March 2002 Archives

Sorry for the lack of updates... I have two excuses:

• The FTP Server at Portland has been down
• I've been really busy

So here's what's been up:

Darn Blogger... yesterday it went down while I was typing that day's message. Not only that, but the FTP server was down on Monday so today will be the first time you see that day's entries. My apologies.

I'd also like to clear something about Optimizer XP, after a brief email exchange with Malcolm McGhee. Originally I blamed Optimizer XP for causing my system to crash periodically when left alone. I now believe that it was a bug in Windows XP - Microsoft recently released a patch to fix a vunerability along these lines - however Optimizer XP may have triggered it. So, my verdict: try it, though YDMV - Your Distance May Vary. It didn't make much of a difference on my machine, but then again I may have already optimised it pretty well anyway.

CptSiskoX pointed this page out to me. It's for PC users considering buying a Mac, or Mac users who have just migrated from the PC platform - basically Apple want to know what you're thinking (why you want/bought a Mac, have you had any problems with it etc.). I have to applaud Apple here - it's nice to see them taking feedback from their users.

Talking of user feedback (well... sort of), I'm a little dismayed by the response that has been given to AER - Application Error Reporting - which is included in Windows XP, IE6, Office XP and other recent MS programs. Let's face it, people are always complaining about the stability of MS programs (though Windows XP has persuaded me that MS can create a stable OS - crashing it is difficult), and then when MS finally come up with a way of getting feedback about crashes, what do we do? We turn it off! Talk about hypocrisy...

Granted, if you are working on a document then it may get sent as part of the memory dump that is sent along with the report, but what is MS going to do with your budget report, or your essay about the influence of alcohol on modern society? And remember, there's a 'Don't Send' button, and you can view exactly what the report contains if you're unsure. Honestly, if you distrust MS that much, go and use Linux or a Mac...

The dBpowerAMP forum is now back online, so I can continue to check out one of my favourite hang outs :) What's more, the mp3PRO Input codec has been upgraded to Release 1a so that it works on Windows 95/98 and Me - for some reason past versions would not work on these platforms. I personally don't use it because it disables crossfading between MP3s, which is a feature I use a lot.

The french course also finished today - although it did get a little boring from time to time, in the end it has really improved the quality of my French, and has helped me learn new skills and more confidence when doing oral exams. It's just a pity a few more of my comrades weren't on the course.

Oh well, time to reboot - the sound has gone again. See you later!

Oops... wrong language. Yes, I've been to that French thingy. It wasn't bad, though it got a little boring at times. Although surprisingly I was the only student from York College (bar someone on one of the adult education courses), though I knew one of the girls from my Millthorpe years (hi Jess!) so I wasn't totally alone. And it was organised by a friend of my mum's, who helps to tutor me prior to oral exams.

The Ogg Vorbis petition was mentioned in Lockergnome Digital Media! Not only that, but Jake even credited me for finding it - as a result, there are now 925 signatures (at time of writing) so it's really close to the 1000 mark. Way to go!!!

There's now an 'official' unofficial ODP forum available for members of the public to read and post to, though there are a team of editors (including myself) who haunt it to answer questions and offer help. It's a good idea - there are other forums about, such as those at Webmaster World and Search Engine Forums, but they are simply part of larger sites, whereas this is its own entity. Although it has staff support (it was suggested by them) it is still not controlled by Netscape - the baton has been handed to the meta editors in this case.

Yikes... I've made over 250 edits at the ODP today. Part of it was down to a minor reorganisation of Yorkshire Dales - until today it had its own editor, though he was removed - although I do know the reasons why, it is confidential so I can't say. To put into context how many edits that is, I've made nearly 5500 in total at the ODP, so over 4.5% of all the edits I've ever made there were made today. Ouch.

Although Yorkshire Dales should be a-okay for the time being, I still have 65 blankbusts to do, plus a few greens in England/B&E to tackle. Having said that, I'm having an earlyish night since I'm going to be on a 3-day French course starting tomorrow. And I'm not looking forward to it...

Yay, I'm speedy. I've just found out that this has been listed under Personal Weblogs: N for almost two weeks now. Well, at least it's nice to know that that category is being looked after reasonably well.

