Motorbike accidents in the media - Part the flat four

The last piece I commented on, from the Courier Mail, came with a list of "related stories", pulled not just from their own website, but from News Ltd sites around Australia.

So, I'm going to do a quick analysis of motorbike accident reports from those sites.

First up:

The Herald Sun (Melbourne) gives us Motorcyclist killed in head-on collision with car on the Maroondah Hwy in Mansfield. What is with these clunky headlines?

Anyway, this is a five-paragraph story, saying that a motorcyclist in his 60s had a head-on north-east of Melbourne, on a major highway, 8am (plus four minutes). Forensics are investing, police will prepare a report for the coroner.

Also, interestingly: The female driver was airlifted to hospital with major injuries, which just goes to show: Sitting inside your metal cage, you are behind several sheets of potentially dangerous glass, through which large, heavy, high-speed objects may come.

Question: How do you have a head-on collision on "a major highway"? Isn't there a dividing line?

A clue may lie in the "in Mansfield" bit in the headline, but don't assume that headlines are word-perfect-exact.

Overall, the article is extremely puzzling in its unanswered questions, but is otherwise well and cleanly written.

Next up:

Perth Now (urgh) gives us Motorcyclist injured in collision with van. Ah, a nice, short, pithy headline.

This article is a more chatty, casual style, but still useful. The interesting part is this:

South East Metropolitan Police Sergeant Mark Ryan said it “appeared one of the vehicles hadn’t given way”.

Well, there aren't many other ways for an accident to happen, are there?

Let's examine this:

The driver of a white van, also in his twenties, was turning right from Church St onto Albany Hwy citybound, and collided with the motorcyclist heading southbound along the highway just before midnight.

So the van was turning right, and the motorcyclist was going straight. Ergo, the van failed to give way. Unless the motorcyclist ran a Stop or Give Way sign, and we know that didn't happen because the bike was on the highway and the van wasn't.

A quick trip to Google Maps confirms that Church St is north of Albany, south of Perth. The writing suggests that "citybound" means Perth, opposite to South. In other words, the van was turning across the path of the motorbike. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the photo accompanying the story, along the fact that the driver was taken to hospital and the passenger wasn't, suggests a pretty serious collision on the driver's side door which would, in this case, have been facing north, directly at the bike.

So: The van comes out of a street, across a highway, and gets hit by a bike who may have had moderate/little/no warning, and hits it.

No conclusion can be drawn about the speed or actions of the bike.

Now: at or about midnight means the bike had headlights on and the "high visibility vests" so beloved of clueless non-riders would have been useless.

Ergo: Although I do not in any way wish to jump ahead of the Major Crash Investigation unit, or the coroner: The van driver didn't give way, and needs to be charged with whatever can be thrown at him.

One final point: As an editor, I would not have let that story hit the Internet in that state. But, that's just me, my colleagues and my employer's professionalism.

Third one is: Rider dies after bike, car crash from Adelaide Now (does a comma really save so much space over "and" that it's worth while? Come on, now).

Basically, an 18yo rider collided with a car driven by a 22yo driver, and the rider died, the driver sustained minor injuries. Please try not to judge based upon age!

A lot of the story, considering its length, is taken up with mentioning that South Australia has a worse road toll than the same time last year. Ignore that, it's irrelevant.

The crash happened on a certain road, after dark, last year, on what works out to be a Tuesday night.

The only interesting, or particularly informative, part of this story is the fact that the four commenters clearly knew the rider.

Come on: There is not enough information here to be satisfying. No circumstances? No "who was going where"?

This is probably the most frustrating story I have covered so far. So little information, for a death. So sad.

The final story linked off the original Courier Mail article is a little different, and will be the subject of a separate post.

Please sir, Godot asked if you could wait a little longer

Excuse me while I waffle for a moment.

Samuel Beckett was a genius.

No, I won't hear anything else.

There was a period many years ago - it was while I was still living in Tasmania, so at least 7 years ago - when Sam had an anniversary, or something, and a project was begun to film all of his plays, using Irish actors. I saw as many of those as I could, and may even have some of them on tape lying about.

He was a genius. I didn't know any of the actors, I had never seen any of the plays before, although I had read some of Waiting for Godot in a drama class, as an exercise.

