Krioma.net

I have to say I detest using Mathcad. I have to at the moment though, argh! It should be ok. It makes some of the stupidest errors known though, look at what it told me earlier:



All I can say is thanks! Stupid bloody software. Then bloody paint didn't save the colour correctly - great! Oh and this blog is now 400 entries old and going strong!

I have been meaning to post about this for a while but haven't got around to it till today. The reason I remembered to post this today is that for some reason I was using Internet Explorer today and guess what happened. Yep I got a "browser hijacker" on my comp. Great! Luckily I have lots of anti-adware etc programs installed and so was a process of running the right one. In this case it turn out Lavasoft Ad-aware was the only one to work. Anyway's my point is - USE FIREFOX - it is faster, more secure, cooler and most importantly not MICROSOFT!

Have you got it yet? Remember download Mozilla Firefox - it is only 4mb!

Yesterday I was working on the NAM 2005 registration page at have now decided that not only do I like PHP but I think it is great. Everything I need to do can easily be accomplished. It has excellent functionality for what I need to do on the web. Combined with xhtml this is going to be how I will redesign my website. Yes I am bored of the current design. Time for a change I think. Probably won't get around to it for a while as I have too much work to do.

Firefox have put their advert in the New York Times.. about damn time. Excellent news though. They better keep it up. It is by far the best web browser available. I love it. Much better than the crap that Microsoft have to offer. How hard is it to create a web browser that conforms to the internationally agreed standards. Maybe one of the thousands of Microsoft employees can answer that. I doubt it - they are too busy making up there new version of xhtml. It is not entirely Microsoft's problem. Netscape started this.



As Firefox goes - I *want* one of their t-shirts:
http://www.mozillastore.com/products/clothing/launchtshirt

More:

+ Mozilla Press Release - http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-12-15.html

Fancy some free web hosting? Try http://www.port5.com/port5/support.htm I have seen a few people using this to store so astronomical images they have taken. So if you are looking to do something similar then this might be what you need. I don't know what they are like etc and so would not claim that they are good. I use phpwebhosting.com - who I pay. They have been excellent over my 3 years with them so if you want a bit more advanced package I would recommend them.

The other day I was thinking to myself about censorship. I can't remember why I started to think about this and I wondered how Google must deal with the bogus entries that pop up on the internet. It would be conceivable that these could easily overrun their search engine and become top all the time. Then I thought well actually I wonder if google censored and if so what google censored. A quick search around brought up http://www.google-watch.org/ a website that seems to be dedicated to pointing things out about Google's actions. I gave it a read. It was quite interesting and some of the things they suggest have some founding. I especially like the about the Abu Ghraib torture case - search for images and you get 1, yahoo.com have loads but I guess this could just be google being on the safe side but I guess this is censorship. I also feel they have the right to censor images results if they see fit - it is their site! Google does not censor the page links though and if you follow them you can find some rather distguisting scenes which I am not going to go into (otherwise I would have a big rant about the USA army and Donald "not as smart as the duck" Rumsfeld).

After further looking at this site it became clear to me that Google has some sort of censorship, but I feel that they are entitled to this. They have never really stood up and proclaimed themselves as the freedom for sharing information alliance (or something along those lines). They are a commercial organisation and they can do what they want. It does also appear that the person behind this site is disgruntled at google for the way his original site was dealt with their pagerank system. For more see: http://www.google-watch-watch.org/.

End of the day, though Google may appear to have some censorship - so what. Even with the case of the Abu Gharib prison you can still get the information via the search engine. It is up to them what they keep on their servers, isn't it? One final thought - remember Google doesn't always have the answer. It is not God (unless God is a bunch of computer servers and scripts.. interesting though!)!