I really should visit the SETI@Home site more often - there's a whole wealth of information on there. What amazes me is that collectively users have sacrificed nearly a million years of CPU time to the project, and the collective computing power produced - over 27 Teraflops (trillion floating point operations), which is far higher than any supercomputer. All I can say is that I'm glad to be part of the club, even if I only rank 1576865th. Still, with SETI now working much faster on here, I should rise in the ranks pretty soon. I'm already over a quarter of the way through unit 7, and I reckon I could be on unit 8 by Monday or Tuesday.

By the way, the Vorbis petition now has 834 signatures.

Those of you who actually watch my screencam may notice that it has started going totally black for long periods. Why? It's because I've configured SETI to turn off its graphics after a couple of minutes. By doing so, it speeds up considerably - I'm up to nearly 25% after just 10 hours - normally it would be about 50 hours before I got there. Thanks to the guys at the ODP who suggested it.

I'm now stuck in to my second batch of blank sites on Blankbusters - fortunately I don't have so many schools this time, and some are obvious deletes (404s or directory listings) so I can get rid of them quickly. 14 down, 86 to go...

My parents launched a surprise hair cut on me this morning, so I've had about half of it cut off. I've also had a trip into York - something that happens decresingly often - and did a little shopping, though not much. It's for that reason that I actually have plenty of money, for once.

The Sash! Connection seems to be gathering steam - Sean, a friend of mine for a long time has agreed to help out, and another friend Petter has also nominated himslef, and is pending an invitation. I also found out how to harness specific parts of the ODP using Digital Windmill, so I can add a nice juicy links section with the minimum of fuss.

It seems that the dBpowerAMP website is down for the third day running - I think I might email Spoon to see what's up. But talking of digital media, the Ogg Vorbis petition is on the brink of reaching 800 signatures - hopefully talking to Jake Ludington may push it over the 1000 mark.

Just stumbled across my SETI stats page - although I don't rank too highly, it appears that I've done more work than most. Work unit 6 has taken longer to get here since my dad switched the computer off when it was nearly complete, thus corrupting the files and meaning that it had to start from scratch. That, and having to shut the computer off earlier in the week due to the instability. Still, I only have 30% to complete until I finish.

Talking of finishing things, I've completed my batch of blanks in Blankbusters. Just have to wait for the next lot to arrive :). The project is really making a difference - the numbers of blank sites have been visibily falling and it's certainly possible that we can eradicate blank sites from the project within 6 months, at my estimate. Though having said that, I estimated that the ODP would reach 3.5 million sites on 25th February yet it only reached 3.25 million yesterday... I think that Robozilla may have had something to do with it though - it set us back by a week or so.

Java applets are really starting to drive me around the bend now - it seems that nearly all of the sites that I'm blankbusting use them, often unnecessarily. I partly blame Microsoft, for including them in FrontPage as an alternative to JavaScript rollovers. While Java as a language is very useful (it's what I'll be learning in September for my degree), on web sites it merely slows down browsing and rarely acheives anything that can't be done using HTML. It's a case of 'just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should'. Same goes for those annoying JavaScript scrollers in the status bar, marquees, background music and disabling the right-mouse button. I'm glad I have the Proxomitron handy, which, by the way, was upgraded 5 days ago to Naoko-4.2.

So, apart from cursing web pages, I've mostly spent the day blankbusting - I've nearly finished working through my current batch actually. Chris from Lockergnome also revealed something top secret to me and the Xteq guys, but since it is top secret I won't divulge the details just yet. So there :).

I'll also be upgrading the screencam code soon, so that it uses a JavaScript popup window. And I'm now reasonably confident that the system instability has gone away (for the time being at least), since the computer failed to crash overnight. Phew.

Okay, so here's the explanation for the lack of updates: I've been busy. And here's what I've been doing:

You can now watch a live-ish snapshot of my screen! It updates every 5 minutes when the computer is running, so you can see what I'm doing.

Sorry for the recent lack of updates - I'll explain later today.

Sorry for yesterday's double post - Bloggar told me that it hadn't worked so I sent it again and so it appeared twice...