But I sat, spellbound at times, as two or three or even one actors, in minimalist sets with nothing happening except perhaps the weather, transformed dialogue or monologue about nothing into the most potent, powerful drama I had ever seen.

Krapp's last tape confused me, but I simply didn't care. All I could see was that old man, bitter, listening to diary tapes he had recorded years ago, eating bananas while rain hammered on the roof, swearing at his younger, smoother voice and abusing his older self. It was a master-stroke of writing and, in that moment, a master-stroke of acting - one actor, alone, with no special effects, nobody else on set, just him and the camera, maintained some of the finest characterisation I had ever seen.

Endgame remains, of all those I saw, the one I would most like to see live. Four characters - a blind master, his servant, and his parents living in rubbish bins in the corner - created all the world that necessary.

I sat and I listened to blind Hamm abuse and berate and proclaim, and I thought it the most compelling monologue I had ever heard. At the time, as I was still doing some theatre myself, I decided that I would track down one piece of his monologue and use it for auditions. I still think it would be a powerful piece to use.

Hamm's roar of "You're on Earth, there's no cure for that!" remains with me still.

And then there is the one piece that people who know not of Becket may have yet heard of - Waiting for Godot.

Only his second play, it has famously been described as being "about nothing" but has also been voted the most important English-language play of the 20th Century.

I had considerable doubts going into it but, also, I was spellbound throughout it. I thought then, and I only think more so now, that Beckett wrote plays which not only made enormous demands of the actor, but which provided enormous opportunities, as well.

A truly great actor, in Godot or any other Beckett piece, would turn in a performance not to be exceeded. And an actor who could not manage those demands, well - we know the truth now, don't we?

So: Ian McKellen, Matthew Kelly and Roger Rees are touring in a production of Waiting for Godot, and will be in Melbourne for two weeks in May. We know people in Melbourne we need to catch up with.

To say we are excited about this would be a colossal understatement.

If I don't see any other live theatre this year, I may not care provided I get to see that.

Motorbike accidents in the media - Part the inline triple

I have been unconscionably late with this. The news report I will be discussing is dated 11 days ago, as I start typing. Blame real life assaulting me in a dark alley.

It's this one: Motorbike rider hit by car backing out of driveway in Newtown, Toowoomba, from the Courier Mail.

Fairly unambiguous headline, no?

Also, the editor in me says, too bloody long by half. You can cut out "rider", you can cut out the suburb, and lose nothing important. If someone isn't going to read past the headline, they don't care about the suburb anyway. If they're from Toowoomba, they might be intrigued enough to read on and find out.

The passive voice "hit by" can be removed, giving us "Car backing out of driveway hits motorcyclist in Toowoomba." No, still too long. Also, the important point - the accident - is too far along.

"Motorcyclist hit by reversing car in Toowoomba" would do, if they really wanted to give a location.

Except it's wrong - as we're about to read, the bike hit the car, which drove in front of it. Unfortunately, "Motorcyclist hits reversing car in Toowoomba" introduces a suggestion of ambiguity over where blame lies. Hmmm...

Moving right along:

A MOTORCYCLIST is fighting for his life after colliding with a car backing out of a driveway in Toowoomba on the Darling Downs.

The crash occurred just before 9.30pm Thursday in Tor Street, Newtown.

Police said the bike rider was heading north when a car pulled out into his path and he crashed into the driver's side door.

The impact caused major damage to both vehicles and left the motorcyclist seriously injured.

The 22-year-old female driver was taken to hospital suffering cuts to her face and eyes from shattered glass.

The 35-year-old motorcyclist is in a serious condition in Toowoomba Hospital.

That's it, at present point in time.

First points: It's well and concisely written. It also opens up many questions.

Take, for example, the impact - driver's door. Think about the geometry for a moment.

If the car was reversing, but the motorbike struck the driver's side door, then either it was a one-way street, or the bike was on the wrong side of the road, or the car was reversing really quickly.

But then, in the comments, unverified, we have this:

i was passenger in the car and they want to get the story right we did drive straight out...

Copied verbatim. Would have been interesting for there to be something else, but there we are. So, a basic mistake in reporting. It may have been a mistake in police reporting, or the commenter may not be kosher.

