Wordpop

Murray over at Palm-Mac has recently made it into the global Wordpop leaderboard. Without wishing to be overly smug (and I apologise if it comes over that way Murray), I related to him my best scores on Wordpop from my Palm Centro. I've since moved to the iPhone, but have yet to scale anywhere near the dizzy heights I achieved on the Centro.

So as you all know I'm not cheating (unless I'm very good in Photoshop - which I'm not), here is the proof.

If you haven't yet tried (bought) Wordpop on any platform, you're missing out big-time. It's a superb game, whether you catch 5 minutes, or the months it took me to rack up this score. What's more, Todd Sherman the head honcho seems like a very nice chap too. Always helpful and responds to emails.

New iPhone in June?

The very informed "The iPhone Blog" is reporting the possibility of a new iPhone coming this June. Not a very great surprise, and mooted by a number of blogs and forums, especially following the announcement of iPhone 3.0 OS last week.

Although we've yet to get any real sense of when we're likely to see the Palm Pre, touted by many as the iPhone killer (bit over the top I think), many commentators feel that the 3.0 OS only really brings the current iPhone 3G up to par with most other smartphones (I don't - I think it still lags behind on some things, especially the calendar, where Windows Mobile, and especially the ageing Palm OS still beat it hands down.).

It would seem a logical step for Apple to bring out new hardware to accompany the 3.0 software update, although what that might offer is hard to tell right now. Only time will tell.

Life without the iPhone

Three days without my iPhone which is off being repaired (hopefully). No major problems this far. One annoying thing was that although I did a backup in iTunes before it went off for repair, I hadn't synced my calendar to my home PC Oultook, which means my Centro is devoid of an up to date calendar, because since I've had the iPhone, I only sync my iPhone calendar with my work calendar - the iPhone being the "master" . I could get therefore sync the Centro from my work PC, but as I'd have to get our IT dept to allow me to install Palm Desktop/Hotsync on my PC and all that that entails - and it's a protracted process let me tell you - I may as well hang on for the return of my iPhone. A bit of a pain, but I vcan manage for a week or so. Might actually have to think about appointments/meetings insted of relying on a device!

It's nice having the hardware qwerty keyboard back, but a royal PITA having to use Blazer as a browser again - let's hope to God Palm have sorted that on the Pre! The result of that means I've not "Twittered" anywhere near like as much as I do on the iPhone.

Snappermail downloads all my email accounts into one "inbox", something that Apple could learn from.

Going back to Quicknews as an RSS reader isn't much fun. Newstand on the iPhone isn't ideal, but it's much better than Quicknews - or any other Palm RSS reader for that matter.

The SMS application on the Centro is miles better than the iPhone app though - especially when combined with the hardware qwerty keyboard. The ability to know how many characters you've typed, a neat window, the ability to forward SMS (I know it's coming in 3.0).

Also the other thing I don't miss about the iPhone is having to navigate back through text using that damn pesky magnifying glass. With the Centro it's just so easy using the central nav. key.

All in all, I'm missing the big bright colourful screen, Twitterific, decent RSS. Still like Palm and the Centro though....

3-0 - to the referee: City 0-3 Sheff. Utd

I don't mind getting beaten. Well actually I do, but what I mean is, I don't mind getting beaten if the other team are better than you.

But when they're patently not, and the referee radically influences a game through incompetence and inconsistency, it's hard to take.

Today, Paul Taylor (pictured) first dismissed Gabor Gyepes for a foul that led to a penalty, when it appeared to everyone but him (and the Sheffield contingent obviously) that he'd won the ball. 1-0 after the penalty and City down to 10 men.

Worse, 9 minutes later he issued his second straight red of the game to Ross McCormack after he and a United player went for a ball, McCormack apeared to win the ball and the United player went down poleaxed - only to get up again once the card had been issued. It appears it might have been for an elbow, but I'm not convinced.

That effectively ended the game as a contest, as Dave Jones sacrificed first Michael Chopra and then Chris Burke to shore up the defence and midfield and the only surprise thereafter was that City managed to play so well 9 v 11, and that Sheffield only managed to add 2 more goals.

Taylor's poor game continued as he constantly failed to penalise Sheffield players for persitent infringements against City players until very late in the game. His linesman were equally culpable missing pushes, tackles and offsides. Maybe it was the sun. One of the linesmen wore a cap throughout, and frankly looked like an idiot.

Referees like him spoil the game for everyone, and I only hope we never see Mr Taylor and his team at City again - ever.

The BBC website says "Cardiff were well beaten" by Sheffield, but when your'e playing with 9 men for more than half the match, that's hardly a surprise is it?

In the greater context, we're still in the playoff spots and have at least 1 and up to 2 games in hand over the rest of the top 5, but things are undoubtedly getting tesne, and we could well do without Gyepes and McCormack missing the next 3 games through suspension. Whether City will appeal either remains to be seen.

iPhone update

Well I popped into the O2 store in Cardiff this morning and told the nice lady my home button was playing up. After trying it a few times, so she could see what was wrong, she did a reset. "Tried that" I ventured, but she insisted. Proudly she showed me the problem was fixed. "No it isn't" I said. It still worked if you pressed it hard, but I should be able to do the press gently like I've always done - not try to push the button through the back of the device. She got out her own iPhone, an original model and asked me to try that which I did. Hers was fine, mine wasn't.

