My view on the world

Well, at last I feel settled again. You never realise how much junk stuff you have until you have to pack it into boxes, transport it and unpack it again at the other end. Sheesh, from now on I'm going to make more of an effort to ditch the stuff I can live without and aim for a more Zen-minimalist approach to life :) Broadband is now connected, although it's only a 1 meg connection instead of the 2 we enjoyed before. Hmmm... we're living in a built-up area in York, not out in the sticks... I don't see why the speed is so low. I think we might have to go back to NTL when the Wanadoo contract expires in September. The only problem for me at the mo is the wireless router we bought is absolute merde. It's a Dlink we bought from PC World on a whim, and it's a complete waste of money. It's supposed to be a 54mbps connection but it drops to 5mbps when it's at the other side of the room. Trying to use it in another room is a frustrating experience to say the l

I know, I haven't updated my blog in weeks now... moving house has got in the way. All moved in now but Wanadoo are tossers and won't connect broadband up for a few more weeks. Will post some new updates shortly, even if I have to compose them offline and post them from work :)

I recently stumbled across this short story written by Isaac Asimov. I remember reading it a few years back and... I won't spoil it for you. Put 15 minutes to one side and give it a read. The man was a true genius.

Unless you've had a pretty nasty computer crash and lost a lot of irreplaceable data then you don't really appreciate the value of backups. I had this happen to me a few years ago... I stupidly let a neighbour-from-hell near my computer and he fried one of my hard-drives (literally - the circuit-board on my drive partially melted as a result of him switching the 110/240volt setting on my power supply). The hardware is replaceable; I hand over some money to a shop and they will hand back a new computer. But that's not the problem. The data on my hard-drive was NOT replaceable and none of it was backed up. I lost hundreds of digital photos which had never been printed out or written to a CD: photos of cats now dead, of birthday parties, candid shots of friends and families. There were documents on there, emails, you name it... all gone forever. Since then I've been especially careful to backup my data at semi regular intervals. Nowadays, storage is cheap - what people lac

I've been using the internet now for over a decade. My first experiences of it were with Windows 3.1 and a 14.4k modem. Back then you had to install some third-party software to allow you to actually dial up and connect as Windows didn't come with it built in until Windows 95 was released. It was cool to refer to it as the "information superhighway" and "cyberspace", and you were considered quite a geek if you had an email address and surfed the web regularly. So, fastforward a moment to 2006. The world and her dog are online, everyone from young kids to the so-called "silver-surfers" (who presumably book their Saga holidays online while surfing from their web-enabled Stanner stairlifts). I don't fear the internet. I can't remember the last time my computer had a virus, or was infected with advertising or spyware, I never get a popup window unless I request it and I do all my online banking (and an awful lot of shopping) online. I can spot

Last week my desktop PC finally gave up the ghost so I decided to order a shiny new laptop to replace it. After spending hours trawling round the net comparing deals I finally settled on an Acer laptop from AcerNotebooks.co.uk . It wasn't delivered on the day they promised but after a phone call to a nice lady in the customer services department I had it by 8am the next morning. I'm VERY impressed with the machine itself; the screen is gorgeous, the hard-drive is large for a laptop, there's wireless networking built-in, as well as dual format DVD burner. It's easily as fast as my old desktop machine, but it's MUCH quieter (almost silent - my desktop sounded like a vacuum cleaner) and it's slim and lightweight too (that reminds me, about that diet...) I hope that I haven't lost any data on the hard-drives which are still sitting in the desktop PC. I'm going to buy an IDE-to-USB adaptor which will allow me to connect the hard-drives to the laptop and hopef

I hate spiders. I mean seriously... I can't stand the little black 8-legged freaks. If they left me alone forever and didn't ever come near me then I'd be very happy. Not only that, I could guarantee I would never suck them up with a vacuum, drown them in the bath or batter them to death with a very long broom. I know where the phobia came from. When I was a child, we'd be sitting peacefully at home when suddenly my mother would erupt in an explosion of anger and swear words, all directed at the black blob on the wall. She would leap onto the sofa, throw whatever was near to hand at it, all the time shouting and cursing as if it was the devil incarnate. Naturally, this had a huge impact on my brother and me, and we would be scared witless, cowering on the sofa, terrified of the threat my mum had identified. I was chatting to Rachel tonight about spiders and she trotted out the old cliche about them being more afraid of us than we are of them. Where did this particular e