Anyway, that report of yesterday's visit to Manchester. We caught the 09:14 train out of York (which for a Sunday morning is very early - sometimes I've not even woken up by then) and were a little late into Manchester Picadilly due to electrical problems near the village of Micklefield (basically the lights were defaulting to red unnecessarily). I had a visit to Chandos Hall first - the one that I had visited on my previous visit, then onto Wright Robinson Hall, which actually I found better. The rooms are reasonably large, and all have ethernet connections to access the internet and the university intranet. It'll certainly be my first choice, since it is situated just above the student union and is literally a stone's throw from the Computing department, which is where I will probably be spending most of my time while I'm there.

The third hall I visited, the Grovesnor Buildings, felt like a young offender's institute, and had very small rooms. I don't think I'll be applying there...

We then went into Manchester, where there was a St Patrick's Day parade. We went to Sinclair's Oyster Bar - a pub which also serves food at lunchtime, and very good food it is too. We also did a little bit of shopping, before returning home to York.

I now have just under 100 more words to write on my French coursework, so I'm on target for getting it in tomorrow, thankfully. And the Vorbis Hardware petition now has 385 signtaures, so it is heading fast towards its target.

320 signatures...

Only a brief post today - I've been in Manchester all day and haven't had much chance to post - a full write up will follow soon, hopefully tomorrow. I've also been trying to make progress on my French coursework - it's about 75% written now. Next time I decide to write an essay on French politics, please hit me with something first...

At least there's one thing - it's boring me to sleep, so I'd better be off for my 40 winks. See you tomorrow.

204 signatures now...

By the way, I've posted an updated screenshot of my desktop for you to look at, if you so desire. The girl in the photos is Damae, the lead vocalist in the German dance group Fragma.

Although I normally leave my homework until Sunday, unfortunately tomorrow I'm in Manchester, taking a broader look at UMIST's accommodation, so it all has to be done today. Darn it.

The Ogg Vorbis petition is gaining popularity - 145 signatures now - so let's hope it reaches its target of several thousand. If you haven't already signed, click here to sign it.

Okay, so Weblogs.com stopped accepting submissions. How was I to know?

By the way, enarra had this to say about my previous entry:

[19:45] <enny-is-bored> I update with interesting things? ha!

Well, in defence, I had to say something complementary. She is a meta editor, after all :).

I've now got quite a cool new feature - an RSS feed. Normally, as a Blogger user, you'd have to upgrade to Blogger Pro, but by using a PHP script provided by VoidStar.com anyone can have one. It's just a case of updating your template slightly and adding the link to their site. Easy, eh?

I stumbled across enarra's weblog from the ODP chat room today. enarra, real name Julie, is a meta editor at the ODP, and she (occasionally) updates her blog with interesting tidbits. A quick check of my BlogDex Report reveals two new links, one from Sid Chism and one from Slobokan, so thanks to you guys. I now rank at #40366 in BlogDex's all time link index... not exactly high but maybe a few more links will help it bear fruit :)

If you like Ogg Vorbis, then I urge you to sign this petition. Its aim is to encourage hardware manufacturers to support Ogg Vorbis in digital music players, alongside MP3 and WMA. A very good idea, I think. I'm the 37th person to sign it, and 41 people in total had signed it at time of writing - please help make a difference!

The first beta of X-Setup 6.2 is now out (earlier than I expected) - visit MajorGeeks.com to download it!

Oh well, I'm off to submit this to Weblogs.com. Ciao!

5 days. That's how long my computer has been switched on for. Cool eh?

I'm currently enjoying a brief lunch break at home before I return to college for Friday afternoon Maths. At least there's only two hours separting me and the weekend...

Quote from Wednesday 16th January:

But on the whole, I think I did okay - certainly better than last time, when I got a 'D'.

Don't you just hate it when words come back to haunt you?

Well, I've got the results, and it's a mixed bag. I didn't do very well in Maths - in my Statistics retake I got the same grade as last time (D), and my Pure exam I only managed an E (in fact I was only two marks from failing it). Fortunately I have the option of retaking it in June, which I won't pass off. Better news in the other subjects - in Geography I raised my grade from a D to a B, making a B overall in the subject, and in I did the same in French. It does, however, mean that Newcastle University is out of the question - I'm sure to be turned down without a B in Maths and at the moment I really can't guarantee that. But I think UMIST, which is my first choice, is still in the running because they are more flexible with grades.