So it's being shipped off to be looked at. And yes, before you ask I did do a backup last night, and just as well, because looking at the repair agreement notes, all handsets that go for repair will undergo "...a software upgrade (does that mean I get 3.0 before anyone else??? LOL), and will have any personal settings, ringtones, icons and graphics restored to factory settings".

She reckons the turn round time on an iPhone is about 5 days. We'll see.

She asked me if I had a phone to keep me going, and I said I did and wheeled out the Centro. She looked a bit aghast and said that you don't see many of those, and did I like it (and I said yes, of course). she also said they had some Palm's in, but couldn't recall the model - obviously going like hot cakes then!

Anyway, it's now just a case of waiting and hoping they can fix it - or give me a new unit, because I'm not having it back if it isn't fixed.

Meantime of course that means back to the Centro. It's funny how quickly you can forget things. Typing an SMS I kept double clicking the space bar a la iPhone to enter a ".", but of course a) it doesn't work on a Palm and b) there's a "." on the keypad anyway! Also, forgot that the Palm doesn't automatically capitalise after a "." like the iPhone.

With the iPhone SIM in, setting up the network settings was as easy as choosing O2 Mobile Web in network preferences. using the Centro is like putting on a pair of favourite old gloves - makes me all warm and cosy.

You also notice immediately the comparisons between the two devices.

• Entering a calendar appointment is so easy on the Palm, AND you can make an appointment private! Yey!
• Using Blazer is such a drag compared to Safari
• Navigating one handed using a combination of buttons/screen on the Palm is still a pretty neat and swift experience, and it fits more comfortable in the hand than the iPhone
• How I miss Bonsai, Docs to Go and the best (IMHO) SMS app going
• GPRS is a pain compared to 3G or even wifi (not that I use wifi much on the iPhone)

Either way, whatever the pros or cons, it'll be fun using the Centro for the next week or so.

Yeek! iPhone home button problems

Something terrible has happened! I have problems with my iPhone. Today, suddenly, out of the blue I'm having problems with the home button. For non iPhone users, the iPhone has a single button bottom of screen, and this is used to close an application and return to the home screen, and you can also assign a specific action to it - mine should take me to the phone favourites on a double click.

There's no great trick to it. You just depress the button slightly and voila! Except mine doesn't work as it has done from day one. I depress the button and nothing happens. If I press hard - and I mean add considerably more force than I think I should, then it does work. But that's not how it's been working for the last 3 months, so I suspect somehow something has become damaged. I haven't dropped it yet - something I seem to have managed with all my previous smartphones, and I cannot recall any other bang or jarring that might have upset it's innards.

I'm off into Cardiff tomorrow so will pop into the O2 store (we don't have an Apple store in Cardiff sadly) on the recommendation of O2 customer support, and see if they can send it away to get repaired. Bummer. CS siad if they do send it away they should supply me with a replacement handset, but I'm currently charging up the Centro as a standby. Nice to see the old fella again too.

I'll keep you informed.

Cutting it fine. City 2-1 Watford

City know how to make you edgy. After not losing at home since November they to a goal down after Stephen McPhail hacks down McAnuff for a penalty early on.

Bothroyd restored parity 5 minutes later. Both sides had chances in a far too open game for my liking.

It all looked to be heading for a poor bore draw whb in the final minute of injury time their player handled a header that looked to be going well wide. That's as maybe, but handball is handball. The ref could have bottled it - almost appeared to after being harangued by Watford players and consulting his linesman, buy fair play he didn't. McCormack coolly slotted home with the last kick of the game when most City fans couldn't bear to watch. The relief was enormous for all (unless you were a Watford player or fan or manager). It's about time City got some luck. 3 points is massive. So now is our next game on Sunday against the Blades.

Up the City!

-- Post From My iPhone

iPhone 3.0. Hit or Miss?

I've just been following the feed on The iPhone Blog from the event where Apple are announcing what's in version 3.0 of the iPhone OS, expected to ship this summer.

My previous post on this had a number of "wishes" I was hoping for. there is a lot to take in, so let's have an initial look at what I think is there (from my wish list).

• Better PIM, especially calendar integration: NO Doesn't look like it (sniff). Looks like Apple are keeping the calendar database pretty locked down, unless I've missed anything vital.
• Screen to rotate to landscape mode in email. YES and apparently in all "key" apps too - including SMS. Nice.
• Ability to forward a text message: YES - and about time too. Whoever thought it wasn't needed is an idiot
• File transfer using bluetooth. NOT SURE - BT gets a mention - support for ADP2 stero headsets, and apparently some ability to share/beam some info, lossibly vcards, but genuine file transfer looks a bit dodgy. I'll double check though.
• MMS (multi-media messaging). YES don't use it much, but every other phone in the world today supports it, so at leat the iPhone is catching up
• Notifications. NOT SURE didn't see any obvious reference tothis - have to look back through feed (tea time half way through!)
• Cut & Paste YES - probably THE most wanted feature. Finally.
  

So certainly there's some great stuff there, although frankly, as previously mentioned, a lot of this stuff is what pretty much every other current phone can do anyway, so Apple are really just making up the ground here.

There's a pile of other stuff, much of it beyond my understanding, and reaction on TiPB seems pretty positive so far.

When will we be able to get it? Summer. Err, that means any time between about May and October, although if Apple stick to form it'll be July(ish).

Cost? Free - apparently.

