Well, why not?

FUCK OFF VALVE

2011-12-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

So, I won't be fucking playing Saints Row now..

$(&*"£% got it bought for me as &(*"£$ present and it wants me to "£!&*! download 9gb FUCKOFF VALVE. If you can't fucking get a game RIGHT on fucking RELEASE so it can be FUCKING installed without downloading 9gb FUCK THE HELL OFF.

Anti-piracy.. cool, fine.. Microsoft Activation, don't like it but hey its ok its only a couple of KB connection and its finished.. FUCKING 9GB FUCKING DOWNLOAD. FUCK THE HELL OFF.

Me.!

Steam prime target for Virus Creators

2011-12-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

There are a few basic things a virus must do to be successfull:

Replicate and
Remain Hidden,

These are two of the most important. Industry seeks to prevent these things happening. However, some vendors make a virus's life much much easier (Steam/Value j'accuse).

One method for limiting viral harm is limiting exposure. This can, in most instances, be done simply by only allowing connections to known secure IP addresses. This means that any virus incomming has also circumvented the security of a secure peer.

Sadly, this is made impossible by some product designs. Steam being the worst case. Internet load balancing should not be happening at the user client (in Steam client this is the case). Regional internet servers should be setup and DNS resolution should load balance within a small range of IP addresses for each area / network region. So, for example, Steam requested in Chicago should not be contacting an address in China (as an example found happening using Windows Update) for an update. It should be load balanced between up to 10 servers within a sensible range.

Steam just appears to try to load balance between 100's of servers. It could be possible they may have 100's of servers within my region, I am however exceedingly dubious of this (I don't think so).

Anyway, the point is, because steam connects to a massive range of IP addresses it is not easily possible to secure against viral attack, since either one must learn every single IP used by steam or just give up and allow Steam total free communications (inviting it as a great launch platform for any form of viral infection. Infect the process with the most permissions and or the most freedom).

The second evil of steam is it cannot run in a non elevated state.

I actually find myself HOPING someone targets Steam because they are behaving like Tyrants.

Oh, and yes.. Windows Update is nearly as bad (but at least I could conceivably mangage Windows Updates Manually).

Modern Gaming Industry standard business practices styfles economy

2011-12-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

It occured to me today that the way modern gaming products launch (in legal terms) is completely designed so that they might reap any revenue which comes from the game. This, at first glance, makes complete sense. They put in the effort, they should be receiving the appropriate reward.

Then, I thought on this. The manor in which they seek to "protect there investment" almost excludes any other business (unless that business is going to be paying them a healthy fee and secondly divulge entirely their enterprise up front in case they where having to be already going to do that).

So, in short, its quickly not viable for others to produce related items for profit.

I only really noticed this on realising how MineCraft has had the opposite effect with its approach. The relative openness of the developer and his company has lead to many, many spin-off "developments" which may or may not earn each person a seperate profit.

Basicly, to my mind here, the lesson is simple. Less restrictive practices and looser licencing lead to economic boom.

A random cartoon...

2011-11-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

More Microsoft Tricks! (makes me want to hug open source.. poor as it makes me)

2011-11-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

So, Microsoft want us to upgrade our internet browser. From what I can figure out their *strategy* to get us to upgrade goes as follows:

End Support
Try to force the upgrade upon us via Windows Update (if possible)
Update all their webpages so they use a feature of the new browser, which just happens (*cough bullshit*) to break compatibility with their oldest brower still compatible.
Provided other "security updates" to 'related' parts of the operating system which *cough* again just happen to slowly break their oldest browser in increasingly annoying and agravating ways (example with IE 7, alignments suddenly different for same pages.. Suddenly the arrow keys no longer work for scrolling pages etc, previously smooth scrolling replaced by jagged glitchy scrolling).
If any user notices these facets, they will say "Please update your browser to resolve this issue, thank you".
Make the browser completely (artificially) incompatable with their next operating systems.

So, there you go.. if anyone reading this knows a Microsoft Executive who is be behind (or in support of) these "ideas" please, please, please do something just a little nasty to them (hide their car keys, erase their address books, factory reset their phone).

Let me know you have in comments and make my day ;).

Cancel is NOT Undo! Damnit!

2011-11-03T13:46:00.000-07:00

Reciently I've had a few problems with my PC which necessitated some reinstallation. So I needed to reinstall a few programs. I had the files already inplace and just needed to restore the registry settings. So I run the install, and ooh nice it put the settings back =) hurray. I don't need to put in the other 4 CD's to complete the install, i'll just cancel the install here and all will be good.

So, I hit cancel.. .the "£(*$ application starts REMOVING all the files. OMG! Cancel, Cancel!!!! NOT UNDO. >.<

Life, don't talk to me about Life

2011-10-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

That of course was a quote made my "Mavin the paranoid Android" from the The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG).

Still, right now I'm so tired of the pointless fight. People aren't valued, effort is only valued for the rewards it brings to the person the effort is made for. Good ideas go unrealised because people need to keep paying for bad ideas because once someone thought it was a clever idea to ensure that a "popular" or "clever" idea remained profitable and somehow unextractably entangled it to some life essencial so we became forced to continue to pay for the bad idea.

Life (by which I mean human effected / created life) seems full of examples of this (indeed these things thrive on this):

American Laws..

Seemingly if any "bill" is put forward for consideration and is seen to be a potentially "popular" proposition, everyone tries to find a way to Tac on their unpopular little proposal in the hope that people want the good enough to pay for the crap that comes with it (whilst making the crap they add seem plausably connected).

Loans (Banks),

Sure, you can have that money.. just give it us back (*small print* with 10% extra repayment per day you don't).

Most Business

Hey, buy this.. its great and just LOOK how cheap it is (*small print* accessories not included, battery must be replaced weekly, must use OUR model of battery/ink/credits/web-site).

Hell, maybe this is the whole of life. Though, looking at nature, it tends to come with more rewards than traps.

The funny thing is, life is full of examples of how people really value other people. Its just disconnected, it only goes so far and then starts going in reverse (that is, for example.. I value you, you value you friend, your friend values their friend.. good. Though, your friends, friend hates you. You hate your friends, friend, friend. So on). Everyone generally has good reasons for why the like or don't like another person (value or not. If we define here good as making sense to them and their definition of good).

Trying to think about all this just hurts the brain. So, everyone, value everyone.. if you can't see their value, value that they give everyone else a greater sense of value by showing exactly how valuable they are by comparison.. thusly, appriciate them.

As for the people providing definite negative value, the ones killing, bombing, opressing, claiming their way or the highway ect. ect. Well, we can't appriciate them, but we can pity them and remember how their example shows just how bad people are when they don't value or appriciate even one.

People, please stop funding web-crime!

2011-09-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Someone, they are nameless, are paying unscrupulous companies to advertise their products. They may not even know these companies are unscrupulous.

Here is the short tip version:

DO NOT PAY ANYONE FOR HITS!

Hits on your website do not equate to customers or even often remotely interested parties. There seems to be an entire industry built around taking money from people who equate hits on their site to customer awareness or product sales.

Let me explain paitiently.

There is a massive number of ways in which a person may attract "hits" to their website. Howeve, the only quality hit is the hit from a person who has arrived at your site in search of a service or product you are offering. This type of hit is very hard to get because of the MILLIONS of companies out there being PAID by third parties to get ANY kinds of hits to their customers sites (customers who may infact by dying for your services are being redirected to a million sites with people offering them nothing they want). Unscrupulous advertisers are very successfull in this ends. These sites get millions on millions of people directed to them because they are conned, fooled, tricked and otherwise mislead into arriving at these sites. The action of a person thus, conned, fooled, tricked is (in 99% of cases I susspect) to immidiately leave the site and try to find what they ACTUALLY where looking for.

Now, some people paying for web-advertising are slightly better informed, they realise that 'How long a person views your page is an indication of interest' and ask for only these hits to be counted (since this is a measure which can be taken). However, again, unscrupulous companies have this covered! They simply trick the web-public into clicking their advert but avoid the user actually realising they are viewing the advert to it appears they viewed it for a long time (because they either didn't notice it was there or the window appeared under other windows). The customer may be shown a quite "compelling" legitimate" advertisement for their product to add to the fraud.

So, therefore, the length of time each "clicker" spent viewing your page becomes a nonsense as well.

So, stop paying for clicks!

Pay for results! Google has a reasonably solid system to ensure you get quality clicks. However, watch out, because a number of third party companies re-selling Google services can easily warp this system by "trickyly" created pages.

I recommend that whenever you enter into a contract with a company for web advertising, that you contractually only pay them based on the sales comming directly through their advertising program, proven ideally by individual customer acknowledgement or sufficiently by unique ID references placed in the advertising campaign.

If you do go with a clicks only advertiser, should you be lucky enough to get sales from the campaign, you are still hurting your company image over because as millions of misdirected people may see your company as "unscrupulous" as well (since the trick lead them to your company name).

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PEOPLE STOP PAYING FOR CLICKS.. PAY FOR RESULTS.

As my final note, its interesting that this kind of "commerical activity" is entirely LEGAL. I also feel the law should be updated to make "misleading" online an offence against the law.

Argg, Game Designers!

