Under development

Posted on 18 Aug 2006 at 12:19

David Robinson - who needs his beauty sleep more than most - has his preparations for a half-marathon interrupted by a spider setting off his burglar alarm

"Ring, ring. Ring, ring." At first I thought it was the phone thrush, a bird that lives in our garden and has learned to imitate a telephone. It's one of a family that's been doing this for over 10 years and they pass on the trick to the next generation.

But it wasn't the bird. It was still dark - 3.18am, to be exact - and it was the real phone making the noise. I answered and a female voice told me that the burglar alarm in the office had been triggered and that I needed to go and attend to it. This was the last thing I needed as I was due to run the Humber Bridge half-marathon the following day and a decent night's sleep is one of the prerequisites for a decent time.

Despite the temptation to ignore the call, I had to go as the police had already been called and were expecting to meet me there. The chances of a genuine burglary are small as all the doors and windows are barred and we don't have anything worth stealing. I can just see a thief going down the pub trying to flog a blade server the size of a Roman legionnaire's battle shield, promising some spotty youth that it's just the thing for running Grand Theft Auto. That's assuming he could get it out of the rack cabinet in under an hour.

FALSE NEGATIVES

I get to the office, meet the police and check the place over. As expected, it's a false alarm (it was probably a spider in a sensor; it usually is). Both policemen decline my offer of coffee as, it seems, their shift ends in 10 minutes. I don't want coffee either because I have notions of going back to bed, but I have to wait for the alarm engineer to come and reset the system. If I see any sign of him inside an hour, I'll be lucky.

So what to do while I wait? Having the time to make a choice is a luxury; most days it's a case of nose to the keyboard from the word go. When I look at my office in the cold light of dawn the number one priority is clear: the place is a tip and a good tidy-up is called for. It's not as bad as Robert's desk (a client who's not actually seen the wood surface for years), but it's not good.

The in-tray's a good place to start. I once read that the most efficient way to handle an in-tray is to keep putting new stuff on the top (the heap system) and rummage through it when you need to find something. Then, once a month, you take the bottom third and simply chuck it away on the grounds that (a) it stops the heap getting ever bigger and (b) if anything in there was really important, you'd have already found it while rummaging. It's a brave man who operates the system ruthlessly.

I bottle out and rummage through, keeping the stuff that warrants any action. I'm left with a pile half-an-inch thick and a two-foot heap of junk mail. Next time I'll trust the system.

UPWARDLY MOBILE

Then there are the seven PDAs. There's my Palm Zire 72, a Palm Tungsten TX with WiFi (very nice), a Fujitsu Loox, two Symbol PT8800s with built-in barcode scanners, an Aceeca Palm-powered scanner PDA and a Datalogic Skorpion. Each has a power supply and a USB cable and, obviously, I can't employ the in-tray method here. The Symbols are for a customer and will go soon, while the Aceeca is on loan from Varlink (www.varlink.co.uk) for me to evaluate.

The problem I find with Windows CE/Pocket PC/Mobile-based devices is that the battery life between charges is less than I'd really want and not as good as you get on Palm-based PDAs. The Aceeca is rugged with a built-in scanner, and is Palm-based so it promises "longer life". Sadly, I don't like it much as the operating system is quite old and a bit clunky compared to the likes of the Tungsten and Zire. What's more, the screen is low-res mono and is really hard to read compared to the others. Still, Varlink is a good company to deal with and will lend developers units for evaluation so you know exactly what you're getting if you choose a unit for a project.

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