connectathon

Am I dead? No. But my computer is, or rather my ISP.

Without wishing to bore I've been having problems with my ISP's speed and connection since they upgraded the line to ADSL2+. It seems my router is incompatible with speeds above 2Mb.
So most of my pc time has been spent fiddling.

Not content with dealing with 1 issue I ordered a replacement CPU from Thailand for my ageing pc to give it a slight performance upgrade. This involves detaching every cable connected to the motherboard and taking it out of the case to swap the CPU. Tiny static discharges will kill the motherboard/CPU so it takes care and leads only seem to like going back on to the same place they came off!

I nearly cooked the new CPU, got an alarm after rebuild which lead to auto shutdown and going into the BIOS told me the temp was 86 C after only a few seconds. After checking the leads I discovered I'd put the heat sink on 180 degrees out of sync so the CPU had nearly no contact with the thermal grease mating it to the heat sink. Anyway, 10 minutes later and all was solved.

I said I wouldn't bore you with the details. Aren't you fucking glad I didn't spill the detail on the ISP connection problem?
Don't listen to me in future.

S T U P I D

Remember to backup a copy of your template, boys and girls, to your hard drive.......just in case you somehow tinker to the point where you completely fuck it up and have to start again.

Of course, I don't know anyone stupid enough to do that.

Talk Talk - I'm not a virgin any more

I signed up an order for Talk Talk today, the package where you get free anytime calls, free 8MB ADSL broadband and free international calls all for the princely sum of £20.99 a month. Without boring you with the sums it'll save me at least £200 a year and change my Lada connection into a Lamborghini. I've never really been happy with my current ISP Tiscali anyway, useless telephone support, the service is always running perfectly according to their website (my arse), DNS problems continually, it took weeks to get my ADSL moved when I moved house etc. etc. but before them I was a net virgin and they had me tied in for another year when they graciously upped me to 512 for no charge. That's up now. Oh, and I hate their website. It's full of little pictures of, (usually) women gasping with what I suppose I'm to believe is a mixture of awe and excitement. I'd prefer to think they've gone giddy through exasperation after spending too long talking to Prakash in Mumbai who's spent 15 minutes confirming their address before eventually telling them it's probably their fault.
The owner of Talk Talk, Charles Dunstone, reckons he'll lose £50 million this year on that deal and I want to make sure I do my part to help. I'm just that sort of guy.

While you're here perhaps you can think of a better reason to explain this woman's expression.

Making a movie or vlog for Blogger

At the time of posting I've got a short example of a movie in my embedded Windows Media Player on the right hand sidebar (though this may not be the case by the time you read this). It's actually quite easy to do (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it). So what do you need? Either a digital stills camera with a movie mode or a digital video camera, a web hosting service and some software-in my case Windows Movie maker 2.1 (which is free) and probably already on your XP pc. For my example I used the movie mode in my stills camera which, even though it's low resolution 360x240 pixels will come out fine. You don't want or need a higher resolution anyway as the resulting file has to be as small as possible so that visitors to your page don't wait long for your blog page or movie to download.

First step. After downloading the movie from your camera to your p.c. open Windows Movie Maker (Start/All Programs/Accessories)and "import video". This will work if your movie has the suffix .avi or .mpeg or .wmv. If your movie is in .mov file format (which is Quicktime and not supported) all is not lost as you can use software to convert it to a file format supported by Windows Movie Maker like .avi using one of these trials Mov Converter, Convert Movie, or the free MPeg4CamToAvi. Having converted the imported video ( if necessary) drag the video to the time line to begin editing. Effects, titles and cutting can all be done here. Excellent instructions on the editing here from Microsoft Movie Maker's website. When you're happy with the result save the output to your p.c. as a .wmv or .avi selecting 512 DSL (or lower) output quality to compress the file size. And that's all there is to it. Your movie is now ready to upload to your hosting service and play in the embedded Media Player.

manage Gmail accounts in Firefox

Not content with getting the Windows Media Player in Spaces working with Firefox I've also added an extension to manage my Gmail accounts from the browser too.

It's straightforward. Download from here. Install. Close and re-open Firefox and set up your Gmail accounts in the Gmail Manager extension by clicking where you see the Gmail icon.