2011-09-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

So I officialy luv MineCraft (and this is just a little frustration outlet, so on the off chance Notch comes accross this post, really luv your work to date). Though I officially loath realism in games! Its a game damn it, if I wanted real life I'd go out and fix my crippled social life (crippled by lack of realism in games making them so compelling hehe ;).

The latest update to MineCraft is overshadowed by the damn annoying hunger system. Its something close to what Diablo was like when you had to buy you arrows (tiring and a reason not to play) (ED: Though in general Notch seems to agree with this POV based on his webpage "If something ever doesn't feel fun, I'll remove it").

Fine, people want more point to the game. Well, find a point thats FUN not tedious. I mean who enjoys actually having to find food? Eating, sure, cooking sure, but actually FINDING.

I can't state emphatically enough, hunger in MineCraft is just annoying. If you want to motivate me not to spend so much time underground, put something on the surface I want to come up for.. like wood.. oh you already have that! well leave us damn alone >.<

Yours,
Disgruntled MineCrafter.

ps. MineCraft is still 99% awesome. Only one major bitch, its a miracle!

Software Vendors giving me Terrets

2011-08-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

ED: Please note. I am not normally a person who swears or respects swearing but sometimes, with enough annoyances, I guess we all need to sometimes. This IS one of those time and appologies to anyone reading (please don't read if swearing offends).

>.<

F**KING BL**DY G*D DANM F**CKING WAN*ERS!!!!

I am SO fucking sick of software vendors. I've wasted the majority of the day today trying to fucking get control of my own goddamn PC.

First, I can't associate the application I want, placed in the location I desire, with the file type that it uses (since they have gone mad for AppID's and so forth requiring application to be installed and registered with the system). This should have been a fucking trivial task and indeed if I revert back to Window XP it bloody is trivial (how I miss when Microsoft where there to serve the customer [or at least pretended]) .

Why the fucking hell is RPC being used for local traffic application (so I know why, but still in principal)! Lazyness seems to be the simple god-damn answer. They know that there will be senarios where a person will need to do some task or other over RPC so they just write it always to use RPC. Which would be absolutely FINE if local RPC used function calls. NO local RPC has to use local TCP traffic (again, LAZY, no specialisation for a case).

G19 YouTube player rendered worthless by Google Ad's

2011-08-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

Installed the latest G19 software for my keyboard. Looks slick, pleasantly surprised about the UI improvements.

However, the single most usefull feature of the G19 keyboard (the G19 YouTube player) has been rendered worthless because, 3 seconds into whatever clip you choose to watch Adverts appear taking up 1/4 of the entire (already small) display and worse, you have no way of "clicking" to close the Ads.

The result? the in keyboard YouTube player is worthless.

YouTube in player Adverts (Ad's) - Say NO!

2011-08-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

So i'm sick of YouTube. The in player Ad's is the last straw!

Don't get me wrong, I don't object to Ad's, but I do object to Ad's interrupting and f**king obscuring my vision. Since we still have choice, lets choose to move somewhere where their decient:

Check out this long list of similar style sites:

http://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/

Microsofts mission these days is to prevent choice!

2011-08-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

So, i'm trying to do something simple. I have installed my choice of Media Player application where I want it put (in the Documents folder) and so I make use of the nice feature Microsoft added a while back "Open With..." to make it my default media player for AVI files.

Short version it. Doesn't work.

Never mind, its easy enough to make a file association, always has been. Quick tweek of the registry.

Yep, there we go.. shows up and its all good.

Still doesn't f**ing work.

What happens is, it always, regardless of whats set, runs Windows Media Player!

Now I could f**ing go and unregister the DDE conversations and any other way it might be completing the association (explorer extensions.. whatever) but the simple fact is it shouldn't be so f**king hard in the first place. No value has been added and its eliminated choice. Congratulations again Microsoft on maintaining your monopoly through screwing your customers! well f**ing done :P.

Fucking GOD DAMN Microsoft!!! >.<

2011-08-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Short version:

Performed full system backup using Windows Vista Ultimate. After backup to external drive containing other important similar backups, external drive now has 3 time more free space before backup began!

Microsoft Backup has DELETED all my OTHER system backups >.&lt.. To quote a Kiwi "Fucking A!"

Lost in Life

2011-08-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

I have the skills to work anywhere. The practicality though is that life and work tends to tie a person to a place or area and usually the place or area in which they live. Thing is, as of this time, I am still residing with my family so I don't have a place. I have a local. I don't need to always be near my family.

I need something, someone to give me a reason to be somewhere. The person I would choose to define that is Alex and I would be happy wherever I was with her. Problem is, I can't be anywhere with her without her support and encouragement to be there with her as more than just her friend. Such encouragement is not forthcomming and infact negitive reinforcement is present (it lost me my last job because I paniced in the second stage interview because all I could think about was what she said before the interview "I don't think its a good idea for you to get the job".. "You can hope you get it, I will hope you don't"... "I want you to be out of my place by Tuesday").

So, I don't have any reason to be anywhere. I have lots of minor "whims" of places to be. I have friends in New Zealand, California, Lancashire and I have Alex, the one person in this world who gives me a sense the world is truely worth living for on the South Coast.

There isn't any pressing reason to be nearer any of my friends, excepting Alex and she is the love of my life (sometimes I so feel like the love of hers, usually when arriving at that point soon after I remember all the things she has said, especially "you are the one person I would never go out with" and "I will Marry someone else, I will have kids with someone else"). So why am I still utterly and uncontrollably in love. I have no doubt in that love, I know its right and I know its complete. Sometimes I don't doubt she loves me as much, though everything she says goes against this sense and I don't have complete and utter conviction she loves me completely (though I am she does love me, I am just not sure she loves me with her whole heart as I love her.. and what she says suggests very strongly, possibly unequivibly she doesn't love me. Yet sometimes how she acts suggests contrary to what she says. Lies are HELL, they make a person doubt the truth).

Where do I go now? I know wherever it is, its not here. I don't belong here any longer, I don't fit. I sort of fit in NZ but how much.

I am tired of being perfectly suited for jobs and being turned down based on dumb pre-conceptions. I've heard "spotty employment history" quoted a few times and reciently "over confident" was sited. Over ****** confident! Course I am, I have 15 years of experience and I can work to develop anything on Microsoft platforms. I just need a job I can believe in and when one comes along they seem to have trouble believing in me.

Story of my life, beside family, only one person has ever put their complete faith in me and they still believe. Its just a shame we don't work together.

I need a reason to be somewhere, I need something to believe in that can't/won't let me down.... I know, I know... I am hearing it too... I, I, I, I .. Me, Me, Me, Me.... The sad thing is though, what "Me" wants is someone to believe in who will believe in me, someone who believes in the me I know. Alex sees the real me, though she chooses to not believe (or not to love me as her life partner).

AGGGGG! life.

I don't even know what I want anymore. Alex is all I want/need except that she refuses, is unable, cannot accept me and choose me as hers. How can I want another Alex? shes irriplaceable, shes everything. What can I want / need now?

Update on Life

2011-08-13T03:25:00.000-07:00

I am looking now at all the evidence which is piling on about the girl who is still for me the love of my life and I am seeing that whilst there may have been a way we could have been together (could I go back and fix lots of little stupid mistakes) the chances of us being a couple where so remote, so tenious that it wouldn't have happened in 999,999 out of a million outcomes.

Knowing this doesn't really help me, she is still the love of my life.

Is the lesson here to be carefull who you let yourself love? To not love too early?

I am not sure. Had I tried not to love her, it might have changed things for the better, though equally it might have left me filled with regret at not trying hard enough as someone else stepped into place.

Its strange, but a pattern keeps repeating with us. We get closer, she pushes me away, I try to stay confident and we reach a "level" where she doesn't want others but isn't choosing me. She communicates us just being friends. She will meet someone who she will be more keen about. She will, for a while, be good and favour me over all others. She will even not want to see this other interest in her life and spend her time with me. She will want me along with her, but then the "interest" will want to push for "them" time. She can't be said to be leading me on, at least not verbally as her position is clear. Though emotionally, she really doesn't know her position.

It should be over, I should be moving on... I can't.

I need to be saved from myself I think.

And the "Damn Stupid Design" Award goes to....

2011-06-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

My friend owns a laptop which now has a broken screen. Laptop is fine otherwise.

Now, this shouldn't be a problem, just plug in an external monitor and boot the PC but either ATI or Microsoft have implemented a stupid **** display driver which keeps automaticly switching to ONLY the BROKEN internal screen. Even if you boot the system with the lid closed, which would toggle OFF the screen as a device option it still makes the internal screen the ONLY screen.

Its stuff like this which wastes hours of otherwise productive time (oh or boosts the economy by forcing consumers to replace equipment).

FaceBook still letting us down

2011-06-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

I connected to some random site today and was annoyed and alarmed to see my basic FaceBook details (photo and name) appearing on the site. I had no prior connection to the site and didn't wish one.

In the past, it has been reasonably simple to prevent this type of thing, but because its a way for bussiness to make money Microsoft and other have been making it "Harder and Harder" to keep yourself "private" (or, as they will sell it, easier and easier to share).

