I am once again off to York for the weekend, and shall most likely be returning late on Monday. I hope everyone has a fun weekend. If you get bored, may I recommend this site. But not this one (tanktops now available!).

I’ve been pretty busy with OU recently so haven’t had much time to watch the films from my DVD club, but tonight I finally got round to watching Pleasantville. I enjoyed it very much, I’d definitely recommend it. At one point the perfect suburban streets made me think of The Stepford Wives, and I remembered that I’d heard rumblings of a Nicole Kidman film version a few years back. It was just a quick thought, but just now when I went to my favourite trailer site to find a link to the Pleasantville trailer (which I can’t, btw), what do I see on the front page? The Stepford Wives, starring Nicole Kidman. How odd Not that I know anything about her, really, but I like to see Nicole Kidman doing well. It’s pretty damn rough having your husband and father of your children leave you for a younger woman, and when he’s the most famous film star in the world and the newspapers knew about it before you did…geez. So when she won the oscar last year I was most pleased On her first tv interview after the divorce she was asked what she planned to do. Her answer: wear heels.

My Renault Clio has been playing up recently. Let it be clear from here on in that I know absoloutely nothing about how cars work. Some kind of fuel is converted to energy which in turn allows me to move. There are things called carburettors, fan belts, catalytic convertors and batteries in the engine compartment. There’s also a wheel that I turn (which is apparently directly connected to the other, bigger, wheels…being a computer person, this is a slightly odd concept; the handbrake works in a similar way, I hear.) And that’s pretty much it. Based on this knowledge, I can say that my car has a cold.

It does, really. You get into it and after a minute of two it starts to shudder and shake. Poor love, just needs a bit of warmth. In a rare lucid moment, however, I last week booked it into the Renault garage for Monday 25th. I then promptly had to cancel this when I got calls from four separate clients with problems that needed sorting that day. I’m going to York this weekend, and was somewhat concerned that I might combust en route (cars do that, you know, I see it on TV all the time), so called in a favour at a Ford Dealership whose computers I look after. They had a quick look today and said that there’s an electrical problem causing the car to stutter, but that it drives fine and I needn’t worry about an abrupt one-to-one with Mr (or, more likely, Mrs) Entropy. I still have to get it checked out by the Renault garage, so I’ll try to book it in for next week.

I’ve had the Clio for twenty-one months now, and it’s had to go into the garage three times, including this one. The first was a problem with the airbags, the second a general ’service light came on’ problem. I don’t know how this compares with other cars, but I thought it might be of interest to anyone looking for a vehicle, as I imagine many of my friends will be within eight or nine months.

It’s arrived! And it works, too! I’ve even managed to synchronize with Outlook. Thank goodness for that I did actually record me opening the parcel, just in case. I made Jackie, Mum and Dad’s accounts assistant, watch as an independent witness too. I’ll be transferring my old number across so no need to update phone books, though I do have a temporary number for the meantime. If you want to know it, email me.

The other parcel I received:

It’s from Orange, and with a bit of luck contains a 6600. I am, however, ASSUMING NOTHING!!! I’ve got a couple of things to do today, including one I’m not particularly relishing, so I’m not going to open it yet. I shall have it to “look forward” to. I’m going to video the whole opening the parcel process. And if it’s wrong, I’m sending it back with Special Delivery, GPS Locators, Car Tracking systems, and RFID tags. Paranoid? You bet.

I got two parcels this morning. One of them was a router. The instructions say:

Linksys highly recommends that you use the setup CD-ROM to install the Cable/DSL Router with 8-Port Switch. However, if you prefer to install the router manually, then follow the instructions in this Quick Installation.

A. Make sure all devices, including your PCs, modem, and Router, are powered down.
B. If you haven’t already done so, connect your cable or DSL modem to its proper connection - the coaxial jack for cable or the phone jack for DS[…]
C. Using an Ethernet network cable, connect the LAN or Ethernet network port of the cable or DSL modem to the Router’s internet port.

You know, I can’t be bothered doing the above, I think I’ll just use the CD like they suggest.