More:

+ Google - http://www.google.co.uk/

+ Google Watch - http://www.google-watch.org/

+ Google Watch Watch - http://www.google-watch-watch.org/

+ Wiki Article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Watch

I find it quite difficult at the best of times to read large documents on the web but I feel it is a great resource. No paper, storage space is minimum and costs are heavily reduced. I came across an interesting website full of online books the other day. It is http://www.nap.edu/. This is mostly scientific publications but is well worth a look. I came across a book I intend to read "Schrödinger's Rabbits: The Many Worlds of Quantum". It is available to read online at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309090512/html/

It seems that Bluetooth is not as secure as people think it is. I do think the majority of the world lives in this bubble where they believe that everything they do electronically is secure. You say to people do you have a firewall. They either respond with "umm, whats that" or "I turned that thing on in windows". Ok most people just don't know. Maybe they should learn or ask about stuff. It really annoys me when people get virus' and then they moan that they haven't done anything. Indeed they haven't - that is the problem. In the world we live in you need to have a firewall. If you don't have one you are screwed. Turn on the windows one - that is a start. The rest do some research. It will be worth it in the long run - seriously. Buy a router!

Back to Bluetooth. I was doing some reading around and I am not going to claim I understand half of this but heck it makes interesting reading. It appears that some Bluetooth phones are increasingly open to attack. Not a good thing. If you are concerned about your Bluetooth handset then check with your phone company. I know Nokia have released some patches already.
More:
+ Bluetooth Hacking (pdf) - http://trifinite.org/Downloads/21c3_Bluetooth_Hacking.pdf + trifinite.org - http://trifinite.org/

I ranted on the other day about people not having anti virus software or firewall software but I did not offer any useable advice. So here are a few pointers. Get an anti virus program. Norton is excellent but you have to pay - it is probably worth it though, especially if you don't want to be messing about with hunting down the final remnants of the Virus yourself. I personally use Grisoft's AVG. I really like this and would highly recommend it. It is also free which helps out quite well. The latest version can be found at: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2.
Anti-virus programs don't take care of every sort of malicious program that could screw up your computer so I would recommend installing some anti spyware programs. I personally use a combination of Spybot, HijackThis, Spyware Blaster, Ad-Aware. These can all be found with a simple google search and in general the basic version is free. Give them a go you might just fin that your computer is running a little faster.

Late this afternoon me and my house mate, Andy (a.k.a. Geordie), went out to do some game shopping. What did we come back with? Well he got: Farcry, LOTR: Battle for middle earth (what I have seen is fantastic!) and Battlefield Vietnam. I went for a slightly cheaper option, still ended up quite expensive in the end! I picked up Gangsters 2 for £2.99 (second hand from gamestation - best game shop in the UK). This is a game I have wanted to play for a long time. It is old now but from what I have played so far shows promise though the control are a bit counter intuitive. I also brought UFO: Aftermath which is part of the wonderful XCOM series (and I am currently installing it now)- these games define my gaming as a young teenager. This was also second hand and cost £5 I picked up Haegemonia, I have played this before (Geordie owns it) and it is absolutely wonderful so I thought i'd buy it since it was on offer. Oh and finally I went and got Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, this was the most expensive one cost £22. So far I am in two minds about this game - when I decide what I think about it I will right a full review - if I can be bothered.

Rockstar games have released GTA, GTA 2 and Wild Metal free for download on their website under the classics section. Excellent. Now I know what I will be doing instead of any meaningful research! :-) To obtain these games go to: http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/. Well done to Rockstar for producing such excellent games and for being so nice to put their cracking (well revolutionary) games online for free.

I have successfully helped to transfer the pc-pals.com forum from an old and in need of attention Yabb SE forum into a nice shiny new PhpBB one. Took long enough though. Lets hope they enjoy using it in the future. I am sure they will. They probably will have to put up with me posting on their lots now. See: http://pcpals.phpwebhosting.com/phpBB2/

I love to use LaTeX (a typesetting program based on TeX), it makes my work look and feel so professional. I normal just do this via a text editor in windows or, more often, in linux. Recently though I have started to fiddle around with using some graphical interfaces. For windows there are a few good programs out there. I really like to use TeXaide as it allows me to easily visualize equations. I would highly recommend this piece of software. An excellent website, full of useful stuff, is: http://symphony.arch.rpi.edu/~hendep2/publications/latex/ Well worth a read.

