Went 10 pin bowling tonight with the gang from church. Had a great time - beat Kristen by 1 on the first game with a lousy 90+ points (shame) but won the second game with a storming come back and my best ever score of 141! (very pleased!)
Then went to Arbuckles and had a superb meal with loads of icecream for pudding and a hilarious joke about a chinese fruit, a disease, a four legged animal and a t-shirt.
August 2002 Archives
Added two sunset shots to my Webshots gallery as the sunset was really nice tonight.
Update Wow - Kelly liked the photo so much that she had it on her blog within the hour! I might use the portrait shot as the theme for a skin for the website...Depends on how much time I get to play this weekend on the webpage.
If you are using the Google Toolbar 1.1.58 and prior then upgrade it as it is vulnerable to attack.
Amazon has a feature called "The Page You Made". I can't link to it as it is unique to each person. Basically its a neat utility that tracks the books (or whatever) that you are looking at and then at the end of your search it will provide you with the list of books you looked at (like the history function) and also related books. Clever marketing in that it exposes you to other products, but should also be helpful in ensuring that you don't lose that book that you were looking at 10 minutes ago! It looks like the page is valid for the existing session though - so if you close the web browser down you lose your history! Update This ability is available once you have logged in though. Look for the end of "Your Recent History"
On the XP machine at work it just prompted me to clean all unused desktop icons into a folder called Unused Desktop Shortcut icons.....now if only there was something available for windows 2000 to do the same thing.....anyone?
Want to email me?
The UK 1901 Census is now online, although only from 9 to 7pm Mon-Sat!
Thanks The Register
Courtesy of Voidstar I now have an 
feed for this page - woohoo!!!!
Google search for RSS and ASP should give me the ability to create an rss file....
The ability to hide the comments has been removed for the moment whilst I check some other functionality to the webspace - sorry!
Just checked into my Sky subscription - didn't realise that i was paying 16 quid for the movie channels on sky - most of which are repeats. Needless to say i'll be cancelling the subscription to the movie channels tomorrow, just keeping the rest of the channels on the package. That will save me enough money to upgrade the dvdontap subscription to two dvd's at once, which means I could be watching a dvd whilst the other is on the way back or to the company :-)
For those of you who have been suckered into the sky subscription packages and want to see how much you could reduce your payment by changing the package deal, then go to the Sky Package page. (Took me ages to find it so hopefully this will help someone.
Well we watched the first dvd of 24 last night. Four hours later it was time for sleep. Cracking series. can't wait for the next disk, which will get here on Saturday or Monday I reckon.
Signed up for the renewal of a domain last night with amen.me.uk (daft name) which are selling a domain for 3 pounds a year, and if you sign up now, they are offering 100mb hosting for free (normally £56 a year) for the first year - good deal! I'm now waiting for all the dns to update around the world. Also time to start learning php and mysql (as these are two more processes available with them)
My laptop takes about 10 minutes to log onto the lan now that it has Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 installed on it. If it's not on the lan, then I get in within a minute. Annoying to say the least. However, the OS does now recognise the mobile phone via the infra red port!
My laptop takes about 10 minutes to log onto the lan now that it has Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 installed on it. If it's not on the lan, then I get in within a minute. Annoying to say the least. However, the OS does now recognise the mobile phone via the infra red port!
First DVD arrives from the DVD club this morning - shame I now have to go to work :-(
Mother of Pearl may have answered my previous question.
Anyone have details on how to create an RSS field that doesn't involve upgrading to blogger pro? Ideally i want to get this website on its own thing like moveable type (or greymatter) but I dont have access to install extra perl libraries or anything :-(
Wow - this woman has threats made against her as she was no longer linking to a companys website. Some guys are scary. As a side note if you want to link to me or not I don't mind!
Thanks Grumpicus
Got an email from Geocities - that company that used to be so good until it got taken over by Yahoo and the greedy execs arrived! They said that as I had not updated one of my sites (not my main old one thankfully) they would delete it unless it was updated within 30 days. Went to look at the web site and it was already deleted! Dunno why anyone continues to use them nowadays :-(
These wallpapers are fantastic!
