Fromage Friday

Fromage Friday
In the first of what will hopefully be a series of food-themed sessions, myself and some colleagues held the inaugural "Fromage Friday", which involved spending lunch sampling a selection of cheeses and drinking wine. Varieties included Stinking Bishop (appropriate name!), Isle of Mull Cheddar and Oxford Blue. I just feel sorry for the turophobe in our office.

[Listening to: PinkPanther - PinkPanther - Seven skies, se]

Portable playstation

Portable playstation
Managed to get a Playstation emulator working on my laptop, which means I can play PS games on the train

Currently it works too fast to be playable, except when its accessing the CD, where its too slow to be playable. I'm sure this is just a matter of me adjusting the configuration, which I shall look into later.

[Listening to: DJ DeCibelle - groovy day after]

Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24 hours

Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24 hours

from the oops-they-did-it-again dept.

This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called 'Genuine Advantage.' It was cracked within 24 hours.

Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')

It turns off the trigger for the key check.

Thanks to BoingBoing for that one

House buying - another attempt

House buying - another attempt

from the home-is-where-the-broadband-is dept.

Having gone through many ups and downs with the sale of my house and the purchase of another, we spent the weekend trawling round the various estate agents in Folkestone to see what else was available. Not a lot was the answer, and we were startign to get somewhat dispirited by it all, but luckily the last agents we visited found us a nice little cottage in a quiet private road, for a remarkable price. We both loved it, so we've put in an offer and had it accepted. With a bit of luck, nothing is going to go wrong this time!

[Listening to: Liquidfreak - Alien Symphony]

They called it what?

They called it what?
Apparently the next version of Windows will be called Windows Vista. Bit of a wanky name if you ask me

[Listening to: Haoma - mixed by Dj Shoom ]

When good software goes bad

When good software goes bad
Latest version of Kerio Personal Firewall ground my machine to a halt, failed to let me run core windows apps (Windows Explorer for example), stopped Outlook from opening, wiped out most of my desktop icons and systray icons, and generally killed XP. Uninstalling Kerio fixed all of this.

How the hell can such a major bug make it out to the public? Do developers no longer test their software? I know its not something unique to my machine's config, cos the Kerio forums are starting to pile up with other people having the same troubles.

[Listening to: Liquidfreak - Alien Symphony]

More bombs?

More bombs?
Reports of more bombs (or at least the detonators) going off on the public transport network in London. As per last time, I'm ok.

Go Away!!!

Go Away!!!
Just had some bloke phone on my work phone desperately trying to convince me to buy shares in a company called General Components (NASDAQ:GCPO). I spent 20 mins or more telling him I wasn't interested but he still wouldn't piss off. Grrrrr!!!!!!one1

Good news bad news

Good news bad news
Good news is, as of this morning (Monday) I've finally sold my house (yeah, I said that before though...) and we have a complete chain. The bad news is the house we were planning to buy sold on Friday. God I hate the UK property market!

Birthday treats

Birthday treats

from the Getting-Older dept.

Yes, recently had another birthday and as part of my birthday goodies, I got a Playstation 2 (shiny slim silver one!), so I've been mostly playing on that of late.

London bombs

London bombs
I just want to reassure everyone that I am ok. I wasn't in London when the bombs went off this morning, as I'm unwell and at home.

All work and no blog

All work and no blog

from the Where's -the-fun-in-that? dept.

Things have been busy at work of late, hence the lack of updates around here. I'm still alive, in case anyone wondered, so here's a few updates.

• Got another offer in for my house, which looks a bit more promising, so I could move house after all, just not sure when.


• My friend Clare has now left for her new life in Croatia


• Its my birthday on Sunday

[Listening to: DBA Magazine #6 intro / Scavenger / Synergy ]