Happy 10th birthday Yahoo!! What an odd thing to say. Happy birthday to a website. Well it did revolutionize the internet. I personally don't use it anymore. I did have my first email address on their though. Haven't used it in years now. I have my own mail server so don't need to. I used to use it as a search engine, google now deals with that. I wonder what use it has for me now? Probably not much but it was there when I needed it, back in the day. I am sure many people still use it and it is still an excellent resource, just one I don't need anymore. Oh if you have a yahoo id you can get free ice cream to celebrate their 10th birthday, see: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo_birthday/ but only for the next 35 minutes or so..

I decided to get hold of a copy of Playboy - The Mansion, a concept that seemed interesting. After playing it I am a bit disappointed. It is just too 'samey' and very similar to the Sims. I expected this but it is almost identical. It has lots to uncover and it, for some unknown reason, is quite addictive. I think I will probably end up playing it for a while and it will grow on me. It isn't a bad game, but it is nothing outstanding and not worth the price on the label. The main problem is the issue of their never being a deadline on time, you can just go on and on - little pointless. End of the day it is still cool to be playing Hef.
More:
Official Game site: http://www.playhef.com/
Gamespot.com Review:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/playboymansion/review.html

I have recently started using FORTAN 77, a programming language that was invented 5 years before I was born (in 1978 - don't ask why 77 then!)! It is fast and powerful, though a bit out of date. In general I am enjoying using it though I have a mind set towards C++ at times, when I remember my C++ coding that is! FORTRAN 77 itself was created by a team at IBM lead by John Backus. Fortran stands for FORmula TRANslation and is mainly used by scientists - it would be no good for developing tools for mobile phones for example but is damn powerful when it comes to data manipulation. It has been updated regularly but most people still use good old FORTRAN 77. If anyone wants to learn some FORTRAN 77 take a look at http://www.star.le.ac.uk/%7Ecgp/prof77.html, this is an excellent manual that I stumbled across today. Oh what fun that would be ;-)

If you are using Mozilla Firefox as your web browser (if you aren't then get it from http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) then there are now a myriad of different add-ons available. I personally use SAGE which is a feed reader. Quite useful to get the latest news. One thing I have always thought would be good for web forms, that don't have the functionality built into them, is a spell checker. Well I shall now introduce you to Spellbound, http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/. This is a rather useful and I personally like it, though I haven't used it much yet but I know I am bound to. All I need now is a grammar checker and off I go :-)

This flash animation is all about hard disks and the flipping of bytes (http://hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html) ... take a look its quite funny.

The Feds have shut down EliteTorrents.org, supposedly one of the best sites in the torrent community, I personally have never used BitTorrent. The webiste now has a big warning from the Feds that goes something like this: "HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN BY THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT

Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement".
Another one for the MPAA eh? (Motion Picture Association of America).
Some more info can be found here: [Reuters], [SlashDot.org], [Geek.com].
Oh and remember (probably only people from the UK will get this) that piracy funds terrorism, even when it costs no one a penny and that's a matter of FACT. :=)

...maybe not but almost. The makers of the Max Payne games are going to be bringing us another psychological action thriller - Alan Wake.




This game has been classified by many as the best game to come out of E3 (well in close competition to UT2007). Personally I can not wait - I love the max payne games. Lots of fun and not too long that you get a bored of it, to be honest I doubt I would have gotten bored of it. I can't wait for this now.

More:

Alan Wake Official Site

Gamespy Preview

My brother-in-law decided he wanted to have a go of [Star Trek: A final Unity] today and asked my help to get it to work, it seems it didn't want to work in windows xp. This is a curse that many old games suffer with xp. This game was releases in 1994 so I wasn't expecting it to be easy, it shouldn't have been this hard though (I remember doing this the first time round and it was a bitch then though!)! The first major problem was it was not detecting the hardware correctly and was telling me that the computer doesn't have the minimum specifications to work! I thought this was funny but it was also causing a huge problem. Why oh why isn't installing anything easy. Essentially because this failed it would not allow me to install the game. Argh! I then immediately though [DOS Box], which is a program that emulates DOS and does it expertly. I first came across this when I was trying to get [X-COM: Terror from the Deep] working (another brilliant game from a similar era). It did the trick then, it didn't now. In all fairness it was probably because I didn't use the correct setup, but before I started playing around with this I came up with another idea.

