You know things are getting tricky when

the MP's of your country decide they have to award themselves a below-inflation pay rise.

But don't worry just yet, the Bankers and stockbrokers are still getting their bonuses.

Shouldn't that be bonii?

Pique Oil

We passed a psychological barrier here in England a few weeks ago, when diesel and petrol passed £1.00 per litre. Once committed, (and once their pumps and forecourt signs had been adjusted to allow for the extra digit), it was obvious that we weren't going back. Premium price fuel is here to stay, and by way of celebrating it's new found freedom to rise, the prices are almost at £1.10 per litre for diesel, and we haven't even finished the first month of the new year.

Looking through the on-line news at their "Why are oil prices so high?" sub-sections, I found a bewildering list of reasons. Anything and everything around the globe was cited, storms, hurricanes, hostages.... One day, as a teaser, the oil prices were supposed to have fallen, because "America might have more reserves than it had thought", but next day, the same old song was being sung again. Up, up and away.

A minor war here, a nuclear building program there, anything could trigger a rise in oil prices. Except for a butterfly beating its wings in Africa. I haven't seen that one yet. So the butterflies are innocent, OK? And that means that this isn't chaos theory. The oil market isn't being perturbed by random happenings. This is a move.

Before certain people start banging on about the Bilderbergers or Iluminatii or Masons or the Priory of Sion, let me say that I don't believe that people are clever enough to form secret societies capable of running the world. The closest thing we have to them are the governments, and they're neither capable of keeping secrets or of running things without a cockup a day. They think they can do both, but look at today's news. America has cut the interest rate, not in a controlled manner, but in a desperate bid to try and keep stockbrokers and shareholders around the world from dumping their investments and running off back to their vaults with the cash. So, America does not control it's own economy anymore. A disparate group of investors and traders can call the shots, and the picture I get is of America having to dance to a tune it didn't put on the jukebox. Somebody else is benefiting from the market's susceptibility to ingenious rumours.

You can't blame them, either. What they're doing is quite legitimate, even though it might fall into the category of gaming. They're in the business of making a living out of other people's money, and when that becomes uncertain, they fall back to the secondary business of not losing their own money.

And it's not about oil, OK? It never was. It's all about futures. Someone (plural), somewhere, have (ugh) been trying hard to make as much money as they can from the oil market, long before it actually reaches the run-out point. Who could it be? Shrewd investors? Maybe. The suppliers? Quite likely. And here, I have a lot of sympathy for countries like Saudi Arabia, because all they have is oil. When they've sold all the oil they can get out from under their feet, what can they turn to? Selling sand? Camel-hair coats and rugs? Who can blame them for trying to build up a chunk of venture-capital for what comes after the well runs dry.

Or, and this was the startling thought that came to me while I was gardening, with jets screaming overhead beneath the low clouds and helicopters thudding monotonously backwards and forwards in the Blackmore Vale, perhaps this is a new kind of warfare. Let's call it Economic Guerilla Warfare. Perhaps Osama Bin Laden, and a few like-minded individuals, have decided that terrorism is too hit-and-miss, too risky, and above all, not able to really hurt the people they despise the most; the financiers and governments of the West. Perhaps, in the way that the Japanese tried to put a stranglehold on the computer printing market back in the early days of the Centronics interface, these individuals have decided that they will go into the futures business and beat their enemies at their own game. And perhaps they're winning.

Get me out of this

I went home with the waitress,
the way I always do.
How was I to know?
She was with the russians too.
...
Send money, guns and lawyers,
Dad, get me out of this.

Sub-titled

How to get your Infrared Stowaway keyboard working with Windows Mobile 5 on your XDA Exec

Sub-sub-titled

Without access to money, guns and lawyers

Warning: This post has a geek-factor of 1 times 10^3. That means it will contain some technical terms, but no formulae or other forms of mathematics. If you want explicit descriptions of wide-open cases or hot throbbing motherboards, go elsewhere, and blame Google for sending you here in the first place.