VoodooExtreme quote I just read:

The Monkey Island SCUMM Bar has scans of the latest issue of PC Gamer UK that hint at Monkey Island 5 being in development:

When asked about a Monkey Island 5, LucasArts answer was ‘No, we do not have Monkey Island 5 in production. Sorry.’ Of course, two months before announcing Curse of Monkey Island LucasArts said this to a fan asking about a Monkey Island 3: ‘At this time there are no plans to release a Monkey Island 3. Sorry.’ And about Monkey Island 4: ‘[..] However, at this time there are no plans for a Monkey Island 4.’

It’s kinda like paranoia, but in reverse. There’s gotta be a word for that.

Why does the woman in the advert need to talk to her bank after eight at night? What is it she’s hoping they’ll be able to do before the next morning? There is indeed another way: Internet Banking.

I got my TI-86 working, by the way. After removing and replacing the backup battery I got a very faint cursor, which after a few on-off cycles was able to be contrasted up. I think you’ll find that last phrase is an official entry in the English Literature Professor’s Lexicon, and I didn’t just make it up just now. So now I can play Vertigo do complex calculations involving logs without having to invoke the Sony Ericsson calculator

Moving onto today, I had a kak morning. The first tutorial for my Astronomy course was today at Worcester Sixth Form College, from 10:30-12:30, so I left at about 09:45. The tutor had previously said that we had to be on time. I’d been told to head for Spetchley Road, which I found by about 10:20. I didn’t know any more than that, except that the College was off that road. I spotted a College sign directing me down the road and relaxed; I wasn’t going to be late.

Except the road promptly ended 300m later. The only turn off was into an estate with many collegy-type-looking buildings, but the sign at the front said it was Council Offices. Nevertheless, the documentation had said to head to the right to find the visitor’s car park, and that was the direction the road went. Also, there was nowhere else it could be. So I drove around the estate for a while, but couldn’t see any signs that said anything other than coucil related buildings. After taking a while to figure out which road would take me back out the way I came in, I went back up and down the road and came to the same conclusion. There wasn’t anywhere else it could be. After another tour of the council buildings I was getting pretty wound up, which didn’t help. It was getting late, too.

Eventually I left via a different exit and came around for another trip down the road. This time I spotted something. There was a small track going off to the left, directly opposite the College sign directing me further down Spetchley Road. An idea occured to me and a few expletives and a quick turn-around later my hypothesis proved to be correct. Some helpful person had turned the sign around 90 degrees. The college itself wasn’t that big, and wasn’t visible at all from the road. I hadn’t even thought of looking out for it before this sign, anyway.

Unfortunately by this time it was 10:53 or so, and all the doors I tried were locked. So that was a waste of a morning. The tutorial wasn’t compulsory, but I was looking forward to having a few queries clarified. I can still do that via the OU online conference software, though.

Sorry for yesterday’s lack of postage; I was working in Henley until half 7 then didn’t get tea until 9 and as a consequence was exhausted. I saw some of Mad About Alice in the evening. Hmmm. As a general rule: TV Show + Amanda Holden = I can cope. But, really, no. Jonathan Ross described it as the first thing churned out by the infinite monkeys. I think I managed to stand 7 minutes before switching over to Friends. As an example of the calibre of the writing, I present you with the following gem:

Woman 1: I just want something [a relationship] that’s short and happy!
Woman 2: Well, date Bilbo Baggins!

Mere moments passed before my fingers were feverishly stabbing the channel-up button.

My OU courses involve a fair bit of maths, so I’ve been looking for my old TI-86 over the past couple of weeks. I literally haven’t used it since my final exams at college, so knew it could have ended up anywhere. I had one quick go, then a much more sustained look which turned up nothing. I just had a brainwave, however, and found it at the back of my camera cupboard. I obviously decided that since it was vaguely technical that was where it belonged, or something I can’t get it working yet. The batteries are obviously a good 32 months old, but they have the duracell pressy-button-lighty-uppy tester which shows all of them to be about half-depleted. I remember that last time I used it there was a crusty build up* on the battery terminals, which is still there, so I wonder whether that could be the problem.