I decided to copy over all the *.lst files from the cdrom to a new directory on my computer, this directory is where I will "install" the game. Once this was done it was just a process of unzipping STTNGINS.ZIP which is on the Cdrom.

Now that this is completed it essentially means that the optimal version is "installed". This is not quite true as we haven't setup the configuration file which would normally have been setup during the install.exe process. To do this all you need to do is change, in your new directory, the STTNG.ini file. This is a rather simple parameter file and contains all the settings you need to get this to run. The settings I used were (you can probably use the defaults but will find no sound!):

Audio=SB8
Port=0x220
IRQ=0x7
DMA=0x1
Video=HI8
Sound=ON
Music=ON
Voices=ON
Movies=ON
Advice=0x0
VolMusic=0x7fff
VolSound=0x7fff
Dialogs=ON
Scale=ON
DPixel=ON
Path=C:\STTNG\
CD=D:\
UniVESA=OFF

I occasionally feel in the mood to play some old games and I go off on a hunt around the web to see if I can find it (normally quicker than hunting through countless boxes). Today I came across [oldgames.org] which has quite a few good oldies. I actually haven't tried many of them but SimFarm seemed to work! It is all abandonware, so I guess it is legit and saves you having to hunt around for old games. Most can probably be found in a bin at [gamestation] for 50p! There are some great games on there. At a glance I'd recommend giving Dune 2, Prince Of Persia, X-Com: UFO Defence (probably my favorite on the list!), SimCity 2000 (close behind the previous!), SimTower (I spent ages of my first christmas at home from uni playing this...only 3 years ago!) a go! You probably need [Dos Box] to play them though.

LucasArts have released the first trailer for the upcoming Empire at War game and it looks brilliant!

See the trailer at: [LucasArts]

This is to be probably the most graphically detailed space stratergy game ever made and promises a huge amount of control. The only problem is we have to wait till february.

Time for another piece of SQL code. This might, like the [previous one], be useful to someone. What this one does it from a database in the SDSS database, with objID and plate in, returns them in a random order. Now why would you want to do this? Well, maybe, you just want to return a random sample from the SDSS without having to download the sample (due to its size it is unfeasible to download it all) and run some C program. This allows the randomization to be completed without having to download any data. The idea for this came from [SqlTeam.com].

-- don't bother with useless row counts

set nocount on

declare @rand_temp float

CREATE TABLE #temp (objID bigint NOT NULL, Ran_Num float NULL, plate int NOT NULL)

INSERT #temp (objID, plate) SELECT objID, plate FROM z_table

--assign a new random value to each key value in #temp

DECLARE Random_Return CURSOR

FOR SELECT Ran_Num FROM #temp

OPEN Random_Return

FETCH NEXT FROM Random_Return

into @rand_temp

WHILE @@Fetch_Status != -1

BEGIN

UPDATE #temp SET Ran_Num = rand()

WHERE CURRENT OF Random_Return

FETCH NEXT FROM Random_Return

into @rand_temp

END

CLOSE Random_Return

DEALLOCATE Random_Return

--export the data from the temp table

select *

INTO z_random

from #temp

order by Ran_Num

This is just so cool! (or is it just me being a geek?)

Ok this is an oldish article but it made me laugh. [TheRegister]

Interesting article about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) [W3.org] in particular I am very interested in the future developments of CSS and I can see some rather cool changes.