There's no indication of speed of impact beyond "major damage to both vehicles", but if he wasn't paying complete attention he may not have had time to brake at all and even at 60, that's enough.

He also seems to have been riding towards the footpath, not the safer right hand side of the lane. Remember, kids - if you ride near the line, in the wheel tracks of those four-wheeled vehicles, then drivers behind you and approaching you are more likely to see you, you get a clean bit of road, and you get more warning when people try and pull out of side streets and driveways.

Leaving aside the debate over whether the motorcyclist could have positioned himself better for visibility, I can not conceive of any way in which this was not entirely, completely, the driver's fault. The rider could have been more defensive and minimised injuries, or even avoided the crash entirely if there was nothing coming the other way - a big if - but the driver must have pulled out, into traffic, without paying due care and attention.

Case closed.

Except for the comments, which are quite amusing.

Several talking about the safety benefits of driving out of driveways instead of backing out, which is gratifying to see.

There is the guaranteed comment about hi-vis vests, and this beautiful response, from BikerTips of Brisbane:

A high-vis covering won't help if you aren't going to look. It's very easy to "see" bikes - take that extra second to look, not glance, and then another to take note of a bike's velocity before deciding to pull out and change or cross lanes. Also, if you cannot see clearly due to conditions and surounds, go slowly!

I haven't said it better myself.

On the same vein, from housedadextrordinaire:

Hope the rider recovers. Making excuses for the car's design doesn't excuse not seeing a motor-cyclist or cyclist. Have a good look and turn the radio/cd or I-pod off until you have driven off safely. Yep, I will agree, all our cars have poor rear vision. Adjust your driving to suit the conditions or WALK!!

And on that note, I will leave you.

How to replace a photocopier with a good camera phone and your own printer.

There is a problem with photocopiers in libraries - University or public. You need money, for a start. Then you need time, you need a photocopier not being used by anyone else, it can be highly wasteful of paper, and of time.

You can get a much more flexible and useful result by using a digital camera and a few minutes of image processing when back at your PC.

Photographing pages and then printing the photos can work at least as well, if not better, and can be done anywhere, any time.

So let's look at doing so.

You need, first of all, a digital camera. A decent high-quality camera on a decent mobile phone is perfect. I've been using a Nokia N95, which is possibly even overkill.

For best results you will need to modify the camera settings slightly. I find that setting it Black & White makes life easier. There may also be settings to adjust light balance based upon flourescent, incandescent or sunlight, settings for image sharpness (more is better, in this respect, because you want nice, clear text) and image size. Go for the highest quality photo your camera can take - you can always discard pixels later, but no matter what the TV shows will have you believe, there is no way to put them back in.

You may be able to do all this as a customised setting so you don't have to repeat yourself next time you want to copy anything else.

You need two things: You need a consistent light level across the entire page, with no obvious areas of shadow or light, and you need a good contrast between text and background. Basically, you need a good background level of light. A flash is particularly poor in this situation, because you are so close to the page that you will probably get a bright spot and a gradient outside that. Your mileage may vary if you have a particularly good xenon flash (those of you who still have N82s can stop feeling smug, you bastards).

I suggest you try and get each page flat, photograph it from directly above to minimise any text distortion, and try and get it to fill as much of the frame as possible. Tip - try and keep the page numbers, you will need them for referencing properly.

Oh, and of course you want them as sharply in focus as possible - practice breathing exercises, if you have a shaky hand.

Once you have the images, you need a computer and good image editing software. If you have access to Photoshop - sure, use it. I use the GIMP, which is free and just as powerful.

To make life easier, you want each photo orientated the right way, and you then want them as legible as possible.

It's also a good idea, financially, to cut down on the amount of ink you print.

You will notice that the image is in greyscale, with a not-entirely white background and not-entirely black text. To correct this, look for a neat little tool called, in GIMP, "Threshold". It sits under the Colours menu, and what it does is take the greyscale image and turn it into strict black and white by picking a degree of grey and making everything below it white, and everything above it black. Very neat, deceptively simple, and if your photos are any good, very, very effective.

I don't usually need to adjust the defaults - you may find it beneficial.

This process should give you pictures with no visually messy and ink-wasting grey smudges, and with the most readable text.

If you want to print, print as you like - I prefer two-up printing. Digikam can print an entire set of photos quite nicely. Picasa can, as well. Experiment with your preferred software.