Roll on summer!

Check out The iPhone Blog for a fuller, and more explicit explanation of what's in 3.0

Point rescued: Bristol City 1-1 City

The Bluebirds still have aspirations for automatic promotion, but taking, or rather rescuing a point won't be good enough to end up in one of the top two slots.

It was a typical dogged, tight derby with both teams more afraid to lose than win.

City could have scored in the first half but a bullet header from Roger Johnson was cleared off the line. Bristol also had a chance but on loan keeper Steve Taylor who looks miles better than Dimi, beat the shot away.

Bristol opened the scoring after the defenders backed off, but tue irrepressable Ross McCormack nipped in to slot home after their keeper fumbled an Eddie Johnson shot.

So a point shared. Not ideal, but at least we've stopped the losing away sequence. Big week ahad with Watford at home on Wednesday and Sheff Utd at home next Sunday. We really could do with 6 from 6.

Up the City!


-- Post From My iPhone

A very curious thing

I've just noticed a very curious thing. If I switch from 3G to wifi on on my iPhone, the quality of the photo's for the people I'm following on Twitter using the Twitterific app improve remarkably.

Turn wifi off, and they go all grainy and coarse. Turn it on and they go back to clear as a bell high re photos. It's particularly noticeable with the following people that I follow on Twitter: @ruskin147 (Rory Cellan-Jones) photo - currently his dog sporting a red nose, and @AlsiB (from Astraware)

Now I thought that wifi was just "faster" than 3G. I didn't think that it downloaded any more data.

Can anyone put me right here, or explain this? It's not a big deal, but I just don't understand.

iPhone 3.0 - What's it got

Apple are going to provide a sneak preview of the v3.0 OS next week, and everyone's guessing what's going to be in it, or not, so I might as well have my three penn'orth.

Firstly, and the BIG question for existing iPhone users is the question of whether this OS is going to be available as an upgrade at all? Chances are that Apple in the infinite wisdom, and because they want people to upgrade devices not OS because it makes them more money (Oh cynic that I am), will require you to buy the shiny new iPhone 3 to get v3.0 of the OS, so for me, all of this might be moot anyway - at least for another 12 months until my contract expires.

So what am I hoping for?

First and foremost I'd like to see either a better PIM functionality, or the SDK opened up to allow others to garner a better PIM function. For me, the biggest downer on an otherwise remarkable device is a poor calendar. Views are restricted, it doesn't link to other applications, you can't mark appointments as private. It's longwinded to add an appopintment, and any of these on a current first line smartphone is a ludicrous omission.

I'd like to see email app should be able to rotate to landscape mode.

I'd really like to be able to forward an SMS. You should be able to have SMS "groups" I know our American cousins think everyone's got always on email so that you don't need to be able to forward SMS, but for me, it would make a hell of a difference. Most of the people I communicate with on a day to day basis always have their phone with them, but most of them aren't "smart" and very few use email on them. They all use SMS though. And whilst I'm on the subject of SMS, that horrible rounded rectangle for typing SMS text into really annoys me. Why can't I have a proper "window"? Adn another thing...why is there no character count. I'm pretty sure every other phone has one. How do I know wehen I've reached my 160 character limit?

I'd love to have the ability to file transfer using bluetooth

I'd like to see MMS, not that I'd use it vey much, but every now and again...

Notification for missed calls/emails.

Well there are probably more things, but that's enough for now. Whether we'll see them or not is another thing. It'll be interesting to see "what's occurin'" on 17th March. I just hope that I don't have to upgrade the phone to get the new OS. Have a feeling I will though.

And a final thought. The Palm Pre, of which we've heard a great deal lately, is getting closer. Previous Palms have always done all of the above, and most of them very well. There's no reason to assume the Pre won't. Have Apple thought about this, and therefore built these things into 3.0 to trump the Pre? We can only wait and see.

I suppose I should chuck in copy and paste - everyone else is. Actually it would make editing anything a lot easier.

Not another goalie

Cardiff City get through more goalkeepers than they sell burgers on a match day. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.

Anyway, after two dreadful clangers in 4 matches that have probably cost us 6 points, Dimi Kantstopalot (sorry Konstantopolous) has managed to get himself injured - much to the relief of the City faithful.

Problem is, of our 3 other keepers, two are injured, and the other one's only 3ft 2in and never played a competitive match for City. So Dave Jones has been out and about, and brought Steve Taylor in on a months loan from Aston Villa. He's currently 3rd choice at Villa, and has only had 2 outings this year I believe (so in form then). I do recall he was deputy to David Seaman at Arsenal for a while, and I remember being impressed when I saw him back then.

Anyway, he can't be worse than Dimi.

Wurzels this w/e when we play Bristol City at their gaffe on Sunday.

Up the City!

Recent City 'keepers - in no particular order: There are just the ones I can remember!

• Neil Alexander (now at Rangers)
  
• David Forde (somewhere in Ireland)
  
• Casper Schmeicel (3rd choice at Man City)
  
• Ross Turnbull (2nd choice at 'Boro)
  
• Tom Heaton (@ City - injured)
  
• Peter Enckleman (@ City - injured)
• Edwin Sak (@ City - too short)
  
• Dimi Konstantopolous (@ City - injured and rubbish)
  
• Martyn Margetson (@ City - goalkeeping coach)
  
• Steve Taylor (@ City - on loan from Villa where he's 3rd choice)
  
• Michael Oakes (can't remember)
  
• Tony Warner (now at Hull - worse than Dimi)
  

WebIS have been developing an iPhone version of their comprhensive PIM software Pocket Informant, and have today submitted this to Apple in the hope that it will be approved and find it's way into the App Store. Of course, submiting an app doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be approved.