Thought I'd take advantage of the break today and work on creating a work around to the isp changing config or something on my webserver where my pages were not being served up correctly. However, checking it today the page worked fine, so it obviously just needed a reboot. Still it meant less work for me to do so its not too bad (although I am having serious questions about the reliability and performance of this host.)
UpdateThe website was rebooted 1 minute ago!
Grr - tried to do my Tax Return, but the stupid website does not accept my username or password!
Trillian has a security flaw which could allow remote attackers to run programs on your machine. NOT good. I don't think it will take them long to fix it though as their patches to work around MSN and AOL's blocks when chatting were fixed pretty quickly.
I'm the first to download a version of BubbleBobble - I loved that game! Thanks GnomeDownloads!
In a round up of the news from The Register this morning, Nominet have backed down and now won't include personal details for owners of new (and renewing) .uk domains. This should provide us with some privacy. Businesses will have to provide details though!
BT have lost their idiotic claim that they patented hyperlinks and therefore they wanted royalties. Thankfully a judge has seen sense and thrown out the claim which means that we wont have to give yet more of our money to BT
Microsoft have brought out yet another humungous patch for ie that aims to include all previous patches. Check and download if you are not up to date!
Kelly is back again after accidentally deleting her web page! using Googles cache feature she did manage to get the rough layout and links of her site back! Welcome Back Kelly!
Thought I might put GreyMatter on my website, but after a quick googlesearch for GreyMatter, there is a big security hole. Sure enough, within 2 minutes I'd found at least one website with the password and username available (and the password was an easily guessed word when looking at the "about me" page!!!
Update This file can be removed by clicking the clear and exit button when doing pictures (apparently)
Hmmm - the spyonit.com website has closed down - its meant to be temporary, but i'm not convinced....Guess I'll have to look for an alternative.At the moment I'm using Webmon, but this doesn't provide you with a web interface accessible from any computer, with reporting via email :-(
In the states there is something called NetFlix where you subscribe and get unlimited dvd's for a fixed monthly fee via the post. I've been looking for something similar in the uk, and there is a company called DVD's On Tap which does the same thing. Needless to say I'll be signing up to see if its any good. (7.50) per month doesn't seem to bad (thats about 3 rentals!)
Norton's Antivirus 2003 will be available on the 1st September according to InfoWorld
Had a brainwave today. My Outlook uses offline folders so I know what my calendar (and email) is like when I am away from the office. However, there does not seem to be a way to make someone elses calendar available whilst offline......HOWEVER, if you can access their calendar using Outlook Web Access (OWA) then you can bookmark the url for their current months calendar and then set it to be synchronised whilst offline. Then whilst not connected to the net you will have access to their calendar.
With me so far?
The main problem is that it is not obvious to work out how to set the calendar view so it shows you a whole month and not just today. For example http://exchangeserver/user/calendar will only give you the daily view.
If you append ?Cmd=contents&View=monthly to the url, then you get the month view...
http://server/user/calendar/?Cmd=contents&View=monthly will then work.
This was all thanks to the (eventually tracked down) Google Groups Post
Hope this helps you!
This should be interesting - Is my Blog HOT or NOT?
Stingy busdriver charges a boy 10 pence to allow his hamster on the bus
. Seems crazy. The company doesn't get anything out of it apart from loads of bad publicity (and 10 pence!)
Bigfoot are now asking for users of the free service to accept advertising :-(
Their email states the following:- While other internet companies have shut down, we have continued to offer our free email forwarding service at 25 emails forwarded to your account daily. However, due to the costs involved as explained above, this must be supported by third party advertising.You are currently opted out of partner advertising, but still enjoy the free service. We must then require you to opt back in for us to continue serving you.Rest assured, you will only receive relevant product information suited for your business needs.
Yeah right.....most of the spam i get is to the bigfoot address! I'm glad that I can now host my own email forwarding solution to multiple email accounts (which is what I was using bigfoot for anyway!)