In praise of sports-tourers

I have a theory.

More of a conviction, really. In scientific terms, I'll defend it as halfway between a hypothesis and a theory.

My theory is this: Sports tourers are the most useful, versatile and worthwhile species of motorbike, and more rides should be buying them.

It's not that we're talking about a particularly narrow definition, here, though. I'll get to categories in a moment.

But it does seem to me that sports tourers sit at a crossroads where they are jack of all trades, master of none but capable of performing just about any task so well that the average, need-one-bike-to-do-anything motorcyclist can't find their limits without either getting seriously arrested, or seriously dead.

If you want to race - get a race bike. Enduro, track, motard, whatever. Go for your life. Have fun.

If you can only afford one bike, or one bike is all you care to look after and use, get a sports tourer.

Commuting? Check. Thirstier than lighter, smaller, more focused bikes, but also, I suspect, needing less maintenance. Not actually that much larger, either - the widest point on most bikes in the mirrors and/or bars, not the fairing, and unless you really have to fight gridlock the biggest difference will be parking a heavier, slightly longer bike.

Twisty roads? That's what the "sports" part is for. BMWs have a reputation for being able to seriously frighten sports bikes on mountain roads, and that's what they should all be like.

Distance? That's the whole point, of course. These bikes show that "sports" doesn't mean "uncomfortable". Sure, you can tour on an MV Agust F4 - people have - but why do that to yourself unless you really, really can't go past an MV without masturbating uncontrollably?

Carrying pillions? With rare exceptions or strange oversights, most of them are designed for it.

Maintenance? Bikes designed for long distance are generally tougher than bikes designed to shave grams with more delicate tolerances, or to excel at very narrow requirements only. Particularly if you get a shaft drive.

Off the beaten track? We'll get to that.

So what are the categories?

I claim there are three, two with blurred distinctions and one which has been absorbed into the family as time has passed.

First up, there are the wanna-be racers. Bikes like the Triumph Sprint ST, current king of the category, and the Honda VFR750/800. The VFR750 was, in its earlier incarnations, winner of the inaugural World Superbike Championship. Then it got overtaken by the sharper, more focused CBR series and it became, instead, one of the most popular bikes-to-have-if-you-can-only-have-one-bike. The 800 alienated an awful lot of people by introducing VTEC, which was a complicated answer to a problem with a more obvious solution - a bigger engine - and linked brakes, which insulted the very people most likely to buy a pensioned-off superbike like the VFR.

These bikes are generally equipped with a crouched riding position, seats leaning more towards racer-firm than long-distance plush, and aggressively styled full fairings. They have chain final drives and frequently have sexy sports-style single-sided swingarms as well. At the upper end, this category goes to bikes like Honda's CBR1100XX Super Blackbird and Suzuki's GSX-R1300 Hayabusa, bikes which existed for the sole purpose of being The Fastest but, particularly in the case of the Blackbird, grew luggage because there really wasn't much point in having one, otherwise.

Most of them have four-cylinder engines unless the company, e.g. Triumph or Ducati, don't make them.

The second category is the one championed, and more or less invented, by BMW - bigger, heavier bikes that don't look sporty until you ride them, with shaft drives and generally larger fairings but still huge amounts of power and hugely capable handling. My K100RS is pretty much the archetypal example of the breed, complete with what BMW described as a "three-quarter cafe crouch". The Kawasaki GTR1000 which followed the first K bikes has a cult following who believe it's better, and a string of hugely fast GTRs and Yamaha FJRs have bolstered a category which just keeps growing. This group is more likely to have a variety of engines, with various forms of twin joining the more common fours.

The third category is of course the interloper - the Adventure Tourers, Dual-Sports, Road-Trails. The category commonly understood to have begun with BMW's R80G/S of 1980 and lead by various G/S and GS models until the new R1200GS with four-valve cylinder heads, a bike with such a solid sales performance that the R1200ST, the more traditional sports-tourer, is no more.

