After a cup of tea and some Weetabix I was in a quandary, so I began by tweeting:-
http://twitter.com/andij/status/1008065628

The other night I installed the Ocarina iPhone instrument. It looked like a bit of fun after @ColinMacD sent over this YouTube vid.

This morning I decided to ‘have a go’. Seeing as I have little knowledge of playing an iPhone! I dug out of the back of my mind the easiest tune I can remember playing as a child on my first keyboard.

So, reading the ‘how to play’ and looking at the Ocarina forum I jotted down a rough score and had a practice.

After a little refinement I had a crack at writing the score on the Smule Ocarina Score website, once that was done a quick post to the forum was done so that I could share my simple work.

After that I undertook to record the aforementioned tune. I downloaded Audacity and the Lame MP3 Encoder to enable me to create the necessary recording and give me the ability to edit it too.

I set about using my Skype headset as a microphone and plugging the iPhone into my speakers and sighting the Skype headset nearby to achieve a decent recording level. A bit crude I’d agree but it gave me the desired result. I then began to practice the tune and record at the same time, after a few attempts I ‘nailed it’! Cleaned it up a little using Audacity, saved it as an MP3 entered data into the ID3 tags and WHPAM; a recording of Oh When the Saints go Marching in by Drew Jones.

After a spot of lunch (ham and cheese) I wanted to do something outside, but as I finished the washing up it decided to rain. So that scuppered those plans : (

So, to get round this pain in the arse problem follow these simple steps:-

1. Ensure that your iPhone is connected
2. Open ‘My Computer’
3. Right Click on the ‘Apple iPhone’ icon
4. Select Properties
5. Pick the Events tab
6. Choose ‘Take no action’
7. Click ‘OK’

Now when you dock your iPhone the popup will not annoy you.

I was happy to see that it went just over £215! I received an instant payment through PayPal then a phone call from the winning bidder asking about the condition of it and ensuring that I’d package it safely. The following day I duly wrapped and posted it using Royal Mail Special Delivery.

A few days later to my supprise I received an email from PayPal informing me that the payment was under investigation! Then the following day I received another email stating that the case was closed and the payment has been returned to the account holder. I therefor have no iPhone and no money in my paypal account!

It feels like someone has stolen my iPhone.

I can’t believe this has happened I was under the impression that eBay and PayPal had processes in place to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen.

I now have to go through the pain of complaining to PayPal and eBay. It’s come at a totally inconvinient time as I’m far too busy trying to start my freelace venture and to top it off I could really do with the cash.

My requirements are simple:-

• Sync Google Calendar with my iPhone Calendar

In practice this seemed to allude me, I did find a third party application through my Jailbroken app list but this required me to run the app on my iPhone and request the synchronisation by clicking a button. I can’t for the life of me remember what the app was called but it did 90% of what I was after.

Bring on http://www.nuevasync.com/ ! This web based service managed to get me, my iPhone and my Google Calendar all synched up with a minimum of effort.

The only reservation that I have at this time is that it appears that I can only sync with my iGoogle account and not my Google Apps for andij.com account, for now with this product being in it’s infancy I am more than happy to accept this minor inconvenience.

Check out this post in the Apple Discussions http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7854548 David Boreham (owner of Nuevasync).