I never wanted to really be a part of FaceBook but I have friends that did and I am there friend and joined for there sakes. I think I should leave for mine.

Tired of shit search results

2011-05-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

I am so sick of wadeing through piles, and piles of shit to find what I am looking for. Google, have been quite good for not having too much "shit" but these days, everyone seems to have jumped on the Google waggon and succeeded in bogging it down with crap (though to be fair, the results are still superior). I feel sorry for Google really, they have some very good results generally, but they are searching "everything" and it seems sometimes theres more crap than good out there.

Its reached a crux point where I'm getting so sick of repeaters, advertisers, buzz-worders, re-posters, spammers and all the other web-based scum that is currently from the POV of search results pervading the internet (I don't resent mis-information even as long as genuinely delivered... its deliberate misinformation to support advertising that hacks me off).

Heres my list of "Waste of time Web Pages" for everyone else to add to their firewall block list (using httx so I am not linking to these **** and upping their hit count):

Site(s): httx://www.thebigresource.com/, httx://excel.bigresource.com/
Reason: Content Repeater (zero added value, lots of added ad's). Worse still they don't even repeat all the damn content, just the first post! >.<

Site: httx://www.eggheadcafe.com/
Reason: This website, whilst providing some usefull links, often justs forwards and repeats content from other sites. Better than most sites, this site does not provide enough value to be worth your attention (e.g. one is better looking for the source of its information).

Site: httx://www.canbal.com/
Reason: Content repeater.

If I could get enough people willing to sponser me, people who are simply looking for a search engine with ethics and veted content we could all bring our heads together and build a search engine whos content is 100% vetted and free of all the types of web-shit which makes searching painful (or maybe someone can post me a link to an existing one which is free from crap).

I can see all the things which makes this proposition tricky. It could never be an "exaustive" search engine with billions of pages indexed. It might be a "quality" search engine with 100's of thousands of "reputable" and "vetted" pages which provide "information" and "what it says in the tin" advertising (if any).

I'm a dreamer with this, and I know it.. the likely outcome is that shit=money. Whilst people are willing to pay to have their crap crammed down the throat of the consumer in any way (and whilst its possible to make money from this) I can't see it going away.

Give the internet back to Achedimia I say... they might sometimes be a bit stiff, but they deliver!

Personal Lessons

2011-05-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Reciently I've been having lots of signal issues with the o2 network which used to be fine here. After a few days with no improvement, I rang up to complain and was told there was a fault and it was down to be repaired.. good news I though, though frustrating still (there was a 72 hour turn around to repair, that sounded promising).

Waited a few days (well over 72 hours) and still having problems (though prehaps they were less exreeme? very subjective). The basic issue is that the signal kept dropping out, going from full strength to no strength to full strength (even though I wasn't even moving).

So, I try calling back, but line quality too bad. So I just decide to email. I get a reply back which was pretty useless as it more or less said "maybe its your phone" a definitive "the network is fine in your area, we suggest a phone replacement" would have been better.

Anyway, this isn't really why I am blogging today.

I was talking to the love of my life (and for those following my blog you will know who this is) and the phone starts cutting in and out again. She had said she was going to have some food soon before and I thought to myself (though didn't think much) I should suggest we go since the signal is awful and your about to eat. The way it came out was "I should go and let you eat since the signals bad". I regretted it the moment I said it, it seems simple enough but heres what the problem is:

It gives the impression that I wanted to end the conversation (wrong impression)

It furthur gives the impression that I am giving up on talking to her because of an inconvinence. That I am "giving up easily" therefore, that I might not care all that much (very wrong impression)

It did not consider her feelings in the matter of going or staying. It in fact did not consider anyone. It was inconsiderate.

If I had thought for longer, I would have realised that I really didn't want to go. To suggest going was supid and against what I infact wanted. To admit that "I should go, given the problems but would stay and only go if it cut out" was infact what I wanted and what was right.

So, as soon as I said this, she didn't sound very impressed (tone of voice). I don't blame her, she had gone to the effort to call me on a known bad line :(.

I was basicly a fool about it. I tried texted first then tried calling back but, obviously, why would she answer? Things will be ok, I know, we've been best freinds for long enough. I just need to store this up in my mind, keep it in my memory and not let myself do something this stupid again! :( Since right now I am sitting here missing her and wondering if she is now talking to someone else who won't go just because theres some line issues (and in the end alot of this is about me worrying about being perfect, because she is so perfect to me). I know she doesn't work like that really, but I think every girl (everyone?) does on some subconsious level.

Anyway, hopefully lesson learned. I'll just have to miss her until we can speak again :(. Also hope that she will want to "bother" to speak to me after it appeared I didn't bother to speak with her when it was a bad line (this is me being hard on myself now... I just miss her :()

Facebook getting out of hand

2011-05-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Now I'm normally not really bothered with FaceBook. I have some friends on there and it just works. Lately though I am so sick and tired of the crap they are pulling.

This post is for all the people out there who are really hating the way facebook is going. I would have done a nice bulleted list of points in complaint on FaceBook itself.. but *sarcasm* Oh wait!

"I can't now make any formatting using line returns with my replys to messages on Facebook!".

*ed. Thought this was systemic but just seems to be with replies. I can see possibly why (for text replies) but FFS only limit me if I choose a text reply.

This is the kind of "crap" FaceBook have been pulling lately changing what was good about FaceBook into whats good for FaceBook.

Well WE (the users) are good for FaceBook, so lets Campaign to have them stop f**king around with stuff that works and also to stop trying to suppress firstly our freedom of expression, secondly our choice for privacy, thirdly who and how we interact with and finally not abusing whatever we post in whatever whim way it takes them.

So, what am I talking about? (for anyone whos not really been using FaceBook or is new to it).

Well, here is a list of things FaceBook has done reciently:

Made all profiles Public by Default without overly alerting the FaceBook users that this is the case (so you suddenly find yourself appearing on search engines with a whole list of your friends for the spammers to consume and enjoy).

Disabling ability to post line-returns in messages replies (and posts in general, though not universally it seems).

Preventing the creation of Groups without others of your friends as members.

Automatically culling your friends so you only see news from friends you interact with on a regular basis (again choosing for you who are your friends).

Makeing dumb and sometimes offensive suggestions as to who your friends are

Assuming if your status is single you want to see 50 adverts for Dating ever time you logon (though to be fair they've always done this, but since I'm complaining lol).

Changing the privacy agreement on an ongoing incremental basis to increase how much they can do with your own stuff (fortunately someone spotted the liberty taking option on your uploaded photographs and it got changed).

If anyone else finds this and agrees (or even disgrees) please post me some comments! =)

Business thinking is killing society! Here is why

2011-04-13T04:13:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs to be able to earn money to live.
The minority of people have plenty of money.

The minority wish to keep their money so either seek to avoid spending the money or seek to have the money return to them either faster than they spend or at roughly the same level.

The majority do not have plenty of money

The majority need money to live on a day to day basis and work to earn money to live, the money they earn to live they spend on things they require (food, accommodation, friends and family). Since it is the Minority with the money, they ensure that for every bit of money the majority "earn" the majority spend it with them or another minority.

Everyone in theory wishes for better (more than they have). Therefore everyone tends, to some extent to behave in a similar fashion, which is:

For as little as possible effort, retain as large as possible reward.

This is largely only logical and not in fact always motivated by wanting more reward than is fair or warranted(and besides, the minority people don't like the concept of fair because it limits their ability to exploit their position which is often hard earned or fought for so in some ways who can blame them).

So what actually comes about is everyone becomes a "player" in this ridiculous game. This is all fine as long as we have a referee, which is where the government is supposed to sit. The Government owns the bank and should always be the biggest employer (have the most outgoings) and should have the least monetary incomings (all the incoming to the government should really be the efforts of the people for it). They should be the ones underwriting all our pay checks and ensuring that people can live. In this way this "non-player" keeps the system balanced (in theory).

The problem comes when the referee tries to be like everyone else. That is to say, the government looks to be "profitable" monetarily speaking (rather than placing its profits in progress of the people). Government shouldn't work like a business because all business can only continue profitably in the current climate if there is a renewable source of income in the economy.

The goal of business is as follows :

Through an investment in goods, people or services to receive back more money than you pay out. To, therefore, make a profit.

The only way "everyone" can possible make a profit is if, ipso-facto, someone or something (or collection of such) are making a loss (unless money is infinite, which was the role of the government to make this effectively so). In the past, the government was the source and sometimes the sink for all money. This is still in theory true today, but then why is the government "borrowing" billions from the tax payers future and why is the government in "debt"? Partly I suspect its propaganda to get more from the people, but mostly they have bought into the game (stopped running the game). NO you CANT play the game AND run the game. If you play the game, it becomes a free for all and all money evaporates because everyone on the whole play field tries to profit (that can't happen so...).

Everyone has to lose (or some smaller set of people lose really badly. It won't be the minority who lose in the end). What they have done by "taking it from the future tax payer" is pretty much "virtualised" inflation ("oh no, we aren't spending beyond our means. He's (pointing into the crowd) going to pay you in 5 years time" what do you think will really happen?).