You may have noticed that most of this site has had a complete makeover (it will all be done soonish) and I'll write more about that soon but not now. Now I am here to give you an interesting link! I have for years wondered why 3d elements were missing from operating systems, ok it would be odd to have a 3d menu system and it would be quite useless baring in mind we have a 2d display. Anyway I do rant on at times. I am actually here to write about 3d website design. Well it is not really 3d in the sense I have just wrote about but it is layering, which essentially introduces the z direction into our geometrical arguement. You might think its odd to suggest that this is new stuff since essentially this can be achieved with traditional css, heck I know I have come up with it on many occasions when I really didn't want it to. That is the point, it wasn't meant for this. To really do the layering so you can layer images over each over nicely you need some nice image editing suite, I use photoshop for this! That means you can't really do it dynamically as you go along, though I bet with some fancy php you could do it in some sense but it would not be elegant and quick. Well the future is z-indexing. Essentially each "z-index" gives you another layer and you can build up nice layered images. I believe [this] is a really funky example. Probably not the best to sell the idea to budding designers though! Anyway there is a much better and more thought provoking discussion over at [24ways.org], take a read.

No word can describe the natural beauty of the new Linux marketing plans...

This is taken from [this] site, which has even more girls dressed up in Linux geer. Obviously some look better than others, like you would expect :-). Oh and this page includes higher resolution images, for your viewing pleasure. lol.

The concept of software developers coming up with Viruses and other malicious code has always interested me, I normally have put it down to paranoid conspiracy talk and that there are some good programmers out there fighting the evil demons. Saying all this I came across [this] interesting article which is mostly about a spyware "remover tool" called Spyware Cleaner (note: I really wouldn't use it, use Spybot or something), oh and SpyAxe (again, stay away!). This provides a really interesting discussion and really just puts across good evidence about these companies engaging in some rather dodgy buisness practices. If you want to know more about safe computing take a look at [this] article off the [PC-Pals] forum - some of the info is probably a little outdated but the core ideas and ethos you should have towards computing do not change over time!

Well, thats it, done. At long last I we have finished the new University of Birmingham Astrophysics and Space Research Group's website!! YAY. It was long and at times very annoying, but I think we are pleased with the final outcomes, oh take a look at the [ASR Site] if you really want. It took lots of effort and is, I think, a huge improvement over the old site! I have a few minor corrections to make but heck the main stuff is done. Now I can sleep at night without seeing php and css floating around the room!

Oh and I'm talking about from your website, we aren't quite at the point when you want to stop them from walking in to your house. No robots scripts are great if you don't want a certain robot picking up your site and indexing it incorrectly or if what I'm interested in (as I'm too lazy to be bothered by the previous) and stop robots from visiting certain pages; especially ones containing personel data. The last thing you want to essentially end up doing is allowing people to find all the info on one person via a quick google search. Anyway if you want to do this I suggest that you take a read of [robotstxt.org] which provides basically all you need to know to get this setup, its a very good page.

It will be 20 years since the first computer virus was written! Well it didn't do much harm, needing floppy disc (do you remember them!) to get around the place! Anyway, 20 years(!) bloody hell... it can only get worse. Take a look at this [BBC Article]

If I hadn't got it enough things to distract myself with instead of working now I have an excellent site full of crack C64 games to play... take a look at c64.com and you will be hapily suprised.

Take a look at [this], it is funny though probably quite geeky. I dont care!

I decided I needed something to make my life easier in installing ports of software to the mac, so I have installed [fink].. it seems to work like apt on debian or yum on other systems... good, cause that makes getting software so easy.

This is funny, thanks Tom, take a look at: [BoreMe]

I want one!! Please santa.. well maybe not quite at that price. Still though how cool is that. If you wanna know more I suggest you take a look at: [Virtual Laser Keyboard]

She uses linux so why don't you!