Of similar interest to the previous post, is a note of the DOT's website stating their intentions (and if I read it correctly the conclusion) to ban the use of radar detectors in cars. I thought this was actually legal now, but it doesn't look like it....
Yet again there is a call for mobiles to be banned in the uk whilst driving. Personally I think its a great idea, even though I do use a mobile whilst driving - with the hands free kit. there is not much difference between using that, and talking to someone else in the car and uses less hands than smoking does (which I also think should be banned if phone use is banned) I have seen far too many people driving like a lunatic with a phone to the ear, although with the hands free kit, the dangerous bit is dialing the numbers (unless you have voice activated dialing on the phone)
Interestingly on the Department of Transport's page, is the following quote "[Employers:]Do not ask your staff to carry out two demanding tasks at the same time. It can be an offence for employers to require employees to use mobile phones while driving - you are asking them to drive while not in proper control of the vehicle[1]. "
Winamp3 is out - and looks really nice. BlogAmp doesn't work with it though :-(
The new version 2.1 - of ConquerCam is now available. Webcam page has the latest pic taken with this software.
Google came to the rescue tonight. It was decided, after much discussion that our last meal together would be at a pub.....but then we couldn't decide on which pub to eat at. A quick Google Search later, and I found the Pub Food Guide for Congleton which had the Brownlow Pub near Congleton. (A pub we had driven past, but never stopped to eat at. The food was excellent and very reasonably priced too (there is a menu and information on the pub at their website
grrr - something has changed on my host as certain pages dont work anymore...emergency fixing in progress - someone pass the duct tape.
Basil is still sick so I have to wait for the vets to open and take him in. He's not eaten for over a day and is very lethargic - not his usual spazzy bazzy :-(
An amazing article about reading someones face and working out whether they are lying or not and other psychological things.
Thanks MicroContent
Hmmm - I got a letter today from the dot tk company - the place that lets you have your own free .tk domain. As I have not had many hits through the URL they are releasing the domain back into the wild....OR I could buy the domain.....Call me cynical, but this sounds like a marketing exercise...It would be interesting to know if people have had LOTS of hits, and therefore have to pay to continue with the registration. Looking at the site they do say that they need 30 unique hits every 90 days :-( so I guess I can't complain (that and it was free).
Note however, that due to this restriction i would certainly not recommend it for a permanent domain
Changed my blog links to use blogrolling as it seems to be pretty stable recently - that and it also gives the ability to see which blogs have recently changed (denoted by a +)
I need more sleep!
Happy Anniversary Kristen! We've been married three years today! Had a great night out at Swettenham arms (again) this evening with us both relaxing during the day with a pedicure and 9 holes of golf (guess which one I had!)
Back from holiday - more soon. I'm off golfing tomorrow so hope the weather holds out!
Find out whats new in Google
Create your own barcode. Would be interesting to see if you could create a barcode scanner navigation tool using a scanner to do your navigation and send the output to your browser....Then play with tins of beans and things to "random surf"....now there's a marketable idea i'm sure!
Seeing as though Blogchalk is back, here's my post again.
Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United Kingdom, Congleton, Cheshire, Andy, Male, 26-30!
wqoohoo - 8 days off work (it feels like it should be longer than that). But if you are a burglar then i'll still be at home some of the time and the evil cats will still be there....they have claws too - four sets each!
Blogchalking seems to be down at the moment, so the link is removed for the time being.
14 months after finishing my Java course and handing in the course work, I've still no results from Stoke On Trent College! Anyone who is thinking about studying with them - I would strongly advise you to not bother - especially if you have to rely on the qualifications to get a job. I logged a formal complaint back in March - and am still waiting for results. A snotty email was sent to them tonight asking what the latest excuse is. If anyone else knows where to complain to now then let me know!
An interesting new bot appeared in my web logs overnight called Slysearch.. From the sounds of it, this will enable teachers to compare submitted work to pieces on the internet to see if someone has done some plagiarising (sp??)
After looking at the Blogtree site, i've found several other website that look neat and worth further investigagtion. Some of them i've already heard of....DayPop - index of most frequently linked blogs, and blogroots which seems to talk about publicity of blogs...need to keep an eye on both of these.