Solutions? I can't see one. We can't go back to the old system, it can't account for life. Moving into the "StarTrek" era would be nice, but that doesn't account for some people (e.g. the StarTrek era requires world cooperation).

What I would dearly love to see is an "owning up" but to own up would be to cause a collapse of the system. Systemic collapse is never good, even for a corrupt and evil system (leads usually to rioting, fighting or war). This system is bad, but it's not truly evil.

I guess though, the one thing that's clear in my mind, is the government needs to operate quietly (at a continuing loss) for the people. Perhaps splitting the government into two, one part that seeks to profit (the services part of the government) and one part which will continually run at a loss (the provision for jobs and income).

Amazon are Fanstasitc, Highly Recommend them

2011-04-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about my last post and that I spend a good amount of time "complaining" on this blog. I realised that I don't enough praise whats good.

Amazon are GREAT the provide an excellent service, they are safe, efficient and really seem to listen to customer feedback. They don't overly spam me with advertisements and they have always delivered on the goods (and on the rare occasion I have had problems I've always been left satisifed with the resolution).

I highly recommend if you have shopping to do, check out Amazon's website.

I'm sure though for most people this is really apparent, but I just wanted to take the chance to praise something good.

Browser Features Override from Web Scripting

2011-04-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

I want to make everyone aware of this dangerous ability provided within Microsoft Internet Explorer (and possibly other browsers) with a correctly coded browser script it is possible to "hijack" default browser shortcut keys (such as CTRL-N (New Window). CTRL-F (Find) and replace the standard behaviour with a scripted behaviour).

THIS IS A HUGE SECURITY LOOP HOLE.

Imagine, you search on Google and alight upon a likely looking search result. You goto that page and then decide you want to move to a new browser window, you hit CTRL-N and, unknown to you, the script on the page intercepts your request and opens up a new window in its own script injecting its scripted functionality into the new window (perfectly possible). Now, unless your very familiar with the working of your browser your not aware your still in a page controlled by scripts from your previous page. It would be potentially dangerous to proceed to login to your email.

It admittedly would be hard to make an "exploit" which would not be noticable by someone familiar with browser technology but easy to trick the non-technical user.

This kind of irresponsibility I find really annoying. Having these kinds of features. An external source should not be allowed to override innate features of your browser (for example, although pages should have the ability to know when they are closed. They should not have final executive control of wether the close can be allowed, the page should mearly be notified of proceedings and proceed to obey the user.

However, theres money in taking control away from the end user and theres loss in fixing it.

Sick to death of Browser Whores (Wars)

2011-04-06T02:04:00.000-07:00

Summary:

"I'm Sick & Tired of companies using my internet connection like they own my computer and all its softwares and like I am just an inconvinience getting in the way of them continuing as they wish!"

Let me detail a typical day of bad "free" or "supplied" software.

I launch Internet Explorer, which on the whole isn't a bad little browser but a bit target for viruses and malware. It works well for me and is pretty steady. Though, every now and then, I wonder if I want something better (especially when I try to zoom a JavaScript and get junk).

So, I fire up Opera and the whole whoring begins. First of all, without any permission from me or even notifying me it starts downloading something. Its probably an update, but F**K OFF ITS MY SYSTEM ASK >.<. So basicly, Opera could be the best damn browser ever but I would never use the f**king thing. Except blocked to hell and sandboxed in an emergency situation. This is just a single example, other examples are that it connects to unrelated web addresses when I goto a website on the intranet (in a "triggered" behaviour). I don't know or care what its doing. It might even be in my interest, all I care is theres another internet connection I have not asked for or agreed to (agreeing to allow the product to do what it likes in the licence agreement is NOT gaining permission, its avoiding litigation).

This is the problem these days, browser / internet companies feel its "acceptable" even "profitable" to bypass the customers consent portion of the proceedings and go ahead and do whatever THEY want (I can imagine them saying "oh right.. yes.. erm.. now you mention it erm.. yes.. we did it FOR you.. yes.. we know best. Just be a good consumer and continue to download our crap and support our advertising revenues theres a good customer.").

What they want is money and they don't really seem to care all that much how they get it within the bounds of "not spooking the cow" (eg. cash cow) which is the customer.

I'm sick and tired of this crap. Online bussiness built on "what can we get away with" instead of "what can we provide, and how should we charge for it".

I do admit though its the actions of consumers that have them: 1) getting away with such alot and 2) needing to "get away with it" in the first place as some people treat the web like a gianormous free meal, 3) Undermine decent business by leaving a perfectly good cost effective solution because someone in a web back ally goes "pssst, I can get you that free mate".

I am not anti-free software. I do like my rights and things being my choice.

Mind you, some companies that have got it right on the above can be irritating in other ways. I really like Comodo, I used their Internet Security Solution free version whilst I was between positions and when I was back in work I wanted to buy their full product and support their activities. They couldn't process my debit card and ended up pretty much rejecting my order (not tried to work it out. Just rejected my order. This was on a card I used a day later to buy something 3 times the price with no problems at all from Amazon).

Oh yes! Whilst I'm here Amazon are fantastic. Amazon have continually impressed and proved to be very considerate. Pity they don't provide a browser.

Microsoft Closing up the operating system API

2011-03-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

In the "growth" days of Microsoft, before it was the corporate giant it is today, Microsoft where very keen to get anyone and everyone using their software. One way in which they did this was by providing robust and well supported API's opening up the operating systems to developers and allowing easy extension of existing controls.

Over the last 5 years, Microsoft have been peice by peice clawing back the control of their operating system by slowly and subversively closing off UI accessiblity. This is not an idle claim, review the following examples:

Desktop Window Manager (Closed / Private API for all but TRIVIAL operations)
Windows Presentation Foundation (Closed / Private API unless you use / buy their .NET development products. See DirectUIHWND control which is replacing many controls in Windows 7).
Digital Rights Management (See IP6, Windows Media Player etc)

Now, of course, Microsoft want to still keep customers but at the same time ensure that the customer requires a continuing spend with their organisation. What has changed is they no longer want to keep customers by "giving them a bargin / open development platform". Not happy with the simple continuing spend of O/S upgrades and new technology they want to lock third parties out of certain areas of the operating system (leading to a monopoly control within their own solution with minority access given to the wider development community).

What they are seeking to do, is to tie customers to their product and force customers to use them, and them alone (though this is possibly the goal of most all big business sadly).

Abode I'm sure are partly to blame for this change in behavior. Adobe proved with Flash how a third party could "tie up" a market sector and "force" businesses to pay for their particular solution. The have done this repeatedly, PDF format being another "lock in" technology. Microsoft have tried to "reclaim" this sector with their "Silverlight" like for like solution but its just changing which company your locked into.

Whilst I appriciate all business needs to earn revenue to survive, business which feels it must "shackle" their customers to their solution is at best anti-competitive. Microsoft used to operate based on "incentive", that is, buy in to our solution we offer the best most flexible / simple (best?) solution. They used to do this well.

However, their direction right now is all about tying up the customer. A customer forced to stick to a provider due to artificialy concocted "reasons" (with an engineered technical reason) is not getting the best for their investment (since they no longer have the "power" of choice being locked to a single solution for reasons other than, superior service or reduced costs).

SHAME ON YOU MICROSOFT.

If you really do care about your customers, you will do the following:

Provide FULL documented low level API access to WPF and DWM.
Find OTHER alternative ways to protect your revenue streams. Ones which are based on serving the customer.

Finally don't just do this for the functions you have earmarked as "low profit" or "last generation". Expose and document the whole API (even if its only a one liner on a blog). Sure, you might mark some functions as not being supported yet or as volatile as sensible.

I susspect noone is listening.

I bought into Microsoft as was, I dislike the direction. Google sometimes seem to be inching in similar directions but so far they seem to have tempered this practice and kept it to an acceptable minimum.

A damn good website!

2011-03-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

Still in love with my best friend, still "like a brother" to her. I got absolutely "fed up" today because she told me how I was "acting strange" and "scaring her away" which seemed to be based on me being "clingy". I live a good distance from her and she is sharing a flat with her ex-boyfriend (and not as "ex" as I would wish) so of course I am going to get "clingy" *sigh*. So, I searched for some random "fed up" search terms and came to here:

Straight Talking advice on Romance

I have to say that right now I very much love this straight talking site. Its just tempered nicely between advice and "wake up fool".

I am not actually sure I have any ideas to change my situation but I do feel I might understand it alot better.

I just hope the "content replicators" don't "ruin" it by whoring it about with advertisements.

Too many McGyver's not enough Engineers

2011-03-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

I like McGyver's they get things done, they do whatever needs to be done in whatever way it can be done given the resources available and sometimes the solutions are just damn genius! Sometimes.

Mostly though, they are short sighted work arounds leaving increasingly bigger messes for Mc Gyver's boss's to sort out.. unfortunately, they are also trying to be McGyver.

We do need McGyver's in this world. The problem is, most all people are being McGyver's.

We need more people to be patient and consiencious observers of life who test their ideas and come up with theories. People who look forward to whats comming next and design for the future and to be built upon, not just always working in the space of Now.

