This is getting to the stage where it’s very usable:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Technorati Tags: Microsoft Surface, surface, surface computing, gesture, gestures
Category Archives: General
Typing: Elevated to an art form
A few days ago, my colleague Jim was lamenting about the noisy typing he had to endure whilst travelling on a train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen.
Today, I was forced to endure a similar noisy typist. It seems that some business travellers are practicing some serious finger ballet, making their fingers almost dance over the keyboard…but instead of their fingertips gently touching each key, they’re coming down with thud, only to bounce right back up again for the next qwerty waltz. In fact, Jim advises me that this kind of typing, when applied to the piano, is often referred to as a Bobby Crush moment…
So, dear reader, if you are one of these noisy typists, I have been empowered by the general train-travelling public to order you to Cease And Desist! You know it makes sense.
Technorati Tags: keyboard, noisy typists, annoying typists, Bobby Crush
WordPress 2.1.2 – immediate upgrade advisory
If your blog uses WordPress, this advisory should be read and acted upon!
IE7:In my world, everything is indexed from zero…
[Humour] – street party in Dalgety Bay, Fife, Scotland
My mother-in-law pointed this one out to me, it appears on page 11 of in February 2007 issue of The Diary, a local publication from the Dalgety Bay and Hillend Community Council.
Apart from the glaringly obvious spelling mistake (sorry, no prize is available if you’re the first to spot it!), “absolute” instead of “absolutely” and the interesting use of capitalisation, I found this very amusing! Very very amusing! Actually, I’m surprised that the spelling mistake isn’t on this list.
It gets better. It would appear the same “advert” appears in The Dunfermline Press (print edition), which probably means somebody has actually paid to have it published! [Update: It turns out that it wasn’t an advert, but a news article written by a reporter]
Let’s give it a couple of weeks before we check the property prices in Inchview Gardens! (via here)
Technorati Tags: Dalgety Bay, Hillside, humour, Inchview, street party, Inchview Gardens, neighbours from hell, underage drinking, police intervention required, street party
Yes, I know…
I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.1. Looking over to the right, you might see this:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ” at line 1]
SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM
I’m working on it, please hold off sending a barrage of e-mails!
Update: it’s an issue with the theme, sidebar.php to be more exact. A fix hack will be forthcoming
Technorati Tags: WordPress, WordPress 2.1
Outlook – sharing individual folders between users
Today, a user asked me how they could share a folder between themselves and one or more other users within the same office.
Whilst the solution is “obvious”, right click on the folder in question and choose the Sharing menu option followed by the Pemissions tab, in reality, it’s not quite that easy.
Without going into song and dance about the solution, the key thing to note is that the person sharing the folder must give the recipients access to the entire folder hierarchy. The whole process is described graphically here.
Technorati Tags: Outlook, shared folder, shared folders, permissions, hierarchy
WordPress 2.1
Confidence Tricks
This seems to have been a weekend for computer support. Today, Sunday, I found myself looking at an eMachines PC that refused to connect to the Internet using the https protocol. The machine’s owner had already mentioned that he had ditched Norton Antivirus (and gone through a lot of pain trying to uninstall it) and had chosen WinAntiVirus as a replacement. Why? Well, a moderately reputable web-site “popped” something up that told him his computer needed “fixing”, a fake “you are infected” type of message. WinFixer and WinAntiVirus would “fix it” for a small fee. To all extents and purposes, it sounds fairly legit, you pay your money, you get a download link for a couple of products, you believe that you’re protected. Except, these two products do little more than invite their friends (ad-ware, spyware, malware, etc.) in to play about on your computer. From there, it goes from bad to worse. And it’s not new as this post confirms.
Luckily, I was able to uninstall WinFixer and WinAntiVirus, disable a whole raft of browser hijacks and clear down 115 items of ad-ware, spyware and malware. Whilst I was there, I killed off all the remaining Norton services and lingering processes. After a reboot and a re-scan, I was pleased to see the Windows XP shield appear at the bottom right – a clear sign that prior to my arrival something was “blocking” it thus preventing Automatic Updates from taking place. WinFixer and WinAntiVirus may not have themselves been blocking Automatic Updates and other security-related activities (such as blocking scanning software), but they were certainly responsible for something getting on the computer that did.
