Mmm having looked as this plane I have a hard time understanding what makes it so "dreamy". Its looks exactly the same as all of the other planes Boeing makes.

I get the idea it is supposed to reduce pollution by 20% but I bet we are all still going to be packed like sardines into this plane as airlines put as many seats as they can into them. Hardly dreamy is it?

A few days ago my machine started to suffer with high CPU usage and was just generally very slow. Naturally being a technical person I examined the event logs and CPU usage followed by what I had last installed on my machine. It appears the culprit was the latest version of McAfee Anti Virus software. I tried all kinds of things with it until I eventually got annoyed and removed McAfee and installed the free Anti Virus program AVG which has given me no problems what so ever.

I also found I am not the only person who seems to be having this problem quite a lot of my friends on older laptops which have been updated to the latest version are suffering the same problem. I feel there is no excuse for McAfee having not extensively tested their software before it was released. Software companies have got to start realizing that when they release a bit of software for a machine that it has to try and play nicely with other bits of software and stop acting as though it is the only piece of the software running on the machine. We have computers to use them, we do not have them for bits of software to monopolize their recourses while we wait until they are finished so we can use our machines.

I am not a die hard Linux or Mac fan but I can understand how they smile knowingly to themselves as we Windows users suffer all these performance issues.

Got a call from BT the other day offering me a free BT Hi-Def phone if I agreed to stay with BT for another 18 months. Well I've been with BT for such a long time now and while other friends on other broadband providers have had all kinds of problems I have not had a single complaint with BT. The service is always up and its very rare for it to be down, their customer service is easy to get through to and they actually know what they are doing unlike other broadband providers. So I said yes to the man on the phone and in return a got a further discount on my bill and a sought after BT Home Hub Hi-Def phone.

BT's IP phone technology is interesting, you can't help but feel that the companies vision is to eventually go fully IP with their whole network. However one thing I absolutely love about  normal PSTN phones is that they just work. IP telephony can go wrong so often depending on what you have running on your network.

Every now and again I do a Google search and take a look at Joost's blog to find out if they have finally got a set-top box on the way and the only article I have found that seems to be anything hinting at being close is this article.

Gee if they had a set-top box I would be one of the first to get one. The content from my Sky box is lacking even with Sky Anytime. BT's BT Vision also doesn't seem to be much to get excited over and Virgin Media leaves too many strings attached for me. Get your phone with us, mobile and Internet and you can get cable. I think the thing about Joost that appeals to me is the whole simplicity of it. There is no strings attached it just works. Apple TV seems like a great idea as well but where is the content Apple? I don't want to get an Apple TV box just to download music videos.

Come on Joost where is that set-top box?

I've been watching the Diana concert on the TV. All the acts were brilliant however one thing that seems to let it down from a television perspective is how they will be interviewing someone and then suddenly cut them off and go to the two main presenters while Fearne Cotton is still in the middle of talking to someone and then go back suddenly to someone else. They were also constantly introducing the wrong acts which was a bit unfortunate. At times the sound would suddenly disappear, its hard to know if it was the producers fault or technical faults.  

The concert in all was fabulous and helped to highlight so many things Diana was involved in, so many good causes and charities.

It seems as though the latest 2 car bomb attempts in London and the single attack on Glasgow airport appear to be testing and probing the new Brown government. I wonder if its more than just a message but a way of trying to scare the new government into pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and not just the warning of "we are still here".  

There seems to be a view that the intelligence services are not doing their jobs properly monitoring these groups. However the job for them to monitor these people is incredibly vast, however there is the argument that the USA is just as much a target and they do not seem to have had any attacks like this after 9/11, is Britain being seen as more of a soft touch by the terrorists because of our more lenient human rights laws? The Muslim community will feel the spotlight back on them more than ever now as the security services start to do the usual probing into their neighborhoods and the other terrorist agenda of segregating these communities more from the rest of the population will be on its way. It seems so unfair and it was the same pressure the black community felt in their neighborhoods when stop and search was introduced during recent knife and gun attacks. I remember when the first terrorist attacks started I had my very first stop and search as I was carrying a laptop bag at the time. I knew why the police had to do it but I couldn't help but feel that the colour of my skin had something to do with it, but I didn't mind I knew the police couldn't target their search at everyone they had to narrow down their searches I suppose. Better safe than sorry right?