Now is important (for sure), Now is when things get done, now is when things happen! It seems people today equate "progress" with "happening now". That is to say: people don't want to plan things out today and build tommorow, they want to start work right away. This is possibly an admirable trate, but without planning and understanding whats being built and its need we soon end up in the "then" needing a lot more "now".

Society does not support people to work for a better future, but it does support those in the now.

We need a mix, we need to encourage the genius McGyver's into places where they can help the world but managed so they don't just put off a bigger disaster in the future. We need to somehow train the other MyGyver's (the ones building a poor solution in the now for an even worse problem in the future) to be something "other" but which fits with their ability.

Now, my observation. The reason there are so many McGyver's is that business and government rewards that type of behavior and rewards genius and fool hardy with some level of equality (as much as anything is equal in societies built from a history of slavery and opression).

Whats needed is a clear reward, placed in the future, for following a Engineering path. One that a person can see building day by day and one which they can observe the conciquences of returning to be a McGyver.

I'd like to see more "scolarships", more "government funding" in such a way that it makes sense to do things right (not just to do things "profitable" which is certainly not equating to right). Actually when it comes down to it, this is the core of the problem... "profit" in terms of money does not equal "profit" in terms of society and people. It infact means the opposite.

Lets make "profit" in money to "profit" society.

Do No Reply type emails should be banned.

2011-02-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

With the ever rising tide of "phishing" scams why is it that major players are still using "do not reply" email addresses. It seems to me this is basicly saying f**k off to the consumer, your not important enough for us to listen to you but we still want you f**king money now hand it over (even though its worded in the nicest tones possible).

I am making a policy. I am going to generally not deal with any company which emails me anything in the form of a "do not reply to this address" email (that is, anyone I'm not already dealing with *sigh*. I guess you can't change some things).

Say NO to do not reply!

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 - less good for hardcore coders

2011-01-20T15:06:00.000-08:00

In my last position I worked extensively with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and generally found it to be a good system. Until receiently...

The short version:

When running in debug mode the system changes pointer values at runtime.

This mostly will go unnoticed because the debugging IDE reports the correct values and even does the correct maths. So if you try doing the following:

((size_t)(&FunctionOne)) - ((size_t)(&FunctionTwo))

If you look at the result in the debugging IDE you might get (real example):

((size_t)(0x011ee0e0)) - ((size_t)(&0x011ee050)) = 0x00000090

However, if you try an apply this in your running code you get instead:

((size_t)(0x011d132f)) - ((size_t)(0x011d137a)) = 0xffffffb5

Now, I get what its trying to do here (at least I think I might) its actually adding a call stub to the functions which probably adds a bunch of debug checks to try and help out a poor developer.

Whats majorly annoying is:

It does not translate the addresses consistantly! So (like in the above example) addresses which where previously ordered top to bottom are transposed to the opposite effective order.
If you attempted to perform an in memory transfer of this functions data you would copy garbage (or at least not the function proper).
Maths carried out on pointers is completely meaningless (e.g. deriving the length by the difference between two pointers is not possible, though arguably this is bad practice anyway).
Confusing because the IDE reports the correct values, addresses and maths (e.g. results in IDE will not match results of performing exact same math in code).

DoggyDude96a

Left feeling very negatively towards Disney and Pixar

2011-01-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

First off, I think these two companies are great. Producing some fabulous stuff.

What I am left spitting bricks over is their damn, up their own arse self advertising at the beginning of their DVD's.

Firstly, I've bought your damn movie, don't force me to watch promotions of your other movies! >.<

Secondly, and this is the biggest annoyance, I got the Toy Story collection as a Christmas present and on every damn DVD theres a spoiler for the third movie and on the second DVD its PART OF THE INTRO TO THE DVD!

Oh my god! F**king annoying.

So, my "Arse Company of the Day award" suprisingly goes to Pixar and Disney DVD division.

Microsoft Outsource to China

2010-12-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

Why should I care? I would feel the same way, but, for Windows Update!

When I worked for an UK Internet Technology Company, whilst working there there where a great number of unsolicited connections comming from Chinese and South African IP addresses.

Investigation into this traffic proved the traffic to be Hacker Activity and specifically Brute Force attempts to gain access to one of the Companies SQL servers.

In my time I have rarely seen attacks comming from English or Ammerican IP addresses. Those countries are probably just too well regulated and locked down and people have much easier ways of making money (aquiring information?).

So basicly the solution was historically to block incomming connections from any unknown Chineese IP addresses (which makes perfect sense, all the companies I've worked for have been UK, Ammerica or NZ based and have little business ties to China).

Until I reciently discovered that Microsoft seem to have distributed Windows Update world wide. Now, your friendly regional updates are sourced (or might be sourced) from China Seems crazy? Its happend to me (I thought I had a virus... maybe I do?). It just seems to be that Windows Update wants to download its latest batch of updates from China.

Just incase there is someone out there why might be able to say "hey, yup.. its a virus" and maybe I'm misjudging Microsoft? Heres the IP address(s) in question:

213.199.149.103

213.199.149.104

Registered to : Beijing Urban Network Co.,Ltd

Being accessed when I run Windows Update for Windows Vista Ulitimate.

Hey maybe its just got f'ed up and can't recognise where my IP is and thinks I'm in China.. I'm open to possibilities?

Thats just Charming!

2010-12-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

Oh my god!

Whoever wrote the later series of Charmed (4th Season onward) completely runined the character of Phobe :(.

The love whole story between a Demon and a Good Witch (Cole and Phoebe) is/was timeless (and should have ended in a win for the power of love.. should of). In the first, second and even third seasons it was explored so vividly and so well (with love conquering all against great odds). The up's and down's, the mistakes and the forgiveness.

Then, the Seer arrives and maniplulates the couple (which was not in of itself a bad direction for the plot). Love then proceeds to fly out the window and the whole series decends into a pointless re-living of earlier events (and in essence basic story concepts of Cole plotting subitly) and attempts to turn Cole back into the evil character he once was. Though at each stage its the actions of Pheobe that turns Cole more and more evil (whilst she is excused of her own evil and making cole feel he can be nothing but).

All the charm went out of Charmed!

Pheobe and Page's characters are made to appear to be total sluts going from one seemingly loveless bedding to the next (though some small amount of effection is always involved) and all the witches are painted as blameless and good no matter what they do whilst a Demon (who infact often behaves far better than any of the witches, is evil).

It left me feeling I should be getting in touch with my inner demon as the Demon sets a better example than the girls. Maybe its a bitter writer trying to say its better to be demonic than good O_o but this is hardly a moral to live by, nor one I would support.

Just to be clear, I don't think theres anything wrong with a strong female character, but its hardly strong sleeping with a range of men (who all want to sleep with the girl) and the character keeping moving on to the next. To many "males" of this world its their idea of the ideal girl i'm sure *rolls eyes*.

At least Pipers character remained strong and thats probably the only thing compeling me to keep watching (as I need something I can relate to / sympathise with). Piper stays true to love without ceasing to be faithful and loving to her partner.

The whole Cole-Pheobe love story was so complelling and filled with the best and sometimes the most challenging aspects of true love.

Only eventually to paint true love as pointless and evil in the later episodes.

"Pheobe has become the architypal loveless slut" would be a fair quote for the seasons past season 3.

Which is such a shame because Phoebes started out as a powerfull woman living by her own rules. Which didn't initially mean a lack of love. She started out as strong and independent, willfull and loving. I am not sure what she became but it wasn't the original Phoebe. Maybe its more realistic and thats why I don't like it... I guess that could be fair to say.

Recommendations to increase your personal privacy

2010-12-07T06:25:00.000-08:00

I am very concerned with my pesonal privacy. What I decide to search for is my very own business and noone elses. Only these days everyone wants to make it their business.

This is largely something unavoidable. Though there are ways to prevent unintended breaches of privacy.

Google is a great search engine, but, it completely invades your privacy as much as the law will allow.

Whenever you use a modern browser with Google the site stores all the unique information about your browser (there can be valid reasons for doing this, there is no requirement to do so for a search service except to support user tracking for its ad's, and, hence, tracking of you as an individual). Sure its not tied to your name but I don't like it at all. Secondly, when using modern browsers, everything you type into the search box gets sent to google immidiately (to provide you with an as you type search, if your feeling generous to google). Again, this is crap, many a time I've accidently typed a private URL into their search box only to curse as it was already too late.

So, for a solution I recommend the following:

Add http://www.google.co.uk/ to your restricted websites. You will still be able to use the search facility but Google will now only receive information after you have accepted a prompt to transmit it and furthur no google related browser scripted components will run.

Google have made their own bed on this one and I fully recommend to everyone to do this!

Google became great by respecting the public and providing clean and simple search results. Now Google is big business and feels little need to respect the public beyond the minimum necessary to keep us using their service. Given that this is their attitude, I say your going to get the minimum necessary information from ME to use YOUR service.

The end.

Windows Security

2010-11-29T07:19:00.000-08:00

Windows Security is pretty good. The UI for managing the security is sometimes very poor. Any Administrator who is trying to manage permissions on complex directory trees will know the sense of frustration I experience when being presented with a dialog like the following:

Which as you can see is completely useless to the administrator. This box is usually seen when using the option:

Whats required here is the option for the Administrator to provide sufficient system credentials to circumvent this "Access Denied" issue (or if it is behaviour by design, a full description on why these permissions are thought not to be changable).

