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Monday, February 4, 2002

Busy, busy, busy today, as I suddenly realised (while lying quietly in bed listening to the news) that I had totally overlooked getting the Camera Club newsletter prepared and posted. I also had to collect Joan's cousin Eris, who was staying with her son, and later convey them over to Lurene to cut Joan's hair. And for her to give me a trim too.

I laboured manfully through the day, got the newsletter ready to go -- and found I had used an article that had gone into a previous newsletter during last year. Doh. The Dork Factor strikes again. So, by the time I had found some more text of a roughly equivalent length and panel-beated it into the hole, I was too late to catch today's post. There is some urgency in this, as our normal club night is on Wednesday -- which is a public holiday in NZ (Waitangi Day, celebrating the Treaty of Waitangi made between the NZ Maori and the British Crown in 1840. The only native race in the old Empire that got a treaty). Hence we have deferred the meeting until the following week. I will have to do some ringing around tomorrow night, as the newsletter will not now be delivered until Thursday. The new article is on Landscape Photography, if you're interested.

Bharat called in to collect his computer after tea; I had installed the modem drivers and checked the Internet connection using my own ISP. He's going to have to arrange an ISP himself, and I'll probably need to walk him through the connection setup on the phone.

We are attempting to get away with the camper on Wednesday -- if the weather holds sufficiently. Squelching round wet camping grounds in the rain is not conducive to domestic harmony.

Tuesday, February 5, 2002

Well, the frontal rain came in as forecast; can't fault them on that. I drove Joan into town to change library books, and get talking book tapes to listen to in the car. When we got home, I received a phone call from what I thought was my local Honda car agency, reminding me that the car was due for servicing. Now, I had already rung yesterday and tried to book in today -- but was told they were full. The lady on the phone was quite insistent that there was no problem; just bring the car in after lunch. This I did; to encounter blank looks. They told me the phone call was from the Honda centre in Auckland and I was now booked in for Thursday. But, I said, I'm going away for several days, tomorrow...

Anyway, the sales manager came rushing up and shoehorned me in, anyway, by deferring some non-urgent work. I was most grateful, as the car was very perky when I picked it up at the end of the afternoon. You never notice a gradual drop in performance over a period; and when they put new plugs in and give it a tune-up, the difference is marked. So that's all set for tomorrow.

It does make a difference when someone senior takes the time to intervene. The girl on the service desk was quite disinterested; as far as she was concerned, the book was full and that was that. But Steve is a real salesman, and he wasn't going to let me remain hassled without doing something about it. And there lies the difference between those who just serve, and those who sell. Having done years of staff training, I felt like hanging up one of my favourite admonitions:

The customer is the purpose of our work, and not an interruption to it.

We opened up the camper and put bulky bedding and clothes in; the balance can be put in before we go in the morning. I spent some time during the afternoon looking for the PCMCIA adapter for compact flash -- which had already cost me a couple of hours diligent searching last week. Suddenly I hit on it; as usual, it was in a place I had already looked, but hiding under a small instruction book. This adapter enables me to transfer files from my Nikon Coolpix 990 -- in case I take something worth posting <g>.

Wednesday, February 6, 2002

We didn't get away as early as we wanted; there seemed to be a succession of things that hadn't been done and/or got out. Finally, we finished loading the car and camper -- only to find that one of the trailer's direction indicators wasn't flashing. I pulled the plastic lens off, to find one bulb blown; so we drove straight round to a local petrol station and got a new one. I installed it, but it didn't seem to be working either, according to Joan. Anyhow, we just went; and I stopped a few km down the road to do a check, on the theory that a little vibration might do the trick.

Well, the lights seemed to be working now; but Joan reported that the brake light was flashing and the turn indicator was continuous. !!Dork Warning!! -- yes, I had reversed the lens cover when I put it back on; a quick bit of screwdriver work fixed it. A nice run through the back country westwards to the little village of Pio Pio, where we turned off to visit old friends: Robert and Susan. Robert was a cousin of my first wife Leola, and Joan remembered going to Robert's home and wheeling him down the road in a push chair. We had a very nice lunch, caught up with their family doings, and were on our way to New Plymouth by 3 pm.

An uneventful run to New Plymouth through some of New Zealand's picturesque back country; the weather was holding fine, although there was a brisk cold southerly cross-wind making driving a little difficult. The wind intensified when we reached the west coast; it was rather hazy with spray from the sea clouding up the air. We found our camping ground at the far end of New Plymouth, got the camper set up, cooked a nice steak tea with our own potatoes and tomatoes, and are turning in early.

Thursday, February 7, 2002

A reasonable sunny day, with high morning cloud which burned off by mid-morning. We breakfasted leisurely, and went into the shopping part of the city by 10.30 am. Having spotted a shopping mall with attached parking, we decided that it was the best choice. Well, it might have been -- except I was waiting for Joan and wandered into a Vodafone shop. I found an assisant who was actually the data consultant up from Wellington for the day. I was asking him lots of questions about GPRS phones, and the new data speeds which are up to about 33kb at the present but will be increasing in due course.

