Tuesday 2 January 2001

Pic of the day: Me and Cassiopeia ready to go ... except I'm half asleep. At least Cassie can just be plugged in to recharge, it's not quite that easy with me... after an evening of

Avant-go go go

Long time readers may have noticed my admiration for The Economist, the weekly magazine on economy, politics, science and culture. No, it's not just for accountants. (Not that being an accountant is instantly damning.) Modern economists are intelligent, broadminded people like my humble self, people who used to read Readers Digest when they were small and then upped their standards. Unlike the tabloids, The Economist writes what you ought to know, not what tickles you. It covers areas like Africa, Asia and Latin America without the patronizing attitude you often find in western media, when they deign to mention these areas at all.

I used to buy the paper magazine, but it was eventually crowded out. And I try to not stay online too long, since we pay per minute for Internet access here in Norway. (Well, with some exceptions, notably cable modem, which is not much of an option here on the outer fringe of the suburbs.)

So I was deligthed to see the advertisement: "Economist a go go go". The economist is publishing its news and editorials for free on the AvantGo content distribution for handheld devices. As you may have noticed, I am quite keen on such devices, lately with my Cassiopeia E-125 Pocket PC. So, off I (Avant) go.

***

The installation started well enough, giving me a choice between several possible handheld devices. I was then taken to a download page, where I could get an installer program. It was when this download terminated suddenly that I started to wonder. I tried to download it again, and probably succeeded. But by then the AvantGo site was not displaying the whole page, then nothing of the page. Error, error, everywhere (and not a drop to drink). Eventually I could not even get to connect to AvantGo. Evidently they are extremely popular right now. Or perhaps underfunded or something.

I've noticed that with many American web sites, it is now almost normal to have horrendous lag, or break of connection altogether. Reminds me of how it was here in Norway the first year I had Internet access. Perhaps this comes from the way Americans have lately taken up multimedia over the Net, downloading large amounts of music and even video. If this clogs up the regional distribution lines, service providers in that area would suffer. Or it could of course be that many individual companies have under-estimated the traffic. :)

Anyway, I'm not that easily deterred, at least not by anything less than physical pain. So after an hour (productively spent terraforming Mars) I tried again. I clicked, I reloaded, I cast the URLs into the great void again and again. After half an hour, my quest had met with success. I was formally greeted as one of the honored Avant-goers. WoW! The install program had even thoughtfully thrown in the most appropriate Norwegian sites for me: Aftenposten and Dagens Næringsliv.

And then at last I could return to The Economist to add the channel. Since this too went through the AvantGo website, another quarter of an hour drifted fruitlessly by. After various attempts on two different browsers, I finally managed to add the new channel and start sync-ing. (Sync is, I believe, coolspeak for synchronize, indicating that new stuff is copied in and old stuff is removed until my handheld holds a copy of the server's pages.) The whole process took slightly less than an hour - after the pause, that is.

According to lore, there should now be an AvantGo icon in the start menu. There was none, nor in "programs". But poking around in File Explorer eventually found an index page in the Windows folder. So I guess all is well that ends well.

***

So when will I avant-go my journal? Well, it sure won't be tonight. I'm cold and tired and demotivated. And while I'm sure there are other Pocket PC users out there, I'm not sure any of them is reading my journal. Then again, it would be geek ... it would be very geek. Hmm ... Geek appeal! :)