Got the US maps for the TomTom GPS but they didn’t work on my Treo because my version of TomTom is version 5 and the maps would only work with version 6. I could have ‘upgraded’ with version 6 but who knows what wouldn’t have worked then.

With hindsight it might have been worth the risk of upgrading to version 6 as when in the US I ended up buying 3 or 4 maps, and these were just for Los Angeles. I couldn’t find a map with detail i.e. road names for Greater Los Angeles so you end end up with one for LA County, another for Orange County, another for Long Beach and yet another for the Santa Monica/Venice Beach/Malibu area.

If the A-Z company produced a map of LA with as much depth as their A-Z of London they’d make some money.

After yesterday finding out just how large my registry keys had got I ran a few registry checkers to see if they could get rid of any detritus. Ran at least 4 checkers and they all found a hundred or so issues which I let them fix. Odd how all of these registry checkers promise to remove unused keys etc yet all find different issues. The first checker finds 100 or so issues which I let it fix. Then I run a second checker, which also promises the same thing, and which I figure shouldn’t find any issues as the first checker has run and fixed every issue it could find, right? Wrong, the second checker finds another 100 or so issues which it fixes. Same for registry checkers 3 and 4.

There are some people who would actually try and convince you how the previous scenario is actually correct. They have a bit of a blind spot regarding software. If an application does something in a certain way then it must be correct and that it’s really a user misunderstanding problem.

I was having trouble with Nero on XP the other day so thought I’d try the DVD writing software on Vista. Loaded up the VOB file to write to the DVD and I got a run32.dll error message. Retried and got same message.

Run32.dll is a library file that allows a dll file to be run as an application, which I assume is loaded at Windows start.

I’ve started reading a book on the phenomenal growth of IT in China and India*. I’m a bit of a sucker for these kind of books so as soon as I saw it I had to buy it, if for no other reason than to scare the bejesus out of myself.

Seems that everybodies moving to these countries. One of the obvious reasons is that development costs are cheaper. Having said that even within these countries development costs vary so much so that one Western IT company actually upped sticks in one part of China and moved to another even cheaper area of China. Apparently competition in these countries is fierce and each city, town or IT development area wastes no time in criticising the next bunch down the road (Sounds like they have a reasonable understanding of capitalism then. Ed).

Some of the problems they do have in China are that there is a very serious water shortage problem, they have an aging demographic, obviously not helped by the one child policy and also the banking system is handicapped by bad loans. The bad loans, as at 2006, is estimated at about $800 billion. They are also a bit stuck in factory mode in that they are great at manufacturing soft and hardware but not so good, at the moment, at innovation. Interesting. More to follow.

When I picked up the hire car from Alamo I had to get an upgrade to a Cadillac and it’s great. Californian’s are a bit obsessed with smoking here or rather people not smoking. Suppose it keeps their minds off the smog thing (ouch).

It rained here this morning, for about an hour. They have so little rain that when it does rain the local roads flood because the drains are blocked. 

* IT And The East - How China and India are altering the future of technology and innovation, by James M. Popkin & Partha Iyengar

Quote of the day

‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up’ Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)