Thursday 31 January 2008

Shameless plug for a friend's website

Matthew used to work at the same company has me but left before Christmas to pursue his other interests. One of which is a website full of useful information for anyone getting to grips with windows.

http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com

It is a interesting site full of information, instructional videos on how to drive windows and advice about solutions for security, anti-virus and firewalls.

Cheers!

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Left work today for the last time

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Well I unwrapped this present for the last time today (Cartoon from toothpastefordinner.com)

Over 10 years I have worked at this particular company and today I went home early for the last time. It is a pity there is bitterness on both sides as the "professional relationship" broke down. I know no-one likes their job, but I honestly used to and unfortunately didn't anymore.

The plan is to reboot, clear my mind of all the garbage it has put up with recently and then decide what I want out life.

All I can say to those still left in purgatory is I wish you the best and hopefully some get what they deserve. Thanks for the bottle of whiskey and the card.

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The True Natural Born Killers


The Telegraph website is showing some amazing pictures capturing the splendour and horror of a great white shark weighing two tons leaping 10ft from the water as it closes inevitably on its victim in this case a loveable seal.

Saturday 26 January 2008

My apologies to Kris Athi

In my previous post I took a little pot shot at Kris Athi who it was reported on the BBC website was suffering a problem with MySpace.

Kris left a good natured comment and explained that he was running his own email server so there was no way that a spam filter was responsible.

So I would like to apologise for questioning Kris' abilities and wish him well this year and hope he graduates with flying colours and gets that job at Nasa he wants! :-)

Friday 25 January 2008

Computer Science Student vs MySpace

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I had to smile when I read this article on the BBC news website. It seems a computer science student was having a little trouble with MySpace

Kris Athi wrote to the BBC after trying since early December to delete his MySpace account. "As I am graduating in the summer," he explained, "I decided to it was time to grow up and remove any job-threatening information from the internet."

His profile does not look that job-threatening - just the normal collection of mildly embarrassing photos and obscure messages from fellow students. It does reveal that Kris is studying computer science and wants to develop video games or be an astronaut "when I grow up".

Kris explained that he had performed the "cancel account" procedure, and confirmed time and again that he did want to delete his account. But to complete the process you then need to reply to a confirmation e-mail from MySpace. That e-mail has never arrived.

"I tried to receive this e-mail about fifty times over three weeks," Kris said. "As I am studying computer science I like to think I am quite "tech savvy" and understand where to look for such an e-mail should it be sent.


Well it appears that poor old Kris isn't as "tech savvy" as he would like to think. Firstly it sounds like the confirmation email was being caught by a spam filter, either his ISP or his email provider and besides as MySpace point out you can make your page private so no-one can see it anyway. In Kris' defense he does claim on his blog to have checked his junk mail, so it does appear to be his ISP at fault.

In a statement MySpace told us, "Kris had no need to cancel his account, he could simply have set his profile to private so no one would have been able to view it without his approval."

The company went on to explain why Kris may have found it difficult to get hold of the cancellation e-mail. "In some cases e-mails confirming cancellation will be sent to "junk mail" by e-mail providers. E-mails from MySpace can sometimes be blocked entirely because the ISPs block e-mails based on volume."

But Kris is not impressed: "I think removing your personal information from a site should be less of a pain and performed much more quickly."


Out of interest I tried to delete my MySpace account and what do you know, about three clicks and I received the email message asking for confirmation!

I am sure Kris would have been complaining had someone managed to delete his account because they didn't have to confirm their identity. A lot of websites won't delete or allow changes to information without using email as an identity confirmation that is why most stress the importance of making sure spam filters and blockers aren't blocking such emails.

Oh and for good measure the BBC then throw in the old scare story about you leaving information scattered all over the information super highway.

We asked a private detective Richard Martinez to have a quick scour of the internet to see what traces Kris had left behind. There was nothing particularly damaging but enough to provide a potential employer - or a fraudster - with lots of information.


What is the betting Mr Martinez just entered Kris Athi in a google search
and stumbled across his website http://www.krisathi.co.uk/ including his CV his blog http://www.klog.co.uk/ and numerous other posts on various websites he has made.

See him demonstrate his 3l33t skills on this BBC Video

Will be interesting to see what future employers make of his 15 seconds of internet fame, just waiting to see what Slashdot and Digg will make of it.

Oh and perhaps they shouldn't have taken a screen shot.

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Since when has University Challenge had specialised subjects? Don't you mean Mastermind?

