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Posted at 9:42 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in humour

3 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    And now she's got the twitter bug Mac :)
  • mel
    LOL. Well visit it again. I have a question there for you.
 

Jul 27
2010

Posted by richard

I know this sounds strange but I’ve never really used rss readers. I always like visiting a site, probably a quirk of the job or something.

So I’ve been trying to force myself to use a reader, mostly because I forget sites. And yes, clearly, forget to bookmark them too.

Here I was again though, thinking about it then I realised I hadn’t read blogs in a while, and had forgotten to use the reader. Either I’m going batty, getting old (not that old though, ok), or just busy. Must be busy I suppose…

The downside as I see it: I just visited Mel‘s blog post.

Posted at 9:00 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in hot

4 comments - Latest by:
  • mel
    If you do, I'd like to know how they like it. I don't know anyone who has one.
  • richard
    Oh wow that's perfect! I'm going to have to get the parents one :)
 

Jul 11
2010

Posted by richard

This is something that I’m really surprised hasn’t been more of a market.

My mother uses this really old mobile phone, a simple Nokia with no frills, barely even a digital display and fairly large buttons (although not too large IMHO). She doesn’t need anything else, as it’s only for emergencies anyway. She can’t see well, and she’s not too tech savvy, so it’s perfect for her.

My father on the other hand, a bit more tech-savvy although still like comparing a four year old with a five year old. He at least knows he can get information on train/plane times on the internet and recently started asking me about phones that do this. He got a Nokia X6 the other day, but today he called me to say it was awful and he couldn’t get on with it.

So my question is, why haven’t these large mobile phone companies, with all their resources, made phones for the aging? Big buttons, less gadgets and stuff on them, perhaps more intelligent voice control or large video displays or at least bigger icons and text? There must be a market for it, as more and more people use mobiles phones on a daily basis, and generally speaking people don’t see as well when they get older, or hear as well etc.,

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Posted at 10:22 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in technology

2 comments - Latest by:
  • macbros
    Ditto to what mel said
  • mel
    Can't IE just go away? I mean, with so many web developers bitching about it, you would think the ...
 

Jul 7
2010

Posted by richard

Ok it’s not here yet, exactly, but it’s on the way.

You can download the new beta version and read about all the new goodies in the release notes. But the real question that I thought the Independent missed on was, or rather what they glossed over quickly, if Microsoft didn’t have a stranglehold on the PC market, would IE be the market leader?

Surely, with something like 31% of the market, Firefox has a good grip on things. Like most people, most journalists, most newspapers, the Independent in that article simply forgot the fact that the “most popular” (it coined Firefox as the “second” most popular) browser has been losing market share for years now…

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Posted at 8:54 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in hot

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Jun 3
2010

Posted by richard

Not a bad job at all on the iPlayer redesign. Currently it’s still in Beta, but I think it’s a real improvement on the one currently there, and that one wasn’t too bad either. Not sure if people not from the UK can see it, but it has sliding panels left/right that you can use to navigate categories.

I suppose that with the news that they’re integrating it all with social media (twitter et al) and allowing other networks’ content to be played on there, they had to do it for ease of use. As good a time as any!

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Posted at 11:12 pm • Trackback Trackback

Posted in technology

2 comments - Latest by:
  • David
    Well, as you're well aware, Opera's been my browser of choice for a while now, and although I try others ...
  • mel
    You're welcome! Nah I'm just kidding, I'm not with Opera.
 

Mar 30
2010

Posted by richard

I really like the new design of Opera (10.51). It’s clean, and thank God for big mercies, no extra toolbars along the top polluting the design. On a side note, I hate how most software you install these days asks if you want to install Yahoo! toolbar or somesuch add-on, bloody annoying.

The main menu is hidden in a small ‘O’ button in the top left, the panels are hidden in a small button on the bottom left, leaving what is most important of all, a large viewing pane for what you actually use the browser for – to view websites! There are several other browsers that could take notice of this. Safari and IE to be exact, although Safari isn’t too bad.

So, I just wanted to say a big thank you to the Opera team, good job, you put your hearts into it, clearly.

