Home at Last

I've been catching up today. Amazing what a backlog of things to read build up when you're away for a fortnight, both on paper (the latest Private Eye came on Wednesday for example) and on the Net.

I will try to sum up some thoughts about the Scotland trip later but for today here's some other bits and bobs. First an old XKCD cartoon appeared in my RSS feed while I was away for no good reason and if you're a mathematician and a James Bond fan¹ then it's for you.

Second I can say now (as Beth's not going with me so there will be someone home minding the house) that I'm off sailing late next week. My friend Jenny, the now ex-mayor of Cambridge, is sailing around Great Britain² and the current plan is that I'm crewing on the leg from Bridlington to Aberdeen. I'm going to blog online as I go, assuming I can get phone reception each night, which I should be able to do.

I'm currently wondering whether to take this laptop, my Nokia 770 or treat myself to a Nokia N800 or N810 as the 770 seems to be getting a bit flaky lately.

I'm also thinking about trying to do real time position updates via GPS and mobile phone so you can track our actual course however I'm having problems finding good combinations of software to do this with at the moment. What I really want is a Java application which will run on my phone, talk to my Bluetooth GPS and sent periodic position updates to a server, preferably my server, via the Net. Thus far I'm having problems finding anything that works with the hardware I have.

If anyone's got any thoughts on any of this do let me know.

1. See that, that's me that is.
2. She's cheating slightly, she's using the Caledonian Canal to avoid the tricky bit over the top of Scotland.