the Grand Tour blog

iPhone Network Issues en route to Bonn

After four train journeys - First Capital Connect in the UK, then Eurostar, Thalys and Deutsche Bahn - all four of them running late, I've finally arrived in Bonn for my first night's stop. Staying at the excellent Hotel Mozart where I stayed two and a half years ago on the Grand Tour; they remembered, which was nice. It's good to be back.

But a minor panic on the way as the iPhone resolutely displayed "No Service" throughout my interminable wait between trains in the less-than-exciting Brussels Midi station. When it still failed to find a signal as the train crossed into Germany I rebooted the iPhone and all was well. This is the second time in two months that I've had to reboot to fix a signal problem (the first time was at home in the UK): a bug lurking somewhere perhaps?

Typepad app updated

At last the Typepad app for iPhone has (yesterday) been updated to version 1.2, which among other things seems to have fixed the scrolling text bug I mentioned in the last post (and which I reported back in March).

And if this sentence appears in a new paragraph, they've fixed the paragraph break issue as well. UPDATE: Yes it does, so they have! Thanks Typepad.

iPhone, blogging and Orange

Thought it might be worth blogging about blogging on the move. I had far less Internet connectivity on tour than I expected, and certainly all the recent posts have been direct from the iPhone over the mobile network. There's always the concern about the cost of data roaming – and we've all heard horror stories of people coming home to huge bills – but the iPhone Typepad app that I've been using seems very efficient and a blogpost (like email) is only a few KB of data. The iPhone records the amount of data sent and received, and I've been keeping an eye on the total. Provided I don't open Safari there isn't a problem, and I keep data roaming switched off except when I need it. 

I've been working hard at using the larger horizontal keyboard of the iPhone, which is much faster than the small hunt-and-peck vertical keyboard, but prone to a lot of errors; thumbs are big clumsy things! But I'm getting better. 

The main problem with the otherwise very effective Typepad app is that there is a bug which prevents the text scrolling properly, so on any post longer than ten iPhone lines the last line gets lost off the bottom of the screen. My solution was to draft longer posts in the excellent Notebooks app and then copy and paste it all into Typepad. The other issue is that it posts as plain text with no obvious way to break paragraphs, hence some rather long paragraphs from me until I could get to them for a bit of editing. I think the solution, which I'm trying with this post, is to include the appropriate HTML tag. [UPDATE: No, this is not the solution!]

Finally, for the three weeks I was in Italy I found myself connected to a number of different phone networks. Almost all the time the iPhone showed full signal strength, whether I was in the city or out in the country on a regional train, and never once did I see it indicate 'No Service'. In common with many people on Eurostar, I imagine, the first thing I wanted to do on emerging from the Channel Tunnel and getting back on my home network was to phone or text family and friends. Not possible, unfortunately, as there was zero or intermittent signal almost all the way into London. Pathetic!  Wake up, Orange, install some infrastructure!

Wireless-less in Vicenza

Or to be precise, I can connect to the hotel's WiFi network but can't get the login screen which would allow me to use the Internet. Which is a pity as I wrote a long report about Venice last night but then couldn't post it. I'll have to sneak it into its time-slot later [which I have now done; see below]. And it looks as if blogging from now on will have to be by iPhone, probably until I get home.

Bologna arrival

I am now installed on the 7th floor of the Best Western Hotel in Bologna. Arrived here feeling very hot and sticky after fighting through the Bologna rush hour in the bus – and before that fighting in the chaotic station to find the loos, buy a bus pass, try to check some bus information but failing – and waiting at the bus stop as it started to rain. There is much hooting and crazy Italian driving at the busy junction below. I have air conditioning, but I think I shall die of dehydration if I leave it on overnight, so I may have to put up with the traffic noise.

Everything in the room is perfect, and bears the hallmark of many focus groups. I have a sewing kit, a bath cap, a sponge shoe cleaner, three biscuits, two tea bags, two stirrers in sealed bags, one shot of coffee whitener, three towels of different sizes, some bathroom scales, and not quite enough room to lay out my suitcase.

I also have a wireless internet connection, so for the first time on the trip I can post to the blog from the computer; all the earlier posts have been from my iPhone. But the internet connection is one of the awful hotel systems that require constant logging in through a special webpage, and won’t allow me to use my SMPT server to send email. I can read email without difficulty.

Catching up: regular readers may notice that I’m starting to ‘back fill’ a few posts where it’s been impractical to post from the iPhone at the proper time; that really is quite hard work! That will probably continue, on occasions when I have a proper connection. I feel it’s best to try to keep reports in chronological order.

Check list checking

A week of final preparations, adding things to my multiple to-do lists as fast as I check them off. Confirmed all the images have been transferred to the computer from the Nikon D300 and P5000 memory cards, backed them up and deleted everything from the cards. Charged the camera batteries. Finalised the printed backup information and tickets, and taped it all in two envelopes under the lining of the case so it doesn’t get left anywhere.