WebIS say they've been working with Apple for almost a year to make sure they're playing by Apple's fairly stringent (and generally accepted to be hamstringing) rules, so good though this looks, it's probably not going to have anywhere near the functionality of the WM variant which has been around a long time, and subsequently had time to mature.

I once tried PI on a WM PDA, and found it OK, but there was so much too it, I eventually went back to the simplicity of the default WM PIM applications. I don't think that'll be an issue in this first iteration of the iPhone version - assuming of course Apple let it through.

The other interesting thing will be to see where it gets priced. The WM version clocks in at just under $30, so I'd guess even a stripped down iPhone version ain't going to be free of 59p, but then it probably shoudln't be. I'm one of the band that thinks dvelopers should get rewarded for their efforts - so long as the customer isn't being ripped off.

Anyway, fingers crossed on this one. I still wish Apple would open up their SDK a bit more though - I cant for the life of me see why they won't, unless they've got something up their sleeve for the 3rd iteration of the iPhone.

Pant, pants pants! Norwich 2-0 City

How is it we can give good teams a run for their money but we can't beat teams at the bottom of the division? We recently got beaten by Southampton, and now Norwich.

Admittedly both are fighting to retain their Championship status, but hey, we're fighting for promotion to the Premier League!

Who wants it most?

I'm really, upset and annoyed by this result, especially so as all those around us who played tonight drew, so the chance to gain ground has been thrown away. So much for our games in hand. Play-offs now look to be our aim, not automatic promotion.

Scary or what?

Courtesy of my good pal Stabber (don't ask!)

This is a photo from the 2009 US Presidential Inauguration, in which you can see, in focus, the face of each individual in the crowd. You can pan and zoom in, wait for the focu to come in and bingo, you can see clearly individual faces out of a mass of thousands.

I'm told, the picture was taken with a robotic camera at 1,474 megapixels (295 times a standard 5 MP camera.

Makes you wonder who's watching you right now.....

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

Right in there: City 3-0 Doncaster

City kept their push from promotion on track with a 3-0 win over Doncaster rovers at Ninian Park, and what a trio of goals they were!

Chopra opened the scoring on 10 minutes sweeping in after a glorious City move that proved that when we get our heads down and pass we're a really good footballing side.

Then on 29 minutes, Bothroyd chested down a long clearance from Konstantopolous, turned and volleyed the ball home from distance. The only downside was that he appears to have injured himself in his goal celebration. That brought new fan favourite/object of derision (take your pick) Eddie Johnson into the game. He again worked hard and had a couple fo half chances, but on the hour he collected a ball out on the right , cut inside and hit a great shor past Donny keeper Sullivan to score his first City goal and send the crowd ectstatic. In the end, City were good value for the three points, although they did rather sit back when they got three up, and basically stopped playing. Personally I think we should have pressed more and could well have had 4 or 5 goals to show for it.

Doncaster came to City on a good run, and to be fair they played neat, passing football in the first 2 thirds of the pitch, but just didn't have any cutting edge to speak of. A good win that hoists us to fourth with as many as 1-3 games in hand over all those above us.

Up the City!

Calendars. How important are they to you?

There's an interesting mini-thread over at PDA247 at the moment on the History of Mobile Calendars. Now you wouldn't have thought that would be a very captivating subject, but for some, and to an extent I include myself, it is.

My interest is borne from the fact that my calendar on my smartphone is one of the most used apps, and certainly one of the most important. My phone is with me nearly all the time, and therefore, so is my calendar/diary (call it what you will). It house all my personal, social and work appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, private appointments (of which more later), reminders (because there's not a decent task manager on the iPhone) and so on. Frankly I'd be lost without it.

But as the PDA247 article discusses, not all calendars are equal. Some, like the generally well received Palm app are great. Intuitive to use, full of (most) of the functionality that the majority of people need, and therefore very useful.

Some, like the iPhone app, are more eye candy than functional. yes, it's got some good bits, such as, erm, ah, oh yes, days and months. But it's annoyingly fiddly to eneter a new appointment, you can't mark an appointment as private direct from the app, and the calender app itself can't be accessed by other apps or developed due to the restrictions in Apple's SDK. There are rumours that this might change (and about time too) with the next iteration of the iPhone, but don't hold your breath.

Windows Mobile's default app isn't as good as Palm's (in my opinion) but it's way better than the iPhone's. It still remains fiddly to enter, and view appointments with far too many keyclicks for my liking.

I have no real expierence of Symbian apps, and none whatsoever of RIM's BlackBerry app. The PDA247 article suggests that BlackBerry's is pretty decent, but one of the commenter's is not so impressed.

There other solutions of course. Datebook (for Palm), Pocket Informant (WM) and Agendus (Pal, WM & Symbian) are all applications by developers who think they can provide a better offering than the default offerings on handsets, and there are many more. In these cases the level of functionality in these offerings usually far outweighs the default app functionality, and having tried some myslef, I've found them to anal for my liking. I just want something that works well, does what I need it to, and is simple to use. For me, the best example is the default Palm Calendar app.