Now if I could find an extension to deliver a woman to me and a bowl of hot stew I'd never have to get up off my arse.

Guess what

Well, after looking through a load of old photos I was going to scan one in and have all 3 readers guess where it was taken. Of course my scanner decided that it wasn't in the room ....

"Error, scanner cannot be found. Bummer error"

Now I knew most computer errors were bummers but I'd never actually seen one admit it before. Progress, I suppose.

So as I can't post it you're going to have to guess what the picture was of. Should be easy enough, just tune in to my thoughtwaves in a Uri Geller like way.

Easy Peasy.

What? You need a clue? O.K. then. It was taken with my own fair hand in the mid 90s.

2006 - A Spaces Odyssey

What a week of technofuckery. My car keeps having a flat battery and popping the boot lid open. The new business line at my new house, well even the phone company can't work out what's happened here but it goes along the lines (ha ha, oh all right!) of them activating a line on one exchange and erecting a pole connected to another exchange. Even I know that's not going to work. Someone was supposed to be here on Thursday to fit the junction box inside the house. Do I have to tell you? Good. But if he had it would have been fun to watch him try to work out why the damn thing wasn't connecting. To add insult to injury they delivered a phone book to me on that day.

Back to the car. They discovered what I had suspected which was a current drain on the battery from a component. A "module" (I believe this is the generic name they give to something they don't themselves understand) which apparently controlled everything including Tower Bridge, the Hubble Space Telescope and a cigarette machine in a nearby bar, had decided to turn into HAL. This would therefore explain why I lit up like a fucking Christmas tree after being in the car for even just a few seconds. 5000 volts needed to produce a blue coloured spark apparently - I kid you not. Still, they seem convinced it's fixed even though I can still light a fine Cuban cigar off the static discharges. No doubt I'll soon find out on a morning when HAL is telling me it's 1 degree - the sadistic, narky silicon fucker.

Treewalk ing

What the f's he on about now? Ever had a day when the page you want to load just won't or pictures and links in pages take forever? Me too!! Especially now I've got my broadband enabled at the new house. No idea what it is but I can't load pages for shit. Until now.

The solution I came across accidentally (like everything else) and ... by fluck!, does it make a difference. It's called TreeWalk DNS. I'll try to explain what it does but as I'm stupid this will most likely be wrong. When you type in a URL the internet service provider's address book converts it into a number and "connects" with it. Sometimes however this information in the address book gets corrupted or their DNS server acts up. This is when you get error pages and slow or non-loading pages. Your computer keeps these addresses temporarily and disposes of them when you switch off. Treewalk doesn't use your ISP's DNS server and also keeps a copy of regularly viewed pages' addresses even after the p.c. is switched off hence faster loading.

If you're happy it's safe why not try it. It auto-installs even on a broadband network and seems to speed up things dramatically particularly if you use a multi-tabbed browser like Firefox. Your firewall may warn you about an application called "named.exe" trying to act as a server. This is what's meant to happen. There's a support forum at the site.

Oh, and it's free.

Get it here.

"..I may be gone some time...."

The predicted fuck up by my ISP in changing telephone numbers has happened. After 3 weeks of waiting (and wondering why my old telephone number was still working for the ADSL) I got an email from them stating that as their record of my postcode differed from my telephone service provider's they couldn't do it. I would have to contact my telephone service provider to have them amend their records. What a load of twat. So the address is identical, they have the first half of the postcode meaning they can narrow the street down to a particular area of the city I live in, they know I created the order (the person who they both had the correct old address, postcode and number for) but they can't be SURE that it's me or the right house and street even though I provided the ISP with the new telephone number. Who the fuck else apart from me would the telephone company have given that new number to ?

Yes, I'm slightly peeved.

I'm moving the office to the new house today so god only knows when the new number will be active for ADSL. In the meantime amuse yourselves by delving into my archives or making up a resolution for me (see previous entry).

new Firefox 1.5 released

As many of you know (and there's a clue somewhere on my page) I use Firefox browser, even here on Spaces . A new updated version has been released for all main software platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux . The new version 1.5 should appear here within a few hours or alternatively click on the Firefox logo on this page.
I cheated and grabbed it from here though and am running it now . It seems to be faster loading pages and has a few tweaks around security and clearing personal data in one click plus the ability to drag and drop tabs . Of course you may find some of your previously installed Firefox extensions don't run with it (it will tell you if this is so) but I found if I went directly to each extension's author's homepage a 1.5 compliant version was available there .