Fiddled with packing, though some difficulty making final decisions on clothing. And no way I can carry the Epson P2000 [a portable disk for image storage] as backup, so I'm a little concerned in case anything happens to the PowerBook. I guess I’d just have to shoot JPEG only, not RAW+JPG as I normally do, and probably buy more cards.

Phoned the hotel in Milan to say I will be arriving late; the train is due in at 10:30pm, and I’m told that some TGV-Artesia trains can run quite late. Relieved to hear the hotel has my reservation – I’d had a slight fear I would arrive in the middle of the night and they’d know nothing about me!

On Grand Tour 1 I carried the Rough Guides to Germany and Austria, but never referred to them except to look up restaurants a few times. And the books are heavy. So this time I’ve scanned the restaurant pages for Bologna, Florence, Rome, Lucca, Venice and Vicenza; no problem with copyright, I think, as this is strictly for my personal use. Adjusted the scans, saved them as JPGs and also combined them into a PDF for easier 2-up printing (which I almost forgot to do).

Transferred the restaurant JPGs to the Files app on the iPhone, together with a PDF of the Cremona-Busseto-Bologna train timetables from Trenitalia. The timetables now show fares for these regional trains – just €2.80 for Cremona-Busseto. Files was behaving itself, and not causing the Mac Finder to hang as it has ever since I upgraded to the full app; I did quit most other applications on the Mac first, which might (or might not) have made a difference.

Even spent some time relaxing in the sun today, between sorting out paperwork and fettling the suitcase.

Enough planning already!

Updated the Highlights list with the latest bookings, plus details of Roma Pass etc., Rome bus and metro tickets, and Florence free-entry locations. Printed all modified pages, 2-up. Added the bookings and a couple of other times to the Itinerary and printed a final copy. Made sure I have backup copies of the most important stuff to bury in the bottom of the suitcase. Electronic copies of almost everything on the iPhone.

That's it: the end of planning. I've probably done too much and I certainly don't feel like doing any more!

That iPhone power adapter

A while ago I posted on the impossibility of buying, in the UK, Apple's neat continental power adapter for the iPhone. But now I have one, many thanks to a friend in France. It's certainly a slimmer and more pocketable thing than the UK charger combined with a converter:

The price, of course, is pretty outrageous, and much of it must be due to the comprehensive packaging:

But it's nice to get these things right. And I know I'll appreciate it when on tour.

A brief intermission

An unproductive week as far as preparations for the Tour are concerned, as I have a nasty attack of shingles. Amazing how quickly this has arrived and established itself; how would it be if it had started on Tour? Apart from being very painful, it has the effect (on me, anyway) of dulling the brain and taking away any interest in doing anything. I'm glad that the serious work of deciding the itinerary and finding and booking hotels was done some time ago.

The iPhone World Travel Adapter Kit went back to the AppleStore for a refund, and they confirmed that there is no way they can obtain the continental power adapter in the UK. But the good news is that a contact who lives in mainland Europe has kindly offered to buy one for me and post it when he comes to London at the end of the month.

Updated the rail map with the change to the Lucca-Venezia route, and added hotel locations to the relevant city maps.

The exchange rate offered by CaxtonFX struggled up to an amazing 1.10, so I tried to load some euros onto my currency card. But on a couple of tries there was a technical issue, which turned out to be due to a fire in BT's Paddington exchange. Finally managed it the following day, by which time the rate had inched forward slightly to 1.109 – of course it may continue to rise. There currently seems a possibility of a hung Parliament after the Election, with the likelihood that the pound would crash, so I need to get most of my Euros, I think, in the next week or two. On the other hand, the rate might rise sharply if the Tories get in...

iPhone power and images

Invested heavily in an Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, for charging the iPhone. But I'm now fairly certain I'm going to take it back: I find that Apple have recently (last month?) introduced a tiny continental power adapter – complementing the small UK plug with USB socket that came with the phone – which is exactly what I wanted all along. Unfortunately there is no way for me to buy one in the UK! I called the Apple Store who said that if I tried to buy from, say, Italy, I would need to have an Italian billing address. I will talk to my nearest physical store to see if they can get one for me, but I don't hold out much hope. Sent a comment to Apple Feedback suggesting things like this should be available through all the national stores. 

Scanned and adjusted maps for all my cities, to carry with me on the iPhone. Ended up with 18 files to which I will add the location of hotels, highlight the main attractions, and add anything else that may make it easier to get around. But after carefully sizing them to be a multiple of the iPhone's screen resolution (so they will zoom well), saving them as JPGs and transferring to the iPhone through iTunes, I find they are pretty poor quality when zooming in. Someone on the Apple forums pointed out that images are 'resized' to twice the screen size during copying, even if they're that size already. Pah! Clearly if they're line art they lose a lot in the process.

The trick is to copy them unmolested using a file-transfer app – I've now installed Files Lite, which has a good full-screen image viewer and is perfect for my maps. I already have DocumentsToGo, which I forgot can handle JPGs, but it leaves bars obscuring part of the image, and won't scroll diagonally. Files shows the image filename, which the iPhone photo viewer doesn't (tricky for maps because all the thumbnails look the same).

I hope it's all worth it; the transport unions seem quite keen on striking at the moment.