Adventure Tourers have been absorbed into the ST pantheon recently, helped by the fact that more and more companies are building bikes with a more and more token nod towards the dirt. On the one hand, the KTM 990 Adventure is a bigger, more powerful, faster, road-legal Dakar racer. On the other end, the Ducati Multistrada has been the epitome of the dirt-styled road-bike that combines comfort (for a Ducati), touring range and more fun than should be possible while fully dressed. These bikes come with chain or shaft final drives, all sizes, all degrees of seriousness, and all of them hugely practical and with vast potential for fun. All of them are twins save the triples from Triumph and Benelli.

If you're in the market for a bike that does everything, get a Triumph Sprint ST or a BMW K1300S, depending on budget and whether you want to waste time oiling a chain or not. If you are really in the market for a bike that does everything, get a BMW R1200GS. If you plan on trying to cross the Nullabor any time soon, get an R1200GS Adventure.

I'll see you on the road.

Android versus Symbian. Fight!

While I am struggling with the question of whether I replace my current Symbian smartphone with a resistive touch-screen Symbian phone (N97 mini) or a capacitive touch-screen Android phone (Motorola Milestone), I thought it was about bloody time I made a list of vital functions and tried to find replacement Android software, before making the jump.

This is prompted by Steve Litchfield's flawed but interesting similar comparison on All About Symbian between the N97 and the Google Nexus One (that link points to part two, which includes the link to part one).

I'm not listing "top functions" here, I'm listing functions: Everything I use my phone for. Any replacement for the N95 has to be able to do everything I use it for, otherwise: No deal. I'm skipping little things, unless there's a big problem or there's a serious reason to prefer one platform over the other.

Also, I'm only really focusing on Nokias where Symbian is concerned, for two reasons - I know the most about their options, and their history with S60 (they own the company, which helps) gives them a decided edge over the likes of Samsung and Sony-Ericsson.

Address book

Thanks to tight Google integration - advantage Android

Calendar

See above - advantage Android

Email

See above - advantage Android

Camera

Built-in. Obviously, superior on Nokias given their traditional edge and Carl Zeiss optics, but with rapid software development I'm willing to risk a Motorola Milestone.

Advantage Symbian - not only Nokia, but Samsung and Sony-Ericsson are punching hard, here. Samsung's Android phones have been sub-par in the optics department so far, but SE may pull off something great.

Podcasts

Finally, the first interesting comparison. Nokia has the edge here for quite some time, with their own Podcast application managing, downloading, and playing podcasts on most of their phones. The third-party Escarpod, despite the fact that its apparent rapid development has not been associated with any actual new releases, has benefited other Symbian phones.

On Android: Google Listen, obviously. There have been reports of bad instability, and poor user documentation, but there is development. Also, Beyond Pod, My Pod, Doggcatcher ...

Advantage Android, only because Listen integrates with Reader, so you can manage podcast subscriptions easily on any desktop.

Loudspeakers

Nokias are variable - the N95 was brilliant, the 5800 better, the N97 family apparently not so.

HTCs are famously shit, but the Milestone was a pleasant surprise when I heard it briefly. That long gold strip of speaker doesn't seem to be only show.

This is probably a draw.

Ebook Reader

Symbian - Mobipocket Reader, which hasn't been developed since Amazon bought the company (hmmm... I wonder why not?), and QReader, which just hasn't been developed in a couple of years, and most promisingly, the Russian ZXReader (link through Google Translate).

Android - Aldiko. FBReader (which I first used years ago on a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500). AReader. Yep, promising enough.

Draw.

Audiobook Reader

More than just a music player, audiobook readers need to be able to remember exactly where they were in any given music file, and play even more formats.

Symbian - Nokia Audiobook, which is no longer developed and relies upon one specific format, with a desktop PC helper application, and PlatySoft's Scheherazade, which needs Python. Scheherazade goes one step further than just remember locations - it automatically rewinds a few seconds after every pause, helping you catch up to where you where last. Very nice, albeit with Windows 1.0-era interface non-graphics.

Android - Ambling, BookDroid. Good start!

Draw.

Text editor

Symbian: DEdit is fantastic.

Android: Text Edit, apparently. Kote-Lite. And bonus points for GDocs, allowing access to Google Docs documents via a download-edit-upload system.

I'll go with draw, here.

Twitter

Symbian: I bought Gravity, and it really is the premier Symbian/S60 application at the moment, also acting now as a Google Reader reader, and Facebook.

Android: Twidroid is the famous one. There are many others.

