We went out to a thai restaurant last night and I decided to have quail as I had never had it before. With hindsight it probably was not a good idea as Quail are very small birds. There is not much meat on them and Kristens mum said it was probably pigeon but from my experience pigeons tend to be fat. Apparently the phad thai was good but as it had nuts I only had a tiny taste.
I finished reading Hacker Cracker last night. The first part of the book deals entirely with the authors plight of growing up in a very rough area of town and the struggles that he faces with on a day to day basis. Apart from the first 4 or 5 pages, which contained a fast moving account of what happens when a rogue Chief Technology Officer gets sacked, for the first 71 pages I was wondering whether the book that I was reading had been slipped inside the jacket of hacker cracker as there was no mention of computers at all. The story was still pretty interesting though. Eventually he gets round to his first experience with computers and his encounters with hacking and the addictiveness of it all. Eventually the story ends up with a moving account of being at the site of the twin towers on 9/11 and a very touching part about a strange whistling noise (which I won’t explain as it is a bit of a spoiler). An easy read and not really the usual hacker biography type book. I think this is partly due to the fact that the author is assuming his readers are not technical as some of the explanations (IRC for example) are very basic and some are almost “media stereotypical assumptions” of what really goes on.
As the theme of the book is the struggle to overcome and make life a lot better for his family, the target audience for this book is increased beyond the geek and I think even my mother would like this book!
I’ve been using nod32 on the home pc for the past week as I was having issues with my previous av software and gsak. Both avg and ca’s free av software do not give you the ability to exclude a directory from realtime scanning (or a lot of other so-called advanced features). This means gsak runs really slow.
I wasn’t about to install Nortons or Mcaffee on the pc (despite the pc coming with a free version of Norton (but that is another rant – wants the point of a “free” 90 day version of software? It’s not really free as it just encourages the poor sucker to go and buy the full version and think they are covered ok) ) so I downloaded the trial version of nod32. Yes ok this is similar to the free idea I just ranted about, but at least they are upfront in that it really is a trial version.
However, when I tried to download SIW, a system information gathering tool, nod decided it might be a virus as it has been packed with an executable packer. The file has now been submitted for analysis so it will be interesting to see a) how long it takes to come back with an answer and b) what their conclusion is. My gut feeling is that its been flagged due to the exe packing as a lot of virus use this method to try and escape detection.
Incidentally I got the tip off about this software from PC Doctor who really should allow commenting instead of trackbacks!
Update I guess they fixed it as I can download it ok today. Didn’t get an email from nod though.
Happy Birthday to you…… The Astronomy Picture Of The Day is a great source of some incredible photos of the solar system. I’ve been reading it on and off for about 7 or 8 years I think.
I tried to use orb on the pocketpc last night and the pictures worked great but I had no video. This is due to the nasty bug that occurs when media player immediately closes when it is launched. This is apparently to do with a corrupt default skin or missing shortcut -both of which I checked and neither of these “solutions” fixed the problem. The only other solution was to hard reset the axim. So that is what I did about 10 minutes ago (after doing a backup which took a couple of hours). Now, I can watch movies in media player so I just have to reinstall all the apps again – ugh.
No, not a film about two of our friends, but a very funny film about two assassins, married to each other, who are eventually sent to kill each other. A very funny film, loads of action (including a car chase) and eye candy in the form of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt so everyone is happy. Well worth watching – Kristen wants to go see it again already!
I sat down in the car the other day and the belt clip for my creative zen snapped in half. The zen had been pushed up by the action and snapped the plastic. I sent an email off to Creative for a RMA number and after a couple of days correspondance back and forth they said they would send me a new case foc. However they said that they would make this an exception and that I must not sit down with the zen clipped to my waste. This seems a bit daft to me as a hard disk player is not an ideal choice for listening to when jogging or doing something active, therefore you are likely to use this when sitting down and now they are saying that you shouldn’t use it?
I’m still grateful for them to replace it under warrenty and am looking at getting something like a glorified bumbag to put all my electronic gadgets in. I have found a nice CityWalker pack bag at the container store but it costs $35! This does have pockets for anything and everything and I think would be ideal for putting the gps, camera, pda,zen,notebook,pen and geocaching goodies in.
Orb looks like a good multimedia server package that lets you stream audio and video to any internet connected pda,phone or pc. It will also let you look at your webcam and setup tv recordings (assuming you have a compatible tv card) from a remote machine as well as allow you to view previously saved recordings – beats a vcr anyday. I’ve not actually tried this yet as I don’t have a tv capture card although I am sorely tempted to get one – It would be much more convenient to store tv shows on the hard disk than it would be to remember to rewind the video tape, program it and hope it worked correctly.
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.
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.