I will admit it. Back when I was younger and kids were fighting about what format was better in the school playground I was the kid with the Atari ST. A die hard fan right to the very end just hoping Atari would save what I thought was a great line of computers with an even more fabulous release of computers. Sadly this was never to be but it didn't stop me running a BBS system I had run on the machines for over 4 years.

The good old Atari ST almost never crashed it was slow but it was also reliable and did what it was supposed to but ever so slowly as the loyal users of my BBS system Athena BBS commented back then. For those readers too young to understand, a BBS stood for Bulletin Board System, they were around way before the Internet became popular, people would leave messages kind of like newsgroups on them and these messages would be traded with other BBS's systems in the unsociable hours of midnight over 33,000 baud modems.  Users would rush in polling the BBS's modem one by one for their mail in the morning seeing what had gone on in the world or what was the latest in the Fidonet message areas. Back then you were lucky to have a modem past 22k in speed anything faster was far too exspensive. Internet email was also exspensive back then and some BBS's like my own offered people email addresses at the BBS for free which would be fed through to them twice a day. Back then spam was something you got in tins and the closest we had to modern day spammers we called muppets and banned them from the BBS network not a hard thing to do back then.

The owner of a BBS was called the Sysop (Systems Operator) a very nice guy who ran the BBS usually for free. Most BBS's also had public domain software available for download, one of the easiest ways of getting hold of free software if you didn't have an Internet connection. My BBS used to be run on two Atari ST's networked over Midi ports using two modems to answer calls. It was a great hobby I funded out of my own pocket and sadly closed down when BBS's finally started loosing people to the Internet. Every now and again I take my Atari ST's out of moth balls and fire them up looking over the BBS system and playing with the old games in the glorious 640x480 resolution, left in exactly the same condition from when it was turned off 12 years ago.

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.