Not much to report really, I just thought I’d better get a new post in and bring things up to date a little.
No matter how I try I can’t seem to get my office/workspace clear of a seemingly ever growing pile of old PCs and bits! As fast as I get rid of a pile of old machines, a couple of “new” broken ones appear. I meant to photograph the current pile and put an ad on FreeCycle but haven’t got around to it – 3 old laptops, 2 PC desktop cases, 4 tower cases, an HP scanner, 2 printers and a bunch of PSU, oh and a partridge in a pear tree!
The pile is now big enough to raise eyebrows at the local tip as I’m sure they’d think it was commercial dumping so I think the FreeCycle thing is the only way to go.
I hope there’s not another one on the way as I just had a call from somebody who fell for the phone scam where the caller reckons he’s from Microsoft Support. He says he has detected that your PC is infected with all sorts of nasties and eventually convinces people to allow him remote access to assess the damage. Unfortunately, my friend allowed him online and only realized the scam halfway through. He immediately shutdown his PC but is rightly scared about what has been done by the intruder.
I’ve been using the BBC page for a good few years now and visit it at least once each day. This morning when I visited I see they have implemented their threat of a new design.
OK, so it’s the first day of general release for the new page but I am really surprised that they have removed the options for me to customize the page to show only the things I am interested in. All I can do now is set my postcode so I see the latest weather and news for my area.
Instead of being presented with a set of options in a relatively small screen space, I now find I have to wade though half a screen filled with irrelevant (to me) pictures, football news, and the latest Strictly rubbish etc etc.
I hope they improve things…. Meantime, I’ll give the new look a 1 out of 10!
Update: Well it’s been a few days now and my opinion of the new BBC pages hasn’t changed. Please go back to the previous version…. This new one grates more each time I visit, oh, and please make links from the iPlayer or Listen Live open in a new tab as it’s far too easy to overwrite the page with a new link.
The quality isn’t great but it’s certainly worth a watch to see if you can recognise any of the holes after 60 odd years.
You can use the controls at the bottom to go full-screen which may help make things a bit clearer (although I think it looks better as it is here). Oh and the sound is now working – unfortunately it’s just a “lift music” type track as I suspect those old cine cameras didn’t have sound recording.
A week or so ago my trusty TomTom Go 500 finally gave up the ghost after almost 6 years of reliable service (see “A New Toy for 2006“). As the picture shows, it was a “sturdy” device and much deeper and heavier than the latest ones:
Mine had got rather bashed about over the years and was gaffer taped to the windscreen mount but the final straw came when it refused to find any address in Southampton! It just said “No navigable route available”. The time had come for a replacement and I decided to stick with TomTom as a manufacturer.
Google to the rescue; I found a great offer on a shiny new TomTom Via Live 120 European version which had all the new bells and whistles and was a lot smaller and lighter than the original – it was also a lot cheaper at £152, the original costing over £250 if I remember correctly. In addition the Pixmania website (which offered the best price I could find) also had a “flash” on the product picture stating “£30 Cashback”, so a total price of £122!
I ordered and paid for the Via and it arrived a couple of days later, then the truth set in! There was no sign of any cashback claim paperwork? I called Pixmania who immediately denied all knowledge of the promotion even though the picture with it was still showing proudly on their site. After a week of waiting for them to decide what to do, I contacted them again today and they responded with “there is no offer on our site and unless you can provide a screenshot the matter is closed” (or something similar).
Fortunately I had taken a shot at the time of purchase, although the item is still shown with the “flash” today, so I sent them a copy a few minutes ago and await their response…
Pleased to report that it works very well though so at least TomTom have lived up to expectations – it even knows where Southampton is
At the Cáfe Scientifique meeting last night we were treated to a discussion about what will happen when the oil runs out. During the discussion afterwards there was mention of a book, ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air‘ which I have just downloaded as a pdf file and scanned over.
After just a quick look, I heartily recommend it to anyone even slightly interested energy consumption and climate change – written in an extremely easy to read style it manages to explain the concept and dispel the myths. For the techies, the second part of the book gets stuck into the maths, but even then a decent secondary level understanding should get you through it.
Take a look… You can download the pdf from the link below (the file is free for personal use)
Earlier this week I got back from our annual French golf tour. We played four courses in the Caen area:
Golf de Omaha Beach Le Mer
Golf de Omaha Beach Le Manoir
Golf de Cabourg Le Home
Golf de Caen Le Vallone
Rating them, in order of personal preference:
Golf de Omaha Beach Le Manoir
Golf de Omaha Beach Le Mer
Golf de Cabourg Le Home
Golf de Caen Le Vallone
For a change, I managed to play them all reasonably well and Le Manoir well beyond my expectations (38 points). Overall, I shared the top place for the challenge with Paul Hawkins and it seems like my game is beginning to show signs of improvement
As usual we had a great trip, in no small part due to Pete Rush’s meticulous organization, thanks Pete!
For anyone new to WordPress, WPtuts+ is hosting some really nice tutorial videos:-
Quoting from the site: “Welcome to the WPtuts+ WP101 tutorial series, the perfect beginning spot for those just getting started with WordPress!
It’s also a valuable resource for designers & developers who are teaching your clients & colleagues!”
There will eventually be 17 tutorials; but for the moment only the first 6 are available:
Although I have always been happy with FreeSat via my Humax box, the offer of a couple of Sky Sports channels for next to nothing on BT Vision was too good to refuse. A few months ago I added the BT system to my TV and have been happy with it since. The “Sky+ like” hard drive recording is particularly good.
There are though some cons compared to the satellite system:
Less channels
No BBC iPlayer
No HD (high definition) channels
Well as of yesterday, BT finally brought the iPlayer to the Isle of Wight (and it works perfectly!) so now, I guess, I just have to sit tight and hope the FreeView network adds the extra channels and switches on the HD channels…
Keeping your Windows machine clear of malware and nasties is never easy and it’s made worse by not knowing whether your installed software is up to date. The excellent PSI utility from Secunia makes things a lot easier as it keeps an eye on all of your applications and gives your PC a rating (0-100%) on how updated everything is.
A little logo down in the bottom right hand corner of you screen changes colour when it detects outdated applications and offers an easy and automatic way to ensure that you never miss updates.
To quote from their website:
The Secunia PSI is aFREE security tool designed to detectvulnerable andout-dated programs and plug-ins which expose your PC to attacks. Attacks exploiting vulnerable programs and plug-ins are rarely blocked by traditional anti-virus and are therefore increasingly “popular” among criminals.
The only solution to block these kind of attacks is to apply security updates, commonly referred to as patches. Patches are offered free-of-charge by most software vendors, however, finding all these patches is a tedious and time consuming task. Secunia PSI automates this and alerts you when your programs and plug-ins require updating to stay secure.
Using the setup described below in my last post, I have now started exploring the world of astrophotography and my first attempt is shown below. To say I am pleased with it is a bit of an understatement!
The original images were captured as a .mov file on a Mac laptop and then processed by an image stacking programme (Keith’s Image Stacker). A little fiddling and out came the image you see.
For the more technically minded. the camera was plugged into a 2x Barlow lens which in turn was inserted into the Vectis Astronomical Society’s Meade LX200.