More good news - I got accepted as editor of York College (well, I think it was a reasonably forgone conclusion that I would do :)) so thanks to chasm for accepting me. I'm still debating whether to include Super Squirrel amongst the sites, though...

Good morning! I've made another request to be a category editor - this time for York College. Hopefully being a student there may help my cause :). Talking of the ODP, it seemed relatively quick this morning, with not one timeout. That either means that the problem has been fixed, or all of the yanks haven't woken up yet so the server is under less stress. Either way, I just wish it was like this all the time.

I've spent the morning worrying about exam results - the results of my retakes in January are out today so I'll collect them when I get it. To be honest, I'm not incredibly confident about doing well, but I'm still hopeful. And in any case, the best result stands, so if I've done worse this time around, then I won't be at a total loss. I'm mostly worried about my maths results, which is annoying since I need high maths results for university.

I spent last night writing a new CLI Codec for dBpowerAMP - in a few days you'll be able to encode MPEGPlus files too. I've sent the file to Spoon, and he has replied to say that he received it, but it isn't available to download as yet. But I'm sure it will be soon.

Today is CptSiskoX's birthday - 23 years young. Happy birthday, Anthony!

Ah...blue sky, the sun is shining. Not a cloud in the sky. And it's 7ºC outside. Brrrrrrrr - I'm staying indoors.

The ODP is still being "impotent", as one editor put it, and "needs its injection of Viagra". I think staff are blaming the hampsters which drive our servers - maybe they forgot to feed them, or they have gone on strike again. I hate it when that happens.

Apologies for the late arrival of last night's post - unfortunately Blogger was having a few troubles so the page never reached the server, though it was added to Blogger's own database so fortunately I didn't have to retype.

I'm in the LRC at college at the moment - Computing has been cancelled since my teacher is away so I'm just making use of a little free time on the 'net. It also allowed me to print off this article about Canal+, the French TV station, as well as its related article. I tried it at home but it appears my Epson printer may have developed a fault. Having talked with Richard from FutureCom it appears it could be a common problem - he had it too. Basically, it prints the first page, then wheels it through, but keeps on going. It doesn't draw down the next bit of paper, and even pressing the power off button does nothing - I actually had to unplug the printer from the mains to stop it.

Today is No Smoking Day in the UK - it's an attempt to reduce the 40,000 people who die prematurely from smoking related ilnesses every year. And being an asthmatic, I'm all for it - why should I have to suffocate on other people's smoke?

By the way, if you understand French and follow the link to Canal+, make sure you visit the page about Les Guignols - it's the TV show that I attended in Paris, and the web site is very funny. A knowledge of French politics might also be useful.

The ODP seems to be slowly getting towards normality, though it is still much slower than it should be. While I'm keeping up to speed with site submissions, I'm not going to do any serious editing, due to all of the timeouts I'd get. At the moment, it's a game of chance as to whether anything you do actually happens, and if it does, has it happened twice? Eurodance and the dBpowerAMP forums haven't been incredibly interesting either, and I wasn't able to find much of interest in any of the Gnome newsletters. And as for the Xteq guys, well we're deep into X-Setup 6.2 discussions (I think Beta 2 is due out very soon) so not much to enlighten you with. Though Anthony did post a link to this site which contains a number of Windows XP tweaks, many of which were new to us. They'll be in X-Setup pretty soon, I imagine.

Latest word from my parents on the laptop is that it'll be a birthday present - although I specifically said I'd like it "by September" I wouldn't mind having it sooner (particularly as I'd like to climatise to using a laptop, after being so used to using a desktop). And as my father said, the quicker I get a laptop, the more chance he has of using this machine. But then again, he rarely asks to use it, and I'm sure I'd be able to extract myself from it if he needed it.

I'm currently running KaZaA at the moment. And I'm hating it. You see, I'm more of an AudioGalaxy user, which in terms of system resources is quite light (though it does send the in/output on ZoneAlarm mad when it is running). KaZaA, on the other hand, comes with a shedload of spyware, and is incredibly bulky. In fact, my CPU hasn't dipped below 95% usage in about 5 minutes. Though that might have something to do with AdAware running to detect any new nasties that may have been brought in with the evil program. It's not even finished, yet it has detected 10 new components. Memory tells me that KaZaA requires the evil Cydoor advertising system to run, but most of the other junk can be removed safely.

