Archive | July, 2007
The GPS on the Nokia is great, but there will come a time when my Nokia N95 talks to me as I drive. Now I have never tried that, I hate taking advice at most times, and driving is certainly no exception
To tell the truth I am a newbie to this Sat Nav/ GPS laugh, further I know that it is completely uneccessary and I cant think of a use for it – but I am a saddo, it is true, and I want to experience the trance like state of driving without wondering about the destination. Maybe this will allow me to achieve a spiritual Nirvana, no longer asking questions about : how do I get there? Which is the best path?, but just coasting idly and enjoying the Journey.
Whichever is the best method of installing some navigation software onto my Nokia N95 I will have to try it soon. I have looked at Wayfinder, Smart2Go, Nokias own bundled software and some other stuff online, but I am confused, I need direction.
Last week I was looking for nicole miller dresses as it was my mistress’s birthday and she loves the slinky style of the designer who
combines the ideas of elegance and rebellion to achieve a subtle sexiness that is the essence of modern femininity
I found a great selection online and was drawn to either the Nicole Miller Bubble Dress or the Nicole Miller Silk Charmeuse, wither of which would have ‘gone down’ well with my unofficial partner.
In the end I settled on a simple nicole miller dress which was both sexy, rebellious and well priced.
Now, I work all day, in an office, like many people, sitting at my desk with a keyboard, mouse and monitor for company. I have a telephone also – a Toshiba System Phone with lots of buttons; I tend not to make many outgoing calls, usually it is our clients who call me with requests or support queries. I am lucky enough to have been supplied with the most wonderful headset ever invented – well so it appears to me. In my old job, one which required me to be both on the phone and accessing online databases simultaneously. I had to juggle handset and mouse, often adopting that ‘semi-shrug’ which jams the phone to your neck painfully and precariously. My new telephone headset is a Plantronics CS60 Headset.
The headset is superb, it is powered by DECT Technology, meaning that it is connected to the phone on a 2.4Ghz signal which allows me to wander about the office whilst on a call, the manual boasts that it can achieve a 300m range in ideal conditions. That would be ideal as there is a nice public house just over the road from our office, but I have tried and the headset cuts out just as I cross the road.
So I sit at my desk and strap on the headset. If the office telephone rings I have a small beep in my ear and can press a button on the headset and the handset lifter picks up the handset in a smooth operation and the call is immediately transferred to the Plantronics headset. When the call is over I press the button again and the handset goes down and all is peaceful again.
The Plantronics CS60 Headset is lightweight ( I rarely notice its presence) and the battery life is great – it must have a talk time of several hours after an overnight charge as I have never had a problem and do, sometimes get forced into laborious conversations lasting all day it seems. The headset also has a built in acoustic shock protector which means that if a sharp load noise is transmitted to the earpiece it will cut out in order to save my eardrums – very thoughtful.
So as a person who is involved with customer support and client liaison all day in an office, on the telephone and at my PC I can heartily recommend the Plantronics CS60, it makes your whole desk and office environment more ergonomic and enjoyable. Plantronics Headsets are available on line at a retailer like Best4Headsets. Plantronics are the market leaders in headsets and even supplied headsets for the first trip to the moon.
I was idly browsing the web when I found an online Telephone retailer who specialise in Home Phones when I got to thinking about home phones and who actually uses them…
I have got a contract with Orange, the mobile phone provider, which costs me around £35 a month ( one of the animal contracts ) and I have 500 minutes of cross network minutes included – that is 6 hours and 20 minutes . No way I speak that much on the phone a month. As I am running with a general surplus of hundreds of minutes I never use my home phone, and noone ever calls me on it. My conversations are masculine to the max, the linguistic equivalent of bullet points. I arrange with my friends complex itineraries and discover how they and their extended families are getting on with health, education and employment in about 20 short syllables. When we are together, of course, our expressiveness takes on a more expansive manner.
In direct contrast to this ‘zipped up’ / compressed method of communication favoured by myself and, I believe, my sex; is the way in which our partners hover and flutter around the subject of a sentence like butterflies around a flower. They will not construct conversations, communications of a specific aim and action. For example :
Derek “lets go beach for a swim”
Clive “yep, see you there at 7, bring some tinnies”
this is the male version and you will see that they manage to convey logical and specific aims and actions with definitive lingustic devices
On the other hand :
Shirley “not very nice weather yesterday eh, Jane”
Jane “no Shirl,not very nice at all.”
