Fatboy Slim

March 31st, 2011

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,

of the way he repeats a lyric over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Pants required

March 29th, 2011

C’mon Rob, how about an image credit?

Nuclear power: Who can you believe?

March 29th, 2011

I’ve been reading George Monbiot’s column for years, and I rely on it for information. He recently publish two articles about nuclear power, in light of the recent disasters in Japan:

  • Atomised: The Fukushima crisis should not spell the end of nuclear power.
  • Going Critical: How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power.

I’m deeply worried about the the apparant lack of consensus on the subject of sustainable energy production.

I would love to know what he thinks about a recent interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott after the Fukushima Japan nuclear accident.

Apart from the curious relationship she draws between nuclear power and men’s testicles, she does seem to have some alarming scientific facts about the dangers of nuclear power, and how, in her opinion, there is no such thing as a safe nuclear reactor.

How can we make the right choices, and put the correct pressure on our elected politicians, if we can never be sure we are getting the right information?

Who do you trust?

Google account disabled for any reason they like

January 29th, 2011

Google Accounts: I’m getting a message that says ‘Sorry, your account has been disabled.’
If you’ve been redirected to this page from the sign in page, it means that access to your Google Account has been disabled.
In most cases, accounts are disabled because of a perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.

Google reserves the right to:

  • Suspend a Google Account from using a particular product or the entire Google Accounts system if the Terms of Service or product-specific policies are violated.
  • Terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.

Well that’s just wonderful. This all started when they thought they detected weird logins from multiple countries, and their SMS secret code method completely failed for my Spanish mobile.

And what’s up with that last clause? For any reason without notice? How do they expect to win business customers with that? I am now completely unable to use any google service, and all my data is locked away. Including YouTube, google docs, gmail, rss reader and chrome bookmarks.

Update: Got the account back, and it was pretty straight forward.  But four days is too long without your main email repository.  Luckily, I was able to redirect my main accounts to another service.

eProductivity: Survey Results are in

January 13th, 2011

I’ve mentioned eProductivity before. Recently, they did a survey of their users, and here are some interesting factoids:

  • 97.3% of respondents feel like they receive a large amount of work-related emails
  • 55.8% use a BlackBerry while 34.8% use an iPhone
  • 90.4% said eProductivity saves them time, and 72.1% of those people said eProductivity saves them 30 minutes or more every day.
  • 87.1% said eProductivity makes it easy to get an empty email inbox
  • 91.2% can access LinkedIn at work, but only 73.5% can access Twitter
  • 90.5% reported being satisfied with Lotus Notes when using eProductivity, but only 31.1% reported being satisfied with Lotus Notes when eProductivity was taken out of the mix

The last fact sums it up: If you must use Notes, you must you eProductivity. It is that simple.

Hiking and Booze: A Good Mix

December 7th, 2010

Trying out smugmug, and lightroom.

Full gallery here.

To install, first remove the battery. Twice.

December 1st, 2010

Really? Remove the battery? Twice?
And what happened to apps which gracefully replace themselves with the latest version?
Every time a remove the battery, my Curve takes 10 minutes to be useable.

Secret Blackberry Codes

November 11th, 2010

Address book crapped out on me, couldn’t “find” anything, even though all my contacts where there.

Battery out reset didn’t help.

The secret address book rebuild code on this site did the trick.

I am so three one three three seven.

Should I get the last byte?

November 3rd, 2010

Gee, I dunno…..
What could be in the last byte? Half a smiley? An exclamation point?
Maybe I should choose to retrieve it just to make sure….

The IE zoom of death

November 3rd, 2010

While slowly beating my brains out with a SAP shaped hammer, the oh-so -helpfull IT support called, and asked why I was trying to use the native SAP client?  I asked what was wrong with that? To which he replied:

Well, no-one uses it, and its really bad.

Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

So I kindly informed him that I had previously reported that the SAP web application had stopped working, and had turned into a paint program.  He said, “By any chance do you have the zoom set to anything other than 100%?”

Stunned silence.

As my brain slowly started processing the idea that a client-side zoom setting had caused the ENTIRE application to hang, I realised that I was trying to apply Reason in the first place.  So I simply did what the IT guy said, and checked.

Oh. My. Fracking. God.

Behold – the IE zoom level of death:

IE zoom of death

IE zoom of death

I set this back to 100%, and wouldn’t you know it, it started working….

….until… <click>

<click>….wait….<click><click>

…. ah yes – we all knew this wasn’t actually going to solve all the problems.  In fact, it has joyfully created another problem.

The report which I had wasted my ENTIRE DAY on is inaccesable from the web client.  The IT guy on the phone said those dreaded words:

“Huh.  Never seen it do that before.”

I said that if I  have to delete my report, and start ALL OVER AGAIN, I would come through the phone and strangle him.  He laughed, but with that tinge of fear caused by the realisation that I might actually manage it, somehow.