What's more, my current download (the original mix of "Gouryella" by Gouryella - it's blocked on AudioGalaxy) has just under 2 hours before completion. Ho Hum.

Ah, AdAware has finished. It's found elements of Aureate, Cydoor, DoubleClick, ValueClick and a couple of others. Another ho hum.

Anyway, my vision is deteriorating, and at 21:22 I'd better hit the stack. See you tomorrow!

The names for my laptop came in thick and fast after posting in the ODP chat room, so here's a rundown of suggestions:

• newwave - Sierra, Margie, Lisa, Corrina, Marisa, Jessica, Amber, Julia, Sara, Elise
• marisa1116 - Marisa, Sophia
• hstyri - Anita, Nausea, Marina
• donwiebe - Euphemia
• filminfo - Marila

In case you're wondering, Eric (newwave) posted a list of all 10 of his past girlfriends (he's now happily married), though I'm unsure about Sierra and Elise - Eric is a car fan after all. Marina is probably out of the question - too many years of watching Last Of The Summer Wine, and while using the computer may make me feel nauseous, I don't really want to call it 'Nausea'. That's just asking for it.

I've been reading a couple of other blogs today - namely MisterMittens.com (brother of Randy "Furo" Nieland) and Ramblings of a Code Monkey, and found this parody of a MSKB article (beware of strong language). And if you're wondering why I'm browsing around, it's because the ODP is still suffering technical difficulties, making it almost impossible to edit. Apparently it's due to a huge amount of tasks in the catmv queue, though don't quote me on that - that is what a certain meta told me and therefore it isn't an official staff announcement.

You know this laptop I keep talking about? Well, I still don't have it - it looks like it could be a birthday present at this rate (put Saturday 25th May in your diaries!) - but I need a name for it. I follow the great tradition of naming my computers, usually after past girlfriends. Currently I'm using Marianna, and my old 486 was called Jane. Trouble is, I've not had any girlfriends since then (3 years...) so I need some ideas. I'm thinking of a girl's name, preferably 2-4 syllables and ending in an 'a' - Melissa is my current favourite though with a computer virus having the same name it may prove difficult. Any ideas are welcome.

I'm now the England B&E editor, so I've got a little bit of work to do here and there now. X-Setup 6.2 Beta 1 also got released - it looks good, bar the occasional bug, and should be going into public beta very soon. Chris also likes it :)

Here's something I've found recently - Bishop calls for end to 'state ties' - this is want I've wanted someone to say. If only the idea would catch on...

The ODP has gone insane today - first it has slowed to practically a halt, and now I'm getting all manner of ghosts in a category that I am working on. Arrgh!

In fact, the ODP staff have even posted "Don't adjust your monitor - we are experiencing some technical difficulties - please be patient while we fix the problem - Thanks" on our editor dashboards. But don't worry, it's not affecting the public side, thankfully.

Spoon has released an update to Sveta Portable Audio, though Yepp support hasn't been included just yet - he did post a copy of his to-do list which contains quite a bit of my correspondance with him on it, so obviously I'm being helpful... or annoying.

Sun Sues MS for $1 billion over Java not being in XP - damned if you do, damned if you don't, though in this case it probably is Sun who are in the wrong, as it actually violates their own agreement with MS. Though argubly, the less Java gets used (in web pages), the better - I can't say I'm a big fan of it, and while I'll admit it can be useful, as an ODP editor I can tell you that it is used unnecessarily on a lot of web sites.

ComputingX - I've already mentioned it but Anthony (aka CptSiskoX) has updated it with more information. It also explains why you should disable Persistant Caching - X-Setup will let you do this, but the description of the option isn't particularly good, so I left it enabled. It's off now, of course :).

And I'm starting to get a small stream of spam - three items now. Ah well, you win some, you lose some...

What, no updates for 3 days? What have I been doing? Well, not much, but I just haven't got around to writing here.