FWIW, the tools that I used to help me are: Crap Cleaner, Spybot and HijackThis.
On the premise that this is one of those “how do you know” scenarios, a piece of advice that I can offer is this:
If a pop-up window (or an advert within a web page) tells you that your PC is infected and offers a “clean up” solution, either ignore it or at least put it into your favourite search engine. Google, for example, provides this advisory:
Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFixer
http://www.spywareguide.com/spydet_2731_winantivirus.html
http://stopbadware.org
Technorati Tags: WinFixer, WinAntiVirus, Scam, Hoax, Confidence Trick, CCleaner, Crap Cleaner, SpyBot, HijackThis, StopBadware
IE7 Connecting…
One of my wife’s friends popped in yesterday. Seems her laptop just “went and installed IE7”. After the installation was complete, when trying to visit a web-site, IE7 would just sit there attempting to connect, displaying “Connecting…” in the solitary tab. It also consumed huge amounts of CPU time giving the impression that the machine was slow.
I know John has been lamenting about this sort of issue over here and here. And Dan was kind enough to offer his good advice elsewhere in this blog. So add-ons seemed to be the logical place to start. However, even setting the Tools -> Internet Options -> Home Page to about:blank, it’s difficult to get to the Add-ons menu in order to actually do anything with them. Of course, being the sly individual that I am, I used HijackThis to rummage around myself.
I was pleased to read this Microsoft posting that highlights a menu option that most users may not have discovered:
[scroll down and look for Toolbars that are incompatible with Internet Explorer 7]
This menu option will at least prove that your IE7 installation is working as it should. Sadly IE7’s Tools->Manage Add-ons menu item is greyed out, so you can’t simply go in and turn all the Add-ons off from here. However, you can choose Tools->Internet Options and then click on the Programs tab thus revealing the Manage Add-ons button, as the screenshots here confirm.
Armed with the knowledge that IE7 was working fine, I could now set about looking for the offending Add-on. Without beating about the bush, it turns out that it was the Norton Internet Security Add-on that was causing all the problems: disabling it forced NIS to go in search of a fix for itself, which, to my amazement, it found. It would appear that I am not alone, others are having similar problems as this post suggests.
Anyway, my wife’s friend now has a working laptop, with IE7 and NIS running happily, so all is well. YMMV
Technorati Tags: IE7, Add-ons, IE7 Connecting, No Add-ons, Norton, NIS
ATM running Windows XP Pro
Yet another instance of software that sucks…
Last year I lamented about how BT expected me to contact my administrator to solve their problem.
Tonight, whilst trying to book some flights via AirMiles, I stumbled upon this unbelievable error message:
Amazingly, I had used the drop-down menu to select London Heathrow. Even when using the “type destination” option that forces the correct destination airport to be selected, this error still appeared. And hey, where’s the magnifying glass icon on this page?
Frankly, this isn’t the first problem I’ve endured with this particular web-site. It’s virtually impossible to book British Airways flights through it. I ended up buying flights through BA.com because it was easier. Here’s the kind of nonsense it presents us with when we endeavour to pay for a flight:
I wouldn’t mind, but there are no items “highlighted below in red”. Clicking on “Get available flights” and changing any or all of the flight combinations makes no difference. Personally, I don’t believe that “the system” should allow us to get this far if there are problems with availability – in fact, I’m sure there’s a conspiracy theory behind this.
Now, you might be thinking that I’m perhaps being a little harsh with this posting. Perhaps you’re right. However, since I went to the effort of writing to this particular flight vendor back in July 2006 when I endured my first failed booking, I got back a pretty nondescript response. Now that I’ve gone through the same pain again tonight, I’m going to be taking the matter up with them once again. However this time, I’ll bypass customer services and write to their top man. Be afraid.
Technorati Tags: AirMiles, This Software Sucks Award, Why Software Sucks, David S. Platt