Update If it was so difficult to delete your MySpace account then the forthcoming "International Delete Your Myspace Account Day" on January 30th would be a bit of a failure.

I will die and leave no footprints in time

I felt cheerful this morning but as the day continues ennui is beginning to gnaw at me.

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I found the cartoon at Paul Kingsnorth's website via a google image search.

Boxes of junk!

Well the computer has fired up and seems to be working. While it was fixing itself last night I had a bit of a clean up in computer room. I discovered some shoeboxes hidden away that are full of junk! I have a load more boxes in the loft that I know are full of similar obsolete items.

One of my many tasks in the coming weeks as well as doing some decorating will be to sort through all my stuff and either dump or sell most of it (probably at a carboot sale)

 

 

 

 
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74% - ok this is starting to worry me now!



Well this "chkdsk /r" has been running since 6:30pm last night, so has been running for 13 hours! When I got out of bed an hour ago it was saying 74%

Just had my usual half an hour of browsing on my standby PC and I switched the KVM back to the suspect machine to check progress and it was saying 55%... wtf! Mind you the drive light was flickering frantically and it started to count up, currently at 72%!

Not sure my nerves can take it anymore, probably finish and find it has decided to format the drive!

HOLD THE PRESS - as I was compiling this post the machine has finished checking the disk, as I suspected it has found and fixed some errors and is in the process of rebooting as I type. Things are looking promising as it just got past the login screen!

Thursday 24 January 2008

54% complete

Here we go again, my main PC which is a Dell despite having a decent processor, motherboard, harddrives, graphics cards etc has a habit of being really slow and unreliable sometimes, yes I know "what do I expect buying that pile of crap".

This morning RealPlayer decided to hang the machine up, yes I know "what do I expect installing that pile of crap" but I quite like watching some of the BBC news reports. Norton Internet Security 2008 had also gone away and updated itself, yes I know "what do I expect installing that pile of crap" and was waiting for a reboot so I finally got the machine to shutdown without resorting to the power switch and now it won't boot.

Enter the password at the log-in screen and it just sits there and after about 5 minutes a Blue Screen Of Death informs me that something critical has just nuked itself and it's shutting down to protect me! (Stop error 0x000000F4 if your wondering)

Well it appears to be a software problem and/or a corrupted file so I am currently running "chkdsk /r" from the recovery console. The only problem is now it's been sitting at 54% done for about an hour! but the harddrive light is blinking away so I assume it's still running, best get the coffee on it's going to be a long night!

Well this photo of a BSOD amused me as it reminds me that I am probably leaving this industry at the right time!

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Update... just reached 55%

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Dog vs Balloons



I have four terrier cross dogs and each of them goes mental for balloons, even our little old 17 year old still gets worked up by them.

Watch this brilliant video kbad73 has posted on youtube of Simon the terrier exacting his revenge on 74 evil latex orbs in a mere 57 seconds!

Oh and the video below shows Simon continuing his noble yet relentless quest to end cardboard balloon infestations. 100 spheres of doom dispatched in a paltry 77 seconds!

Burning Bridges?

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Perhaps I should have read this article before taking my recent course of action.

Just over a week left....

Monday 21 January 2008

Blue Monday



Are you feeling down? In a foul mood? Feeling irritable? Fed up of the rain clouds and spending most of the day in the dark? Well you are not the only one.

Today is officially Blue Monday. Cheer up! It's not just you!

All over the land worn out workers are hanging on for the end of the month pay cheque after overspending at Christmas. The dark nights are not helping, nor are the failed resolutions set out with such hope at New Year. To make things worse, those expensively purchased Christmas memories are fading fast. So says Dr Cliff Arnall, a psychologist at Cardiff University who devised the Blue Monday formula. Does it make it any better now you know your mood can be calculated? Probably not.

Where T equals time since Christmas, D equals debt, W is weather, d is money due in January pay, Q time since failed quit attempt, M general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action, today, he calculates, we are in trouble.

Here is the formula: 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.

In short the Monday morning of the last full week of January is a deeper shade of blue than any other of the year.

But enough with the misery watch the video above of the sublime New Order and their 1980's classic Blue Monday that should cheer you up!

Friday 18 January 2008

NHS saves hundreds... but kills thousands!

