Week of 6th May, 2019

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Monday, 6th May

Early May Bank Holiday

Ramadan

I checked the tracking number for the PocketLab Air today. And there's no change - the package is still listed as "Enroute to Regional Processing Facility", as of Saturday the 5th, at 05:39. What timezone is not mentioned, but since PocketLab are in California, it's probably PDT (UTC-9)

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Tuesday, 7th May

More tracking e-mails, this time from Mobiscribe, predicting delivery this coming Friday, by FedEx.

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Wednesday, 8th May

Fedex updated the delivery date to next Monday, which I can live with.

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Thursday, 9th May

Cycle 5 of the chemotherapy starts today. And the usual problems with finding a good vein recurred. The reason for putting the cannula in the back of the hand is that if they fail at back of hand, they can move up the arm. This happened today, and the cannula ended up on the inside of my left forearm.

The usual procedure followed - flush with 5% w/v Glucose solution, and anti-nausea, followed by the capecetibine chemo drug, and final flush with more glucose solution. All done by 16:30, so I schlepped off back to Hammersmith Tube station. On the way, I suffered another instance of restricted breathing, probably due to cold air.

Once home, I got another FedEx e-mail - the Mobiscribe will now be delivered tomorrow.

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Friday, 10th May

Sure enough, the FedEx courier delivered this morning. The first thing to do was to charge it - 43% as shipped. Then connect it to the wifi, and there's a software update. So install that.

And the thing is Android-based, as I thought it would be. But it's 4.4.2, which is andediluvian. So it's not going to be networked except when I need to add ebooks, or pull hand-written notes off.

And talking of which... Hmmm. not visible. Let's try USB. Nope. But there is a microSD slot, so I can put books onto it.

If I could put my hand on a blank microSD card... Amazon to the rescue.

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Saturday, 11th May

MayDay celebration today. And yes, it's late. But this is for hysterical raisins, which one I don't know, but it's always the second Saturday in May.

The weather forecast has been poor of late, but the day started well - sunny and dry. So Jenny and I went to my storage, and extracted all the kit, before driving down to the venue, and setting up.

By the time we'd done that, there was some cloud, which eventually started shedding rain. I tried to cover the gear, but none too successfully, which I'm almost sure was the cause of later problems with spurious pickup and loss of connections. I need to test the kit, once it's dry, and, ideally, permanently fix the Neutrik Speakon connectors to the amplifiers. I should also order some shorter cables - I only need 1no 50 metre cable. The others can be 25 metre, or even 10 metre.

Jenny left after setup, citing things to do, but she said she'd return to help with the derig. Which she did, albeit I'd mostly finished by the time she arrived. Of course, packing up ran overlong, so I missed my lid of tea and my bun with the committee, but that's not vital. I did pick up my "Thank You" Amazon voucher - UKP30, yet! More than I was expecting - in the past it's been UKP20 or so. Not that I asked for it - it's an expression of gratitude from them for my assistance.

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Sunday, 12th May

OK. I've ordered the microSD card - in fact I ordered 3no 16GB SanDisks, which is wretched excess for a collection that amounts to 64 items, and 43.7MB. But there's no other way - the Mobiscribe doesn't show up in Network Neighbourhood, nor if I try a USB connection. So microSD card it is.

There will be another Molle belt pouch, to replace the one that got mislaid last December, at St. Mary's Hospital, and some Molle straps and clips.

Still no sign of a tracking update for the PocketLab Air - last change was Monday, "Scanned in at Globegistics SFO Facility", May 6th. 2.40 pm."

<pause>

I tried to update the Gemini to Android 8.1 Oreo last week, but the automatic update failed with some sort of error, after 336.5MB of 1.05GB. And nothing I could do would convince it to resume.

Planet have a manual update process, which requires you to downlaod the update file, and then point the updater at it. So I invoked that today, and after some time, the update appears to have completed. This is good - at least everything says "Android 8.1.1" with patch level 5th Dec, 2018, so I think it's as up-to-date as it's going to get. At least MediaTek, the SoC maker, hasn't abandoned the processor. Whether this will continue is an entire other question, of course.

Now maybe I should experiment with .html editors on the Gemini, just to avoid having to carry latitude when I want to update these pages, while I'm out-and-about.

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