Just going to try updating the blog software with the latest version…Last time I tried this it went terribly wrong. And everything broke. So backups are the order of the day, I think!

Removed all the christmassy festoonage Am sad now. Site looks bare. Pants. Might this be the time for a re-design? Possibly…

The MS spyware tool is out, and first impressions are very good. If you’re on XP or 2k, go get it! Cool things it does:

Scans for spyware and removes any it finds (after asking)
Runs in the background and continuously protects your system
Removes toolbars from IE (that can be *really* difficult sometimes)
Updates automatically
Can schedule scans

I don’t know what the memory usage is like, but providing the database is decent this should be incredibly useful. And it’s free! So what are you waiting for?

Just saw National Treasure and I enjoyed it very much. Haven’t come back from the cinema raving about a film for ages…I found it most entertaining.

I hate spyware. It’s horrible. It’s the way that they don’t even work properly that gets me. Little programs sitting there firing off statistics are one thing, but that they are capable of breaking computers is nuts. I’ve seen Kazaa kill at least two windows installations. And they invite in trojans. And slow everything down. And pop up porn banners. And delete things. It Just Sucks. Spyware is now much more annoying than both viruses (virii?) and spam, in my opinion.

So if this works properly, it’ll be great: Microsoft are due to release a spyware removal tool before too long. I don’t know how they plan to implement it, but if it eventually becomes a ‘critical’ download and is easy to use it’ll solve a hell of a lot of problems. In fact, when I was working I would estimate that 75% of the PCs I looked at had spyware of some kind on there (not just cookies). It’s not an easy thing to kill off, either. If you miss even one program it’ll invite its mates in within days and you’re back to square one. Good move, MS. Bring it on.

If you’re into comics, you might like to know that Will Eisner died. A pioneer and one of the founding fathers of the industry, he’ll be missed.

I don’t understand silences. How is it showing respect to be silent for three minutes? If you care, you care. If you don’t, you don’t. Why not spend the three minutes doing something useful and appropriate? If you’ve got the media to devote three whole minutes to an issue, why not use it to blast the website and phone number for donations? The people who are in need don’t care that half of europe was silent for three minutes. They just need help. It just seems such a waste.

Just a quick question…I’ve been transferring my emails around and now any old HTML emails appear without any formatting - you see the HTML code. New mail appears fine (in all readers) but old emails are effectively the source of the email, which is nigh on impossible to read. It’s not *that* big a deal but is a bit annoying. Has anyone come across this? I’m not really sure what could be causing it…

I’ve kept my mouth shut about this until now, as it’s not very pleasant. However, I have to say something about the BBC website page quoting the tsunami responses of various religious representatives. The hindu, buddhist and muslim responses are so completely offensive it’s hard to know what to write. The hindus and buddhists suggest obliquely that the reason the people died was due to their lack of karma. So, effectively, they were all bad people and needed to die. The muslim statement says that this is the “will of God Almighty. Allah knows best.” Or, you know, not. The christian and muslim quotes are the religious equivalent of “I’m sorry sir, that’s company policy.”

Don’t come at me with ‘god knows best’ when over 150,000 people have died. Don’t come at me with ‘god moves in mysterious ways’ when disease is threatening to kill as many again. As the atheist says, man is the only hope for man. We are rising to the challenge. The charity effort is unparalleled in history. Science can’t currently predict earthquakes with any reliability, but we’re working on it. I can’t say we’ll get there, but we’re trying. There is no comfort here, no deus ex machina that’s going to make everything ok. People died, that’s how it is. But the response is as beautiful as the event was horrific. All we can do is try our damndest to fix things, and work on trying to stop it happening again. Don’t come at me with insulting, bigoted, nonsensical, blinkered fascism. Look at what’s happening. Don’t hide behind comforting words. Stop trying to wreck things further. Help. Be human.

I consider myself to be a vaguely intelligent person. Not top of the class, but not bad. Why is it, then, that despite having had at least three different people show me the correct technique, it still takes me fifteen minutes to iron a shirt?! What’s wrong with me? I know there’s a clever way you can pull it around the pointy end of the ironing board. I know that you can cunningly rotate it, enabling you to iron the entire shirt very quickly with a minimum of creases and arms and stuff getting in the way. I just can’t do it. It’s an undoable thing (heh). Robots. That’s what we need. Ironing robots. Steam-powered ironing robots! Gotta be efficient.

Sometimes, the world seems to suck. But it’s not all bad.Things are actually getting better. Really.

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping 2005 is far superior to 2004 Weren’t the London fireworks spectacular? The tv cameras were completely overwhelmed by the finale!