A simple numerical count would give Android the advantage here, with most of the Symbian ones crude or java or half-baked, but... damn, Gravity's good! Draw.

News - Google Reader

Symbian: See above - Gravity.

Android: Frankly, the web-based WebKit interface is great, but, yes, there are apps.

Draw.

Facebook

Symbian: Look, I use the web interface, I use Gravity's incomplete but largely sufficient feature. With a 5th Edition touch-screen device, there is an official app.

Android: Oh look, there's an official app.

Draw.

Foursquare

Not important - only just started using it, not sure I will continue to do so.

Symbian: Oh look, Gravity! Unfortunately, that means firing up my Twitter and Facebook access as well. Although I would usually take the advantage to check in on those, the extra data usage does add a little bit of cost and a little bit of time. If I had a huge data plan and a huge battery, I would leave Gravity running. But I don't expect either of those things.

Android: Being an American service, there's already an official app for Android, but not Symbian.

Advantage Android, for having a specialist app.

Mapping/GPS

Symbian: Nokia's latest partly-bullshit announcement of "free navigation for everyone", available on new phones, gives them a really serious advantage in off-line usage, provided you buy a new phone that isn't the original N97, which has (well, okay, mostly had) serious problems.

Android: Google Maps is free, of course, and does navigation for free, and does voice navigation in the USA and will no-doubt be expanded. But, you need a data connection, which means data costs and a signal - not always possible out in the fun bits of the world where the good biking roads are. However, there are commercial apps, and there are solutions like MapDroyd for offline map viewing.

Advantage Nokia/Symbian. You can't beat having on-device, offline maps and voice navigation from a specialist, giant GPS company which provided maps to GPS device manufacturers and was purchased by Nokia at a cost of about US$10billion.

Conclusion?

The actual communication functions are an on-paper win for the Google integration of Android, and a couple of extra native apps.

The camera on a Nokia is a known quantity, and superior.

Everything else appears to be evenly matched, with only my own experience with Symbian giving that platform a real edge.

But hey, isn't the fun of playing around with a new device half the fun of owning it?

Balanced against this, as well, is the fact that Symbian is going through a major shift with the introduction of Symbian^3 this year and Symbian ^4 soon after bringing about a complete binary incompatibility, making life interesting for developers and their consumers.

Oh, and one more thing: Although Symbian is the most sophisticated and advanced OS under the dated S60 UI, and although that dated S60 is still an extremely efficient way of getting things done after learning it, it's beginning to seriously bore me.

Android is just a more exciting platform at the moment.

Oooh, the shiny! Ooooooh, the SHINY!

This is a rambling tale of two superphones.

I'll use that term, obnoxious as I may usually find it, to highlight the fact the I am not talking about mere smartphones, with good hardware and maybe a specialisation or two, but the cream of the crop - two of the premier mobile devices on sale today.

From Finland, the N97 Mini. One of the best 5MP cameras on any mobile device, all the trimmings in the form of GPS, magnetometer, accelerometer, Bluetooth and high-speed everything, stereo FM transmitter, a big touch screen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the latest iteration of one of the most flexible, evolved and powerful mobile operating systems - Symbian with the S60 user interface. Oh, and it has full, free, offline GPS navigation, something which did nasty things to Garmin's share price. The N97 mini, slightly more compact than the N97, has a more useful shape, was launched with decent firmware, and has better internal memory configuration than the infamously disappointing but slowly improving-in-firmware N97. Not the absolute flagship for Symbian - the Samsung i8910 is still a bit more impressive, even without a keyboard or Nokia's S60 tweaks - but pretty damn near.

From America, the Motorola Milestone - the non-USA version of the Droid, with different radio hardware. 5MP camera, everything else, gorgeous screen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and the newest and fastest-growing kid on the block, the open-source, Linux-based Android operating system from Google and, this being Google, an awful lot of functionality depending upon being online - maps, for example. The Milestone, when it was first released with Android 2.0, before Google trumped them with the HTC-built 2.1 Nexus One, was the absolute flagship of Androidness.

Problems? Well, the S60 5th Edition on the N97 Mini is a kludge, the screen is an unfashionable resistive (pressure sensitive), instead of capacitive (which uses the galvanic effect to measure the electrical conductivity of your skin), and Nokia have a not entirely proud history of using the efficiency strengths of Symbian to not entirely hide them skimping on CPU and RAM.

