Posts from 2006

In the first 13 minutes of 20 April 2006, there was a single hit on this blog (no names, no pack-drill). Curiously, the recently added WordPress feed statistics reported a surprising and rather unlikely number of 53 estimated number of people who used certain tools to read your feed' in the same period.

Now this is simply not true. Most of these 53 'people' were RSS spiders and automatons dumbly and repeatedly polling for any activity. The associated human being is probably down the pub or asleep.

While the RSS feed may have been subscribed to at some point (by me in all probability) in the past, they are all now sitting unloved and unread in a still born Web 2.0 beta account.

Michael Brundage writes an popular article about what it is really like to work at Microsoft. Flexible working environment, minimal paperwork, hard work, gripes about managers, free drinks. So nothing too earth shattering or surprising there.

But what struck me about this blog is that it isn't a blog. It is simply a good old fashioned Web page.

No categories. No comments. No statistics. No trackbacks. No fancy themes. No calendar. No widgets. No plugins.

Just words that fill most of the screen on a HTML page. And undoubtedly the most interesting content I have stumbled across this week.

Sometimes, less is more.

I was seriously considering selling all my stock options and purchasing a 1GB USB memory stick for an amazing 30 GBP.

Then I thought I would get an account at box.net and upload all the precious files, that my wife sadly lost when my hard disk died a couple of years ago, there instead. This has the advantages that if I ever need to take my memory stick to Seattle to show Auntie Rita, this will be possible, I won’t be able to leave the memory stick in a client’s PC in Eastern Europe and, finally, it will cost me 30 GBP less.

I haven’t used the box.net service much but there is a nice drag’n’drop interface for uploading folders and multiple files and it seems intuitive and quick. There is a free 1GB service available and you pay for additional storage which seems fair enough.

If you are interested in trying out the box.net service, then please, please click HERE! (so I can upgrade to the Deluxe, Premium, Gold 512GB service free of charge) as all the worst Web sites (used to) say.

I have started a book club. I am the only member. I realise that this is a little unusual but I prefer to choose the books myself rather than someone else (or even worse, the Daily Mail).

I held my first meeting last night which was very well attended by all members. Norman gave a fascinating review of 'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer. This book was written by a journalist and experienced climber who took part in a commercial, guided expedition to climb Mount Everest in May 1996. After reaching the summit, bad weather struck resulting in the death of eight climbers from three different expeditions.

Interestingly, although the author achieved his goal and succeeded in reaching the summit (shortly before the storm struck), there is hardly any euphoria or pleasure only the grim realisation that he is half way there, the descent is dangerous and his physical condition is deteriorating fast with the demands of the high altitude and the lack of oxygen.

Even though I am not a climber - in fact, I don't really like heights (I once had to be assisted from the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver by two ten year olds) - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written and compulsive reading. The story of the expedition unfolding, the ascent, the mix of characters and the personal and honest account of the ultimate series of tragic events is very sad and truly mesmerising.

I am lazy. I buy my gas from British Gas and my electricity from Seeboard. It takes a lot for me to overcome my inertia and change provider to save money.

However, I am interested in Carphone Warehouse's offer of 8M/bit broadband, unlimited UK landline and international (28 countries including Australia) calls, all for 21 GBP per month.

This is much less than I am currently paying Telewest for an inferior package of telephone and broadband services.

The only downside I can see is that the contract is for 18 months. Obviously a lot depends on the quality of service Carphone Warehouse can provide to this influx of new subscribers but worth keeping an eye on.

PS. Well I was interested but I just entered my phone number and postcode to be told 'Your telephone number is not on a BT exchange so we can't offer you TalkTalk'.

So that is why Carphone Warehouse can only offer coverage to 70% of the UK.

Absolutely no-one has ever asked me: Norman - why dont you start a photo blog of all these interesting places you visit ?

So here we go. No. 1 in a very occasional series.

The Sage Gateshead in Newcastle (from the Tyne Bridge)

You start to feel small and insignificant. [ Via Populicious ]

I enjoyed these quotes from airline staff with a sense of humour (via Tom Kyte).

A couple of years ago, I was on a British Airways flight that was making its final approach to some anonymous airport in Scandinavia.

Quite suddenly and without any warning, the landing was aborted. The plane stopped descending, quickly started to climb, levelled out and then resumed a familiar, circular holding pattern.

I was a little perturbed but no-one else seemed bothered as though this was perfectly normal so I stopped screaming, apologised to my immediate neighbours, dabbed the sweat from my brow with a napkin and picked up my copy of 'High Life'.

The pilot announced:

'Ladies and Gentlemen. You have probably noticed that we have been unable to land and are in a now holding pattern. This is because the aircraft in front struck a bird during landing and the ground staff are currently clearing the runway of debris so it is safe for us to land. British Airways apologises for the delay to your onward journey and the inconvenience caused. However, please spare a thought for the poor bird.'

Of course, the last sentence was my input but what a glorious, wasted opportunity.

I go away to spend a few days sitting on the UKs gridlocked motorway network and I discover those chaps at WordPress have been making yet more changes.

The Regulus theme has been upgraded to 2.1.1 and now includes bug fixes, support for sidebar widgets, personalised header graphic and lots more besides.

In addition, every single post is now prefixed by 'Posted by Andy C'. This is completely superfluous in my case and I would dearly like to turn it off. This is my personal blog. Who else is going to be posting to it ?

Also, the categories and 'Add comment' now appear at the top of the article rather than the bottom which I also dislike intensely as it adds distracting clutter.

WordPress have also added feed statistics which is a welcome addition although the statistics are not as comprehensive as those provided by FeedBurner so I'll continue to keep the Feedburner feed alive for now.

Oh - and before you all jump to signup at once - WordPress had an outage over the Easter weekend.

Buoyed by my recent, successful firmware upgrade of my Linksys wireless router, and for the sake of completeness, I decided to upgrade the driver software of the Linksys Wireless USB adapters to the latest version (2.0.2).

In addition, prompted by my wife's perceptive question of 'Is it not working because someone has hacked into it ?', I also decided to increase the security on my embryonic wireless network by disabling SSID broadcasts and enabling MAC address filtering so only specified PC's can connect.

Apologies to all my neighbours. This is probably undue paranoia on my part but if only you could have provided demerara sugar instead of fobbing me off with caster sugar all those years ago, none of this would have been necessary.

These simple configuration changes and software upgrades went surprisingly smoothly. Until, of course, I came to complete the very final task of upgrading the driver of USB adapter #2. This USB adapter is identical to the (upgraded) USB adapter #1, was purchased around the same time and was working perfectly on the old 1.x driver.

Inevitably, when I upgraded this driver, it stubbornly refused to connect to the wireless network. I uninstalled, reinstalled, rebooted, reinstated the original driver to confirm the adapter was still working in the new wireless configuration but, still no joy. So this irritating minor issue will now continue to nag away like a dripping tap until I can be bothered to revisit it.