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This morning I posted about the propose organ harvesting scheme proposed by the UK Government. In it I included a link to Polly Toynbee's diatribe on the Guardian website in support of it. In it she has the following line
"It is deeply shocking that hundreds of thousands of lives have been blighted or lost over the past decades for no better reason than a few vociferous people's misguided and primitive instincts about the sanctity and integrity of corpses."
Well I wonder how that comments sits with the claim that 17,000 deaths a year in the UK are unnecessary and due to nothing more than poor NHS performance?

The NHS is wasteful and inefficient my wife works in the NHS and knows only to well how much the bureaucracy has increased, instead of letting the hospitals decide what they need to spend the money on to increase performance the Government continually force them to spend it on headline grabbing initiatives. For every headline about waiting lists there seems to be two or more about MSRA or unnecessary deaths.

Oh and on the subject of infections at hospitals I wonder how many victims will get £5 million payouts? Not many as Peter Walsh, of the group Action against Medical Accidents, said: "
Thousands of people are gravely affected or even killed by avoidable hospital acquired infections every year. However, the continuing restriction of legal aid means that very few people can afford even to have their case investigated."
It seems the compensation paid to Leslie Ash has caused outrage in some quarters
"The £5 million paid out is equivalent to the total paid out in compensation to all MRSA victims in the last four years.

It would pay for 250 specialist intensive care unit nurses for a y ear, 230 year-long courses of Herceptin breast cancer treatment, 6,578 doses of a drug which could save the eyesight of 137 people, six MRI scanners, or 70 consultants for a year."
A very sorry state of affairs indeed.

The Ulimate Death Tax

I have for years carried a organ donor card in my wallet and am of the opinion when your dead your dead so am happy for my parts to be divided up, providing it's not used to prolong the life of some pathetic alcoholic


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This week saw the UK's nanny state reveal its latest ghoulish plan. The Labour government plan to snatch the body parts of anyone. Obviously at the moment this policy only applies to dead people. Is this the ultimate death tax, surgically extracted.

Without any apparent squeamishness, Gordon Brown backed the Presumed Consent Scheme to redress the demand for transplanted organs. So rather than looking for those bothersome donor cards on a fresh cadaver, we are all now fair game. If you don’t specifically carry a card saying “leave my corpse alone” -- known as “the opt out option”, or unless one’s family is on hand to object, one’s remains are considered fair game for an organ harvest festival!

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Considering that hospitals are dangerous places to be in at the best of times and are driven more and more by targets and have limited resources do you honestly think Doctors are not going to look at your body and decide your recovery is borderline and potential expensive and would it be better to let you die and save a handful of other people? Yes that could happen now if they knew you carried a card, but when everyone is automatically a potential bag of meaty goodies?

Oh want to read the ramblings of a supporter of this idea than you cannot do much better than read Polly Toynbee's column in the Guardian. This woman is to use a phrase I heard recently "totally hat stand"

I have plagiarised some of phrasing of this post from this excellent article on humanevents.com which points out some of ethical dilemmas of this proposed scheme.

Thursday 17 January 2008

Workplace "Jazz Mags"

Where I work (well for the next two weeks anyway) has one toilet cubicle which always seems to have a couple of "lads mags" or should that be "jazz mags" for it's occupants perusal while they answer the call of nature and/or skive off for a few minutes. These well thumbed issues of Nuts magazine are the current reading material on offer.

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Today I noticed this interesting stain on the cubicle door opposite!

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Enough said I think!

(pictures taken with my crappy Motorola L6)

Wednesday 16 January 2008

Pastures new, greener grass?

pasture

Well I resigned from my current job back in October. I have been in the job for 10 years and have worked with some of the senior management at this and other companies for the best part of 15 years. However "things change" as one of my bosses said this morning. They certainly do!

Come January 31st I will be unemployed and no real idea of what I want to do! I have a brief period in order to reboot and clear my cache and decide what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Doggysnaps.com

DoggySnaps.com

I am a dog lover, and share my home with four rescued terrier crosses ranging from 4 years old to 17 years. I am actively involved in the sport of dog agility. You can see some of my efforts on my youtube.com page.

I just stumbled across the Dog Trust’s photo-sharing community, DoggySnaps.com. The site is wonderfully designed with an impressive attention to detail.

The site has just won the social category in the Yahoo Finds of the Year competition, reflecting the best of user generated content on the web. Doggysnaps is the first UK-based website dedicated to dog lovers where they can build profiles for their canine companions, swap dog related tips, photos, stories and ideas.