The reason is probably that some permissions in the ACL are set not to be inheritable (e.g. not to propergate above this folder). The error message does not give the Administrator the clue that this is the issue.

Security permission control should be simple. Make is so Microsoft, please.

FaceBook fails users AGAIN (privacy failing)

2010-11-29T02:26:00.000-08:00

I am so *£%#@ off right now. I already setup my privacy settings ONCE to disallow public access to my account BUT FaceBook has gone through a back door to enable that access.

How so? Well, whilst I setup my account settings to be all "Friends Only", APPARENTLY FaceBook author (feel like telling him to go *£%#off) feels the "general public" are my friend so allowed the world to see my name and a list of my friends (which has lead to an unhealthy amount of new spam which lead me to find out the source of this spam).

Heres a heads up for all facebook users, vital personal information (in this case your name and a list of people who are your friends) is being made publicly available by your FaceBook account. Yes.. I repeat publicly available.

Please PLEASE follow the following steps to prevent this before you too become another hit on Google (and therefore the primary target of spammers!).

Goto the "Account" drop down in the top left of your FaceBook page. Click "Privacy Settings" and you should be taken to the following page:

Click on the "Edit your Settings" button next to the "Application and Websites" at the bottom of the screen.

In the section "Public Search" click "Edit Settings".

Untick the box which contains the "Enable Public Search".

Grand Theft Auto IV

2010-11-09T04:28:00.000-08:00

This is the worst game in the GTA series yet (so far).

First off theres the massively invasive installation process which forces you to play online (or at the least forces you to require an internet connection to use the product).

Right, so for now I've put up with that s**t on the basis, hey maybe the game makes the loss of personal privacy worth it? (hah).

So, I am playing the game... unlike the other GTA's (which where suggestive and excitingly unconventional and to be fair down right criminal hehe) this game just comes across as lude, crude, rude and somewhat offensive.

Within the first converstation between the main character and his cousine many sensiblities are down right offended. Now, I realise thats part of the ethos of the game genera, but frankly previously it was done with alot of class. This introduction is just plain "base", it might be more realistic, but I don't want to REALLY be a criminal. I want to PLAY at the exciting parts of the fantasy of Crime (thats why I play). This incarnation of the game so far seems to completely miss this concept.

Graphically the game is good, but, I bought the game months and months ago but only reciently upgraded with a machine good enough to play it. Now, bear in mind my old machine was no slouch. It was a Pentium D 3.2ghz with a Nvidia GTO 7900. Sufficient for many lush games (like BioShock and Batman). Though failed for GTA IV.

Now my new setup runs it fine, but what a disapointment.

The MOST annoying thing though, the thing that made me quit the game in disgust, is the completely control freak nature of the new system.

In the older GTA games the joy of the game is not doing what your told the freedom of those games is massive and frankly very exciting. I thought this would be a given for the new game so the first thing I do is ignore my "cousin" and wander off to explore. At this stage, without the irritating dialog, the games looking pretty exciting again. However, just as I am enjoying myself, the game cuts me off mid pummel and says "You have abandoned your cousine" and then RESETS ME back to the car.

OH MY GOD! How shit can you get!

I will probably try the game again at some stage but that experience has put me right off.

Windows L(Spy)ive

2010-11-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

I only need to mention two technologies, SecuRom and Windows Live. Two of the most public and invasive technologies created today (who thought Steem would look innocent by comparison).

So, SecuRom installs a kernel component to give itself root level access to your system (even more priviledged that the user and able to bypass any and all security measures you may have in place). Windows Live installs a swath of processes all of which want to be very chatty about the fact that you have Windows Live installed (to the joy of any system hacker, its like installing a process saying "pick me, pick me, I have a gianormous attack footprint").

Comodo = Software Leak?

2010-09-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

Now I've got a lot of good things to say about Comodo Internet Security suite. Firstly it has proper 32bit and 64bit versions and has for some time now. Secondly its feature "Defense+" is possibly the most comprehensive and ambitious pro-active security solution ever (though you really need to be a computer developer to make the most from it).

Now for the whine:

Defense+ includes a section called "Pending Files" which I hadn't really investigated much until today (that is Comodo Internet Security version 4.1.1500349.920). This section reportedly maintains a list of unrecognised executable files (which on the surface seems fine). It gives the option to submit these unrecognised files to Comodo (presumably for approval or whatever).

So, today I was investigating a Virus Report from the engine. Comodo has had a bit of a spotted history with its Anti-Virus solution. Specifically if is quite prone to false or incorrect reports. So, I was attempting to validate its claim using http://www.totalvirus.com/ which seems like a good site. Whilst I was looking into this I came across "My Pending Files" and I looked and there where a list of executables (fair enough) and amoung them some of my own peices of software.

Then I looked again, and noticed that 2 of the files in the list had been "submitted" to Comodo. I was not aware of ever agreed to this! One of these files was an application I develop that contained propritory code I would very much not like to distribute anywhere for any reason. Whilst I'm not saying Comodo are going to be stealing code, they are probably going to be performing a threat analysis upon the executable in question and to do that understanding its function and purpose is key. So, then they will understand the function and purpose of my propriotory code and well, if you understand something you use that knowledge!

This, to me, is a serious risk of software leak. One I felt I was not given the option to prevent (or at least there was no clear warning it would be sending this file out).

So in summary. If your a software developer, Defense+ is both a boon and a danger. I am not going to disable it because it does guard my system well in all other respects.

This post on their forums has also pacified me for now :

http://forums.comodo.com/help_for_v3/how_do_i_disable_my_pending_files-t15799.0.html;msg124795

Lastly at least it DID tell me it had leaked my executable. I will be keeping a close eye on it in future and possibly doing my development on a different machine to my internet connected system.

AMMENDIUM: I now noticed this:

The "Submit the file to COMODO for analyis" button must have been checked when I was wanting / expecting to check / select "Do this for every" checkbox from the older Comodo dialog. So, sadly, I guess I have been my own leak. Still far to easy to do and no way to disable this.

Torchwood, Series 3.. Return to form

2010-07-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

After struggling through series one and two of Torchwood cringing along the way I finally reached Series 3, also known as Children of the Earth.

What a brilliant return to form, intrigue, action, suspense, plot oh joyous plot unfolding (previously so absent).

I'm only on Day 3 (the third episode) so I might well yet be posting a blog on how bad the ending is, after earlier disapointments I'm not going to get too excited yet.. but I have a cautious optimism based on episodes one and two. Fingers crossed.

...

Whoever directed the Day Three episode completely overused the "Zoom onto the News on TV" effect. It completely destroyed the power of such a cinematic. If used once or twice its a powerful and moving moment / gesture.. if you show it 10 or more times like in this epsiode / series.... well.

Still, managed to be good overall tho :).

Overall, Series 3 is a thumbs up :). Though, parts of it are very contrived... kids as alien drugs? hmmmm, still glossing over those types of shortcommings a great series!

Torchwood... so bad I had to fast forward!

2010-06-05T05:50:00.000-07:00

Oh my God!

I've never known a TV show I liked to be SO bad that I couldn't watch it!

Even the piss poor episode with the Psyco family was "comparitively" watchable.

I just watched "Out of Time", please do yourself a favour, skip it! I am a bit stubborn watching series in order and since Torchwood and Dr Who match up I wanted to watch them in order. Out of time was SO awful I had to skip at least 5 mins of it. I couldn't watch it any longer... I stuck it out after stupid twist after stupid twist.

Where was the plot? Where was the "reason". Where was the interest! The "girl" who plays the lead fancies everyone, and I mean everyone.. every damn episode shes giving googly love eyes to someone else. Whilst i'm sure this is probably a very real possibility, wheres the character... can you base a "character" on the lack their of?

There was a moment when things looked like they might have picked up. When the man met his son.

The whole of Torchwood seems to pander to many of the worst traits in humanity, even bringing down the best actions to seem selfish and unimportant.

Strikes me that the writers could do with listening to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD1512_XJEw

Which is a link which a very good friend of mine posted.

Torchwoood / Could-have-been-so-good

2010-05-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

What a tragedy! Great actors, great initial concept.. entirely ruined by a lack of creative writing talent (and possibly poor direction).

First episode, exceptional, good start (enough to get me hooked, well done)...

Second episode, bizare unsettling but never the less passibly good (weird tho, but par for course I guess).

Third episode, utter drivel. Yet, still vuagely watchable drivel.

Fourth episode... could be a recovery, not quite working but an improvement.

Then, the worst kind of desperate plots follow. Dr Who, know for its scientific fiction with a little bit of artistic licence just to give science a shine. Torchwood, their dealing with ghosts, twisted horror, thrillers and faries! OMG why not just take every major B movie ever made and make it into a Torchwood episode.. oh wait.. you did >.<

Its a criminal shame!

Not to mention how weak is the introduction sequence (Actor playing Jack, c'mon i've seen great acting from you in Dr Who, I know your good.. was this an off day?)!

So so very disapointed!

