Still on a quest to find something worthwhile in ALS that actually works, I tried Analyse/Tools/Points to grid. ‘Points to grid’ is cryptic at the very least, so when the dialogue opened I clicked the’?’ for help, and got to http://www.ala.org.au/spatial-portal-he … cies-tools and the greatly helpful ‘This page does not exist’.  So back to guesswork.

Enter Calliphora uralensis (I thought the suggested Macropus giganteus was probably not too relevant to Scotland), and hit ‘Next’.  Since the screen looked more or less the same as the one I worked on yesterday in the AOO/EOO tool, I expected failure, but no – I get to stage 3.

The options there are pretty obscure (no OSGR for a start, just decimal degrees), so I stuck with the defaults. Click ‘Next’, and I am told it will take less than a minute.  Click next again, and I am given a warning notice that ‘There is a problem selecting the species. Try to select the species again’.

So back to stage two, and I type at random ‘ard’. Six options appear, none of which contains the string ‘ard’, but we know all about that problem. Pick ‘Sagina apetala’, and ‘Next’, and ‘Next’, and ‘Next’, and ‘Next’, and ‘Next’ and ‘Next’, and nothing happens at all.  On the principle that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I stopped.

So despite all my best efforts, I have still not found a single function in ALS beyond the utterly trivial that seems to work.  I could add a list of requests to the IT team, as I have done before, but I think the necessary actions are blindingly obvious without that effort.

The 'insanity principle' would rather suggest that I (and everyone else) should find some other entertainment until ALS has had some serious remedial work - or even better have it parcelled up, and sent back to Oz with the message 'Can we have our money back, please?'.

M.