The judging panel were impressed by the design of the site and especially enjoyed the 'Dog of the Week' section. They also liked the fact the site is run by a charity - Dogs Trust. The trust cares for over 14,000 stray and abandoned dogs a year.

Steve Bridger on his nfp2.0 blog has an interesting article discussing the design of the website.

Time to post my four mutts up!

MacBook Thin Air

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Yesterday saw Apple announce the super thin MacBook Air a triumph of style and design, though I am not sure the ASA will make of the main photograph on the website which uses crafty angles to hide the bulge underneath. It actually looks more like a high-tech kitchen chopping board!

Oh and interestingly I have the AdBlock Plus extension in my Firefox browser and for some reason it has decided to block the actual image (I assume it's a practical joke on behalf of those compiling my current subscribed filter set) - so the MacBook Thin Air might be a better name!

Here is the site with AdBlock disabled showing the technological porn!

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Monday 14 January 2008

Should I stay or should I go?



Today I find myself in the same situation as the Clash I have to ask my self this question and answer it, should I stay in my current job, or should I go?

Sunday 13 January 2008

Stephen Fry and Social Networking

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I would love to be as intelligent and as eloquent as Stephen Fry, his blog and musing on technology are required reading not necessarily because he is right, but because of the way he puts his thoughts down.

Today sees the Guardian posting his thoughts on Social Networking in their Dork Talk column (what a hideous name) and he has repeated the column on his own blog.

He makes the point that so many of the new "Web 2.0" social networking phenomena is based on old practises but with a coat of shiny new technology paint. He also bemoans that these new websites are actively encouraging the segregation of people in to groups that don't look outside of their own interests, comparing it to the old systems used by AOL and Compuserve that created closed communities and resisted the urge to add the "Internet" access. Those old communities effectively disappeared as the Internet came on line for it to now be replaced by the new kids on the block like MySpace, FaceBook and Bebo.

Interesting article I suggest you read it.

Stephen Darlington posted similar thoughts on his blog back in July.

Boris loves his stick!

Another picture from Whitby, not sure why Picasa didn't add it to the last post, but I think it deserves a post of it's own!

 
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Whitby

Well we spent yesterday up in Whitby, driving up across the North Yorkshire Moors stopping off at the Hole of Horecum to let the dogs stretch their legs.
 
 
 
 
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Friday 11 January 2008

It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people!

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It took 18 years to design, 20,000 workers to build and cost £4.3bn - but now Heathrow airport's terminal five is finally complete (read all about it here) However seeing the above picture of the baggage handling hall I can image Charlton Heston running down it shouting "It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people!" It looks so 1970s in style!

Oh don't understand the quote you had better watch the film!

No Ifs, No Buts!

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Peter Hain, the work and pensions secretary, failed to declare £103,000 in donations to his deputy leadership campaign. This is clearly a breach of electoral law and yet he is still in his job. Hain has issued an apology to his party and to the prime minister, but rejected the view he should resign from the government, saying he had made a mistake "inadvertently and not wilfully".

Interestingly and perhaps ironically his very own department is currently running a "No Ifs, No Buts" advertising campaign when it comes to benefit fraud.

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Whether he broke the law or not, or was a willing party or completely innocent if he can't oversee the financing of his own campaign, can he really be trusted to look after a £100 billion social security budget?

This is Hain's latest statement on the fiasco
I today met the Electoral Commission and reported £103,156.75 of donations to my deputy leadership campaign that were not registered within the required timescale.

I provided full details to them and was very satisfied with the meeting.

All of the donations were from people entitled to legally donate to my campaign.

I understand that people will ask how I could have allowed this number of donations to go undeclared at the time.

The fact is that during this period, I gave my campaign for office within the Labour party second priority to my government responsibilities. I reasonably believed that the arrangements in place for my deputy leader campaign would be sufficient to ensure compliance with reporting requirements, but as it transpired, due to administrative failings this was not the case after early May.

It became necessary to continue fundraising after the campaign ended as a result of unpaid invoices coming to light during the summer and autumn.

Immediately I became aware on November 29 2007 that these donations had not been declared within the required timescale; I took steps to inform the Electoral Commission, issued a public statement and subsequently asked to see the Commission on December 3.

At that time I confirmed my intention to provide a full report as soon as I was satisfied it was complete. I have subsequently kept in touch with the Electoral Commission on progress.

I very much regret that these reports were not made on time. I should have given higher personal priority to the day-to-day administration and organisation of my campaign.