On Friday, I ran through Microsoft's Personal Security Advisor to see how well-protected I am - and it appears I'm not. The three accounts on the computer (mine, my mother's and my father's) are all administrators and none have a password. It did, however, wrongly detect that I had Outlook 97 (I don't), but I do have all of the necessary security patches. We also got a quote for the new windows (glass ones) - about £1700, but that is actually comparitively cheap and we know from past experience that their service is good.

My parents were out on Friday night at a Magistrate's dinner, so I was at home alone - I basically just curled up in front of the TV and ate pizza the whole evening.

On Saturday I went with my dad to get a box of chocolates and a card for my mum (it's Mother's Day today, well, here at least), and made an unsuccessful trip to the garden centre to find something. And it was tipping it down with rain, too...

I spent the afternoon working through the adverts in a local free paper, getting web addresses for the ODP. I added about 20-30 addresses, so it was worth it, in my opinion. I also had a bit of a saga with Windows 98. I decided to reinstall, but since it is very much a second OS, I decided to use the free version of 98Lite to cut out bits I don't need. All was well, then I tried to install my father's digital camera and the ethernet card drivers. The whole install corrupted - I could boot in Safe Mode but normal mode just refused to work, and I couldn't really be bothered to reinstall again. So I deleted it. Whether this was related to 98Lite I don't know, but having made an assesment I've decided I don't need 98. Now that we have rechargeable batteries, using a serial connection in Windows XP for the digital camera shouldn't be too much of a problem, and with Sveta Portable Audio supporting the Yepp Player soon, quite frankly I don't need it.

Ciaran has just told me that a GeekCode Decoder exists, so there's the link. And for a BlogCode decoder, try here.

And if you type 'BlogCode' into Google, my site is ranked third! Way to go! Though that's probably because it is "Blogger Code" and not "BlogCode"...

MG from the #ODP chat room gave me this link http://www.radiolaughs.com/download/penguin.mpg - very funny!

Got my first spam message today. Well, the first since changing my email address, anyway. And unfortunately I couldn't get BSM to work either - whether that was a problem with the email or the program I don't know, but I noticed the program's web site is no longer online. I just hope this isn't the start of a deluge. And in case you're wondering, it was one of those stupid pyramid schemes. It's now been sent into email heaven... or should I say hell?

Actually, I remember ages ago reading an article about spam, saying that rather than blaming the spammers, we should blame ourselves. Why? Well most companies won't resort to it unless there was some money to be made from it. Therefore, there must be some people out there who are actually buying from these idiots. Scary thought.

I've spent a bit of time this morning working on Affiliations - I might as well claim who I'm working with so other editors don't accuse me of bias. In fact, with the exception of the Sash! entry none of them are on my categories. I will add more once they're listed in the directory - if I list them then they have less chance of being listed elsewhere in a more important category. Specifically, I'll be adding George's and CptSiskoX's sites.

Lockergnome, incidentally, exists in 10 categories, and is the highest ranking site in Windows 98 FAQs, Help and Tutorials - putting it ahead of the MS Knowledge Base. Nice.

Today's the day my HE1 Higher Education Funding form goes in, and fortunately Computing is cancelled again so I have a longer lunch break. But having said that, I have a lot of Maths homework for tomorrow and preparation for a mock French oral to do, so it's hardly a day off. Then at the weekend I've got a minor Computing project to complete (in place of lessons) and to start my French coursework, which will include analysing Lionel Jopsin's canditure speech for the French Presidential Elections in April. Wish me luck.

And another person who needs luck is Ciaran Hamilton - he's got his Driving Theory Test today. Let's hope he passes...

Last night at Ventures was interesting. It was 'my night', ie I had to organise it. It had been pre-decided that we'd do a 'fashion parade', but using newspaper and cellotape instead of fabric, and we'd have to dress up as cartoon/fairy tale characters. I say we, but I actually didn't take part - you see, all the characters were couples (eg Marge and Homer Simpson, Peter Pan and Wendy etc.) and there were 19 of us (8 girls and 9 boys) so I stood out and ahem... co-ordinated it. It didn't go too badly actually, and I got a chance to try out our new disco equipment, even though I still don't really know how to use it. That's what I like about computers - they have an F1 key.