Will it rain , will it pour ?

Fiddling with Firefox today I contacted the Arkansas Oracle , juncquedujour , whereupon I was made aware of a Firefox add-on ( they call them extensions ) named Forecastfox .
Now , there are no prizes for guessing what this does but suffice to say it sits discretely in your browser and lets you know whether to iron your shorts soon or bring the washing in .
I've added it to the Firefox list down the page .

I've been experiencing some problems with Firefox lately , but predominantly on MSN pages . Updates from 1.04 to 1.05 to 1.06 didn't solve it . The versions immediately before 1.06 disabled some of the functionality of some of the extensions due to a security patch (I was using 20 and most were not verified as being compatible) so I backed up my profile , went through a diagnostic and finished up re-installing 1.06 from scratch which was painless . All my settings and bookmarks are still there . Seems to be a lot faster now , but obviously I couldn't leave it there , what with it working O.K. and all that so , at the risk of breaking it again tweaked some settings which should render pages faster - link also in the list .

It's going to be a roaster for me tomorow folks - 17 degrees - already stocked up with the factor 60 .

some more everyday essentials

We're all so tech savvy nowadays , aren't we ? Well , a bit anyway . Enough to get us complacent and into danger . Sometimes we just don't know how to get the best from our new technology .

Here are a few sites that I've found useful for this'n'that .

computer hardware or software help

everything you need to know about digital photography / your camera

sending files up to 100MB

test your firewall

connect or die ... and the lesson

it's so frustrating when you can't figure a problem out , isn't it ?
i spent a large part of yesterday getting more and more angry about a problem i couldn't solve - namely - i couldn't connect to the internet . here's my tale of woe .

morning - browser can't find websites . so...... tries other browsers - no joy .
my internet acceleration software ( ON-SPEED ) says it can't connect . ah , that must be the problem , their server must be down . so ....... connects browser directly at websites instead of through ONSPEED's proxy server - no joy . bollox.
i figure the router is the problem and check it's connection . so ..... the router detects an ADSL line but no connection to a server . shite !!
i reboot the router several times to no effect and end up losing my encrypted wireless connection to the computer . feck, feck , arse ! so ......... i move the router from downstairs to upstairs where the p.c. lives ( which is a major operation as it normally stays in a unit where a video , satellite DVD and t.v. are so there's about 2 miles of spaghetti and half a dozen knots to untie as well as feeding cables blindly though tiny holes in the back ) so that i can connect the router via a LAN cable . still no connection . bastard , bastard !!
i take off encryption and re-establish the wireless connection .
i re-check the phone line to make sure i can make a phone call ( i know i should've done this earlier ) . but , still no joy . what the fuck .....
must be the fucking ISP - Tiscali . but , no connection so no phone number . ah , but i have an old disc somewhere .. so .... i load the CD and get a premium rate number to dial . and .... i speak to someone in India , who needs my e-mail address before he will answer any questions ( and he can't spell or understand my accent ) . why do i get the dyslexic Indian in the call centre ? anyway , after running up several pounds of almost clear profit for Tiscali he tells me i'm dialling the narrowband help-line and he can't help me . BASTARDS !!!!!! so , he gives me another number which i dial .
this then tells me if i'm ringing about a " no-connection " problem that there is a " major BT outage in the north east of England . mmmmm , i don't live there but could that effect me anyway ? it also tells me to ring another number , the " status line " which would give me an update on the problem .
so ..... i ring and the line either goes dead or is constantly engaged .a lot less than no joy . i'm gonna fucking break legs now , somebody better speak to meeeeeeeeee !!!
YOU USELESS FUCKERS !!!

it is late now and i go to bed with chest pains which are still there this morning . lo and behold i can connect now .

so what's the moral of this story boys and girls ........ it is of course " when something goes wrong , you should do fuck all about it , particularly not spend most of a day trying to sort it out and certainly not get stressed about it , you should totally ignore the problem in the naive hope that it will sort itself out ... which it will . "

here endith my lesson .