There was a group of us with such cool calculators and we used to have great fun, particularly once I got the data-cable and used it to transfer programs from this site as well as the seemingly now defunct ti-philes. We had clones of mario and tetris; there was space invaders, 2 player (via the link cable) asteroids, a very primitive 3D-shooter and even a wav player that streamed unamplified barely-discernible sounds through the data port via an uncommon headphone adapter I managed to get hold of. But by far the best game, in my opinion, was Vertigo, which was really quite stunning. The aim was to roll a ball around a 3D map, without it falling off the edge, in a certain amount of time. It was greyscale and must have had a primitive physics engine and all sorts. I seem to remember the second level taking me weeks, though Ben and Ed managed it in about a day. Gits. I’m not bitter. This was all in 8K too. There was even a pc-based level editor!

As well as games there were all sorts of ‘useful’ programs. You could draw serpinski’s triangle in about 30 seconds and factor very large numbers pretty damn fast. You could get picture viewers…Unlike some on the ticalc forum, I didn’t actually use these for dubious reasons, but the surrealism of using a calculator to view porn was extremely amusing - 55378008 eat your heart out!

I seem to remember one particular 1st April maths lesson where I copied a ‘useful’ program to all the other TI-86s in the class, then told them to press a certain key combination. Their keys were then remapped, which I found terribly funny. There was a combination to fix it, which I was going to let them know at the end of the lesson, though I think Ben discovered it before then. Unsurprisingly, not much learning took place that half-hour!

Such games and programs were written in asm, which is without a doubt the most loopy programming ‘language’ I have ever attempted to use. You’re only a couple of steps away from directly using 1 and 0 at this level and while I have every respect for people who can write programs in asm, they’re sometimes of a certain mentality. Though I might just object to this guy because of his name, which doesn’t evoke fond memories. Actually, no. Anyway, there was also a version of BASIC built into the calc, so you could program wherever you happened to be. Somebody actually came out with an asm compiler for the calc, but that was risky as it was easy to get into a loop which required a memory reset to exit.

Oh yeah, you could draw graphs of functions with it too. But what fun’s that?

*a google groups search for ‘battery terminal crusty’ turns up a post from alt.sex.stories. Intrigued as I am, I don’t think i’ll read that.

I just checked the Orange Shop and 6600 was in stock! So I bought one. Gulp. £30/month for 200mins anyone/anytime & 500 free texts, plus £4/month for 3mb data transfer and 20 photo messages (oh, and another 10 texts). I hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake.

Won’t it be funny if the wrong model arrives…

Or, even more amusing, if the O2 bailiffs come round to repossess their 6600, and try to take away the Orange one! It won’t be long until O2 start getting nasty about the £275 I ‘owe’ them…Wonder whether I’ll get taken to court.

Comment spamming seems to have caught up with me. Damn. I went through various old posts and found a fair few useful comments containing links to porn sites and the like. I’ve installed MT-Blacklist after a recommendation from Ed. It very cleverly checks all comment IPs/content against a known spammer database, as well as allowing me to search all previous posts for similar. Though I’m loathe to do it, I may have to implement comment registration once MT 3.0 comes out.

Btw, the Painkiller demo is pretty impressive, if just a touch graphic.

I’m currently trying to find a good security setup for the network here at home. Each computer is currently running Norton Antivirus, but I really want to get everybody firewalled too, and of course be legal I’ve been very happy with Norton Antivirus, and Norton Internet Security often comes top of firewall reviews, so I was looking at buying a 5-user pack. NIS includes NAV, so that looked like an excellent solution. This would be £252.62 from Dabs.

However, I also spotted something called Client Security, which sounds even better. It’s an ‘integrated solution for client security with virus protection, firewall and intrusion detection’. So far, so NIS. It is, however, all centralised. So I can control all the firewall rules, virus updates etc. from the server. The problem is, it’s £240.87 from Dabs. So how come it’s cheaper? I’m worried now.

All I can think is that, given that NAV, NIS and CS are all subscription based, the annual subscription charge will be more for CS than for the NIS 5-pack. Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem like enough to account for the lower price. CS is also, helpfully, a ghost product. Because of the business orientation, I think, I’ve only been able to find one review.

I’m tempted, though, as it seems perfect for my needs. Does anyone, by any chance, have any experience of it? Or can you think of anything I’m missing, like the fact you have to connect a testicle to the serial port as a security key, or something?