CptSiskoX has finally updated ComputingX, including an interesting article about DR-DOS 7. He also sent me this spoof article from SatireWire.

I spent this lunchtime watching Boundaries - a short (20min) film about a woman wanting to cross the border from Mexico to the US, but being hampered by... a trombone player. In the style of Big Train, or, at a stretch, Monty Python. Quite entertaining, with an interesting twist at the end. I found the link in Monday's Lockergnome Digital Media, if you're interested.

CptSiskoX has been on one of his mass mailing days, and one of the more interesting items that came through was this. It's a plug-in device that lets you plug PlayStation controllers into your PC's USB port. It costs a mere US$12.95 (less than £10), thus making it cheaper than many cheap and nasty joypads. And think of all of the PlayStation and PSOne controllers coming onto the second-hand market, now that the PS2 has taken off. Great idea, and the review at the other end of the hyperlink is very positive too (10/10).

A few American colleges have finally got the idea when it comes to power management. As you may know, I only turn my computer off occasionally (usually only Sunday mornings since the new power supply causes interference on the 1MHz band thus affecting MW radio) but when I'm not using it I turn the monitor (and speakers) off. It actually switches off after 5 minutes anyway - the screensaver (which is SETI) comes on after 2 minutes.

And finally, Randy "Furo" Nieland of Lockergnome Tech Specialist fame is asking for readers to submit their blogs to him for inclusion on his own blog, Furo.com. That'll be the third link on the sidebar sorted, then :). I might also add BlogDex and Eatonweb there too.

Computing has been cancelled this morning, so I have a little extra time than normal to search around the net for stuff. One of the interesting things I found was Steven Hawking Pro-Skater - a little distasteful, but funny nonetheless.

After making my PC cooler with a new fan and a few bullet holes (see the archive if you don't know what I mean), how about maing it even cooler... this time on the outside? Thanks to CptSiskoX for the link.

I've added yet another site of incomprehensible garbage to the bottom of the blog pages (well... the recent ones, at least) - this time, it's GeekCode. It's taken me longer to get this up since it isn't a straightforward as BlogCode (okay, yes, that's probably the point), but at least I'll join the vast majority of ODP editors who know have it. It'll also let you know more about me... that is if you actually understand it. Maybe if I'm bored I'll knock up some kind of Perl script that encodes/decodes GeekCode/BlogCode someday. Of course, I'll have to learn Perl in the meanwhile...

Found another way of getting people to know about this blog - EatonWeb. They have an alphabetical index of over 3500 blogs, and with a bit of luck, it'll increase traffic. The Googlebot made up 10.87% of my traffic last month.

This article from The Observer has been troubling me. It was published in late February, but I was reminded of it today, and a second read made me realise how shocking it is.

The article goes into detail about attempts made by right-wing religious groups in America to have Darwin's theory of evolution removed from syllabuses, as well as other ways of forcing people to believe the Bible's version of events against those of other cultures and religions. This sickens me. Although I generally avoid religious discussions (since if I say my point of view they turn into arguments) I can say that I'm an atheist who subscribes to Darwin's theory. Admittedly I was baptised into the protestant Anglican Church, but I wasn't even 1 year old at the time so I had no real option. I think it is irresponsible of these people to try and insulate the American public of other theories, particularly when these theories have some kind of fact behind them. The only evidence to prove the theory of creation is the Bible and a few philosophers.

I also think that law-makers in the States forget that their country is very multicultured - how would a muslim, buddist, hindu or jew feel after being told that they were wrong? Perhaps we (as in the US, and the UK too) should look to the French political system where religion is kept well away from politics and education.

I admire some peoples' originality... after Anna Kournikova and Jennifer Lopez, we have a Britney Spears virus. Actually it's the second Britney Spears virus, and neither seem to have been any good. It spreads as a .CHM (Compiled Hypertext Markup file - used for HTML help in Windows), attached to an email - which probably explains why it hasn't spread very well. People know what a .jpg or .doc file is, but .chm? Seems like a bizarre choice, even if it means you can hide the script without using a telltale double extension.

Remember the problems with my fan? Well, rather than get another one, I really should have followed this guy's advice. Now, where's my sledgehammer?