Warning: This post has a porn-factor of 1 times 10^-2. This means there is no porn or gratuitous sexual references anywhere in this post. If you came here hoping to find descriptions of soft yielding flesh penetrated by hot throbbing uncircumcised members, you're out of luck. Go and blame Google.

Actually, if you've got the patience to read through it, there is a picture of a gratuitous horn somewhere. Consider yourself warned.

Spoiler: If you're wondering what the hell this is all about but find that words and you just don't get on, it is all about how to get from this



to this








If you still can't see the point, you might as well carry on reading as you've got this far already so you're obviously |open to suggestion|of a curious nature|bored|can't work out how to close the browser window| (or something else I haven't thought of).

---

I have been in junk-clearing mode, this might explain my blogging-silence, particularly if I tell you that I am a compulsive collector who hardly ever throws anything away. In addition, I have a fascination with tiny gadgets, particularly if they are battery-powered computers that could conceivably travel around with me on a bicycle and be powered by sunlight. I'm not going to explain that last bit in this post.

I was determined to find the little Stowaway keyboard that I had used with my old XDA, because I had finally realised that the newer XDA Exec I received last summer as a replacement for the burnt-out XDA Mini did have infrared on it after all, and so it would work with the fold-up keyboard.

Why had I decided that the Exec didn't have Infrared, even though the specifications said it did? Because I couldn't see an infrared port on it anywhere. I was looking for the red transparent cover that the two previous XDA's had, beneath which you could just see the LED that handled the beams. But all I could see was a black patch between the camera button and the backlight button where I was expecting to find the diode, so I decided that the spec was wrong; it wouldn't work with my portable keyboard. I was getting used to hardware becoming obsolete after less than two years due to Microsoft changing the playing field yet again.

As it happened, I didn't care too much, because the XDA Exec was a large clamshell PDA that had a nice built-in keyboard, and so I managed, typing carefully with my fingernails, until recently, when I came to think about putting the folding keyboard on ebay. I decided to have a quick Google to see if anyone else had noticed the lack of an Infrared port on the Exec. Nobody had, it seemed; in fact I found three people talking about how simple it was to beam files to one another. I had another look at the front of my machine, and saw that, moulded in black on the little black piece of what I had assumed was part of the case, was a tiny symbol showing an expanding wave.

I had been mislead partly because the Windows Mobile 5 operating system didn't call it Infrared, unlike all the earlier versions (Pocket PC and Windows ME); they called it "Beams". Clicking on an icon I had previously ignored because I didn't understand what it was for got me into the page that managed Infrared "beams". Now, I could see if the keyboard would actually still work before putting it on ebay.

So I went looking for the keyboard, and after two days finally found it snugly zipped up in the little black carrying case, still with the two AAA batteries inside that I had got when I originally bought it. A further rummage turned up the installation CD, and before you could say "Is this wise?" I had hooked up the USB cable and was busy installing it. All the prompts and messages popped up just as I remembered them, and before I knew it the XDA was suggesting I allow it to restart. I let it.

The XDA Exec is more security-conscious than the earlier models: it insists on a password at startup. I haven't found any way to not have a password, and to be honest, I hadn't worried about it until now. The machine booted through the Windows Mobile splash screen and came to the password prompt. And that's when I found that the clamshell keyboard wasn't working.

"No problem", I thought, I'll just get up the on-screen keyboard and tap in my password. "Yes problem". The on-screen keyboard wouldn't appear. And, without logging in, I couldn't get to the screen where I could remove the recalcitrant piece of software that was currently locking my XDA Exec. I was stuck. Again. As usual. Why does it always happen to me? Send Money, Guns and Lawyers...

After a lot of fiddling, I tried a second reset, and this time found the clamshell keyboard worked. I logged in and investigated the Stowaway Keyboard in the settings menu, only to be told that it wasn't working properly and would I please re-install the driver?