Thanks to Mike, I've found the 
. This is an interesting site where you can see what blogs inspired a particular person and which blogs they in turn inspired. At the moment I am the only one inspired by Chris @ Lockergnome but I bet that will soon change! I think that his was the site that inspired me to start a blog off myself..I know since then that I've been influenced by several other blogs, and I know for a fact i've inspired at least three others - will have to get them to sign their websites up!
If you've already looked at the wrestling photo's then you may want to look at them again as I've added another ten or so photo's. Most of these are of Basil asleep as that is all he seems to have done today.
Nice Sunday morning wake up call when Kristen brought me breakfast in bed which was a great way to wake up!! About two minutes later all three cats scrambled into the bedroom and it took about a minute before Winston discovered he could jump up behind the curtains into the window. He was soon joined by the other two and we then had fun watching the cats watching the numerous birds in the garden. I don't think I've seen as many birds in the garden before. Four greenfinch, 3 or 4 GreatTits, magpie, couple of blackbirds, starlings (who seemed to have a great joy in flying straight towards the window to wind Frankie up, then veering away at the last minute). Frankie would then see if he could get into the house next door where the birds had flown too! We also had a nature show when a fly flew into a spiders web and was duly covered up and dragged off - very entertaining! And all this before 9am :-(
Librarians in Queens are protesting about the fact they are not allowed to wear nose piercings, shorts or t-shirts whilst at work. More details at their local website.
Phew - that was a bit of a relief! I came to upload some more pictures of the cats and discovered I had no power to the usb hub. Checked the mains cable and that seemed to be ok. Then reaslised that the usb cable to the computer wasn't plugged into the hub - oops! I guess thats what happens when you have so many cables in the computer!
Update Wrestling album now online
anyone know if Quicktime files are actually *streaming media*? Apparently they have decided that it wasnt a movie file that was the problem, but that it was streaming media.....I'm not convinced.
In other copyright news, the site that copied mine is no longer functioning.
Want to see what this page looks like at 800*600 (assuming you are not running at that resolution already?) Enter javascript:resizeTo(800,600) into the address bar and hit enter and your web page will resize. If you want to make this a button on your links bar, then just highlight the whole lot and drag it onto your links bar. Then you can resize any webpage!
Thanks Laz!
The choice is yours!
The option to enable you to save your settings to select what part of this page gets displayed is now working (Requires cookies!) Just choose your options from the "modify sections displayed" from the top right of the page.
Apparently the movie files that I posted on the website are "streaming media" and were therefore removed under that clause of the acceptable use policy. If I get any more requests, I'll host them somewhere else...Comment on this post to let me know what you think.
UpdateFiles now posted here and here
Had a good laugh this morning when I came downstairs to find some floating candles in the cats waterbowl! I guess one of them was feeling like he needed a bit of atmosphere last night! I'm just glad they don't know how to use matches yet!
There are some weird people about who get their kicks from being kidnapped and a bloke in New York is providing a service of kidnapping them. One guy has even been kidnapped 3 times!
Imitation is the best form of flattery...Someone so loved my website that they copied the entire thing... I know its my site as they've still got all my usernames for forms etc.
My Spamnet software suddenly started working again today after a reboot of the machines. No idea why they've suddenly started working, still it means I can get on with capturing that spam!
phew - got the comments working - I made a slight change to the code to make the text appear the right size, but didn't realise that blogger was changing the & to a amp; which was breaking the javascript. Once this was corrected it all began working again. I have some plans underway to allow you to enable or disable certain areas of the site but its not live just yet!
Grrr - the isp hosting the website has decided that the movies of the kittens that I took and uploaded are not created or copyrighted by me and has therefore deleted them......Sometimes I wish I was a lawyer :-)
In the meantime you'll just have to look at the static pictures instead (I do have the movies at home so i'll reload them up again)
UpdateAnyone else know of a host that is reasonably cheap, allows you to host your own files that you've created and runs windows2k and access databases? I know I could set up a webserver at home to do this now that I have asdl, but not sure that I want to do that just yet!
