It has been a pleasant day, marred only by a few niggles and a disappointment ...
Rose arrived bright and early, and we passed a very pleasant few hours chatting. She made me some leek and carrot soup which was absolutely delicious, and brought me some clean clothes. I would be totally lost without her support and I love her dearly.
On the medical front, now that my platelets are low, I am beset by a persistently recurring nosebleed. So far it has not been serious, but it makes me think twice before blowing my nose! I also have developed a slightly swollen neck and a rash on my shoulders. I showed the doctor when she visited, and she says it is a mild allergic reaction to one of the plethora of drugs I am taking. Since neither is giving me any discomfort, we will just monitor for the time being. My red cell count dropped again, so I am currently getting some blood (red cells only), in addition to the usual,saline drip that will go on overnight.
After Rose left, I finished my book, and you will have seen the review by now. Then, I noticed that the App store had three updates for me, the most exciting of which was that BTfon is now available for iPad ...
BTfon is the app that gives access to all of BT's WiFi hotspots in the UK. There are tons in London needless to say. I was very excited to think I could be free of 3G. The app firstly ran out of memory, and runs quite slowly even after a reboot of the iPad, but sure enough I am surrounded by hotspots ... except up here on the 13th floor I cannot connect to any of them. I tried in vain for a while, and then gave up. I am stuck with 3G.
And stuck is the right word mostly. Although it promised up to 5M, or maybe realistically 2M, I ran a broadband meter on my line, with 5 bars of reception, and find I get just over 750K! This is the root of my problems with the BBC iPlayer - not enough bandwidth. In fact, this morning at 9am when the youth of today were all still slumbering after a night on the raz, I was able to watch a programme from the iPlayer, but even then it could not stream fast enough and kept pausing. At least for me, where I am (in a high rise block in the middle of London), the 3G hype is not matched by reality. I think I get 10/10 for effort, but no cigar!
By now you already know that this blog app crashed on me - not a great day for my IT infra! This was the second update from the App store. There remains a Kindle update, but now I am nervous they'll break that ... No, surely Amazon has some quality control!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Hi Ian, sounds like you have been busy but not necessarily with the most productive outcome! I can sympathise with the broadband width and problems with BBC iplayer - we are 7km from the exchange so we can get broadband but only half a meg, therefore video streaming not a viable option. Pity they can't move you to a room with decent wi-fi access! On the book front, I can recomment Prey by Michael Crichton; it is futuristic rather than sci-fi, as the subject is based on nanotechnology, but it is a very good read and both Cathy and I liked it a lot. Timeline is another good one of his. Peter has gone to put more photos onto Tony's laptop today. Tony is coping quite well so far with it, but I am sure he will have a lot more questions once broadband is live. It is at least keeping them occupied and putting a smile on their faces, so is mostly worth all the effort in helping them get to grips with computing! Mary is at last much better and almost back to her normal self, which is pleasing. I have noticed that our blog posts come up as Peter and amp: Sue, for some unknown reason, I have no idea why it is doing that as it just shows Peter & Sue when previewing! Hope today is a good day for you. All the best, Sue
ReplyDeleteThe ampersand you used when naming yourself is an illegal character in a web address. The protocol for fixing this is called escaping, and the special character that introduces an escape sequence is &. Thus, & represents the illegal &. Quotes are not allowed either, a " would be shown as ". I am not sure where google uses your name in an address, but obviously it thinks it needs to. You can fix it by changing your name to Pete and Sue.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have a 3G iPad too and streaming is not do-able without buffering, like Youtube. If the BBC iPlayer does not buffer then its unusable on 3G. I can't get the iPlayer in the US because it refuses to stream to internet addresses outside the UK.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you can acquire the password for the hospital wi-fi by cajoling some nurses or doctors. They must have devices that need to be connected to the internet. Or better still, surreptitiously install a Wi-Fi router behind a computer on your hospital floor.
BTW. Another alternative is to use VNC from your iPad to your home computer to download stuff and somehow get them into the cloud for download to your iPad. I did that when I was on vacation in China. I did not bring my laptop with me, only my iPad. Also, China bans Facebook so I vnc'ed home and accessed FB from there and posted my photos on the go. I use iTeleport but there are a few others. Not sure if it would be a satisfactory solution for movies. You need someone at home to reboot your PC if it hangs - but thats what Rose is for, right? :) And when are you getting on FB?
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