These kind of segregations always take place, the Americans did it after the Pearl Harbor attack keeping a close eye on the local Japanese population with an internment program. I think the only thing that can help is education and greater ties between communities, naturally communities of different cultures stay segregated they have done so from the beginning of time. However it is usually one common stand, interest or something they both believe in that brings them together. I suppose the question is: Why is being British not something that brings people together living in this country?

iTunes 7 Browse Album Covers functionality is really pretty cool you can even put it on full screen mode to browse you're albums. This is the same interface that has been made available on the iPhone and would look pretty cool on the iPod if its gets released for it.

If you have problems getting the Browse Albums functionality working make sure you have hardware acceleration turned on on your graphics card. Take a look at Mark Moshers blog on how to enable acceleration on your graphics card for iTunes 7. 

I really like the BBC web site. No other news web site in the world gives you the variety of choice and quality the BBC web site does without the bombardment of adverts that sites such as CNN and SKY have on them.

My only gripe is why on earth they only use Real Media Player to broadcast their content. I find Real Media Player slow and clunky where they have tried to include so much into the actual player and prefer players such as Quick Time and and Windows Media Player by comparison which are quicker to load and have better handling of buffering content. I always find when I am watching a video on the BBC site, I can hear the sound but the video takes ages to catch up.

Does anyone have the same problem?

Well an update on the tooth ache is I have been put on antibiotics by the dentist (didn't even know they could prescribe them). The pain after a whole night staying up and bathing the tooth in cold water as it was the only way to stop the gut wrenching pain has now become a tingling discomfort.

I can only wait an see if the antibiotics clears the pain fully or I have to go back into the dentists for the dreaded root canal surgery.

I eventually got through to a dentist yesterday and he told me I was suffering from a condition where the nerve end on a tooth decides to die often after having dental surgery like the kind I had a while ago to have some inlays put in. Unfortunately not much can really be done for up to 24hrs until the pain in most cases dies away by itself the nerve end eventually dies and stops reporting pain to my head, eyes and general half of my face.

He told me I had to take two lots of pain killers that I could get to kick in at certain times after one had lost its effect. You usually have to wait about 4-6 hours before you can take more of that particular pain killer. At the moment I'm in a waiting period before I can take the next lot and can only numb the pain by rinsing my mouth with vodka or applying bonjela.

I must apologize for the lack of posts recently, I've been rather busy at work working into the unsociable hours of the morning and not getting much sleep. To cap all of this off I finally get to the weekend for some nice hard earned rest and all of a sudden I am suffering intense toothache. So far I have had pain killers and vodka to help stem the pain. I basically take a sip of vodka and hold it in my mouth while crying like a little girl as the intense burning pain sets in on my tooth and then eventually numbs away the pain for about half an hour before it comes back again. The disadvantages of this method is you soon start slurring your speech and end up mind drummingly drunk after a few hours. I know what you are thinking "why not spit out the vodka?" and yes I have asked myself the same question each time I swallow it.

Hopefully the dentists emergency answer phone number will get back to me before I fall asleep. What is even worse is its my wife and my first anniversary tomorrow and I'm going to be in so much pain.

If you've read my previous blog entry about the Wheelie Bin Thief you will probably have noted that I have a CCTV system around my house. Before people start calling me paranoid it was originally intended as a cat cam network to keep and eye on what those balls of fur actually get up to. After a while it started to grow so we could check on the house over the Internet if we were staying at a friends place for the night or we went away on holiday.

Most friends are quite fascinated by it and usually think it cost me a fortune, well to be honest it only really cost me around £50 to put together. If you are looking at having the same kind of system I have in place, have a look around your home for any webcams you might have. I have about 6 of them I managed to pick up some dirt cheap a while ago at Homebase of all places for £5. Another camera I have which isn't as cheap is a wireless camera which I use for places not close enough to my PC which cost me £20

 This little camera can either be powered from a 9V battery or off a power adaptor I plug the receiver unit into the video card on one of my PC's upstairs. You can pickup this camera from Skyline Select for around £75 however I managed to get it cheaper from a shop in Thailand for £20 but it no longer appears to exist anymore.

Anyway pulling this all together I used a very clever piece of shareware software called SupervisionCam by Peter Kirst. This only cost me £25 at the time to register which I consider a real bargain.  If you don't register it you will get a "Unregistered" on all of your webcam views.

