It's coming along

When I say "it's coming along" I'm talking about a couple of things.
First that I'm getting much better at typing on this thing (new
iPhone) and this quick little blog may take me less than an hour to
do :).

More importantly is that the work on the York Street Train Station has
finally started!
If you're a Facebook or Twitter friend of mine you'll know that I have
been putting up pictures of the work progress every time I happen to
drive by.
Which is every day. More than once.
I was actually away in Saint John all last week for a course on the
National Building Code. Oh man, it was very hard to get into that.
Especially with my attention span of a fruit fly.
At least that week is over.
But while I was there Cheryl sent me a message to call CBC television
who wanted to interview me.
So before I left Saint John for home last Friday I sent a note out to
my friends on Facebook and Twitter asking what the heck I had missed.
I was happy to find out that work had begun and there had been a cover
story in the Daily Gleaner with a photo of that old luggage cart still
there. That thing was there when I went in the station over 6 years
ago. It's qctually held up quite well and will make a great piece of
memorabilia somewhere.
When I was coming back home from Saint John I made a quick detour into
Fredericton to the station to see.
A firm by the name of The Urban Farmer has been hired to repair the
roof. The co-owner Dana filled me in on what had been done and where
the work was headed on their part.
They are just doing the roof work for now.
When I asked how long he thought it would take them he replied
"February".
I doubt that he was joking.
By the way, the CBC didn't need to interview me after all. I was too
late getting back to them. They had already been to the site and
toured the building from the outside. It's not very safe for anyone
but workers with hard hats and workboots to go in there.
Even then it's touch and go with the severe rotting of the wood. What
a mess.
One cool thing is that earlier this week Rogers Television met me for
an interview at the station. While we were there a truck came and
dropped off a load of brand new roof trusses.
How cool was that??
I noted aloud that I wonder when the last time was that new
construction materials were on that site? Think about that. A very
long time ago.
As I said I have been going by and clicking pictures like mad.
The problem I'm having is that I don't know how (or even if I can) to
attach a picture to a blog that I compose and email from this thing. I
could do it with the old Blackberry.
I'll try and figure that out.
Until then all I can ask is that you see my station pictures on
Facebook or follow me on Twitter. I am @timrs2001 there.

You'll forgive me for making this a short one but we have to get up
far too early for a 6:00 a.m. hockey practice for the boys.
I'm serious! On a school/work day too!
Ah well, it keeps us out of trouble. Hehe.

Stay well,
Tim

Tim Scammell, PTech

It's very nice but...

I'm talking about my shiny brand new IPhone. It's an amazing little device and I am in awe of the great things it can do. That's it in the picture above.
I've heard that there are over 100,000 applications available for it and I have already downloaded a bunch of them which are free.
I've discovered that I don't even need my GPS with me to go hunting for geocaches when I have my IPhone! I did pay $10 for the application from geocaching.com and this thing has become my GPS complete with access to the cache web pages.

BUT, I am having a very hard time getting used to typing on it. In fact, I am writing this from my desktop PC rather than the IPhone.
I'm not sure if anyone reading these blogs realizes this but almost all of them were done from my Blackberry Pearl. Here's a picture of it.


Many have a hard time believing this but I was able to blast out a blog, including attaching photos, so easily on my little Pearl.
I guess it was that I was used to Blackberry keys but I was faster with my thumbs than I am on this computer keyboard! I'm not kidding.

The biggest thing was that as long as I could feel the keys it usually worked out well. Usually.
The Pearl has two letters assigned to the keys which saved on space but was a pain in the butt at times. It has a feature where it looks at the keys you are typing and determines what letters you are typing and forms the word for you.
Usually that was just peachy except on the rare occasion that more than one word shares the same keys.
I can't count the times that I was typing "guys" and the screen came up with "hits". If I didn't catch it the sentence was ruined. (And perhaps people figured that I am quite physical at times?)
One place that words are typed quickly and the send button is pushed without proofreading is when I am Twittering. I'm certain that I "hit" the "guy" many times on Twitter.
Another interesting little blip was when I typed "lol" for "laugh out loud" the Blackberry took that to be the first three letters of "lollipop" and plopped that into the entry.
Hey, that's funny! Lollipop! Doesn't work.

Aside from that stuff though is the fact that I could compose volumes on those silly little keys. Because I could feel them.

In that IPhone picture up there do you see a keyboard? No, because it's not a physical keyboard but one that comes up on the screen when you need to type.
Like this:


I have been told that I will get used to this as I did with the tiny Pearl keys.
I sure hope so. It's been a week already since I got this from Rogers (I left Telus. I'll tell that story another time.) and I haven't felt good enough with it to do a whole blog like this one.
I have noticed that the IPhone is far smarter with decided my words for me. If I flub around and mess up letters in a word it thinks about the word that I must have intended and saves the day. That's cool.

Time will tell. I Hope that I just need more practice and one day I'll look back and wonder what I was worried about.

Until then my blogs may be here and there. But I'm still here.

Stay well,
Tim

Words escape me.

I honestly can't put into words what I feel about this. Words could
not describe it.
I won't even try.
http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/front/article/852411

Tim