For reasons I cannot yet fathom, there seems to be certain fundamental but cruel laws that govern this universe. For example: money is so hard to earn yet it's so easy to spend. Losing weight (and keeping it off) takes a lot of determination yet putting it on (and keeping it there) can be done with no great hardship. In fact, it's fun! The best medicines seem to taste the worst, you have to be cruel to be kind, and it hurts more to be cut by a blunt knife than a sharp one. I'm aiming to do two difficult things over the next few months: save money and lose weight. Now, why do I get this funny feeling it's going to be the other way round?

I'm not sure for how much longer we can refer to the Wachowski Brothers (Andy and Larry) as "brothers". Larry's cross-dressing has developed from wearing wigs and dresses in private to growing his hair long and being seen in public more and more frequently as Lana . I wonder when the official announcement will come that Lana has had her Sexual Reassignment Surgery?

I'm conscious that so far I haven't posted any pictures on this blog. To remedy this, here is an exclusive look at the first ever recorded case of a resident of Britain suffering from Avian Flu.

The good thing about the internet is, it's not just for porn. I know some of you may find this hard to believe, but it can actually carry information in the form of words, rather than pictures! I've compiled a short list of links to some articles and essays I found to be particularly stimulating. They're long enough to be interesting but short enough to print off and read when you're not at your computer. Paul Graham (the man who suggested using Bayesian filtering techniques to reduce the amount of spam we receive in our inboxes) made his millions in the DotCom era. I recommend you read How To Do What You Love and How To Make Wealth as both are well written and thought-provoking. More of his essays here . Isaac Asmimov was one of my favourite sci-fi authors and he once wrote a very haunting short story. I don't want to give anything away, but have a read of it here and tell me what you think. From reading people's opinions of the story online, I guess it

I still have 99 invites to use up for Google's Gmail service. It's the best email service I know of, but at the moment it's an invite-only affair so if you want to see what all the fuss is about, leave a commment with your email address and I'll send you an invite so you can sign up.

Despite feeling under the weather on Saturday, I went to the cinema with Rachel to see V for Vendetta , the film based on the comic book from the '80s. And boy, was I pleased I did. The last film I had seen before this was Serenity . Serenity is a very ok film. I'd not seen Firefly (the series the film is based on) so my take on the film was perhaps different than some, but I found it to be funny in places, good in places and starkravingly average in places. It was just too...predictable. Hackneyed. A popcorn movie. A way to spend 90 minutes without being too bored. The CGI spaceships looked exactly like CGI spaceships. I thought the idea of CGI was to look like the real thing? Anyway, I digress. The reason I mention this is because I was pleasantly surprised by just how thoroughly good Vendetta was. It was original. It was intelligent. It was arty without being pretentious and it was a damn fine film. Go and see it!

At the end of the day, cliches should be avoided like the plague. Honestly. There's simply no excuse for them! Since I met Rachel I've been watching a lot of films. We go to the cinema every weekend, and I often watch a film at Nikki's during the week, so I guess I've probably seen about 25-30 films this year alone. I have noticed that there are as many cliches alive and well in the movie industry as there are in every-day language. I guess my film tastes are changing as I get older, but I'm probably also becoming more cynical. The movie industry is enourmous... a typical budget for a film nowadays is probably about $80m with many going way above that. As you can imagine, with that kind of investment, the investors want to play things safe - they don't want to invest money in a film which the audience doesn't understand, or is offended by and therefore stays away from the cinema in droves. Over the years, the Powers That Be in Hollywood and elsewhere have de

Well, I've set up a blog again and can't think of much to say right now, typical! Maybe now it's done I'll get round to actually writing something for a change... (stranger things have happened)