Anyway SupervisionCam allows you to plug as many camera feeds as your PC can cope with into the system and will display these camera feeds as real time over the Internet on a web page! What is even cooler is that Supervision cam detects movement and when it does you can get it to record what it sees or you can get it to email someone with the picture, play a sound, upload a picture somewhere and now even SMS someone. In addition to the web interface Supervision cam also comes with a handy little bit of software called Supervision View which is a little app that sits on your desktop instead of you having to watch a web page for updates.  

At the moment I have an external hard disk which I get SupervisionCam to record the past 5 days of movement. If something strange happens and I need to check on it I go through the past 5 days footage on speed review around that time to see what happened. If you are worried about someone actually breaking in and stealing the PC that is watching your home you can get Supervision cam to upload details to an external FTP site or email you, at least you can catch the thief on camera.

SupervisionCam has had all kinds of success with people who swear by it. It doesn't only have to be used for protecting your home you can also use it to do things such as records flowers opening at night and then speeding up the footage. You can also use it to broadcast what is on your screen across the Internet or just simply using it to keep an eye on your kids as they play in the garden.

I've noticed a lot of houses in my area with external camera however none of them are hooked to the Internet. It would be a great idea if people hooked these camera's up an some sort of community site to keep an eye on their neighborhoods.

If you're interested in setting up your own CCTV system using your computer and some webcams and get a bit lost or have any questions, please drop me a line I'm always willing to help!

Okay it might seem a bit odd but I do do a bit of DIY from time to time (I'm pretty sure my wife will be sniggering at this comment). One of my last projects was replacing the washer on a tap which is a simple enough task on its own provided that tap actually as a stop cock under the basin. Unfortunately this was the hot water tap and there were no stop cocks to be found and it left me with the laborious task of turning off the hot water cylinder and also the mains water that filled the refill cylinder on the roof (this is the one all the cold water taps in your house come off except the kitchen which should come off the mains) and then draining the hot water cylinder into the bath which took almost an hour.

Once I was happy there was no water left in the system I took apart the tap and replaced the washer put the tap back together again and turned on the mains water supply again. This took about another hour to fill up properly until I didn't hear the water running anymore I then turned on the taps to get all the air out of the system but no matter how long I ran the taps for, the tap with the washer I just replaced wouldn't give out any water. It left me annoyed because I'd probably have to do the whole damn thing over again, some how there was a trapped air bubble in the system which was stopping the flow of water, what to do?

Solution

Well its pretty simple actually, all I did was take a garden hose from outside and send water up the tap for a couple of minutes and like magic the air bubble was gone and the tap flowed again!  

Friends and colleagues are often amazed when I show them how easy it really is to get cheap or even free phone calls.

I've traveled a fair amount and when ever I do I always use one of the many VIOP based Internet phone service to stay in contact with my wife. VOIP stands for Voice Over IP, which in simple terms basically means sending a phone call over the Internet to you and me. Several companies have popped up over the years that offer such a service and they are Vonage, SIPGate, Nikotel, Skype and now even BT. As you have probably guessed being the VOIP geek that I am I have accounts with all 5 of these services.

The service I have come to like the most is SIPGate, you can sign up online with these guys and select yourself a real UK phone number for free! Thats right no line rental and no monthly fee. All you do is just pay for calls as you would do with a pay as you go mobile phone. SIPGate works by using something called the SIP protocol its an open standard for voice communication. With SIPGate you have the option of having a soft phone, ie a phone that is installed on your PC or getting a little box that plugs into your broadband and into which you plug a real phone. The other mentioned above are more or less the same however they charge you for having a phone number with them unlike SIPGate.

So why would you want an Internet phone line?

Well lets examine this for a minute, with an Internet phone if you move house to another city you basically get to take your phone number with you, no number changing! This also means if you are in a completely different country and you have your phone plugged into the Internet people phoning you on your UK phone line can reach you in the states for example at the cost of a local phone call. That's a lot cheaper than mobile phone roaming charges which if you face is just day light robbery. At the moment I also have a US phone number with Nikotel which relatives over in the States can call me on over here in the UK. Usually with these operators and especially Skype will allow you to make free phone calls to other people using the same service, great hu?

If you you're VOIP interests you and you need a little advice -give me a shout by dropping me a comment.