Oh my god (watching it now) this is so awful (as people try to make dramtic what is senseless drivel.. and bear in mind, I can rather enjoy drivel if its good)! I feel like i'm wasting my life watching this but I know i'll watch them all for the sake of the fact that Dr Who is still excellent (and I want to know how things tie in as a stickler for completeness).

Torchwood (as a series) fails on nearly every level, and what is most tragic is that it should have been a hit (its so good in theory, just lacked execution). Jack Harkness, what a character (ruined) all the characters had so much potential, but the way they played out resulted in sh**.

Highly Recommend Dr Who, highly slate Torchwood (which is sad because I so want to like it too).

Doggy

Catherine Tate Ruined Dr Who!

2010-05-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

I am a huge Dr Who fan. Daivd Tennant did the seemingly impossible by surplanting Jon Pertwee as my favourite doctor (and thats no mean feat). Now, Catherine Tate is ruining the enitre Dr Who experience (yes, i'm behind, still on Season Four).

She is just point blank irritating. I've never encountered a more irritating assistant. Maybe its acted to be that way, but then why the heck is the doctor putting up with the crap.

Personally, I think its more likely the over the top ham acting shes famous for. Thats why shes a comedian and not an actor in my view (ham is funny when its a comedy).. yes, I know Dr Who has been including more humor which is all well and good but shes more farce and ridicule. A little of which can counterpoint the seriousness of the doctor... a lot.. pah!

I'll watch the episodes, becasue the plots are still good and Tennant is masterful! I wasn't initially convinced by the earlier two companions but without fail by the end of the first episodes they fitted and by their last they where missed when they left.

Really hating whoever cast Catherine Tate in the role.

DONT USE WINDOWS UPDATE

2010-03-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

Ammendium: As you can tell from the below post. I was pretty steaming when this happened. Now, in clamer tones I will reflect my opinion.

WARNING: If you are using Microsoft Products DISABLE WINDOWS UPDATE unless you want to risk losing your work.

The catch 22 of this situation is I have to recommend regularly keeping your system up to date. I just can't recommend Windows Update because of its shamefully bad behaviour.

(I keep my original irate post as a reminder of just HOW irate Windows Update can make me).

"THIS IS THE FUCKING LAST STRAW....

VISTA HAS FOR THE FUCKING 10TH TIME REBOOTED MY PC LOSING ALL MY WORK TO APPLY ITS FUCKING S***E UPDATES. WINDOWS 7 HAS NOT IMPROVED THIS EITHER (I've lost work at work this way too)!!! >.<

I'D FEEL BETTER OFF HAVING A VIRUS. AT LEAST A VIRUS WOULD PREVENT ME FROM REBOOTING.

END OF STORY."

Windows Vista, DVD-R Destruction

2010-01-07T06:02:00.001-08:00

When I take a disk recorded in my stand alone HDD/DVD recorder and try to play it in on my Windows Vista Ultimate PC, sometimes Vista destroys the DVD in such a way that it won't play afterwards in either the computer or on the DVD player.

I have a Sanyo HDD/DVD Recorder which does an adquate job of recording some of my favourite Television. Occasionally, I archive recorded episodes to DVD.
I have a Windows Vista Ulitmate PC with 2 LG DVD drives which I occationally use as a media centre.

There is no pattern to this behaviour, but having investigated the resultant corrupt disk using ISO buster it appears that Windows Vista is falsly recognising the inserted disk as a "empty" (or something) and writting a second "NULL" session to the disk (effectively erasing the disk). Oddly, when the disk is inserted into the HDD/DVD recorder afterwards it says : "No Disk". It also claims their is "No Disk" when inserting it into the PC (though ISO Buster, being an excellent tool, is able to see the original session).

The odd thing is, this doesn't seem to always happen? This always worries me because most commonly in my experience inconsistant issues are a result of user error? Though, I fail to see why any action of inserting a disk (without any specialised software running) should cause a recordable DVD to be effectively destroyed for normal use!

Fortunately, this issue does not unduely concern me as purchase all the movies I like and I haven't lost a recording I could not replace.

It seems Microsoft provide a very poor solution when it comes to built-in DVDR/CDR support in Vista. Microsoft do manage to present a simple interface to DVD/CD writing but this is entirely ruined by the fact that it can cause loss of data when using non-Microsoft software written DVD's.

Shame on them!

Knowledge is wasted?

2009-12-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

When I was young, I had a thirst for knowledge that has diven me through my life (thus far). I wanted to know how and why about everything and had a belief (of sorts) that if we understand enough we can make a better world... I reached a point where I learned; People cannot know everything; Indeed it seems noone can know everything. So I then choose "something" to know everything about (reasoning if I can't know everything, I can know everything about something). I kept my topic small and useful to me thinking this was a wisdom. So I learned about computers, specialising in Microsoft systems and the PC...

I still want to know "all" the answers but having lived half my life asking questions i'm finding that knowledge alone is pointless (and the answers disapointing). The more you learn, the more there is to learn. On top of this, we are all generating new knowledge all the time. Each of us is creating something to be learned about. Even if we just took the output of two very casual individuals it can be a lifetime of learning.

So thats the first lesson... knowledge is infinite.

The second thing is, life does not reward people for knowledge. Society "appears" to reward knowledge and to some extent it indirectly does. The reality I find is that society rewards whatever rewards it (so, if a person lacking in knowledge can give more of a reward than one with knowledge.. well). So, knowledge itself is no reward, its the application of knowledge that brings reward over the lack of knowledge (since in applying knowledge over people who are not applying such knowledge we can offer more reward). I find that most of the people applying knowledge and profiting from its application are not the people who generated the knowledge and often have no real understanding of the knowledge they are applying.

These people have learned that knowledge of itself is a millstone. Where as, knowledge of people and of the system is a boon. So maybe one could say some knowledge is more valuable (though this has nothing to do with "value" as I would see it).

I've gone far with knowledge.. I've travelled the world. I've lived 22,000 miles from my home. I've created many ammazing things... but whats it all worth? its brought me very little joy.

Then, maybe i'm just a miserable person. Though I never felt I was. I'll keep you posted.

What is love...

2009-10-21T20:13:00.001-07:00

Someone asked online for people to define love... I wrote this and thought, yes I want to blog that:

When you are really and truly in love, you know it (as they say) "balls to bone". Its really true! I often wondered in the past, "am I in love?, I feel so much for this person, more than anything i've felt before?".

What I learned is that if you wondering if you are in love, you really are not! It might be you aren't yet (I don't know) but you are not.

For me, I first fell truly in love at 32, when it happened to me, I knew it was right! I just knew it! Everything added up, there wasn't a doubt in my mind.

I was always annoyed when I was younger because older people would say stuff like "Ahh, when your in love you just know it!" and I was always really p*ssed off with that answer because it was so unhelpful (to my thinking). I thought "I might well be in love now then? but how do I know if I can't define it?" Well, older now, I hate that those people where actually right and that I have to pass on the same advice.

So, if you have any doubt, your really not in love, your mearly either falling in love, comming to love or experiencing an emotional love for a person (not true love). I made a key mistake by thinking like I used to think. I got together with my ex girl friend based on the fact I cared for her so deeply I thought it must have been love. It wasn't (at least not true love). I knew it wasn't at the start really, but I rationalised that I was just scared or that I needed to grow up (which to be fair in some ways I still do) but when I met my someone, I knew, I knew I would love her forever. Right from the moment I fell for her.

Now it could happen differently for you. You might meet someone, grow to love them, then come to truly love them. I don't know how it happens or what makes one person different from the next. I just know the feeling of being totally sure your in love and with whom and that it will last a lifetime (of course, I'm undergoing stress tests on this as we speak.. but not from her. That's part of the point. Everything with her is easy, even the hard stuff... its not simple, but its easy). Also, just because you know its true love for you doesn't mean it will necesarily pan out the way you want it to... all you know is that you will love them forever (and always in the same way, you just are certain of this at every level).

So, I can't actually define love! This kinda makes sense because when I was younger and really tired although I came up with some good traits of love, it would never add up to the whole of what love is. Love cannot be defined because it is much more than the sum of its parts.

I can only say what it is and what it isn't in fact:

It is:

Being truely, deeply and completely certain of your feelings,
Being happy to sacrifice for the person but not having to because of them,
Being completely understood (though this does not prevent misunderstanding, it just a sense you get from them),
Finding you comletely understand them, and that the understanding comes easy (though maybe the second part is unique to me and my love),
Always caring for them, no matter what (though, in love, this should not be tested nor should things happen to test it often)

It isn't:

Controlling (excepting in that you both compromise for one another to meet eachothers needs and make each other happy),
Without problems (excepting in love all problems have a solution),
About passion (though there is passion in love, love is not defined by passion),
About sex (you make love when your in love. If your just "having sex" your not in love),
Free (Love is about mutual captivity, but always feeling free in a sense.. its a lovely contradiction because love binds two people together, but its always by mutual choice so your captive because you can never part, but your always choosing each other at every moment so are both free in a sense)

Think I did that justice!

Advice on Marriage

2009-10-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

When you meet the right person, you just know you MUST marry them (I learned this at 32).

When I met my someone (speaking only for my side of things) I just knew it was right and would work. Before I meet her I was wondering if I should marry my ex girlfriend thinking prehaps I was a commitment phobic person.

