Although I'm generally considered quite technical, I'm usually well behind the cutting edge when it comes to gadgets. My phone came second hand and my Palm is about 4 years old. I just find it hard to justify the cost of the latest and greatest. I hardly use my phone, but have it for when I might need it. The Palm gets a fair bit of use as an address book, calendar and general information store. It also sees occaisional usage as my audio player and I just acquired another 1GB card so I can carry more music for when I travel. The Palm and phone do not talk to each other at all, so cannot exchange data or allow me to get mail or web on the move apart from the very basic, text only web the phone can do.

Meanwhile, people I know have all sorts of wonderful toys. The main one these days is the combined PDA/phone/media device. This has some appeal as it would reduce the number of gadgets I carried around, but they always seem to compromise on something. They do seem to be getting closer to my ideal mobile gagdet. This would have the following features:

• Good colour screen - Big enough for basic web browsing
• Internet access - For the odd browse when I really need to
• Email - Mainly for when travelling as I'm generally not far from a PC
• Camera - Something around 2MP would be useful. The VGA unit on the Palm is not much good
• Removable storage - Preferably some form of SD, mainly for music. I can get by with a couple of GB
• Music player - Has to support Ogg
• Software - I'd like the option to install various useful software. The Symbian platform looks good, but there are limited Palm options too. I'm not sure I need/want Windows
• Bluetooth - Seems to be standard these days. Will allow me to play with GPS
• Wi-fi - Would be nice to have to make use of all these hot-spots that are appearing, especially the free ones
• Phone - I just need the basics. I'm on PAYG as I only spend the odd quid in a month so nobody is going to give me a cheap/free upgrade
• Not too expensive - Naturally

Some people have models from the Nokia Nseries that seem pretty close to what I want. It looks like wi-fi pushes the price up, but I think that whatever device I get next has to have that feature as it will open up posibilities.

I'm not desperate to buy and obviously prices will drop, but then the next wonderful thing appears. Maybe I'll get a bonus and can splash out. Alternatively I could pick up a slightly older unit when others upgrade. Meanwhile, I will be monitoring the trends. Recommendations welcome.

I've now installed my new Hauppauge Nova-T PCI DVB card. It was recognised immediately by Kaffeine and I was able to scan for channels. I was actually quite impressed that I got a good signal despite using a passive aerial splitter to also feed the main TV. Watching TV is generally fine, but does get the odd glitch. This may be due to processor load rather than the signal. Kaffeine has the option to schedule recordings from the EPG. I need to test this more as for one programme it did not record all of it. I did manage to record part of Once Upon a Time in Mexico and it played back totally smoothly. It's also possible to pause live TV and continue watching from that point. Video eats about 2GB per hour.

I do have some issues with Kaffeine. It doesn't seem to allow for sorting the channels and you have to leave it running for scheduled recordings. This can cause clashes with other software that uses sound, but that's a general Linux issue for me. I did get the remote control that comes with the card to work, but need to work out what Kaffeine functions should be used for most of the buttons.

I may look at other DVB software. ZapDvb looks interesting. It looks like it might handle recording better by prioritising scheduled recordings that are run using cron. It also allows for recording radio channels to Ogg so I could copy directly to my Palm for mobile listening.

At some stage I will look at archiving recordings to DVD. This requires looking into editing and converting the files to the appropriate format. Meanwhile it gives an extra option for watching Freeview channels that may prevent squabbles.

Another well attended meeting. I took my PC and monitor along to try and get some help on a couple of issues. One was an apparently dead keyoard, but only on one user account. Turned out to be the Slow Keys option was turned on so you had to hold a key down for ages before it did anything. The other was my intermittent USB card. Reseated the PCI card and okay so far. Also had a go at installing a graphics card I got from Rob, but was hampered by a total inability to get into the BIOS screen. Something strange there.

As promised by Nicolas we had wireless networking. There was a Zaurus, an XDA and a Nokia 770 all accessing the web as well as the odd laptop. I'll have to get myself some sort of wireless device one day.

The featured presentation of the evening was by Malc on the delights of BASH. I certainly learnt a lot. Malc used my PC and learnt that you could have multiple KDE/X sessions running as I generally do.

Other news: I decided not to go for the Acer GPS so I'm looking at alternatives. The NAViGPS looks appealing for the price. I might have to go for the more expensive model with Bluetooth in case I get a PDA with that facility.

I just took delivery of a digital TV card (Hauppauge Nova-T PCI) so that I can use the PC to watch and record TV. I'm hoping it won't be too complex to get it working on Linux.

I heard a story on the radio news whilst away about a fake psychic conning people out of their money. Could give those real psychics a bad name. I would expect better of the BBC, but then Steve Wright gives over a fair bit of his show to an astrologer. Meanwhile, loony preachers condemn mathematics as non-Christian. That's the attitude that held up human development for a few hundred years. Mind you, the muslims, hindus and other 'heathens' invented a fair bit of mathematics.

Whatever happened to the Age of Reason?

Just back from a spot of camping up in Northumberland, near Haltwhistle, centre of Britain. Stayed on a very nice C&CC site. Checked out the Roman remains at Vindolanda as well as Hadrian's Wall itself. We had some wet days there, but I bet it was much worse for the Romans in the depths of winter. Another visitor to the camp site was Mick Aston of Time Team fame. We left him to enjoy his holiday, but I'm sure he got the odd autograph request.

We then went on to Edinburgh, via a brief stop at Roslyn Chapel. I first became aware of it when reading a certain well-known book, but it's enjoyable enough as a piece of craftmanship in stone. It's currently covered by a temporary roof to help dry out the structure. This allows you to climb up and view the upper features.

We were visiting family in Edinburgh, but it just happened to be Festival and Fringe time. We saw a couple of kids' shows and Rich Hall. He was pretty funny having a go at the US 'War on Terror' (to be followed by campaigns againt wistfulness and uncertainty). We also did some walking there, including an ascent of Arthur's Seat.