Thursday 10 January 2008

Security Lights - Waste Of Energy

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I have just come in after taking my dogs for a walk and one thing really struck me tonight, the number of badly fitted security lights which were on, or came on for no reason wasting energy. Many of them reacted to me walking past in the road outside the boundary of the property and often floodlit the houses opposite, casting a shadow of a fat man with his dogs rather than them lighting up the area intended!

Security lights with PIR which are automatically triggered by movement have become increasingly popular among homeowners in the fight to prevent break-ins and to provide much needed lighting when arriving home. I have quite a number installed around my house to light up the driveway and the gardens when out at night. When I fitted them I made special care to select models with adjustable timers and darkness threshold settings so that they only came on when dark and only for a short period of time only (their on time is automatically extended if movement continues) I also ensured that they were angled such that they were triggered by movement on, and only illuminated my property and didn't illuminate the surrounding gardens or houses. I have also replaced the unnecessary bright 500W halogen bulbs for 300W ones.

I seem to be in the minority as I understand that there have been a rise in the number of complaints to councils about security lights that go on too easily at night, pouring light into neighbours' homes. There was talk in Scotland recently about introducing legislation to cover these floodlights.

The new provision will apply to any floodlights home owners choose to erect in order to light up their house at night. Members of the public will also be able to complain about street lamps outside their homes which they consider intrusive. The Public Health Bill is currently moving through the Scottish Parliament and is expected to made law later this year.

To prove that nearby lighting is a genuine nuisance, neighbours will have to show that it disturbs them even when their curtains are drawn. What I didn't realise was this law is already in force in England where the "Campaign for Dark Skies" is gaining support, triggered by several accidents caused by bright lights at night.

In Oxfordshire, a man was hit by a car and killed after a floodlight outside a pub temporarily blinded the driver. The case against security lights has also been made by a study for the British Journal of Criminology, which concluded that security lights on houses have no noticeable effect on deterring criminals.

Interestingly on the CfDS website they point out "Assume that, throughout the UK, there are 2.2 million home "security" floodlights that are on, on average, 30 minutes per night (see the Environmental section, above). They will cost a total of £10 million a year for 500 watt lights alone (assuming the electricity used costs 5p per KW/hr)."

I IS MR GAY!

I have never been a great games player, I had a second hand PlayStation years after their heyday and never played it. I got an original XBox which I chipped and now use as a media player using the wonderful XBMC I have played HalfLife on the PC. But truth is I never really got involved with the games and hated the controllers and still do.

So when I read about and then later saw the Nintendo Wii I decided the concept looked interesting and at the comparatively low price it was worth getting one. However I missed out for Christmas 2006 and finally got one in February and I am ashamed to admit it but this brilliant console has sat pretty much unused for most of the year due to lack of time and games. Yes I loved the bundled Wii Sports and completed The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess (with a little help from a walkthrough) I also dabbled with Excite Truck but for most of year that has been it, the console has sat next to TV.

Things changed this Christmas as people finally had something they could buy me (well something I wanted) and I got a clutch of Wii Games Mercury Meltdown Revolution, Tiger Woods PGA 2008, Mario and Sonic at the Olympics and the must have game of 2007 Super Mario Galaxy.

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As you may have heard a little bit of comic license was show by the artwork illustrator(s), who have now probably been fired, if you look at the artwork you can see some of the letters have a little glint/star attached, they are the U, R, M, R, G, A, Y spelling the humorous Ur Mr Gay! link

However despite that this game is wonderful and currently has the honour of being the the most highly rated game of all time!

The cartoon graphics are wonderful, bright, colourful and while they won't satisfy the legions of the "pixel whore", "kill anything that moves" HD gamers with their Microsoft XBox360s and Sony PS3s they do a wonderful job of making you feel like a child. You do nothing but smile at the constant twists, turns and ingenuity of the game play depicted in this crayola coloured universe. The use of 'gravity' in the game is simply outstanding whether it is running around spheres, leaping from planet to planet, pulling yourself along from star to star or catapulting yourself across the void.

During the last couple of days while off sick I have been able to play a few hours and currently have a measly 12 stars but have enjoyed every single minute of it.

Many many words have already been written on the web praising the game and I suggest you pop along to Google and read some of them.

Oh and just the clarify things I am not an homosexual!

Wednesday 9 January 2008

Norovirus

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Just spent the last two days sitting on the toilet and feeling very ill thanks to the little joker pictured above, the Norovirus or Norwalk Virus otherwise known as the Winter Vomiting Bug!

