Yesterday, I installed a new mouse: one of these. To those that know me well, deliberately choosing a Microsoft product might seem a rather surprising move, but I do actually like their mice. Apart from a brief switch to a cordless mouse a while back, my current mouse has been “in the family” since I… (read more)
Today is a big day for Mozilla releases – the application suite hits version 1.5 (get it from mozilla.org), the Mozilla Firebird browser hits the 0.7 milestone (get a friendly installer for MS Windows systems from Firebird installer site). Oh, and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 is out too (get the Windows installer from the Thunderbird installer… (read more)
Co-worker who is not really technically-minded approached me to discuss emailing encrypted files to a work contact (the files contained confidential data and cannot be sent “in the clear”). Anyway, taught her about public-key encryption and, specifically, how to use GPG (GNU Privacy Guard). She quickly grasped the concepts of how public-key encryption works, specifically… (read more)
Having fun with the new MP3 player. Have basically figured out how to use all the functions, with the “help” of the Korean-English instruction booklet. I defy anyone to claim that this was even looked at by anyone whose first language is English. Mostly this can be a little frustrating, but sometimes it is amusing…. (read more)
One of these arrived today. Click the picture for more details … It’s an “iBead” digital audio player. The main unit is about the size of a cigarette lighter, only weighs 40g (less than an ounce and a half) and has a headphone socket. It fits nicely in a shirt pocket. The whole unit plugs… (read more)
For some reason, The Confluence Project appeals to my mind. It is a project to take a photograph at every intersection of whole numbers of lines of latitude and longitude. For example, the nearest “confluence” to me is at 52 degrees North and 1 degree West, which is in the middle of a field in… (read more)
Discovered a surprisingly useful bit of software yesterday, namely PDF-Creator. It provides an easy (and completely free) way for Windows users to make PDFs, without having to buy something expensive like the full Adobe suite. PDF-Creator installs itself as a ‘printer’ on your system, so you can create PDF documents from any application that can… (read more)
A colleague at work has drawn up a very good checklist explaining how to keep a Windows PC safe and secure, and to keep the information on it private. His advice basically boils down to the following: Install a personal firewall; Install anti-virus software and keep it up-to-date; Get rid of Outlook, Outlook Express and… (read more)
Now this sounds like fun. Whilst browsing BBC News, I learnt about the First Open Computer Destruction Championship. Basically, a bunch of geeks in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya set about destroying their computers in an interesting and spectacular way. The winner of the keyboard-throwing event threw his keyboard more than 40 metres. Gosh. 😯… (read more)
So this weblog doesn’t look any different, right? Right. But there’s a lot new behind the scenes. The weblog is now database-driven, rather than just being a static HTML page – I’m using the b2 weblog code, although I’ve hacked around with it a bit. This software allows comments to be enabled for each post… (read more)
