Just picked up a really cool gadget for just £7.50 from Tchibo, its such a cool idea when you think about it. Its basically a simple bit of electronics that detects if your floor is being flooded at night by say maybe a leaking washing machine and lets out a loud alarm sound. I bought it at once, having had a leak from our washing machine in the past that went undetected I thinks it a valuable accessory well worth the investment.

Hi just and update for readers of my blog.

• I will usually link to you in my blog roll if you link to me. Let me know if I haven't linked to you yet, I sometimes miss blogs out by mistake. Remember I won't link to you if you are an advertising farm, porn site or just an inappropriate site. I love blogs with genuine content and genuine people and I like to reflect that in my blog roll and links.
• If you comment I will follow. I strongly believe in following links left behind by people who comment on my blog I believe it helps to enrich the blog sphere so don't be shy comment away. I will naturally however delete spam links, wouldn't you?
• Need help on anything I have blogged about or are interested in? Please drop me a line I am more than happy to help.

I've lived in England for some time now and never before have I encountered rather large and varied species of spiders until now. During the past year we have seen hobo spiders and some rather large spiders hidden under tea towels that make even me (being the hardened macho person I am) scream in terror. I'm just wondering if its the change in climate that's making these large spiders thrive, I remember when leaving South Africa how glad I was that I wouldn't wake up one morning with a large furry spider starring me in the face. Its looks like that horror will once again be returning ahhhhhh! 

I've long been a fan of on demand TV and IPTV, I think its a brilliant idea to be able to get TV on demand when you want to watch it instead of changing your schedule to fit in the programs you want to watch on TV.  I've been using Sky Anytime PC for a while and have been suitably impressed with the results and then I tried Joost which just completely blew me away. Joost was so amazing, why? Because it just worked you didn't have to do much just install it and turn it on and you were watching TV. I am a strong believer that IPTV should just be a platform and content providers should treat and select platforms such as Joost and treat it the same as any terrestrial method of receiving TV. For example the content providers get paid by adverts in between shows or maybe by subscription mechanisms. Surely the content providers shouldn't lock their content down by network and try and get it through as many platforms as possible, that way everyone benefits. The content providers have a greater audience which in turn equals bigger profits for them?

Anyway I digress... I finally got hold of a BBC iPlayer Beta account and hurried to download the software and install it. Everything went fine until I tried downloading one of the programs and all I got was "We are currently experiencing technical problems, please try again later"....arrrghhh! Not impressed! I tried everything, checked over all the instructions checked the help but there was nothing to help with it. I can see now why the iPlayer has had some bad publicity lately. Anyway I am going to wait and see what happens tomorrow maybe its a one off technical issue?

Looks like Foot-And-Mouth disease is back in the UK. The last time this happened the price of British beef plummeted and students unconcerned about the disease crossing over to humans were dining on cheap prime British beef steak while the rest of the public avoided it like the plague. Funny enough I have just been near the area affected today in Surrey near Ash (which is out of the surveillance zone), the area no surprise has had a number of news helicopters and an increased police presence.

I was just thinking after watching one of those films where the clever computer system some scientist creates to make life better takes over his whole house while he is out and locks his wife and kids inside the house and for some reason decided to kill anyone that approaches the house.

So if Hollywood is anything to go by...

1. I will not allow a computer to control all the locks in my house
2. The off button for the Super Computer will be a switch not some silly computer terminal I have to type a password into.
3. As soon as the computer starts getting jealous I'll unplug it.
4. I will not plug ray guns into the super computer
5. I will not allow the super computer to control the national grid.
6. The super computer will absolutely not have control of an automated metal work shop where it could build android foot soldiers.
7. I will not allow the super computer access to heating systems, especially the ones under the floor which may inevitably fry you when you try to walk on the floor.
8. I will not name my super computer Skynet, its bound to want to take over the world.

My name is Rory Street and I'm a coffee addict, my last coffee was 2hrs ago, a smooth tasting full blend Illy Italian Coffee and I am busy thinking of my next cup.

Coffee addiction is something that affects a lot of people in Britain and even more in the USA. I usually find that after I have been on coffee for a couple of months and need to lessen my dependency on it that I usually have to switch to tea. Funny enough tea has more caffeine than coffee however the caffeine is a lot more gentler for you than coffee. Don't ask why, because I really don't understand it. But switching to tea and then gradually moving onto a caffeine free drink such as Rooibos tea (Afrikaans for Red bush tea) seems to work wonders.  

