JoikuSpot

I've had the free version for a while, but couldn't get it to work with my MacBook. It creates a wi-fi hot spot via your mobile phone, kind of like a mifi). After a bit of googling, I found the answer (enable auto proxy discovery) but it was very buggy, dropping the connection every few seconds. The last time I looked, the professional version was €25, but had come down to €7 which was much more like it, so I paid. After a lot of faffing about getting the thing downloaded (ovi is not google, nor iTunes and the E71 is not an iPhone), I installed and it started to work really well. The pro version also includes WEP security.

The upshot? I can now use anything with wi-fi when I'm travelling. Does this mean that I only need to buy the wifi iPad? Decisions, decisions.

Not 'if', 'when'

logs

These should see us out the winter.

spent batteries

We collected some rescue chickens - delightfully described as 'spent batteries' - battery hens past their useful working lives. They're really scruffy (one's 'oven ready') but produced two eggs this morning. Now they've just got to learn to be chickens. The old chickens look amazingly healthy next to them and they're pretty curious about the newbies.