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I first bought WinZip – oooooh – a few years ago (Winzip 9; copyright ’til 2004).
Anyway, they’ve nagged me enough now, and made it seem worthwhile to upgrade – so I did (£12 for the Full Monty).
I have no idea whether it’ll be worthwhile (v9 worked ok for me), but I thought WTF; surely it’ll bring benefits! Ok, so I’m gullible – but after a while at least!
Still, they wore me down – so fair enough!
I love the way the web allows you to arrive at a page, and then [sans the 'Back Button'] find yourself wondering how on Earth you got here!
I had a moment like that just now, and arrived at a YouTube video of Derek Jacobi playing Alan Turing in a BBC drama called ‘Breaking the Code’ – here’s the link.
I well remember seeing this when it first came out in 1996. It was great, won prizes, and was nominated for two BAFTAs – according to Wikipedia that is, and I found myself wondering why I hadn’t got this on DVD?
Now here’s the ‘what!’ – it’s not available! How can the BBC not have something this good available! How?
Actually, this is the second time in a few days that has seen me asking that same question; the first was when I went searching for another great programme, that Nigel Calder made for the BBC in 1979, it was called ‘Einstein’s Universe’. Featuring the Wonderful Peter Ustinov, and near light-speed motor-cycles – it was just wonderful! Alas, it’s also not available. Actually, I did find it on Amazon.com, but why oh why isn’t it available *here*; from the BBC?
I’m now suffering from deja, vu as I’m sure I’ve travelled this road many a time now – great programmes, probably all or most coming from the BBC [paid for by me in other words] and yet gone and seemingly forgotten (care to jog my memory?) What a drag.
Lately Radio 4 has been pissing me off – in the last week there’s been ‘articles’ where they’ve been talking about adopted children, and in which they persist in using the term ‘Birth Mother’.
What’s incorrect/wrong about using the term ‘Real mother’?
Actually, it’s even more interesting, that they’ve always [in everything I've heard] referred to the father as ‘the Father’, why not the ‘biological father’, ‘father by association’, ‘father by marriage’ and still they do seem preoccupied about all this ‘Birth Mother’ tree-hugging crap!
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I can’t see why the woman who actually gave birth to a child cannot be the ‘real’ mother, and why the woman who now has care of the child can’t be a ‘Foster Mother’?
Surely ‘Mother’ should be the woman who gave birth – whether she deserves to have custody of the child or not – and likewise, the ‘Father’ – deserving or not – IS the the man whose DNA is inextricably linked to the child?!
I reckon this is the ‘pc’-state going madder than a box of frogs [no, not the French]. THEY feel they’re the ‘carers’, so therefore, THEY ARE the Mother/Father now [check the OED!] Um, sorry, you’re wrong; laudable as it certainly is, you’re the Foster Parents!
I’ve just noticed what I believe to be a subtle logo that’s been going right over my head for quite sometime.
I’ve noticed things like this before with Amazon and Superman/Carrefour, but I believe I should have ‘got’ this one somewhat earlier!
I think the i> bit is meant to look like a play button – yes [or am I wrong]?
P.S. Yet another one. This is the logo for Errington-Smith estate agents. Took me ages to see it as an ‘e’ in an ‘s’!
This stuff makes me wonder!
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I can’t believe that for SP1 [Office 2007] that there are 322Mb of actual code changes – I mean the complete bloody product is only [only!] 532Mb to begin with! [BTW, despite what the text says regarding Ultimate Extras, the chosen updates were *just* the Office 2007 SP1 updates]
So what we’re getting here is component updates as opposed to, for want of a better term, code updates – it goes like this:
What *should* happen is:
Now I *know* that Microsoft can do this sort of thing, so why don’t they? I’d certainly like to know how much extra energy and bandwidth would be saved if they did it the right way!
If you’re a Times reader, you’ll have no doubt played ‘Find the start/end of Times 2 [T2]‘!
So, here’s a suggestion – flip the T2 section over 180 degrees; so that its folded-edge is easily visible from the main paper’s cut-edge! Simple, and easy to implement I reckon!
I hate gaming/gamers! Probably because A) I can’t see the point [read a book, go for a walk, ...], and B) because two people I [thought I] knew very well are very sadly addicts – one for The Sims [or practically anything else that might distract them from normality/life], and the other for the World of Warcraft [where she's a kiss-ass Elf, or some such shite!]. Oh, and C), my twelve-year-old son also plays too much! Sad individuals indeed. I truly can’t see the point.
Anyway, rant over, my son received a one month’s free trial on XBox [Saddoes] Live – or some such thing – and asked me if I could get his XBox 360 to connect to the Internet. As he’s in a room where there’s no wired network point, this meant doing it via a wireless connection.
So, on checking out the various sockets on the back of the 360 box, I tried connecting the thing using a LinkSys USB wireless adapter I had laying around. It didn’t work, and upon further reading, I’m led to believe that one requires a special Microsoft adapter.
That’s the bad news.
Now for the good news … if you’ve a wireless laptop, that also has a wired network-interface, there’s a workaround:
1. Connect your laptop to the Internet, via its built-in wireless;
2. Connect your XBox to your laptop, via a standard network cable [one is supplied with an XBox 360];
3. Bridge the laptop’s wired and wireless connections.
So, here’s the steps I went through on my ThinkPad [with XP installed]:
1. Boot/connect the machine to the network, via its wireless;
2. Connect the XBox to the ThinkPad’s wired network interface using a standard network cable;
3. Open your laptop’s Network Connections [Start | Control Panel | Network Connections];
4. Select both the wireless and wired connections;
5. Right-click on the selected connections, and select Bridge
Here’s the result:
And that was it: son-networked, playing even more games … hmmmmm – did I do the right thing?
So nice to find a local company run by the good guys these days – http://www.challengemc.com
I bought a new machine a couple of months ago – the first new one for me in around 7 years; so it was *really* getting to be about time! The old one was ok, but the hard-drive was starting to have problems … not a worry though, as I keep things backed-up. And, being a developer – who doesn’t play games [except chess!], it wasn’t as though I needed some massive clock-cycle, or graphics boost to keep me happy [happiness is a hot compiler, and an understanding woman!]
Anyway, I opted for an HP: a nice, very fast Intel dual-core with 4Gb of memory and a 600Gb hard-drive.
BUT, last week, its hard-drive started having problems – ‘bad blocks’ [Seagate!] Luckily, I got more-or-less everything off it that I cared about – partly because I keep most important stuff on an external drive.
I now have two 1Tb Samsung SATA drives – well, the second one is coming tomorrow; and it’ll be mostly used in a RAID configuration!! Plus, whereas the HP came with Vista Business, I’ve now put Ultimate on it [about time I used that expensive DVD!] I actually love Vista … but, saying that, I run most everything in VMs; courtesy of Sun’s VirtualBox [don't want to upset Vista in any shape or form!]
Can’t play, but can when technology is employed like this –
This, reminds me of this. Actually, I reckon the guitarist can play just fine – he certainly knows harmony!