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Posted at 7:54 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in life

2 comments - Latest by:
 

Feb 7
2010

Posted by richard

I had a weird problem tonight, freaked me out.

I hooked up my bluetooth adapter to transfer some stuff to my phone. Everything seemed ok. I fired up my skype and was talking to a friend when the screen froze. I rebooted but when it came back up it gave me a BSOD. I was a bit puzzled but rebooted.

It kept on doing it. Heart rate increased…

I was beginning to think I might be ordering new computer parts but on a webpage I found some guy mentioned removing hardware parts just in case, if you’d added something. I thought that the only thing I had added was the bluetooth adapter, so I removed it, rebooted and it came up fine.

So it was the Belkin Bluetooth adapter, giving me the acpi.sys BSOD, on Windows 7. Watch out for it.

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Posted at 2:44 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in technology

2 comments - Latest by:
 

Feb 4
2010

Posted by richard

Recently in the news, Toyota’s recall of millions of cars because of some fault with the accelerator pedal. It gets stuck in certain situations, and in several models.

On the TV the other day though, they were saying this really damages Toyota‘s reputation, how are they going to recover and so on, but that to me seemed odd. I mean, they’re doing the right thing, protecting the public from a fault that has been found. How can that be damaging, in the long run, to Toyota’s reputation?

If they had done nothing, that would have been bad. But instead they’re biting the bullet and coming forward and making sure that profits aren’t the most important thing to them – we are. This kind of “let’s get this fixed before anyone else gets hurt” attitude might do them well in the future, assuming the media can stop hyping this up so much.

I’m not the only one that seems to think that this is being overhyped, Investopedia also thinks that we might want to compare this to other recalls, and not jump on the ‘hate Toyota’ bandwagon too soon.

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Posted at 12:59 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in css

5 comments - Latest by:
  • David
    Macbros: can you use Portable Firefox or Opera Portable? I carry two versions of Opera Portable (one is OperaTOR for ...
  • David
    Preaching to the Choir, Richard. I het at least one call/week from folks who've infested themselves with scareware or other ...
 

Jan 16
2010

Posted by richard

I, like many developers and designers out there, am so damned tired of IE6.

Can’t people move on and get themselves a decent modern browser? It is literally a click away. Opera and FireFox are so easy to install and get running, I installed Opera on a machine the other day and it was as simple as one click to download and one or two to install.

IE6‘s problems with css cause so many headaches, it’s a real ball ache.

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Posted at 10:30 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in featured

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Dec 11
2009

Posted by richard

Apparently, the Copenhagen meeting that has been going on about the climate this week has come to a point where the EU has agreed to spend £6.5Bn to help developing nations fight climate change.

Wow. £6.5Bn, that’s an amazing amount. We can spend hundreds of billions of pounds fighting two wars (and I’m just talking about the UK here), we can spend £1.5 -Trillion- pounds on bailing out the banks, but the UK has managed to find a whopping £1.5Bn to fight climate change. The other European countries managed to find £5Bn.

Stunning.

It’s made it perfectly clear where our priorities are, don’t you think?

What makes me chuckle is this though – the western nations, and increasingly China too, fight wars over oil, to preserve the status quo; but if we didn’t fight those wars, and channeled money into developing eco-technologies like solar, wave, wind etc., and really make an effort, those businesses would be worth as much as oil is now, and would be renewable rather than finite…

Posted at 2:33 pm • Trackback Trackback

Posted in technology

2 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    This one was a different one - Vista. I'm not having much luck with that. Went there today and having ...
  • MrCorey
    I'm so glad that you're having a great time with your new Windows install, Rich! I've found that upgrading any ...
 

Nov 27
2009

Posted by richard

Had an issue arise whereby a friend’s computer, with Windows Vista installed, wouldn’t even run Internet Explorer. The problem is this – everything on Vista runs on IE. Talk about a pain! I tried to ftp to a free ftp site to grab opera or firefox, but no luck.

This all rose because of BT. The install disk, apparently installed something on Windows OneCare Live, and it must have something to do with IE, because it’s stopping it working properly.

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