Archive for the ‘computing’ Category

Internet Explorer 6.x Users!

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Sorry IE 6.0 users, well sorry to the 16% of visitors, that still have IE 6.0 installed!, the formatting has been wrong for ages, I’ve just found the fault and fixed it, I’ve also removed Energy Saving readings for the moment, because my Wattson has been removed from the computer, because I think the permament connection to the computer, has been what causing to to crash and hang!

I don’t have IE 6.0 any more on any production computers, I only have IE 6.0 in Virtual Machines! I’ve switched to Firefox, Safari and Chrome long ago…

Smoking Ring

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

as we used to call it back in the day, also known as Token Ring. I was cleaning out some cupboards and found an old computer laptop circa 1996-1998, and found this in the PCMCIA slot, Token ring LAN speeds were either 4 Mbit/s or 16 Mbit/s, and it was very important not to connect the wrong device at the wrong speed to the ring, or you knew about it, as you brought the ring down, and all devices on it! I learnt that rule very quickly! Far better than ethernet in the day!

Token Ring PCMCIA adaptorq

Token Ring PCMCIA adaptor

This post is dedicated to all those, at CSC/BASE, you know who you are!

Someone fiddling with my Broadband!

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

My sync speed has fallen to 19,200 this is ridiculous, so I thought I would just get another Draytek Vigor 2600G router out of the box to test, the router has not failed. I have three routers as backups, all the same with the same basic config and firmware on each, I just backup the config off the current active router and transfer to the new unit after power-up. Seems a little overkill, but with three routers exactly the same, it’s easier and quicker to configure, it times of need, and this is one of them.

After connecting up the new router, the sync speed jumped up to 3,136,000, this is the highest I’ve ever seen it, with a SNR Margin or 4.5. So I thought maybe the router I was using was duff, until I connected up the old, current unit and it reported the same!

sync speed as reported by Draytek Vigor 2600G

sync speed as reported by Draytek Vigor 2600G

I think someone is fiddling with my broadband connection as I type. I’m happy to say that my speed has returned to about normal at 1.6Mbps, but I’ve just run another speedtest, and it’s up at 2 Mbps, I’ve not seen 2 Mbps for many years.

2 Mbps results

2 Mbps results

speed tests over the years

speed tests over the years

Yes, I know this may appear sad, but all you City folk that live with Cable and 24Mbps, just take highspeed internet for granted, us rural folk have to put up with slow speeds. This speed increase will not last long, I have a theory, it would appear, that when we get these sunny warm spells in the village, my speed slows down, I bet it’s cold and clear outside at present!

But at least I’ll be able to work tomorrow…

unless it breaks again overnight …

Broadband gone south for the winter!

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

my broadband’s gone south for the winter and I’m getting 271.55 Kbps ( 0.3 Mbps )

Low threshold breached says Eclipse, whatever that means.

Broadband Speed Test

Broadband Speed Test

Belkin you’re Brilliant!

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Well there’s praise, I explain more tomorrow, I’m off to slump in front of the TV & TiVo to watch CSI: Miami! (I’ve also been fighting with a filter leak in the fish house for the last 3 hours!).

and my landline telephone has stopped working but I still have broadband, so the wires are still connected to the telephone exchange. Strange!

The Amazing FishCam

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
The Amazing FishCam

The Amazing FishCam

This isn’t my webcam, I wish. If you’ve not seen this at http://www.fishcam.com/ pop by and have a look. Way back in 1994 a camera was trained upon a lonely fishtank within the as yet unknown company Netscape. The Fishcam transmited live images of the fishtank to the emerging new landscape known as the World Wide Web. The Fishcam was the second live camera on the web and is the oldest camera site still in existence.

I remember in those early days using Netscape Navigator because it had a server push feature that didn’t exist in Internet Explorer. It also had an easter egg, that when you hit CTRL-ALT-F, it displayed The Amazing FishCam.

Maybe it’s time to re-install the webcams back in the fish house!

Have you tried Quake Live yet?

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

quakeliveHave you tried Quake Live yet!

  • A 100% free-to-play arena shooter created and supported by id Software, creators of Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake
  • Beginner to Pro – Easily play against others at YOUR skill level.
  • Over 40 arenas and 5 game modules fior endless competition.
  • Practice and compete privately against automated bot players.
  • Easy to join.
  • Play in minutes in your Internet browser.

Google Biz Kit

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

I’ve just had some emails from a fellow internet user I know, that are in my address book, telling me of a get rich quick scheme.

It’s called the Google Biz Kit, do not part with your money. it’s a scam!

The website may look good, but believe, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is! Also known by many other names, Google Easy Profit scheme etc

Please don’t send me anymore emails!

ITS A SCAM!

Tagging mp3s

Monday, July 6th, 2009

squeezeplayI’ve been a little pre-occupied with things, and needed to return to tagging my music cd and mp3 collection, which is a mamouth task, converting all the tags to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 and downloading all the album art, amongst other things going on in andysworld!

But these are the tools I use for free, Mp3tag v2.43 (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) to tag the music collection correctly and it also downloads album art, and also Album Art Aggreagator v.1.4.6, batch album art downloader. The URL is broken for this, so use Google. I also use iTunes integration for playlist creation, but I’ve recently stopped using this, because my collection has grown, and it takes a while for iTunes to startup and shutdown.

Here are the current Library Statistics

Total Tracks: 10,991

Total Albums: 1,173

Total Artists: 1,316

Total Genres: 107

Total Playing Time: 789:36:50

and I’m only about a third through!

Blog outage again!

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

If you’ve not reached my blog today, received a Hello World, forbidden or otherwise, it’s because since 9.30GMT, the hosting server has been under a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack).

Just my luck…