On the other hand, the Milestone has a suspect camera, and Android is still very much in development.

Now, I have toyed briefly with the Milestone, and find the interface to be more shiny than focused, but definitely cool and swish.

I have also handled an N97 mini, thanks to the fact that when I walked into the shop, they didn't have a fake display model.

The build quality was a sizeable step above my N95 (not really praise, that, let me start again...) The build quality was very good, with no wobbles anywhere, and the hinge on the keyboard rock-solid and snappy. The software environment is two evolutionary steps on from the ones I now know backwards, and the screen, although people complain about resistive screens being a pain to use after capacitive, seemed perfectly fine. The keyboard didn't seem too bad, needing only familiarity to be comfortable, and although I didn't agree with the default menu layout, that's nothing that a few minutes customising won't fix.

The Milestone is a very sexy black oblong indeed, from the clean and industrial school of design, well made and is of course very tightly integrated with all the Google services I already use.

Essentially, then, we have two comparable devices, with slightly different hardware philosophies, one with a software platform I know backwards and already have a solid set of tools for, and one which will be an exciting new adventure.

Symbian has a huge number of applications, some available via Nokia's stumbling Ovi Store, most straight from developer websites. Android has a rapidly growing marketplace and developer community.

Nokia consistently build the most comprehensively competent devices. Motorola put their all into the Milestone.

The N97 Mini keyboard looks a little finger-friendlier, the Milestone has a D-pad for precise cursor placement in text.

The N97 is an N-series Nokia and has an N-series camera with Carl Zeiss Optics. The Milestone doesn't.

So it's not exactly an easy choice.

And here's the three big factors:

The screen - One the one hand, the capacitive screen on the Milestone is more sensitive, and better/clearer/sharper (marginally!). On the other hand, it can't be operated in gloves, through plastic map pockets, or with fingers that are too wet/dry/cold. The N97 can be operated with anything you can push it with, including pens, glove fingers, and through water-proof covers. As I ride a bike, and may need it for GPS, or to control music, this last bit is rather important for me. Even if I get a holder, and it doesn't rain, I can't operate a capacitative screen while wearing gloves. Until someone introduces bullet-proof voice control that works with severe levels of background noise, that will continue to be a big issue for me. And no, I can't afford to buy a separate bike-specialist GPS system that acts as a control centre for phones and MP3 players, no matter how much they may impress me.

Support - Nokia have a great reputation for releasing half-finished firmwares, but a better one for steadily rolling out upgrades. Motorola still need to prove themselves, and the thriving third-party ROM scene that some devices enjoy is questionable for the Milestone.

Services back-end - I use Google, and although I don't trust them to ensure privacy, get everything right, make the best decisions or even not fuck up now and again, they know how to make services. Nokia, well... There are many reasons I don't use anything branded "Ovi" except the built-in mapping software, and the fact that I already use Google is not even very far up the list. Nokia I do not trust to build services at all. Although they have improved quite a lot lately, the web interface to Ovi Maps made me burst out laughing in incredulous disbelief last week when I had a quick look at it.

Now, for the less practical consideration: Android is more exciting. Symbian is a known quantity, very solid, with quirks and issues but something I know will give me a superbly functional device. But familiarity, unfortunately, breeds indifference. The touch aspects will be interesting, for a while, but Android is entirely new, and there will be so much to explore.

There is also the fact that Android is evolving fast, and may soon leave the Milestone behind if Motorola or the community don't keep up the firmware updates, while Symbian is rushing headlong towards Symbian^3, due out this year, which will see a progression towards a complete UI overhaul and a graphic toolkit change that will begin to introduce incompatibilities.

So there's not really much to pick between them on that front, I have to say.

Which brings me irrevocably back to the fact that picking between them is going to be a right bitch.

Price is not really an issue - the N97 Mini is $900-ish, the Milestone $700-ish (through Expansys, Motorola Australia went bankrupt), but go to eBay and you can find either device, claiming to be fully unlocked and Australian-compatible, for $600 plus extras thrown in, like car chargers and screen protectors.

It turns out that although I love having choices, I hate having to actually make one.