Of course this, like most other mobile software areas is really an entirely subjective matter. For me, if something akin to the Palm app was available on the iPhone it'd be a killer app for me. But it's not, and I have to make do with a limited app functionality on an otherwise well rounded device. For the moment.....

Back to winning ways: City 3-1 Barnsley

This was more relief than pleasure. After a run of games starting with the FA Cup loss to Arsenal, City have looked ineffective, tired, out of sorts and generally completely unlike contenders for the Premiership. With our games in hand slowly running out, it was important to put 3 points on the board, and we did.

Barnsely, struggling at the wrong end of the division, came to win points by kicking us, and their number 12, Teymourian was yellow carded early and could have been sent off before half time. In the event, he went in the second half!

Ledley eased City nerves after just four minutes with a close range effort, and Chopra doubled the lead just before half time also with a close range effort. Were it not for the stretch of their 9ft goalie, it would have been three after Peter Whittingham's kick was pushed round the post.

That should have been that, but in true City style, we came out after the break, gave easy balls away and stood off. Barnsely to their credit kept coming, and Macken scored for them with his first touch 10 seconds after coming on as a sub.

Once Teymourian went though, the game opened up for City, and the introduction of Quincy beathed fresh life into the boys in blue, and he set up Whittingham for a peach of a third - the first time City have netted three times this term. And that, was that.

A special mention to Eddie Johnson, our on-loan striker from Fulham. He's been sat warming the nbecnh for most of the season, collecting 16 grand a week for the priviledge. When he has had chances (few and far between), he's looked as likely to score as my cat. Tonight he worked his socks off, and the 15,000 crowd got behind him and cheered everything (at least I think it was cheering). In the end he got the fans MoM award. He's still a donkey, but I hope he gets at least one goal before we inevitably let him go at the end of the season. He'd go down in Bluebirds history, alongside Leo Fortune-West (who could actually score) and Andy Campbell, who scored one of our most famous goals in the play-off final all those years ago, but was about as bad as they come.

Want a brand new Polycom Communicator?

I thought you did. Well, as luck would have it, I've got one going spare, and I've just lumped it on e-bay, so if you're interested, hot foot it over there by following this link to my listing.

You can read all about this device at Polycom's website.

Bummer: Southampton 1-0 City

Damn and blast it. This is NOT supposed to happen. City pushing for promotion, unbeaten in 13 league games and then we lose to the side 1 from bottom. Aaarrghhh!

The only saving grace was that Wolves and Reading lost too and Bristol City drew.

Can even be bothered to write anything I'm so gutted.

Test Post

This is a test post to check the stability of pictures posted via BlogPress




-- Post From My iPhone

Cricket

Whilst I'm promoting local Dinas Powys sport (see post below), here's a shout for my cricket club website (another one I developed and manage - it's a wonder I've got any time left over!).

Regular readers will know I'm pretty busy with cricket having been elected Chairman of the club for my sins last autumn, and the activity ratchets up another gear this weekend as the junior training/coaching kicks off in earnest. I'm look after the Under 15 side this year, along with our Club Captain, but I'll also be helping out with Under 11 and Under 13 nets. Then before you know it, the weather will be warming, the evenings will be light and outdoor training will follow and then the season kicks off in May. It's pretty much going to be cricket every day/night then. If I'm not coaching or managing the juniors, I'll be supporting the other junior/senior sides, and maybe, just maybe even get a few low key games in myself if the knee is up to it (don't tell my consultant and the physio).

You can check out and follow all Dinas Powys CC exploits on our website www.dinaspowyscc.co.uk

Skittles

I don't post too much about skittles on this site, though I play every week during the season (Sept - April). Probably this is because we have our own web site and I update that every week after our matches so it seems a bit pointless duplicating stuff here.

It's all good clean fun - well good fun anway. I used to be quite good too, but the last couple of years I've had a bit of a 'mare. Not sure if it's the arthritis in my hands, my dodgy knee, failing eyesight or a combination of all three.

Anyhows, this week for some bizarre reason it just all clicked and I hit a 35, my highest score for a couple of years. To put it in context, 25 is about an average roll (or rather it's 5 rolls of 3 balls each aggregated on the night) anything over 30 is classed as a good score, and 35 is pretty darn good (though I say so myself). My highest ever score was 42, but you rarely see a 40 - I've only seen two (including mine) in the 9 or 10 years I've been playing.

Pop on over to our site to read all about it this strange game, and the even stranger people who play it!

http://www.dpab.co.uk

Rubbish, but up to 4th: City 0-0 QPR

Just got back from Ninian Park after watching an appalling performance by City, in a 0-0 draw with QPR. How we managed to draw is a mystery. Apart from the first 10 minutes we were truly awful. QPR grew in confidence as the match went on, and the last 30 minutes it was all backs to the wall stuff. City had about 1 shot on target the whole game.

With Bothroyd injured, our front line of Chopra & McCormack, together with Burke on the wing, gave our attacking line up an average height of about 2ft 6in, against some pretty big defenders. But still all we did was hoof the ball up field.

We couldn't string two passes together, and Dimi Konsta-dropalot who gifted Wolves an equaliser on Sunday didn't look at all at home in the City goal.

So, one of our games in hand gone. At least we didn't lose, but how we managed to climb two places to fourth spot is quite frankly amazing. QPR must be gutted they didn't win this one.

