I’m being stubborn, and have returned to Plan B to get Gentoo running on my MiniITX - discovered it was bacause I was using a ludicrously small hard drive - 1.6GB - scratched around dead machines and found a 3GB one and it seems to be fine so far.

Still doing the initial install, but looking good. Trying to sort the pam-login / shadow blocking

I’m now looking forward (?) to the long process of getting everything up to date and stable - the question is: should I try recompiling the kernel and installing the bluez / ussp-push stuff first?

As Dell-Boy says ‘He who dares, Rodney!’

Somehow I managed to screw up a Gentoo install on my MiniITX system (what finally did it was lost networking so I couldn’t fix broken packages, and a lot was broken) so I thought I’d think of alternatives.

I’ve played with Pebble in the past which is based on a stripped down Debian, and I got on with it quite well, so I downloaded a minimal install CD image, and quickly got a system up, even managed to get bluez-utils installed without much trouble.

It was too good to last though - the last tool I needed was ussp-push to do the OBEX push, and it turns out it’s not a stable Debian package yet.

Unless I want to take a big chunk of the system to unstable packages, I need a plan C.

I can’t believe there’s so little out there about this stuff!

Here’s another little anomaly - I’m having a play with a revised mobile version of my firm’s Trainblog, and a simple thing like the ‘post a comment’ form trips me up - limited support for the textarea tag.

This is going to be fun…

This is what these sites should be about - putting stuff back to the comunity!

I’m going to write up what I’ve been finding out about delivering content to mobile devices, and the first problem is detecting handheld devices

Obviously, this is work in progress, but hey! It’s a start!

There are only so many hours in a day, and unfortunately I still need quite a few hours sleep a night. Plus there’s a certain amount of effort I have to put in at work to justify the monthly pay check.

That leaves a limited amount of Jim time, and I’m quite an inquisitive chap; the list of things I’d like to try or investigate are huge.

In case you’re thinking ‘why is he wasting his precious time blogging’ - a/ I’m on a train so making use of lost time b/ the blogging experience is on my list, and c/ so are mobile devices so I’m trying the pda.

I bought a copy of .netmag and was initially thrilled by a relatively high concentration of new ideas and things to look / re-look into, but after 30 minutes the reality hit home - I haven’t got time to look into a fraction of this new stuff without dropping from my current todo list, and things are on that list for a reason - I want to do them.

So the noise filter switched on and I started skimming. What got ignored - ego trips,opinions, css tutorials, design hints, anything with the term ‘API’ init, basically a big chunk of the magazine.

What I realise is lighting my fire at the moment is varying methods of content delivery, and organisation, and management, which is probably why the bulk of Jim time at the moment is spent playing with blogging tools, templates, and xhtmlmp.

So what is it that irritates me most about WM5? It’s got to be the lack of feedback about why things aren’t working.

I’m a bit of a geek, and a fiddler, and have a great talent for pushing boundaries and breaking things. But also for persevering and eventually getting things working as well as possible.

I’ve also recently been breaking the habit of a lifetime, and have started to RTFM - perhaps this is my problem?

OK - specifics - I ‘acquired’ this PDA of mine to experience the Internet on mobile devices (other than my phone) and to do this you normally need Internet connectivity. So I’m trying to get wifi working with some success, and I wad hoping to get my phone to provide access via bluetooth when wifi isn’t available.

Connectivity through the phone has been a total no-go so far - it seems to want modems and phone numbers. Wifi access when it works is great, but it can be a right fiddle connecting sometimes - and here’s where some form of feedback would be great.

There’s no convincing indication that connectivity is in place, other than trying to connect to something like Google. I miss the command line, ipconfig and ping.

My current suspicion is DNS but without some decent utilities I can’t prove that. I have tried installing or using a variety of connection managers including Hitchhiker but none are working.

So I’ve been playing with my PDA for a couple of days now, and the general reaction is … a hell of a tool with a massive potential that somehow doesn’t get realised.

Now the hardware is great, despite a battery life that could do with improving, the problem has to be with the operating system - in this case Windows Mobile 5.0

The challenge is immense - limited processing power, memory, difficult user interface, high expectations of the users who are used to full PCs, but I still want … more.

It’s the little things; the browser is very, very basic, no command line leaves you guessing why things aren’t working, and it just doesn’t quite feel finished.

I suppose it’s still early days yet, and I’m keen to keep on trying, to work with the thing and try to improve sites I build to work better on mobile devices.

Postscript - found a natty utility which is sorting all my problems - http://www.cam.com/vxutil.html

It’s going to take a bit of fiddling to get it working how I want, and integrating with the layout and styles when I get round to it (working nicely on mobile devices of course).

Then all I need to do is start putting some content in!

So I’ve had my new toy for a couple of days now - and it has been a real eye-opener. But that was the idea.

Surfing on mobiledevices is … different.

Many bad experiences, mostly sites are usable, but every now and then you come across the odd gem.

Two I’d like to pick out now - probably not surprising:
- BBC
- Google and if you want to access email from mobile, gmail is superb on mobile devices!

More soon - including making this site work better using xhtmlmp

One of the perks of my job is that we’re actively encouraged to tinker - one of my favourite activities.

So I got myself a PDA, and have had my eyes opened to a radically different view of the internet.

This site for one needs an overhaul.