There’s a new version of skype that was released yesterday (which probably solved the audio hassles I was having!) The auto update function of skype doesn’t detect that a new version is available to download so you will need to download it yourself.
Month: June 2005
Both Dave and Neil were talking about Googlimage, the latest meme and it was pretty interesting so here are my results. Incidentally none of these answers are of any use for security questions so don’t bother phishing with them.
The place I grew up. Emsworth, Hampshire. This picture is of the harbour and similar to the scenes that you will often see on postcards of the place.
The place I live now Dublin, Ohio. This is a great shot of the concrete field of corn just down the road from where we currently live. Not everyone who lives in dublin even knows about the place but there is a geocache there (and we often drive past it.
My name Andy. The picture actually shows a friend of mine, Brian, taken by myself on a geocaching trip when we had to abseil over a cliff to get it. It appears under my name due to the copyright notice on his web page. Interestingly the first picture on Andrew is rather explicit, even with the safe searching switched on.
My grandmother’s name Ada – my grandmother never looked this stern (but then I was always a golden grandchild 🙂
My favourite food. Lasagne. Also the first meal that Kristen cooked for me.
My favourite drink Coffee. Although in the temperatures that we are having at the moment I am being weaned off (apart from the early morning cuppa. I also find it ironic that Kristen’s blog is called CupTeaLuv
My favourite song.This Means War by Petra – on the first tape that I ever got and the title song. I really like the cover and even had it on my denim motorcycle jacket.
My favourite smell.Sunday lunch. Although if done well it always looks a lot more appetising that ANY of the photos on the first page of google images. This shot shows the Yorkshire Puddings which are an essential ingredient.
My favourite shoes. Comfy shoes. I have no idea of the make of my shoes – as long as they are comfy I am happy. These shoes didn’t look that comfy to me – especially as they have cacti planted in the top!
My favourite number.42. This picture was the first result and there was also a cute hedgehog in the list which I was going to choose.
Now that’s wasted 45 minutes, I’m off to reboot the machine to install all those patches.
There are 8 windows updates (on my machine) for XP available now. At the moment my automatic updates has not picked them up, but you can of course get them by going to the windows update site.
It is interesting to see that the news site are only able to send audio streams of the results of the Michael Jackson trial that was due to be announced 10 minutes ago as cameras are not allowed in the courtroom. The BBC have an “audio only” stream but at the moment its actually streaming video reportage from reporters at the court room. The msn’s website is not sending anything at all and looks broken.
I’m not going to comment on the actual case itself as I’ve not been privy to the evidence submitted during the trial – I just think its crazy that the trial has gone on for so long and am amazed how much of a media circus this has turned into.
(and when interviewing someone on the news, you really want to pick someone who doesn’t answer your questions with “that’s right” as it leads to a rather boring interview.)
Twice today I’ve tried to comment on a blog hosted on typepad.com and when I post the comment I get an error message back saying
An error occurred…
Invalid URL ‘https://absoblogginlutely.net’
Please correct the error in the form below, then press Post to post your comment.”
The annoying thing is that the url is correct and works everywhere else. You also have to log in to typepads site to post a problem report (which is daft as I’m not the actual user of typepad)
Update Looks like I’m not about the only one with 74 other hits on google
Update Got an email back from typepad to say that they have now fixed it (and I can now comment again – woohoo)
There is a bug in skype in that if your config.xml contains the value 256 in the MicVolume then your voice is VERY VERY quiet. Changing it to 255 with notepad,saving the file and then launching skype again means you get crystal clear sound again. So if you have skype then let me know! Thanks to the various postings in the skype forum – I’ve spent several hours trying to work this one out.
I was looking at xetrade (online currency conversion from GB pounds to US dollars and there are a few security issues I’m not happy about. Looking at Loosewires post on phishing they have the same issues – they will ring you back to confirm some bank details (which could be open to interception/spoofing.)
They then have some more worrying security issues.
- They require you to fax or email copies of your passport/social security number/birth certificate to an email address (which is stored on an exchange public folder). The fact that email is not secure is drummed into people yet they are using this method of communication to verify data. Surely a secure upload facility should be enabled on the website (the rest of the login procedure is ssl encrypted).
- Their SSL certificate expires in 3 days time – this makes me nervous.
- The “contact us if you have any security questions” link at https://www.xe.com/fx/background.htm is broken, tells you to inform the webmaster but doesn’t have a link to the webmaster for this site (it assumes the referring link comes from another site.
I’ve put these questions in an email to xetrade – will be interesting to see what they say.
Update
xetrade reply, answering all the questions I posed (phew!)
1) We do offer a secure upload service which can be found at:
https://www.xe.com/sft/
As you can see from the address (https) this is located on our secure server and will upload the files directly to our system with no public exposure.
2) The security certificate has of course been renewed and is already on our server. However, in order to complete the process we need to re-start the web server which is something we do not like to do without preparation. For your information, the new certificate should be uploaded within the next 24 hours, and most likely some time later this afternoon. Please feel free to check back at any stage to see the new certificate.
I have reported the broken link and this has now been updated. We are very careful to ensure that all of our links work correctly and I am very sorry that this link was broken. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
3) We do understand this concern. Generally, we initiate the call to you using the supplied telephone numbers which helps us to ensure we are dealing with the person who signed up for the account. Once we have initiated the call and spoken to you, we are happy for you to call back to us to continue the conversation on our contact numbers in order for you to cross reference and check that the person you are speaking to is part of our organization.
Once again, we do fully understand your concerns, Andy, and are happy to work with you as necessary so that you are confident you are dealing with the correct people. We must however do this from within the frameworks that we are provided to ensure that we are not helping clients to launder money or fund terrorism.
I hope that this helps answer your questions but if you require anything else do not hesitate to contact us.
Information Improvisation
Before deciding to work at home, one should be well aware of certain home business facts. Not every home business opportunity is bound to succeed. And working from home does not always mean huge bucks. Just like other business opportunities there is a fifty fifty risk involved.
There is now a dnsstuff toolbar for firefox for easily looking up stuff from dnsstuff the site which I frequently use to troubleshoot dns,networking and the registration of domain names.Thanks Mike
I still don’t get the benefit of using bloglines, but maybe that is because I’m using someone elses aggregation of feeds. If I look at Mikes main website I can see his clips on the right hand side – this is the first page I’m looking at.
If there is an item that looks interesting I click on it which takes me to the second page containing three links on the right hand side.
The first link, larger than the rest and in bold is actually a link to the current page that I’m on (and therefore rather pointless and confusing).
The second link has the same anchor text as the previous link but actually links to the post that Mike is referring to – this is the link that I need.
The third link points to the same place as the second link but contains the text “source blog” which again seems to be redundant as I know that from the second link.
When I click on either of the last two links it finally takes me through to the content – 2 pages after the initial link (and this is meant to make things easier to track?)
So, having whinged, what would I do to “fix” this?
- Loose the first titled link as it is just too confusing and redundant.
- Drop the third link or change the text so it gives the name of the blog/website that you are quoting (and possibly linking to the home page rather than the individual item).
Have I got all this right or am I missing something and overcomplicating things?
Mike in his sidebar had a post about a dead pixel fixing program which “works” by rapidly changing the colour of the pixel that is dead which makes it unsticky. I thought this would be great to run on the dead pixel on my screen only to find that when I went to look at the pixel it was already fixed. Here I was, thinking that dead pixels were final, my screen had snuffed it, it was no more – to (badly) quote a famous sketch.