The only bright spot, though it did get boring after about 89 minutes, was the constant and vociferous heckling of ex-City loanee Wayne Routledge, who turned his nose up at City earlier this season and walked out (literally by all accounts) to go to money sodden QPR. "What a waste of money" and "You greedy *%*$%^*" were a couple of the more polite offerings, and he was roundly cheered everytime he lost the ball or was tackled.

Oh, and by the way, the ref was a completse waste of space too.

Up the City. Can't be arsed to put an excalamtion mark after it tonight.

Got a Palm? Want WebOS? Try Teal OS

Can't wait for a Palm Pre? Well you can can get an idea about how Web OS is going to look by installing Teal OS onto your Palm device!

I've just installed a demo version onto my Palm Centro, and instantly converted it into a Pre! OK, not quite, but you get the idea. Actually it works quite well. It installs itself as the default launcher, although you can easily get to the standard Palm launcher if you want. Apart from that, it pretty much looks and functions in much the same way as the Pre Web OS videos I've seen.

The Centro's screen size and quality naturally limit some of the schmooze we've seen on Pre videos, but in practice it works quite well. In particualr the Centro's navigation key (something I miss dreadfully on the iPhone because it's just so easy to use) makes using this Teal OS a cinch fro navigating through the "cards". It's actually easier to use than a finger or a stylus, but then the Centro doesn't have a capacitive touch screen like the iPhone, and this does make things like the "wave launcher" that little bit more tricky to use - no doubt this will be much slicker on the Pre.

I've found it quite fun to mess around with Teal OS, and actually, it does freshen up the Palm interface. Like anything different, if you're a die hard Palm OS fanatic this will take some getting used to. But hey, give it a try. This IS the future for Palm, and Teal OS gives you a chance to get a preview before you can get your hands on a Pre.

PDA247 has a You Tube video clip of Teal OS in action

A point gained, or two dropped? Wolves 2-2 City

City failed to capitalise on a poor run by Wolves, despite being 2-1 up with 10 minutes to go. New signing, and debutant keepr Dimi Konstantopolous managed to score an own goal after Wolves had opened the scoring on 11 minutes, only for City to go ahead through goals by Chopra and Rodger Johnson.

The draw lifts City to 6th spot, with a two games in hand over Reading in 3rd, 3 over Bimingham in second, and 4 over Preston and Bristol City (5th and 4th) and Wolves Top. With Wolve 12 points in front and Birmingham 8 ahead, our fate therefore is still largely in our own hands, and it would be nice to get back to winning ways when we host QPR on Wednesday.

Up the City!

Docs to Go for iPhone comming soon? Also Dataviz App Store

The very good "The iPhone Blog" or "TiPB" as it's known has posted a story that will interest all "serious" smartphone users. It seems that they've seen an early version of the superb "Docs to Go" from Dataviz running on an iPhone, including dare I say it, a copy and paste function. You can read their post here.

It's early days of course, and there appear to be issues with the spreadsheet part of the app and the story talks about whether Apple would indeed "let the app" into it's App Store, so it seems it's not necessarily imminent, but TiPB are very enthused by it nevertheless.

So would I be. I've been a long time user of DtG on the Palm platform, and I think it's a brilliant application, and I'd be very interested in getting this on my iPhone

Whilst we're on the subject of Dataviz, they've also just launched their own "app store". Clearly jumping on the app store type bandwagon, it look at first sight just like any other online store, but I guess the key for Dataviz here is that they're moving away from an entirely software based provider standpoint to a whole mobile software and accessories basis. Whether they can compete in an already crowded mobile store marketplace we'll have to wait and see. Bear in mind that being US based, shipping from the States will cost you, so you probably wont want to be buying basic mobile accessories from them if you don't live Stateside.

Mobile weather apps. Are they worth it?

Now I don't consider myself to be a weather junkie, but have got 3 weather apps on my iPhone - four if you include web acess to the likes of BBC weather etc.

The first of course is the standard native and very basic iPhone app. The second is the far more comprehensive WeatherPro and the third is an iPhon eiteration of my favourite Palm weather app, Weather by Deluxeware that has recently made it to the iPhone.

The latter two apps have various bells and whistles, including forecast (up to 14 days in Weather's case), precipitation predictions, nice graphics, and in WetherPro's instance, satellite and radar tracking (not real time).

The bottom line though, is how good are they at accurately identifying the weather?

Well, in my opinion, not very is the answer. Take this morning. At 9am in Barry, South Wales it was bucketing down.

The standard iPhone weather app, which gives you one symbol for the entire day said it was cloudy (no rain). WeatherPro was indicating some cloud and sunny intervals, and Weath was the closest indicating light rain with a 30% precipitation probability.

The BBC weather website wasn't much better, suggesting the predominant forecast was "cloudy".

I know I'm not going to get 100% accuracy on these things, and that local weather conditions can vary significantly, but all these apps identify Barry easily enough and therefore must be attaching wetaher info to that location based on some premise. I'm going to keep an eye on these and see if in the longer term, it's actually worth hanging on to, or setting any store by any of them.

Waterfalls

Been up into the Brecon Beacons National Park today, for a walk along the "Four Falls" trail. This walk takes you past four pretty impressive waterfalls on the Felte and Hepste rivers.