Monday 7 January 2008

Poetic Justice

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Now I love Top Gear and it's presenter Jeremy Clarkson but his latest stunt made me smile.

Clarkson published his account details in a column in The Sun to back up his claims that the child benefit data loss furore, which resulted in the loss of unencrypted CDs containing bank details of 25m people, was a lot of fuss about nothing.

Clarkson published his account number and sort code, along with clues to his address, insisting that the worst that could happen was that someone could pay money into his account. Well a few days later and Clarkson has been forced to admit he was wrong after an unidentified prankster set up a £500 direct debit from the account to the charity Diabetes UK, the BBC reports.

"The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again," Clarkson said in a column published in the Sunday Times. "I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake."

Clarkson now says of the case: "Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy."

Oh and Clarkson recently had this to say about the Skoda Roomster which I got as a courtesy car a few weeks back and was pleasantly surprised by what a capable fun car it was.

57 Channels (and nothin' on)

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Bruce Springsteen sang that on his 1992 album Human Touch well in 2008 I can safely say with Sky TV that the number of channels has increased but the sentiment hasn't.

For many years we had the full Sky TV premium package, movies, sport and every channel they supply. Then last year we decided that the nearly £50 a month was a bit excessive so decided to ditch the sports pack and can safely say we never missed it. Well this year we have gone the whole hog and ditched the whole thing, as £35 was still too much considering how little we actually watch on it nowadays and what we do watch is available for free.

Interestingly despite them pulling the plug at midnight last night there are still plenty of channels to watch, all the BBC offerings, the ITV offerings (no E4,More4 or Virgin but won't notice them) Film4 and the Zone film channels and numerous others are still available as well as all the radio channels.

It must be said that the majority of TV I do watch nowadays are American premieres via Bit Torrent. Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, The Lost Room are ones that spring to mind.

Thursday 3 January 2008

Weather Station

A while ago I purchased a cheap and cheerless weather station from Maplins

Atech Weather Station

Maplins used to be a wonderful hobby electronics store, usually situated out of town, where after an exciting bus ride you could buy all manner of components, toys and kits to build yourself but has over recent years turned into a modern facsimile of the old Tandy stores. Maplin now seem to spend most of their efforts opening high street stores selling expensive computer components and consumer electronics of dubious quality for ridiculous prices. But I still cannot pass by one without popping in. They recently opened a store in Lincoln and what a dump it is, it's dark, it smells (mostly of body odour) and you have to negotiate big piles of damaged cardboard boxes.

But I digress, it was on a visit to my parents that I passed one of the bigger, better stores in Walsall that I picked up this little weather station on a whim, I think it cost me about £15 in a sale. This little unit has in/out temperature monitoring, the outdoor being from a remote wireless sensor and a rudimentary barometer showing trend information. The humidity sensor is on the display unit so is next to useless in a centrally heated house!

It had proved quite reliable and informative when wanting to know the outside temperature. However recently the outdoor sensor has become unreliable, I suspect due to poor weather proofing.

My wife has always had a bit of a fixation on the weather, temperatures and forecasts. Some of this is due to her having to drive 90 miles a day into South Yorkshire for work. So this Christmas I was struggling for a present for her and decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade to a better weather station which she could have all the information she wanted and I could connect to a PC and monitor. There is a wide variety of systems out available and have opted for a budget LaCrosse WM-2350 station which I purchased from Aces Electronics.

LaCrosse WM-2350

The unit has a number of outdoor sensors, for temperature and humidty, wind speed and direction and rainfall.

Temp Sensor
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Rain Sensor

I have yet to get to set up, delayed due to bad weather! But hopefully it will be up soon and I hope the supplied software will allow me to have a website up soon with live readings!

It's alive!

Well I killed this blog sometime last year and I have lived to regret that rash decision. The reason for this drastic action was a fit of panic when a fellow work colleague had started spreading the url around and I was sure management had become aware of it.

I'd made most postings when I should of been working and the nature of some of the postings perhaps weren't in keeping with my position. No they weren't pornographic or anything like that but giving advice on how to crack wireless security and bypass network security was not quite what they pay me for!

It must be said at the time I wasn't quite thinking straight as pressure, stress and mild depression had set in. It was a shame as some of the information and posts were quite interesting and may have been a useful resource.

I know find myself with a clearer head and have decided to resurrect the blog.