the purpose of the funeral was to say a simple farewell. The service was taken by her most recent minister, who spoke well. It was attended by two other ministers, which I think says something about her genuine support for the church, also that of her husband, who died about two years ago.

Words become inadequate. I apologise if anyone is reading this who knows the people. I tend to use this blog to think aloud, and am not really able to apply the sort of care to what I write which I would like to. There is a rawness to this blog, which means that maybe I shouldn't be putting it somewhere it can be read, except that the whole point is that I am trying to make some of my thinking public.

Weary

Always, but to-day, especially so. Life seems to have taken a downward turn. The Inland Revenue replied to my yearly update regarding Tax Credits that we owe them £700. Horribly mean, especially when they don't tell you how they calculate the result. And last night, a friend phoned to say that a mutual friend had died, and the funeral is this afternoon.

As it happens, the place where the funeral is taking place is not far from where I work, so I'm planning to go. I hate funerals.

I'm listening to the slow movement from Bruckner's 3rd Symphony.

Graffiti - history

I liked Graffiti, as it was implemented on the Palm III and the HandSpring Visor. Each letter had a distinctive shape, loosely based on its paper form. With practice, entering text using Graffiti became fast and reliable. But with PalmOS 5 came Graffiti 2. The letter shapes approximate more closely to how they would be written (in lower case). But on the Tungsten E, the process is unreliable. It seems to work better on my Zire 31, which uses a later version of PalmOS, so maybe the software needed to be fine-tuned.

In an effort to find a way to communicate with my Tungsten E, I installed TealScript, which is a third-party character inputter (for want of a more elegant description). It works better than Graffiti 2, but not, in my opinion, as well as Graffiti. Possibly the problem is with the Tungsten hardware, which seems to desire a firmer hand than I would like to give it.

We do have something I can use, with which, I suppose, I should be content.

Hurrah

I was beginning to think that AvantBlog wasn\'t going to let me log back in. I was reading recently about people who use their Palm-based PDAs (or smartphones) to create blog entries of 1500 words or more. How do they do it?

Anyway - Graffiti - Palms came with it - it was, I reckon, the killer app, because it meant that you could interact with a small device without a keyboard. But it had to be learnt.

To be continued ...

Eye of the storm

Trying to stay calm - detachment.

Explanation

What was supposed to be distinctive about this blog? I would write the entries on my handheld computer - in those days a Handspring Visor - hence the blog\'s title. The Visor has been replaced - I now, mainly, use a palmOne Tungsten E - it has a colour screen, a rechargeable battery, and more modern software. On the whole, though, it isn\'t necessarily better, and I have found myself occasionally sneaking back to my old faithful. Increasingly, though, the older device has had difficulty talking to newer computers (synchronising), and yesterday I decided to retire it.

Perhaps in a subsequent entry I can discuss the mysteries of Graffiti 1 & 2, and TealScript.

Retiring the Visor

The eponymous Visor will have to be retired. Sad (and annoying,
because Graffiti 1 on aged hardware is still, by a significant
margin, the most efficient, and reliable way to enter text
on a Palm-based handheld. But TealScript is better than
Graffiti 2 on my Tungsten E). But the Visor no longer synchronises
reliably.

Irony

I am not good at communicating. In many ways, I am afraid to communicate. I have learned that the easiest way to lose friends is to say what you think, which happens not to be what they think. So, I resort to saying what I think in a blog (some of the time). It doesn't matter if you disagree with me, because I didn't count you among my friends in the first place (except that at least one of you I do count as a friend, and I apologise if what I have written seems unkind). My point is that here I will try to say what I mean - if you can handle this, then please stay.

Still

Thinking of something to write.

Are we there yet?

This entry is being composed on my HandSpring Visor (thanks to AvantBlog). And I can\'t think of anything to write!

Home alone

The family are on holiday - I\'m left behind. A bit sad.

This is exciting

But, sadly, all there is to-day to blog about is reaction to yesterday\'s bombing of London. And how tired I am.

Deeply impressed

But how to edit? Via the forms manager!

Like

This.

It works!

Amazingly. But what happens if I want to write more than one entry between synchronising?

AvantBlog

Maybe this is the way forward. Blogging, and then synchronising

(almost) nobody reads this

So, with apologies, what I write here may not be terribly interesting.

Can't get away from yesterday's events in London. Grief, anger, despair.