The upshot was, I bought a new Ericssen T39m GPRS phone and ordered the latest Compaq iPAQ 3890 to go with it. Both of these are Bluetooth-enabled, so I anticipate much better email when we're away overseas or round about NZ. I have become disenchanted with the old Motorola and Psion5 combination -- but after all that's technology that's now about three to four years old and is not really coping with my needs.

It would be _really_ neato if I could find an ftp client for the iPaq and be able to update my site directly -- instead of sending emails to Don from abroad and hoping he gets around to doing the updates. The iPaq, incidentally, comes with an accessory pack including a Bluetooth cordless headset, a folding keyboard, and a travel case.

After having some lunch, we drove to Pukekura Park; this is a feature of New Plymouth and one I remember well from my schooldays here 50 years ago. The park is well laid out; unfortunately, the famous view up the lake to Mt Taranaki in the background was spoilt by cloud. We wandered through the Fernery and Winter Gardens; I took a batch of pix of various begonias and orchids.

We drove back to the camping ground, and I sat wrestling with the GPRS setup; finally discovered that the infrared link from the Acer laptop to the phone wasn't establishing. I've ended up putting the SIM chip back into the old Motorola so I can do the updates. I will call into the Vodafone place first thing in the morning and see if I've forgotten to set anything.

Friday, February 8, 2002

This is a late post, as I found that somehow, my Dreamweaver site file had been munged, and I hadn't written down the FTP settings so that I could access the server.

We packed up quickly, and were away from the camp at 9.20 am. I found somewhere to park near the mall (which is never easy with a camper-trailer on the back) and lugged my laptop fo the Vodafone shop. We spent some time fiddling with the various settings; I was in touch with Fraser, the techie, who was back in Wellington. He had me re-install the PC software for the Ericcson T39m phone, but that didn't do anything to help the infra-red link. Finally, he got me to check the transfer rate of the IR link: it defaulted to something like 5 Mb/sec, so I reduced this to 56 kb -- and the connection started immediately. Obviously, the laptop was firing data through the link faster than the phone could cope with it -- after all, it was on-sending at about 33 kb. Sorted.

We hurried back to the car, and set off for cousin Ted's place on the other side on Inglewood, by this time about an hour late. We had an interesting time with Ted and Jude; Joan walked around their large garden with Jude. Ted showed my his ambitious plan to extend his railway into a massive loop right round their large property. This line is 7 1/2 inch gauge (only one in Taranaki) and he has constructed an electric loco and people carrier to run on it. Also, he is well along with constructing a steam locomotive -- a "wind west" type over a meter long.

After lunch, we set out for Fiona and Ian's farm, just out of Stratford about 25 minutes away on back roads. They have just sold their farm, and Ian was out looking at likely ones to buy. We had a very chatty couple of hours, and left about 4.30 pm. I decided it was too far to Wanganui, and I was rather tires, so we pulled into the Stratford motor camp and stayed the night.

Saturday, February 9, 2002

It had rained gently during the night, and I was not looking forward to dealing with the wet canvas sides of the camper; but in the event, the sun came out about half an hour before I closed it down. The residual dampness was minimal, fortunately.

We drove through the lush Taranaki countryside -- with all the rain, there was still a preponderance of green grass. Usually by February, it has all gone brown. We stopped off to visit old friends of my late brother Bruce -- Mac and Di -- who have a long-established farm on the fertile coastal strip. We carried on to Wanganui and set up at the Aramoho camp ground, where we usually stay.

Back into town to pick up food; we have friends Bryan and Carole coming for an outdoor tea/picnic. I'm sitting in the last afternoon sun with the laptop on a picnic table, and will try and get this uploaded. Don rang me with my settings, btw, so hopefully the GPRS link will work.

Sunday, February 10, 2002

Well, as regular readers would have found out, I still couldn't get Dreamweaver to connect to the FTP server at my ISP. It was not until this afternoon, when we were at a friends house, that the solution became obvious. I had entered my site address into Dreamweaver as http://www.icarus.gen.nz/ -- nothing wrong with that, you say? It was that last / that made the server reject my attempts to connect. I removed it, and connected immediately. Bum.

Oh well; the morning was sunny and pleasant, and we walked over to the adjacent cemetery to do some rose pruning. Leola's rose was still blooming, but rather scruffy, so Joan did some secateur work and tidied it up. My parents' and Bruce's rose is a very prolific flowerer, but surprisingly needed very little dead-heading.

We drove towards town, but stopped off at friends Helen and Ian for a news natter and look at Helen's latest quilts. After lunch we picked up Joan's cousin Eris and drove out of town to Colin, another cousin. After a spot of afternoon tea, we came back into town and stopped at Lesley and Vince's place to catch up with them. Lesley works in leadlighting, and is making some lampshades for Joan, so there was some sorting out.

We dropped Eris at her flat and called into KFC for some tea before returning to the camp. Touch wood, this Kronikle will be uploaded correctly through the GPRS.