Shirley “but it looks like its is better today, eh Jane?”
Jane “yes, sun is shining, weather is hot” – giggles
Shirley “must be beautiful down the beach right now”
Jane hhmm, how are the kids?”
Shirley “fine, did you get that new TV?”
Jane “yes, and I think it was down to the struggle in south america“Shirley “I was thinking that also, it explains his influences, artistically and philosophically”
Shirley “beach will be nice later this evening”
Jane “Lets meet down there later..”
…here I have removed 10 further lines of text in order to preserve your sanity and the formatting of this page
Jane “OK, see you there at 7, bring some tinnies”
The conversations above are real, I promise you, I swear to god.
What we, as linguists, and sentinent beings can derive from the conversations above is that if you want something done quickly, ask a man ( ask any woman and they will agree ), if you want something explored, chewed on, ruminated, gestated, regurgitated and finally decorated then get a woman to do it. In most cases the woman will produce a finer, more beautiful and longer lasting creation with the same ingredients as a man would; just they will take the scenic rather than the linguistically direct one.
Getting back to the main point of this diatribe, we only have a land line phone because of her, my sweet and beauteous partner, who likes to communicate with her friends, family and strangers whilst trying to get to the point. I could save a fortune if I ditched the landline telephone. I can get by on my 6 hours and 20 minutes a month handsomely. I should ring up NTL (Virgin Media I mean) and let them know that I don’t need a landline as all my calls are more than covered by my mobile tarrif. So I sit and think about it a while. I have a gorgeous DECT cordless home phone with answermachine, twin handsets, a SIM card reader, colour screens, polyphonic ringtones etc etc, but I dont need it. I am happy with my Nokia N95, all the calls are free, and I have GPS Satellite Navigation. ( I actually bought it for my partner but she laughed at having GPS when she can’t actually remember ever having been lost, and, indeed, don’t I claim to have a superb sense of direction??? )anyway , suffice it to say that I have carefully considered the pros and cons of losing the landline, even asking some of my friends and work colleagues what they think:
“yep why not”, “should save you a fortune”, “do it”, “ugh”
So I am convinced, my mind is made up. I will not give it a moment’s further consideration…
and then the home phone rings, it is my mum, she wants a chat, I leave the room and sit down in the kitchen and put the kettle on, the large handset sits comfortably in my hand, my feet creep up onto the table, aah this is nice………..
Ongoing fun with the Nokia N95 and its beatiful integrated GPS Satellite Navigation ( Sat Nav ). You have to hand it t o the americans for uploading all those satellites.
Luke writes :“ I have just set up the routemaster gps on my phone and if you haven’t done it already you’ll love it – go to: www.wisepilot.com where they are offering a free 5 day trial of their Navigation Software for the Nokia N95 and other mobiles.„
I go to check it out, but am held back by earlier experiences of data charges whilst driving.
The Nokia N95 is so fully featured that one is sure that it has been created by Nokia’s most generous and benevolent development team who saw it as a chance to stake their claim as maket leaders in mobile telephones. They should revive, what I suspect was a slightly flagging brand-loyal customer base and may have made the iPhone redundant in the UK before it is even released.
I am on the road to nowhere, but at least I know where I am.
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Posted in Travel on 03. Jul, 2007
Now, you are looking to reserve a hotel and you don’t know where to start. I travel often and many time I book a flight only package and have to ferret around online looking for a cheap room.
I was directed recently to a great site offering hotel discounts for rooms all over the world.
Just to check the system I entered Chania ( a smallish town on the north coast of Crete ) and was very pleased ( and I must say suprised ) to find 25 results. This, to me, is proof that Hotel Reservations has a large database of cheap hotels all over the world.
When I get off a flight in a foreign country the first thing I want is to get right out and into a hire car. I was glad to note that Hotel Reservations also allows you to search for a hire car, not just with one rental agent, but through several different companies.
Exploring the Hotel Reservations site further I was pleased to see it has a truly international format. You can easily select from a list of languages and have the further option of changing the displayed currency.
The site also contains a very comprehensive city guides section and, exploring it to an obscure level I found an entry for a small village on the south coast of Crete, Plakias. Now this is, on a global scale, an obscure place, but Hotel Reservations managed two well written paragraphs on it as well as a link to some cheap hotels in the area.
The website was easy to use and gave me great results for whatever I searched for. As I am in the process of booking a family holiday and on the lookout for a cheap hotel ( along with car hire ) I shall be bookmarking and revisiting the website very shortly.
