April 2006

Does anyone have any experioence with Nildram as an ISP?

I am still with AOL who I went with after moving house and having to cancel my BT Internet account. Instead of just moving the service from one house to another, they insist that you cancel your account and then re-apply at the new house! Even though the previous owner of my new property was also with BT Internet!

Also, at the time, AOL were (pretty much) the only provider with no download limits, which BT were just bringing into force. My "downloading" action is no way near as bad as it used to be though. Nildram offer up-to 8mb broadband with a 50gb per month download limit. I think it should be enough for what I need I suppose.

Although, my mate has a ratio on torrent site where his upload is over 1 Terrabyte! His download amount is something pretty scary too! Might see what ISP he is with. Can't remember off hand although I set it up for him.

So. Any experience with Nildram , let me know. Or can you recommend a good ISP that won't release the dogs on me if I decide to download more that 1mb a month?

Technorati Tags: AOL, internet, ISP, nildram, broadband, BT, BT Internet
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It was another of the annual horse killing events yesterday, otherwise known as the Grand National. We did a family sweepstake and all put a pound in and got 4 horse each, drawn at random from a hat.

We also all put in real bets at the local betting office. Just a few pounds here and there.

Luckily, after my horse Numbersixvalverde won, I netted the ?20 family sweepstake and my wife won ?24 from her ?2 bet at 11/1 odds.

Sweet.

Now, what shall I spend my ?20 on? Any ideas?

Technorati Tags: grand national, horse racing, horses, numbersixvalverde, betting

EDIT: Just went and got FIFA06 for my 360 from the Birmingham branch of CEX. Only ?28 second hand!

When I was in New York, I purchased a XtremeMac Airplay FM transmitter for my iPod and have been using it in my car to and from work each day.

The thing is tiny and the quality is pretty good - although I have doubts as to wether the signal is in stereoscopic sound or not. When I shuffle to some Beatles tracks, that should tell me. There is also some background hum and hiss from interferance which gets worse when its raining. The signal is better when plugged into my nipple. Well… what I mean is - when it's in my shirt pocket and my metal endo-skeleton is acting as a signal conductor. It also makes me look quite "star trek" when changing tracks - but makes me look all "cheap porn nipple caressing" when increasing the volume!

Generally the product is very good and I am impressed with it. I was even more suprised to find that ipod ubersite, iLounge gave it an A marking and said that it was even better that the iTrip, which was the device I had been planning to get. I decided to get the Airplay as I was also purchasing an XBox360 Play-n-charge kit from the same shop and it seemed to be the best option at the time.

The Airplay's frequency can be manually changed in .2 increments between 88 and 109FM so you can quite easily override everyone who is listening to Radio1 on the way to work with some techno from the likes of the Plump DJs. I was even able to broadcast "Dare" by Gorillaz from downstairs in my home, over the top of my sons radio whilst he was listening to Classic FM (100.3FM) at bedtime. Having Shaun Ryder in your dreams is not good for a six year old's mind.

My advice: get it!
Oh.. hold on.. it's illegal in the UK. Sorry Officer…

And yes, DriverChris, you can have that "POS" Belkin back next time I see you.

Technorati Tags: ipod, airplay, fm, apple, nipple, star trek

Just stumbled upon this site after I was assisting a customer with their word document that had inherited "selective" spellchecking on some parts of the file - but not others.

The site contains a series of "5 minute productivity tips". I expected it to be full of "teamworking, networking and corporate bitch making" skills but I found the Searching with Firefox Keywords tip and was plesantly suprised!

I thought I used most of the nice Firefox stuff like Live Bookmarks and the "Open In Tabs" stuff - but this is cool.

When searching at a site (such as Google) you can right-click the box you put the search text into and then click "Add a keyword for this search". You will then be prompted to put in a bookmark for the page and a keyword too. Put in the keyword "g" for Google for example.

Once it has been saved, you can then type "g taoski" into the Firefox address bar and it will immediately search Google for Taoski.