Coffee quality also plays a strong part. I used to be an avid Star Bucks coffee drinker until I discovered the joys of Illy coffee from a little coffee shop in Windsor called Claremonts, next time you are in Windsor site seeing I heartily recommend it. Claremonts isn't to far from Windsor castle you can find it on your way from the castle walking along the high street opposite Windsor Parish Church. They don't just do coffee they also do tea, pastries, smoothies, hot chocolate, sandwiches and a great egg benedicts among other things. 

Illy coffee is a nice smooth blend of coffee which makes it so different to coffee you get from the main chains who usually use mixed blends which lets down the flavour of the coffee I have found. I used to have my coffee with sugar but after I discovered Illy coffee the taste was so smooth I didn't need to anymore. I have tried drinking coffee without milk, last time I was in the USA they didn't seem that keen on adding milk to coffee, for some reason they thought it ruined the taste unfortunately I still can't bring myself to do without it.   

I was just reading an article about a possible holt to the iPlayer application being launched by the BBC to enable licence payers to access BBC TV programs online.

The OSC has complained that the BBC should launch this service on an open source platform and not lock people into a Windows only platform and would therefor want to holt its launch if it continues on a Windows only platform.

What gets me a bit angry even though I can understand the point of the OSC is that a hell of a lot of money (licence payers money) has been spent on this player. To holt a version that would target most of the BBC's viewers anyway because a few people are a bit unhappy that it won't work on Linux or the Mac is a bit over the top. The BBC does have a plan in place to release a Mac version of the player later on. I can understand why the BBC has taken this approach it makes more sense to target the biggest users of a platform first then move to the second biggest platform and so on.

While I also understand that "The BBC has a mandate to provide equal access to content " regardless of platform, as long as the BBC has a roadmap for this to happen, this should fulfil this need, however it should not require the ripping out of something that has taken time and money to create. The point that the BBC is planning a Mac version is quite clear that a user is not being locked into a platform. While I like Linux as a server product (and use it as such) I am not a big fan of it as a desktop product.

If you've been watching the news you probably would have seen that flooding has dominated most of the air time. We have seen flooding the likes of which has never seen before in the UK and its giving the environmentalists more fuel for their argument that things are getting worse and we will probably see a lot more of this in the future.

One of the problems I have is not so much that the flooding is taking place as it in most cases can't be helped but the information and how it is supplied on the environment agencies web site could be a lot better. A large map of the UK marking all the trouble spots and allowing you to click on it to drill down so if you are traveling it would really be useful. Anyway if you are looking for flooding information along the Thames this is the best I managed to find.

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/floodwarning/Thames.html

The BT Home Hub I have installed in place of my Conexant Hasbani router has recently started being a real pain in the ar*e. For no reason at all it will drop the Internet Connection and commence downloading updates from BT to update the firmware. It does this without disconnecting the BT Home Hub phone (one of the reasons I went for the hub) but it drops every other Internet connection.

I use the Internet a hell of a lot for work and dropping a VPN connection or a remote Citrix connection is not fun when you are in the middle of some important work. Yes I understand that BT wants to update the firmware but not when I'm using the hub and definitely not when I'm working on the damn thing! If this continues I am going to rip the damn thing out and go back to the Conexant. The Conexant is a simple bit of equipment but it works and is reliable. BT obviously weren't thinking straight when they decided to run updates on the Home Hub, and I suggest if they want this piece of equipment to be key to their new strategic idea of bringing TV, Phones and other services into the home that they had better think good and hard about standard of service. If you are going to update a piece of software you ask first you don't just disconnect people and let them lose their work.

  If you are a regular reader of my blog you most probably think I have a real death wish when it comes to cats as I usually end up getting bitten by them.

Well never fear I haven't been bitten again...yet! I've just been helping my wife try to brush one of our difficult "ferrel" cats Oli pictured left. Oli last gave me a painful bite when I tried to feed him a pill and since then the two of us have always had a strange thing about trust. I don't trust Oli and he doesn't trust me.

Oli's has an interesting party trick when you do something he doesn't like and the thing he doesn't like this time is the grooming brush, so when ever you corner him to brush him with it he poo's all over the floor. What a cat hey? Unlike Lucy who will bite you straight away Oli gives warnings in the form of a lick followed by a gentle nip and then a powerful bite.

Anyway I am going to give him one last time to get his matted coat brushed otherwise it down to the vet to be shaved! Mind you last time we took him to the vet he nearly removed two fingers from a male vet. He really seems to prefer female vets to male vets for some reason.