Experiments in Lifelogging, Part 8: It's dead, Jim

Well, that was some rather short-lived fun. Last Wednesday, I came home from our local PHP user group meet-up and plugged the Narrative Clip into my computer, as usual. It uploaded the photos and then, as has happened before, I forgot about it and put the computer to sleep. So I found it hanging from the back of my iMac in the morning, unplugged it and went to work. When I plugged it into my computer at work, the Narrative Uploaded didn't recognise the Clip.

I tried a few things (unplugging and replugging cable and Clip, restarting the uploader), but no dice. I also noticed that the LEDs on the Clip didn't light up when it was plugged in or when I double-tapped it. Oh dear.

Narrative support was quick to come back with a suggestion:

We recommend you to discharge the Clip (lens face up) for about 6 hours. Once it is discharged please plug the Clip back into your computer.

So I left it face up on my desk for the rest of the day and even wore it during the evening. When I got back home (more than 8 hours after I had received the above advice) and plugged it into my computer, it still wasn't recognised and the LEDs still didn't turn on. I left it face up (and unplugged) over night but was still left with a rather dead-looking device in the morning.

Time to contact Narrative support again. The verdict:

the development team have now confirmed that the Narrative Clip is broken and we will replace it.

Bummer.

I've used the Narrative Clip for two and a half months now and wore it every day, sometimes the entire day, sometimes only for a short time. Clipping it on when leaving the house has become second nature. It feels odd not doing that any more.