Spoon has released dBpowerAMP Audio Player Release 2 Beta 2 - most of the modifications are in My Music Collection - the right-click menu now has icons on the menu, and has been cloned to a button on the toolbar. It also lets you open Windows Explorer on the folder containing the selected music file, and lets you refresh the ID tag of the audio file from the MMC entry. To top it off, there are now a number of third-party skins available - some are actually quite good, though I still prefer the original XP style skin.

Not much happened - I've spent the morning clearing out my Downloads folder of duplicates and programs that I no longer have. That's the problem with having a broadband connection - often I don't think twice about downloading programs and as a result download a lot of junk that I never get around to deleting.

Not a hugely interesting day today. I've mainly been browsing DaelNet for web sites to add to the ODP - I think I got about 15 in the end, though most were already listed, and a few were better off in places outside of my editing privilidges. It does mean that North Yorkshire has passed the 1600 site mark, and York passed the 400 site mark too.

I now have a new drive... Z. It's a RAMDrive, using MS's official driver. It's only got a 1MB capacity but could come in useful, I guess. That means I have 6 drives now, A,C,D,E,F and Z. Beats having 2, like on my previous computer (that was before the CD-ROM was fitted). I don't know how I'd survive with a 400MB HD nowadays - I managed to fit Windows 95 and a few other things on it, but quite how I don't know. I guess back then programs weren't quite so bloated as they are now.

Oh, and Lasgo got to #4 in this week's UK singles chart - way to go, guys!

There are some very weird things on the internet, and this is certainly one of them. And so's this.

Haven't done too much today, other than reorganise South Yorkshire even more - I've now created subcats for Grimethorpe, Wombwell and Penistone, where some of my family members are burried (my Great Uncle Alec and my Great-Grandmother, as well as probable others that I don't know of).

Good news from dBpowerAMP - Spoon announced in this thread that the next release of Sveta Portable Audio will support the Samsung Yepp E-series (which includes my player)! That means I'll be able to do away with the horrible Yepp Explorer software, and may mean that I can use Windows XP to upload and not have to descend into the mess that is my Windows 98 installation. Yes, I will re-install it... sometime soon...

It seems that I've been serving up invalid XHTML to you guys... apologies. I've solved most of the problems, but I think a number of them are on the part of Blogger, so there's not much I can do there. Thanks to mwaf for pointing this out to me.

Today I've been Windows shopping - of the glass variety. Although almost all of our windows are double-glazed, two of them - including the main living room window - are not, so we're looking at getting them replaced. They do have secondary glazing but by having double glazing fitted they should retain more heat (especially as the living room has the thermostat in it) and be much more secure - when we were burgled 13½ years ago it was the living room window that was broken. Though since then we have had a burglar alarm and security lights fitted.

I also went with my parents to the York Farmer's Market - it's held in Murton on the first and third Saturday of every month, and the range of products available from there is quite impressive. And it's all good quality.

New sidebar link! I've linked to Ciaran Hamilton's weblog - Ciaran is a fellow ODP editor who regularly haunts the #ODP chat room. That makes two weblogs :).

Today has been a little bit of a slog - I had my Geography essay to finish first thing this morning, and then had to be in college. Fortunately, it's all done and dusted, and homework-wise this weekend shouldn't be too difficult.

CptSiskoX sent me this: N64 Killed My Son!. Sometimes I dispair at some people. If she (the mother) wins this case then there has been a serious miscarriage of justice - Nintendo have done a lot to get across the message that computer games can cause fits and seiziures, and it's clear that this guy has ignored them. The question is - who's the biggest idiot? The guy who ignored the warnings, or his mother for suing the company?

If you don't know about Darwin then here's your chance to find out. It's the core of Apple's superb OS X (which as a PC user makes me very jealous), but it also works on x86 platforms. It's open source too, though not under the GPL, and the binaries are a 300MB download, though a CD is available for purchase. While I doubt it, this could signify a move by Apple into the PC market, and I'm sure I won't be the first to embrace them. Way to go guys!

My SETI progress is now 5 units - the 5th unit got delayed because of the crashes and my Paris visit. Unit 6 is now at 5.393%.

Finally, this humourous photo cropped in the #ODP chat room. See you later!