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This grainy picture was apparently taken at the public premiere of the new BBC website on Sunday:
Uploaded to flickr by adactio
I'm not sure what's going on with the analogue clock in the top right corner (very retro!) but I like the blue colour scheme. I suppose the proof of the pudding is in the eating - apparently the blue masthead changes colour to suit the tab you've just clicked, which could be a bit nasty…
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This weekend I added a wireless LAN adaptor to a desktop PC. Exciting stuff indeed. So why should this seemingly straightforward task be made so difficult by crap products?
I bought a Belkin F5D7050 USB adaptor initially. Firstly, it would only work in one of the computer's six USB ports, and only then when plugged in directly (not using the supplied extension cable.) Hmmm. To make matters worse, the (ancient) supplied software was horrific. It just didn't work! Although it (usually) showed that it could see the wireless network, it only very occasionally connected to it, and only then if I disabled all security on the network, which is plainly ridiculous. After several hours of pulling my remaining hair out (a bit like this…), I gave up and took it back.
To replace it I bought a Linksys WUSB54GS. The contrast couldn't be greater. From installing the software through plugging in the adaptor to connecting to the network (with WPA-PSK security) took less than two minutes. It may have been twice the price of the Belkin but half price isn't much good if it doesn't work!
My own laptop uses a faultless Linksys wireless networking dongle and I'm now more sure than ever that I shouldn't buy anything else. Avoid Belkin like the plague.
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Whilst flicking through facebook this morning (as you do) I noticed that at the bottom of some pages I was getting adverts for a British essay writing site which claims to supply material of "2:1 or 1st class standard - guaranteed!"
Now I'm sure facebook isn't under any legal obligation to not carry such adverts, but surely there's a moral problem with inviting students to cheat on a website which is so popular with the target audience? My only crumb of comfort is knowing that, at least at my university, lecturers have a range of facilities available to them to catch these cheats - and they do get caught…
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Signs you're getting a bit forgetful, number 3786: I tootled round to the petrol station yesterday to fill the bike up and, once I got over the shock of the three-figure price per litre, went to pay. No, I hadn't taken my wallet with me… fortunately the cashier believed me while I twiddled my thumbs for five minutes waiting for my emergency wallet delivery service to arrive. It's a good job I filled up just round the corner from my house, if I'd been on the other side of town it would have been a bit of a nightmare!!
I've never done that before in ten years of motoring… the perils of old age… 
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From The Register today:
Camelot has withdrawn its short-lived "Cool Cash" scratchcard after it required a higher than absolute zero grasp of how numbers work to understand it.
According to the Manchester Evening News, to qualify for a prize, punters had to "scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card". Sadly, as the card had a decidedly wintery theme, this initially-shown figure was often below zero.
Among these was Levenshulme's Tina Farrel, a 23-year-old who admitted "she had left school without a maths GCSE". She explained: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.
I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8, but I'm not having it.
I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression - the card doesn't say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled."
Oh dear Lord.
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Monday night is Guy Fawkes Night here in the UK and that means that up and down the country there will be literally zillions of bonfires being lit and fireworks set off. That's all well and good, but it occurs to be that no-one ever seems to complain about the environmental side of the event. I wonder how many eco-warriors attend bonfires and the such like this weekend…
With high pressure currently sitting over the UK, the weather is calm and dry. At this time of year that often means fog forming and the major weather forecasters have all made a point of noting in today's forecasts that the vast amount of particulate crap given off by all the bonfires, when combined with the prevailing weather, means that the morning fog over the next couple of days will be much more dense than it would otherwise be. The static air means that air quality will also be worse than it would otherwise be.
The totally uncontrolled, low temperature combustion of all manner of crap that goes on bonfires mean that, amongst other things, significant amounts of dioxins are released. Whenever municipal waste incinerators are planned, all the locals are up in arms over the potential emissions of these evil dioxins, despite the environmental regulations being so tight that effectively no dioxins are released from it. Joe Public will expose themselves to a far higher dose of dioxins on Bonfire Night, yet no-one ever suggests bonfires should be banned, do they…?
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