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Whats going on ere, then ?

Woof.

I briefly used Box.net as a virtual 1GB memory stick. Briefly because after the initial transfer of important files, the onus was on me to identify files I had changed recently and upload them.

Mozy seems better suited to lazy people. You simply download a lightweight client, identify folders you want mirrored and Mozy encrypts and mirrors them, quietly in the background.

When you add new files, Mozy mirrors the incremental changes. Mozy offers 2GB of storage for free.

Also, Mozy includes the phrase 'Reticulating splines' during initialisation.

Thankfully, I don't have cause to use Microsoft Excel much. My kids can produce pretty charts about the demographics of pet ownership in the classroom better and quicker than I can.

Excel is a very powerful product but the sheer size and complexity of the software is just overwhelming which makes it difficult (for novices) to accomplish straightforward tasks.

For example, people are kind enough to send me gargantuan, complex spreadsheets where I want to freeze the header row while scrolling data down to the sole point of interest on row 23,538. A seemingly simple task.

Microsoft Excel

Exhaustively search all Menu options. Look in online help. Ask that irritating paperclip wizard: 'So what is it you are trying to do, you idiot ?'. Try some random control key combinations. Plaintively ask for the data in Oracle DMP format.

Slump over the keyboard, weeping in despair, randomly striking keys which unexpectedly reveals a buried Easter Egg (a fully fledged Doom clone). No wonder Excel is so bloated. Search the Microsoft Web site. Search using Google.

Finally, admit defeat and sheepishly ask a (Microsoft Certified) colleague who sneers 'God - don't you even know that ? Place the cursor on the row you want to lock. Hit Windows-Freeze Panes. There you go. Oh no - sorry - you place the cursor on the first row you want to scroll normally.'

Google Spreadsheets

Sort - Fix Header Rows - Freeze 1 row. Screen updated to reflect user action (1 row frozen). Done.

Sometimes, less is more.

Thoroughly enjoying Margave of the Marshes and pleased to see The Chameleons get a mention:

For David Fielding of The Chameleons, that meant loitering outside Broadcasting House in order to press their tape directly into John's paw. In the case of The Chameleons, John thought he was the victim of a practical joke after listening to their demo: the recording was so accomplished that he suspected he had been given a cassette of an established band.

...although this slightly contradicts the note that John Peel sent back to the band where Peel describes the tape as 'Very muffled'.

A few years, when Mark Burgess got married, I made a paltry contribution to a wedding present. A few weeks later, I was staggered to receive an email from Mark Burgess thanking me together with a draft chapter of his (still unpublished) autobiography. Mark also describes travelling down to London and hanging around outside Broadcasting House with a tape.

I subscribe to a fair number of blogs.

Some of those bloggers use Blogger (despite my WordPress evangelism).

Some of those Blogger bloggers are technical types who would normally seize any chance to play with newly announced beta software.

Curiously, not a single one of them has experimented with the recently announced Blogger beta which includes exciting new developments like 'Labels', drag'n'drop page design, private blogs (where you can be assured no-one is reading), multiple authors, additional templates, RSS feeds and 'instant' publishing.

I lie awake at night and wonder - why ?

Holy Father

It is 23 years and 7 months since my last confession. Since then, I have downloaded Ethereal and started to sniff packets off the network. I know it was wrong but we had worked for a week on this problem. We had all exhaustively checked everything (twice) and we were tired, hungry and increasingly desperate.

I fervently wished this was a conventional database problem or even an unconventional Siebel problem but the symptoms, the controlled tests and all the hard evidence increasingly pointed to 'the network'.

Initially, I was swamped by gigabytes of meaningless data until I discovered all about the powerful filters with an esoteric syntax (that sometimes even worked). Then I could trace a complete 'conversation' between the browser and Web server. I was so excited when I could actually examine HTTP requests and the associated response. Why I can even look at the packet sizes and the actual contents with timestamps to the nearest microsecond.

I am desperately resisting the urge to examine the detailed effects of content expiry and static file compression and publish a whitepaper. Worse still, I am feeling increasingly lured by '/etc/services' to find interesting ports to sniff on.

Please have mercy on this wretched, miserable, pitiful sinner kneeling before you.

Yours faithfully

Norman Brightside

There are more signs, warnings, instructions and speed limits in Richmond Park than the nearby South Circular.

The Parks Police really are destroying the park for all those who simply want to enjoy it.

Preloadr is an interesting, free utility that allows seamless manipulation of Flickr photos.

The standard features (crop, resize, flip, rotate, sharpen, brightness) are there but red eye removal is absent which seems a curious, but important, omission.

The Killers are in the UK to promote Sams Town and their new facial hair. The band made an appearance on Jonathan Ross show playing the single 'When You Were Young' and 'All These Things I've Done'. Radio 1 also had a 2 hour feature including interviews and a concert from Blackpool Empress Ballroom recorded on Friday 8 September. Irritatingly, the BBC haven't grasped podcasts yet and the concert includes some of the following songs but not necessarily in this order. The concert starts at 1 hr 20 min.

• Sam's Town
• Enterlude
• When You Were Young
• Somebody Told Me
• Smile Like You Mean It
• Bones
• Bling
• Read My Mind
• Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine
• Midnight Show
• All These Things
• Uncle Johnny
• My List
• Mr. Brightside

Judy Rose has an interesting article on the importance of writing style and Paul Stamatiou also has some excellent tips on structuring blog articles.

My writing style has many flaws. At work, I have a irritating tendency to use 'padding' words that are completely worthless, superfluous and unnecessary. For example, 'It was noted that...'.

This trait was first brought to my attention by the ruthless peer QA review process which helped to reduce my deliverable documents from 78 pages to a more reasonable 12.

In my blog, I have also noticed that I tend to overuse the word 'So'.

So, I am working hard with my English teacher to eradicate these flaws but please remember that old habits die hard.