This particular one pictured, is in my opinion the best of the four, and is called Sgwyd Eira which means "fall of snow". As you can see, you can walk right behind this waterfall from one side of the river to the other. Pretty impressive, and had Bethan grinning from ear to ear. It's a steep old walk down to the bottom, and an even steeper walk back up, but well worth it. You can also see I've tried to be a bit arty farty by slowing the shutter speed to get the illusion of the water flowing a bit.

There's something a bit spooky about the first photo. If you click on it to pull it up full size, and look just above the bottom of the waterfall to towards the right hand side, you can see a face in the water.

This is surely just a trick of light and water, but it makes you wonder and understand how people of olde might have thought places like this were the places of spirits. .

HTC Magic

So, the second "android" phone is out - or will be in April. HTC have announced the "Magic" at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, although strangely on Vodafone's website (yes, it's looking like it's going to be tied to one operator - again - at least to start with), the image is named "HTC_Pioneer".

Anyway, it looks like it's going to be stuffed full of all the latest hi-tech stuff we'd expect of a 2009 smartphone, minus a keyboard, unlike it's older brother the G1 which had a slide out qwerty. Other than specs, which appear fairly comprehensive, there's not much else yet available. The image galler is surprisingly sparse (and poor to look at IMHO). I've fiddled with a G1 in a T-Mobile store, and wasn't overly impressed. At first glance, I'm not overawed by this hardware either. The one I'm still looking forward to is the Palm Pre.

No FA Cup glory this year: Arsenal 4-0 City

There'll be no FA Cup glory this year. Last night City went down 4-0 to the Gunners at tehir gaff, the hugely impressive Emirates Stadium.

Along with several thousand other Bluebirds fans me, Mini-Stats and our friend and his son made the trip down the M4 to London. Tube ride in from Cockfosters right to the doorstep of the stadium

The stadium is massive, and personally I think fare more impressive, both inside and out, and Wembley. Sadly, City weren't so impressive. After an enforced two week layoff, they looked rsuty and not match sharp, whilst Arsenal were right up for this, following their unimpressive showing at Ninina Park.

Frankly, it was all one way traffic, and it was a surprise they held out so long, but once Eduardo (inevitably in his comeback game) had opened the scoring, it was only ever going to be a case of how many. The fact that it was only four, was entirely due to the outstanding Tom Heaton, back in goal as Enckleman is injured and the cover brought in (Konstantopulous) was cup tied. Heaton made about half a dozen outstanding close range saves that would have otherwise led to a very embarrassing scoreline.

So that's the FA Cup for another year. The sage amongst us nod wisely and say, well at least we can concentrate on the league, and with the points we've got, plus up to 4 games in hand on some above us, an almost sure fire play-off place (unless something really stupid happens), and an outsdie chance of automatic promotion if we can win those games in hand.

Lets just hope that defeat doesn't start the rot, and we can get at least a point out of our trip to Wolves on Sunday.

Up the City!

NewsStand update

My preferred RSS reader on the iPhone, Newsstand, has been updated. In my opinion for whatever that's worth, it'scurrently the best iPhone RSS reader app by a country mile. It offered a decent view in portrait, and a "pretty" but less functional "book" type view in landscape.

This update adds a landscape view in the feed list as well as an improved story view in the landscape mode. Other changes seem more cosmetic with feed icons being tidied a bit.

It's still highly recommended, but I wish they'd put the next/previous buttons at the bottom of the screen which would make for much easier one handed operation.


-- Post From My iPhone

BlogPress update

My preferred iPhone blogging app "BlogPress" has been updated again. This update promises a fix to the known scrolling and disappearing text issues. Strangely, these problems had disappeared for me on the previous update.

Installing - or rather updating this new version seemed to resurrect all those problems again. Not very clever.

However I uninstalled the app completely from my iPhone, and reinstalled the latest version by syncing with iTunes and this seem to have done the trick. Hopefully everything will be stable from now on. I'm looking forward to continued development of this app, as it's the best of the iPhone blogging bunch out there at the moment in my opinion.


-- Post From My iPhone

UPDATE
That's funny. Reinstalling from iTunes after uninstalling from the iPhone hasn't actually updated BlogPress as I thought it had. the Appstore icon is still telling me there's an update to BlogPress. I think I'm going to leave this alone for the moment, as the app's working for me without the update.

Congratulations

To my niece Elizabeth and her husband Stephen on the birth of their (as yet un-named) baby boy on Friday 6th February, coming into the world at a fine 8lb 2oz in old money.

Arcade Bowl for iPhone

Another great iPhone app is Arcade Bowl costing £1.19. It's a simple recreation of the old arcade game (strange isn't it - the clue's in the title) where you bowl a ball into a set of holes and score points for doing so. You get 9 balls in the classic game to score as many points as you can, and in the Progressive game, you have to score 200 or more points with your 9 balls to progress, then 220, then 240 etc etc.

The graphics are good, the gameplay is good enough to be very addictive. I can't put it down.

Way out man!

Murray over at Palm-Mac posted the other day regarding the "oldBooth" iPhone app that enables you to create an "old style" photo from a modern. one.

Murray's take on it - "Pointless but funny". I have to agree. I downloaded the free version first, but you only get about 4 options. The "premium" version is a whopping 59p, and worth every penny. I've been in stitches messing about with it. The best 59p I've spent for a long time. Highly recommended!

I think I look rather fetching....wish I had that much hair now!

