Category: Blog
The inbox cannae take it anymore, Captain!
At work, we use WebMarshal to filter internet access so the kiddywinks don’t access porn and games and MySpace and other Internet Evils‚Äö?묢. As well as blocking access, all page requests are logged and anything that hits a filter triggers an email to me. Earlier this week, I’d stopped getting WebMarshal emails (although other emails were fine). Considering I get a fair few each day, I realised that something was wrong. Either that, or Die Kinderen had suddenly all gone …
It’s my birthday!
And I’ve reached the Grand Old Age of 19*. Hurrah for me! I’d actually forgotten it was my birthday this week. Although I tend to forget pretty much every year, it always confuses me as I always remember my sister’s birthday which is just two days later. Isn’t being senile great? *For large values of 19.
Dell 2407WFP and Geforce FX 5600 woes
I took delivery of a new Dell 2407 widescreen monitor today. And very nice it is too. To test it, I plugged it into my MacBook, and within seconds I had a lovely 1920×1200 crystal clear display. Excellent. However, things were not all well when I tried it on my PC. I thought I’d recount the problems here, for the benefit of others who have run into the same problem as me. My PC has a Geforce FX 5600 graphics …
Super Micro Game Gear
Lookie what just arrived for me! It’s a “PlayPal” handheld console, officially licenced by Sega and includes 20-odd Game Gear titles. Not only that, but you can also connect it up to a TV and play them on that! Update: If you want to buy your own, Play Asia have them in stock for a little over ¬¨¬£15.
Powerless!
This morning at work, we had a Year 9 SAT exam in ICT. This involved two classes logging on to some bespoke RM-powered piece of software, which I have spent the best part of a week setting up. We did it last year too, and it was a mess. The software was horribly flaky and slow, kids got confused that the word processor “emulator” wasn’t an exact replica of Word, and the 50 minute exam took almost two hours. This …
Happy Birthday, Mr Spectrum!
25 years ago this week, a man named Clive Sinclair unleashed the future into an unsuspecting world. That is, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released. The details of the machine and its history have been reported all over the internet already today, so I won’t bother duplicating any of that here. I should, however, point out how much the Spectrum changed my own life. As MJ Hibbett and The Validators so musically sang, my parents bought me a 48K Spectrum+ …
Speed cameras – money, not lives
Gosh. Two rants about speed cameras in a row. How petrolhead of me. There’s a road in Norfolk called the A47. It is, in fact, only one of two major roads in Norfolk, and runs east and west through the middle of the county. It’s a road I drive on almost every single day. The A47 is almost unique in this county, as sections of it are dual carriageway. That’s as close as we get to a motorway round these …
On the topic of speed cameras
On my way into work this morning, there was one of them mobile speed camera vans on the side of the road. That particular stretch of road has a 60mph limit, but due to the lorry a few vehicles in front, no-one was going faster than 50. In fact, very rarely can you go 60 there anyway – and certainly not at that time in the morning. So why then, did one of the cars in the convoy decide, presumably …
Tales from the Future #1
I was having a discussion with someone over IRC today (his name is Mal Franks, and he is Wrong), with regards to HD film formats, and it escalated to me predicting the future for technology in general. As is common, I’m sure. So profound were my statements, that I thought it best to publish them here so that in ten or twenty years time people can look back at what I wrote and say I was better than Nostradamus. Or …
That’s it – my life is over
Because Bethesda have released Oblivion: Shivering Isles for the Xbox 360 today. Which supposedly adds another 30-40 hours play to the game. Of course, once I set foot in Cyrodiil again, I’ll need to play the previous expansions (like Knights of the Nine) and the remaining Dark Brotherhood and Fighters Guild quests that I haven’t yet done. Which means my 130+ hours on the game so far could well nudge 200. See you all at Christmas!
On the topic of screen resolutions: Q or Q?
Warning: this post may contain scenes of a geeky nature. So I’m looking for a new monitor. Actually, two new monitors – one for work, and one for home. On my PCs, I love a huge resolution, running a 19″ Iiyama VM Pro at 1600×1200 at work, and a 22″ Iiyama VM Pro at 1920×1440. Mmm, screen real estate. Thanks to the aceness that is Expos‚àö¬©, I manage happily with “just” 1280×800 on my MacBook, but on a Windows machine, …
Brown’s new budget
At first this may seem to be a bit of a departure from the usual sort of blog topics I post about here, but hold on – there’s a pay-off… So yesterday saw the new budget plans by the government. As usual, the “nasties” got a tax rise (that’s fags, booze and fuel), but somewhat surprisingly, income tax dropped. Sort of. Of course, it depends on your tax bracket and stuff, and other rises may counter anything you might gain …