Chrome stats for nerds

Chrome, the new web browser from Google, is very nice. It’s quick, it’s low on resources, and it’s pretty slick in general. There are a few bugs (like certain links can crash it), and there’s a nasty security problem in that your stored passwords aren’t protected in any way. Oh, and there’s no Mac version yet. However, once they’ve sorted these issues out, I might make the switch. In traditional Google Humour style, Chrome is also full of easter eggs. …

24 week (and a bit) baby news update

Last night we went back to the midwife for the 24 week checkup. Thankfully, everything was fine, although once again the baby refused to stay still so it took a while to find him/her with the heartbeat-finding-device-thing that reminds me of those things people with no vocal cords use. But then it was found, and it sounded more like an actual heartbeat and less like Pac-man this time round.

Fillum review: Demon Seed (1977)

These old films about computers (see also WarGames) are amazing. They never manage to get computers right, do they? They just assume that computers in the future will get bigger, have more flashing lights, still be using floppy disks, and yet will have amazing artificial intellegence. Presumably squeezed into 16K of RAM. Demon Seed is about one of these computers. One with its own brain, and tasked with things such as finding places to drill for oil, predicting the stock …

Fillum review: Time Bandits (1981)

Paul Kaye introduced it as a film you need to see before you die. I’m not sure that’s entirely necessary, as there are many better films out there. However, there aren’t many better films with Monty Python involvement, and midgets. Sorry, dwarves. What is the politically correct term? Very small people? Persons of unusually short stature? Although it was written by two Pythons, and stars some of them, overt silliness is kept to a minimum. The story is all over …

Test your site on loads of browsers at once!

Browsershots runs your supplied URL through a metric plethora of browsers, on assorted platforms, and then provides you with screengrabs on how it looks! They seem to have a bank of virtual machines doing the real actual work, and you are placed in a queue, but it’s certainly easier than installing all the OSes and browsers yourself. I was surprised to see that this very blog not only broke on some systems, but actually killed the browser. Now that’s power!

Fillum review: My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

Everyone loves Ghibli films, right? They’re everything Disney aren’t. You know, like good and stuff. My Neighbour Totoro follows the story of two girls who, with their father, move to the country to be nearer their mother in hospital. There’s not really much of a plot, as very little actually happens. It’s just a very nice fairy story of the forest spirits (Totoro and his friends) and how they help the girls a couple of times after the girls lend …

More scamming phone callers

Aside from blasting off and nuking them from orbit, is there any way of stopping these people from calling me?¬¨‚Ć I’m set up with the Telephone Preference Service, but I still get people ringing. Usually, no one is on the line when I pick up (or I don’t pick up at all), but they shouldn’t be calling at all. Today’s offender is 01563 556366, which (according to other posters at WhoCallsMe?) is yet another company pretending to be T-Mobile.

My new Megadrive

Play Asia started selling these recently. They look like a Megadrive variant of the many Famicom “famiclones” out there, but they’re not – they’re officially licenced by Sega! And they’re really cheap too, coming in at under ¬¨¬£20. You get 20 games built into the unit, but it also has a cartridge slot to play original (and forthcoming re-released) cartridges. I tested it with quite a few games of varying geographic origin, and aside from the UK version of Street …

New server desktop wallpaper

At work, I’ve facetiously named all our servers with actual proper names. “Server 1” or “Mail Server” are dull, boring, and – most importantly – rubbish names for servers. So they have names. Some were named after specific people, others were named because the machines were different colours and the name started with the same letter as the colour. Roxy is the Proxy. So there’s no real pattern to them all. Anyway. This week, we killed several of the older …