Pocket Informant for iPhone

I found out today via a post on PDA247 about the Quest for an iPhone ToDo app (thanks Alloafan) that Web IS who make the well respected Pocket Informant PIM app for Windows Mobile (and the Blueberry - sorry Blackberry) are not far off releasing a version for the iPhone.

I tried PI on a WM device I had once, and quite liked it. It was certainly very comprehensive. Given the iPhone's generally not very good PIM fucntions (compared to other "smartphones") this could be just the app that a lot of people are looking for.

I'm sure though that they won't have been able to overcome the inherent problems with most PIM apps, caused by Apples reluctance to open the SDK enough to allow background running , but the screen shots on the webiste (see the above link) certainly look refreshing.

The actual app by all accounts is just about ready. What's holding the submission to Apple for ratification is the sync side of things, but the Web IS blog assures us that this too is nearing completion.

I've signed up for email alerts on this, as I'll be quite interested to give it a run. No word on price yet, but I don't suppose this is an app that'll be given away at 59p!

Cheap but slow

It's funny how you notice certain things. For the second time in a couple of weeks I've filled my car up with diesel at a Morrisons's supermarket. For the second time I've been concious of how slow the pump delivered the fuel compared to other garages I use. It's seriously slower. Granted I put 50 litres in, but I usually put about that much in it doesn't take that long!

It was so bad I was getting self concious about the time it was taking.

Back to Asda's next time!

-- Blogged From My iPhone

It's all Greek to me

We're off to Greece again this summer - though it seems distant at the moment! When abroad I always try to get stuck in with a bit of local lingo. I find it intersting and general the attempt is well received even if it's not very good. However, all that may change. I've just downloaded the Lastminute.com talking Greek phrasebook from the App store for my iPhone!

It' gives a wide range of basic but essential (and some not so essential) phrases, the Greek written version and the opportunity to hear the phrase being said in Greek. It's very clever and if I play around enough might get fluent enough to order my beer!

Even better, it's free and there are loads of other languages available too.

The only downside is the volume of the spoken phrases is quite low, something reflected in nearly all the reviews, so hopefully the developer might eventually fix that.

Otherwise, well worth the zilcho asking price!

PC problems

If you've been following this blog for a while, you may remember that I have had intermittent problems with my main PC. I guess if you've had any PC for a while you, or someone you know will have had problems with it, but that's another story...maybe.

Anyway, what happens is that from time to time the thing freezes for no apparent reason. Then refuses to boot, or takes a long time to boot, or goes to the restore screen...you get the idea. It's an HP/Compaq machine with 3G ram running Vista Home Premium. I've virus checked it, spyware checked it, etc etc all with no results.

The other day it started again after about 2 months with no problems. Ram a memory test using Memtest a free and comprehensive memory testing tool. No issues there. Got the nmachine back up and running (not sure how) but then noticed that it wasn't recognising my DVD/Re-writer. rebooted, checked the BIOS settings etc, but still no recognition. Got the back off the PC, checked the cables and everything appeared to be plugged in correctly. But I did change the power cable to a new power outlet on the motherboard, and then rebooted.

Voila! Drive recognised. I wonder therefore if I've either got a dodgy motherboard generally, or there's a problem with one (or more) of the power outlets on the board.

Everything seems to be back to normal, so fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes.

As an aside, I'd done some pretty comprehensive googling about Vista boot problems and missing CD/DVD drives, and the nearest thing I've found to my symptoms was recorded here. This recommends fishing around in the registry and deleting some keys - something I'm not averse to, and have done before - and the keys in question are visible in my registry, so there may be an issue, but as everything seems to be working at the moment, I'll leave this and try it if it happens again.

By the way, whatever did we do before Google?

Let it snow

After the rest of the country came to a grinding halt today, it was finally our turn here in South East Wales, as the snow eventually started at about 7pm. As I write at 10pm it's still going (not blizzard like by any stretch) but it's laying and there's about an inch on the ground. Kids are really buzzing (or they were before they went to bed) as the school may well be closed tomorrow.

Chops is a Bluebird - for the 3rd time

Cardiff City have re-signed Michael Chopra - for the 3rd time! After his initial spell ended and he was sold to Sunderland, you'll recall City secured him on a months loan at the back end of 2008. However the managerial regime changed on Wearside, and it appeared his future was back with the Black Cats. Today though came the news that most City fans (myself included) wanted to hear. We've got him until the end of the season, and it looks like, a permanent move in the summer. This little lot comes to £4m, comortably City's biggest spend on any one player, but if he stays, and if he scores half as many goals as he did for us first time round, it'll be a steal.

And what makes it even better, is that we haven't had to sell any of our "stars" to get him. This signals City's intent, and I'm dead chuffed we managed to get him back.

Still on a plus, me and Mini-Stats have got tickets for City's re-arranged 4th round tie against Arsenal at the Emirates. After tomorrows replay was called off because Arsenal don't like the cold (only joking....no really I am...) the match was orginally switched to Sat 14th Feb. Great thinks I, a weekend. Don't have to take a day off work and don't have to pull Mini out of school. So I rang up, bought my tickets. 2 hours later, get a text saying they've moved it to the Monday (16th). So I will have to take a day off work, Luckily Mini will be on half term. Why the late switch? My guess is that the Saturday match wasn't going to be on that well used telly channel Setanta whilst Monday 16th will be.

Up the City!