It seemed obvious to me then that this was a compatibility issue, and I remembered that when I had switched from the XDA 2 to the XDA Mini during my sojourn in Lincolnshire I had been forced to go online to download the driver because the CD was back home in Wiltshire, and I was damned if I was going to have to wait the rest of the week before getting all of my toys back into action. So I went online to look for the company called Think Outside Inc.

They seemed to have sold out to someone else, and that new company only seemed to be supporting the Bluetooth keyboards. So I rummaged around for the CDs I had burned with all my downloads on, located the driver I had downloaded, and installed the keyboard driver again.

And again. And again, trying a slightly earlier version, but with no better results. The Infrared keyboard still wouldn't work, and I still had to struggle to enter my password to get into the XDA Exec and remove the locked driver file.

Once more into the search, (dear friends), and after trawling through several support forums I found someone asking virtually my question, but of a different PDA. The answer he was given was to follow a link and download a newer driver file. Sadly, there was no follow-up to the thread to say whether or not it had worked. I followed the link, and found myself back at the site that seemed to have bought out Think Outside Inc, offering a downloadable driver for a Bluetooth Sierra keyboard. Since I didn't have a Sierra Bluetooth keyboard, I didn't bother, but instead returned to Google the forums some more.

Finally, I found the piece of essential information that explained it all. Firstly, in a standard geeky gripe, someone had suggested that the Stowaway Infrared Keyboard program be added to the list of things that had stopped working when Microsoft dropped PPC (Pocket PC) and switched instead to WM (Windows Mobile). Someone else replying to the thread suggested that Think Outside had bundled WM support for all their products into a single installation file that would update either Bluetooth or Infrared devices. The file in question was the one I had declined to download.

And so, after returning to the site and downloading the file, I got my Infrared keyboard working again.

So what do we make of all this? Who are the guilty parties? The company who took over Think Outside, who couldn't be bothered to add a note to their website to say that the driver file for the Sierra Bluetooth keyboard would also update the Infrared keyboards? The people on the forums who couldn't be bothered to post back and say "Thanks, that did the trick, oh and by the way, don't be fooled by the Sierra Bluetooth title?" Or Microsoft, for ignoring compatibility with existing devices every time they raise the stakes in the game of world PC domination?

It's very tempting to bash Redmond (Virginia) for all the sins in the world, but you have to admit that without them, we might still be back in the days of as many different operating systems as there were makes of computers.

It's very tempting to bash the companies who produce the items that no longer work with the new versions of Windows, but from their perspective, why should they be forced, at their own expense, to re-write their drivers each time Microsoft change the tune?

And it's very tempting to bash the people on the forums, but suppose that all of them had thought as I initially did, that the file was not the correct one and they didn't want to risk going through the frightful experience of seeing all the information on their PDA apparently lost for good because they couldn't type in the password to get in and remove the incorrect software. Who could blame them if they took the safe way out and just put the Stowaway keyboard on ebay and bought a Bluetooth one instead?

And so I went outside and smashed some more kitchen units up with a sledgehammer to put on the fire. Life's like that nowadays, everything's screwed up, but no-one's to blame. Supposedly. And smashing the hell out of some modern pointless crap that's been superseded by other more modern equally pointless crap is satisfying for about five minutes. Which is about how long it takes for a modern varnished pine kitchen unit to be totally consumed by fire.

Postscript:

If you're an XDA Exec user with a Stowaway Infrared keyboard trying to get the two working together, go to this link and download the file, use it wisely, and when you restart your XDA Exec and go to set up the keyboard, you'll be offered the option of configuring one of several devices, including your wonderful Infrared keyboard. And I can confirm that it does the trick. You can get a Stowaway Infrared keyboard working with Windows Mobile 5 on your XDA Exec.

Post-postscript

If you're hunting for porn and feel cheated that you got sent here by Google, here's that picture of a gratuitous horn I mentioned earlier.



Yes, I know it's a mythical beast, but so, it seems, are stable operating systems and reliable upgrades.