(I'm not sure of the reference for this image...sorry that I can't give proper credit)

3D desktop? If you thought the Mac's way of operating was cool then with nice transparency and 3d alternate desktops... well you will love Project Looking Glass. Fully 3D... it is in very alpha stages at the moment though I do have a friend who has gotten it install on a linux box. Take a further look at [sun.com]. Here is a rather cool and astronomical screenshot I found earlier:

Well Vista is out in pre-release form.. i.e. without SR1 :-)

Anyway some wacked out souls are trying, and being successful, in installing it on a mac.. why would u wanna remove that beautiful OS and put shitty windows on I don't know, anyway more info and screen shots here: [osx86project] and [engadget.com]

A very interesting read [here]... something I might have to have a play with if I get chance at the weekend. I love GNOME but I do love MAC OS X.... so if my desktop was as pretty as my laptop more the better! :-)

A quite special description of this very very dangerous Irish virus. A big thank you to the mate of mine who posted this image on the pc help forum (you know who you are if you are reading this). LOL

Yep thats right, the new IE will be using the same icons as the mozilla ones, respect to mozilla and in a sense to M$ for being sensible for the user at large. [MSDN BLog]

Now that was easy! I was expecting it to take hours but nope, nice and simple. Well it wasn't when I didn't realise that I had to use LPD. On my journey for a bit of advice I came across, [this].

A good way of stopping spyware is to have a program that helps you stop stuff being installed, WinPatrol does this. I recently gave it a donwload and along with Spybot I think it is doing a good job... though I hate the fact that I have to use all these, even if they are good, programs just because the OS (in this case bloody M$ windows) is shite. Take a look at reviews and comments (and even download it) on WinPatrol [here]

As a Mac laptop user I thought it would be useful that I connected up my creative zen mp3 player, heck cause when I am not listening to music on my laptop and I'm not out home it has to be on my mp3 player. Since lots of the music I download I do on my laptop I have to have a way to connect the two. I, at first, since Apple and Creative are competitors thought this might be difficult. Turns out there is no real support in a sense but then I stumbled across [XNJB] which does the job of connecting and uploading and download tracks nicely. It also allows playlists to be created and does everything I need, wicked. Sorted. So if you are wondering how to do this, do this!

Zap, bye bye, goes that rather annoying application that you just couldn't be arsed to get rid of. Annoyingly Mac OS X doesn't come with an uninstaller (it has the best installer I know of but.. argh!), which isn't the worst thing as you can still remove the applications manully.. but some times you really want to clear out all the shite. So I downloaded and test [AppZapper]. It did the trick nicely and since I had a coupon for it I could get it for $9.99... which is about a fiver, I guess. So what the hell I decided to get it. It is a nice program and gives me the freedom to install any crap I wan't being to immediately delete it if, indeed, it is crap.

This is something I keep meaning to do with my scripts, it is normally not an issue but has become while whilst at Lizzie's the last few days whilst I have been ill. It would have been rather useful to setup a task and let it run without my laptop being connected to the network. I knew there had to be an easy solution and indeed there is ... nohup taskname & ... does the trick! :-) Anyway for more useful info on this... [read from more knowledgable people].

Do you want a linux distribution that looks good and by looks good I mean great! It has that Mac OS X feel to it. I suggest you go get the LiveCD then within 5 minutes you will be enjoying a treat of the this new technology! kororaa is great. I think I may have to install it on my laptop. You can get the LiveCD from [here], go have fun! It's free and doesn't take any knowledge or much effort!

I know this has been around for ages but since I was trying out xgl I though I would go about installing mutliple desktops on my mac, I came across [VirtueDesktops] which does the job nice and simply, lots of fun.. and since I have a tiny 12" laptop will help with my clutter!

Moving one step further from just having multiple desktops, lets do it so you can use another computer to use your mac, with vnc installed: OSXvnc 1.6

Oh no! Time to distract myself with the fun of hapland yet again, this addictive and possibly pretty annoying (cause you have to complete it) game is back! Yet another environment is designed full of strange and odd goings on... to play it you need Flash 8... go and take a look over at [foon.co.uk]

This is a quite interesting / at times annoying (cause it reminds you of annoying moments) animation... [Link]

can't touch this...

It's about time I regave SUSE a chance and I noticed today that you can now (this probably occured ages ago) donwload a live bootable dvd. I think I shall do this later and give it a go. I'm quite happy with my fedora installation but its always fun to give something new a go. Anyway if you fancy downloading SUSE Linux 10.1 live or installable go to [SUSE Linux 10.1].