You can also add keywords to any bookmark you have stored so you could just type g and press Enter to take you direct to Google too!

So now, I can quickly search through that HomeMadePornTorrents site I have access to.

Technorati Tags: firefox, bookmark, google, taoski, word, spellcheck, tabs

Now this is pretty serious stuff.

Everyone knows (well - you should by now) that Apple recently made the switch to Intel chips in their hardware. There have been plenty of people out there that have searched for and managed to get Windows XP running on the "MacTel" boxes - although quite a bit of messing was needed to get it working.

Today, Apple have released the beta of Boot Camp which allows you to install XP for it to co-exist with your OS-X installation!

Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.⁽¹⁾ Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

W00t! This is going to cause quite a few ripples in the computing world!
I don't expect it would take too long for someone to get a mac just to run XP (or Vista) but then switch to OS-X because "it works!". Smart move Mr Jobs. I salute you!

There's probably not much that I could do on XP that I could'nt do on OS-X too.
Awww.. I wanna new PC.

Why is it, that I work on an iT Helpline - but get jobs passed to me to fix that are raised by other members of the iT Helpline regarding silly issues with their PCs?

I'm sure that if I qualified as a car mechanic I would take my car to the local repair shop each time it needed a bulb changing or petrol putting in.

I dispair…..

The Grass armchair is self assembled, each pack contains 14 corrugated cardboard frames and 100g pack of grass seeds. You will need about 240 litres of soil, to fill in the frame. First find the right spot, because once the armchair has grown you won't be able to move it!! You can put up to 20cm of gravel with in the frame then the soil. Spread the seeds evenly using only 4/5 of the bag of seeds. Press them in and water slightly so that the soil is humid. Water the armchair everyday. If it rains cover the armchair until grass has grown, to avoid the chair becoming waterlogged. After 10 days the grass starts to grow. If the grass has not grown evenly use the rest of the seeds to even it out. Once the grass has reached 10cm, cut it to 3cm, and keep it to this height. Now you can sit back and relax!

Purves and Purves

Just saw this mentioned over at Gizmodo and thought it was cool!

And how much for some bits of oddly shaped cardboard and a packet of grass seeds? ?65 - thats how much. I'm off to the skip at the back of the local supermarket to get mine started.

Phew! Had a real busy day here at work today.

I cycled to work again through the icy cold wind this morning and even managed to make it out at lunchtime for a quick ride too.

Well… a ride up to Subway for a foot-long Veggie Max sub! W00t!

I have noticed after just two days of cycling, that when I get to work, although I feel all sweaty and my lungs are insanely burning in a sea of my own mucus, I feel so much more awake and ready to do stuff!

It's cool.

The wife's out at her Salsa class tonight, so I get to spend a little more quality time with my Xbox, PC and 360 - before I sell them all!! HA ha ha ha…. (evil laugh).

Swimpig promises to make an appearance too at some point. Maybe he wants his arab strap back?

I am quite close to making somewhat of a decision.

Now that I have been paid and the overdraft is slightly smaller after maxing it in New York, it's time to think about subscribing for a years worth of XBOX Live and getting a new game for my 360.

However - what game to get is one question… But - "do I want to" is the most important one!

Now don't get me wrong. I love my 360 (like a bruvver! burp) but hardly ever play on it. At present my "gaming time" is spent either fitting in a quick game of Fifa 2006 on my old Xbox after the wife has gone to bed or snatching a few games of the same title on my Gameboy Advance SP (while I crap). The 360 sits redundant beneath my TV.

The most I have used it for recently is to stream our New York photos to from my Media Centre PC.

• Maybe it was a rash decision to buy it?
• Maybe I should have got a PSP like I was thinking?
• Maybe I'm just having a "downer" on it at the moment?

Who knows. I certainly don't. But a PSP from eBay with a few games and a memory stick would not set me back too much. And I'm sure someone would have my 360 off me to counter act the spend.

Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox 360, sony, sony psp, psp, fifa, fifa 2006, gba, gameboy, new york