Take a look at the image of the first slide... [nwsoruce.com] I wish I was there for that. If you are lazy this is what it says:

Project Goals

*Annihilate Bill Gates and feast on the bloody remains of his shattered empire

*Liberate the world from the encumberring bondage of prop*ty software

Anyway the rest of the article isn't the most interesting but that says it all. lol. T

Take a look at [thingsthatmakeyougoaahh.com]. They have a nice cute animal on that page and yes it does look like a firefox! I do wonder if it isn't just a dog with some red painted on it... eitherway it looks cute!

HAHA, how simple but so effective... [gizmodo.com]

Older hardware to use newer operating systems, is this M$'s way out of supporting old operating systems... and make some more money... ? Take a look at [Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs]

Looks like MSN and yahoo are forming some sort of evil alliance to fight against the good forces of Google.... well maybe not quite that dramatic but it does look as if that must be the reason. Both must be terrified of Google since it now has so many cool services all integrated... if you wanna know a lot more take a look: [here]

I wonder how long it will take for google to have all the desktop packages available via their site... now you can do spreadsheets... give it a go [here]

After a linux solution to your astronomical imaging? Then take a look at [qastrocam]. I have yet to try it but expect I will be using it in the near future. I have heard lots of good things about it though. Oh the website is in French but there is a nice babel fish translation tool at the top...

After the mac put out a bunch of cool vids advertising their product there have been a bunch of home made versions appear (by a number I mean a lot). Anyway on youtube you will find loads. Here are a couple I really like... the original mac one [pc virus] and there is always the one that includes linux [but we aren't all geeks]. Oh, and sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words - [microsofts response]

If this is not a reason to move over to Firefox then I can't think of one... [http://www.ie7.com/]

I am going on a long trip to India and don't really want to carry a bunch of books, and heck I can get them free from [Project Gutenberg] so I though I would use my iPod's notes feature... it would actually be quite annoying to do this but there is a nice tool already designed to do the job [WordPod].. works well (is free!) and allows me to do just what I want, read! :-)

Microsoft is to start charging $1.50 for beta versions of Office 2007. From 2 August anyone wanting to download the software will have to pay the small fee. So if you want it free, do it now! :-) I would probably recommend going for the free Open Office but heck if it is free doesn't hurt to give it a go... get it [here]

Still want to give linux a go? Fancy trying it from within Windows? Well DSL (Damn Small Linux) might have the answer. The whole point in Damn Small Linux is to get a bootable (with useful apps) version of linux as small as possilbe and infact it is damn small. For 50mb you can once again have an operating system. Another great thing is that you can boot this version of linux from within your windows installation. I wouldnt say you will get the best installation or linux experience from doing this, but it does give you a damn good start. Also for someone like me, this is great. When I use windows, linux is no more than a click on the desktop (or in my case a double click and my screen changes to my linux desktop, but thats a different story! :-) ).

Anyway more info on Damn Small Linux - [http://www.damnsmalllinux.org]

And this is the file you want to download: [LINK]

Whilst trying to work here in India I also have a need for evening entertainment, so I encoded a couple of DVDs so I could watch them off my laptop. Anyway I must have done one with a different audiocodec or something, well eitherway quicktime on my mac refused to give me sound. So whilst looking for a solution (and reinstalling a bunch of codecs) I came across VLC media player. I gave me the solution immediately and seems like a rather useful tool allowing me to do lots of different thing from within one application. Also it is cross platform which is rather useful. So you windows and linux persons can also use it. I'll probably install it when I reconfigure my fedora o/s at home to a debian based one. Anyway take a look [VLC media player]

Ever need a boot cd with loads of handy utils to get your system back up and running? Well I recently cause myself to have a rather large MBR (master boot record) problem with my hard disk whilst installing, failing to at the time, ubuntu over fedora. I now have it fixed by using the tools on the Ultimate Boot CD. I actually found that I couldnt repair grub at all and fdisk wouldnt allow me to remove the mbr, but a couple of the tools on this did. So yay... now I have ubuntu :-) Oh the ultimate boot cd is available for free: [here]