You should be just friends with partners for a good time so you have a chance to find what you want in your life and how they see you as a person and outside of their sexual attraction to you.

So my advice. Make lots of long term friendships, hug the friends you care for the most, hold hands and kiss with the friends your attracted to. If you find one friend is more special than all the rest and you start worrying about someone else "snagging" him from you, have him as a boyfriend and spend time together as a couple (but keep seeing / being friends with your other friends and them with their friends, but put each other first).

At some point, lighting with strike you too with your current partner or with someone completely new and unexpected and you will know what you have to do.

Maybe for some they will just settle into their long term relationship.

People forget that Marriage is special and unique. Some people think its something that "just happens" to people, but not necesarily everyone should marry, its something special that happens to lucky people and tends to happen alot, but its not a guarenteed part of life like birth or death but a miracle in your life, like having a healthy child or finding a long lost relative.

Google Chrome... Invasive?

2009-10-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the latest version of Google Chrome today. Mainly I wanted to check out the cross-browser compatibility of my latest peice of JavaScript, but I guess also partly I was looking forward to checking out this browser offering.

On the surface, Google Chrome is everything anyone would want from a browser. Looks slick, works fast and has a "new take" on browsing. Yes, its nothing new really, just rather like launching IE in lots of seperate processes (perfectly possibly), but its well done and transparent to the user and the pre-compiled JavaEngine is great!

However, under the covers it appears a sinister spider lurks reporting on ones every action. Type something wrong in the address bar and sends it to google (of course Microsoft have done this, but at least in IE turning it off is straight forward) . Infact, whatever you seem to do with Chrome (even ordinary browsing), it seems to stay in constant touch with Google (or at least it talks to IP addresses completely unrelated to ones immidiate activities). This kind of behaviour frankly pisses me right off, whatever its doing, its not asked me if its ok. I've blocked Chrome to everything but the localhost whilst I check my scripts work alright in its environment (before I did that it was contacting Google [or some IP unknown internet IP] even working exclusively with offline (Intranet) content! Shameful (i'm actually a little worried whether its actually submitted me "private" and "copyright" scripts to Google when I tried out the developer tools).

I guess Microsoft have kind of been doing similar stuff with their "Microsoft Live" suite, but at least its quite clear from that title it is likely to be happening. Google seem to be moving markedly away from their roots these days and are being tarred by some of the same failings of the crowd (which is a real shame because Google's strength has been in its "honesty" and genuine service). Still, Google has not completely gone over to the dark side and its still my favourite and chosen search engine. I just hope they don't get sucked into the corporate money trap.

Did Microsoft Deliberately Bug Notepad?

2009-08-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

Ever tried editing web-pages using notepad? If your like me notepad is a tool which is better for doing less rather than providing more. There is nothing more annoying for an expert web coder than a web-editor "gainsaying" well constructed code with some **it it feels is "equivilent" (and sometimes which it is just adding to promote itself).

So, in this situation, Notepad comes (came) to the rescue.. or so it used to be....

There is a bug? in the current version of Microsoft Notepad, that is either an incredibly stupid mistake or an incredibly sneaky attempt to discourage its use as a web editing, script editing or file editing tool.

Right, now, to the point... Every so often, when using Notepad (in this case in Windows vista) it will silently insert a line return [chr$(13)] character which will appear (and I use that phrase losely) as a space. I have found no definitive pattern to the cause of this behaviour.

This character only of course becomes a problem when your editing scripts (such as ASP scripts) using Notepad, so, when your neetly type your command of strTemp = 50 it instead becomes instead strTemp [cr] = 50 which is of course invalid ASP syntax.

Now, this bug is just "too" convinient for me to easily believe that its accidental. Microsoft don't want you using Notepad to edit your web files! Oh no, they want you to buy their (a) web tool.

Would they deliberately sabatage Notepad? They have been known to do such things. Its now imfamous that Microsoft had put a "check" in Windows 3.11 to prevent it running correcly on DR-DOS (Digital Researches excellent DOS product).

This is a particularly evil "bug" as it only happens randomly anf when it happens you don't "see" the CR in the ASP debugging output and you will have a job locating the "extra" line return in notepad. Unless you really understand whats happening you would just give up and buy a web-editor.

Another reason its hard to believe its a "bug" is that Notepad has been around for years and hasn't hardly been changed since its inception (excepting being re-compiled for newer systems).

Sadly, there is absolutely no way to know what the truth is. All we have is the following fact:

The current version of Notepad (e.g Windows Vista Notepad) randomly inserts hex 0x0D characters as you type with no observable/repeatable pattern at this time. Therefore, its becomes a danger to use (because it the extra character is missed... you may not find out until a client calls up venting a spleen about the web-site being down).

Funny thing is, I do quite like Microsoft on the whole. Maybe it is a bug... maybe.

Design Annoyances

2009-08-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've been updating my web-site reciently and I am now taking a break from the task to be-moan a really annoying discovery about a design choice in Internet Explorer which wasn't readily apparent to me until just receintly.

Internet explorer uses the F5 key to refresh the page (seems ok), in newer versions it used the key sequence CTRL-F5 to force the page to be refreshed from souce (bypassing any checks made on the client side as to wether the page needs refreshing) also good.

However, when using IE on any regular basis its not long before you begin to realise how annoyingly close the shortcut to quit the browser is the shortcut to refresh the page!! Yes, you can see where this is going... I go to perform a CTRL-F5 and I am 1cm short and instead hit CTRL F4 and there goes the browser window.

This is now added to the another annoyance of IE which is the CTRL-W close window shortcut. Its so easy to accidently press this sequnce whilst typing in a web page and when the window closes, how hard is it to get what you typed back? Answer: Near impossible (probably actually impossible, I only say near impossible because if your a real clever hacker you just might be able to extract it from the page file).

Well, thats my "moan for the day". I am thinking of re-titling my blog... "General Complaining" because its all I seem to do in it lol.

Life Impact

2009-07-19T05:46:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about the way we live and work today, about economy, social structure and everything in between. Something occured to me, we don't often really consider much our overall life impact on the world and on humanity. Even me, and I do think about the effects my life has on others and try to minimise any negative impact (or eliminate) but thats not quite the same as the impact of my life as a whole on bettering the world (and its legacy). It seems like it would be good if all people could look for and establish a "life goal" at early primary school age. They wouldn't have to stick to the goal, but it could be considered and it could be expanded so that by the time where making important life decisions like career direction and so forth we have a greater goal to work for (but also a personal goal because life has to be both about the individual and the group). Then, we could work knowing we arn't just working for the day to day needs of ourselves and our loved ones, but building a future for the whole of humanity.

I look at the jobs many of my friends are doing, and whilst they all require knowledge and all provided "something" theres few jobs where more than 10% of the work is lasting. I think this would be a poor target to set for life but its one we accept somehow. I suppose possibly the problem is that people work for money which in reality represents 10% of the value it is said to be worth at the end of the day.

Also, another factor is that we live in a "throw away" society. Things aren't regularl built for "the ages" and when they are, everyone is trying to make the project cost 90% more than its effort in the persuit of profit (so again, 10% effort though possibly some of those people contriuting 100%.). Thats the thing though isn't it, we tend to generate a 10% result, but we offten have to put in 110% effort (technically impossible, but the extra 10% represents the time we should not be working and is taken away from the 100% which is time for family and friends).

I don't think all people are lazy either, its just that we mostly often don't have a bigger plan...

Take banking, ever day we buy things, food, supplies whatever and its very few people who think about that in any big way, so we need banking which is basicly transactional and short lived (who cares how much my recipt was for coffee in 100 years).

I don't see why we couldn't get more reason into everything we do (though i'll grant i'm not yet sure of the solutions).

For example, if every purcase of food from a store added to a fund to build a hospital then in our daily lives and spending choices we can give the long term meaningless actions in our lives deeper meaning. Whilst the individual purchases might still be irrelivent, the fact that I bought food meant something more than simply keeping someone alive or happy .

The only problem being that the 10% crew (as I now refer to profiteers) will find a way to make our "meaning" into their profits (and possibly diminish and reduce our efforts).

People need money to live, money was invented to defaud the public... ironic?

How do I claim money was invented to defraud the public? Well, money was first used in countries where resources where "scarce" or infact not available (for example in England when the king had spent all the crown gold but still needed the people to fight wars and could no longer afort to buy their loyalties). So, the king used worthless items to represent a "desired" item (eg. Gold) and made it "equivilent" in the minds of the people (moneys value is only as much as we desire or require it). Utlimately though, when the king realised that people now sought the worthless item as much as the valueable item, well, greed set in and if he could keep the people holding the worthless items thinking they where good, all the better.

Now, of course, the Kings didn't say "I have no money, but have this worhtless peice of stuff and fight for me anyway and i'll look after you". They "pretended" they had the money (or, I suppose in some cases the money was like a "token not to get killed" for more ruthless monarchs). Money was a way to keep people doing what the power wanted, which, isn't the same thing as keeping the people doing right or good.

Well, this has degraded spectacularly into a ramble so i'm going to leave it at that.

The main point is, i'm going to try to find a way to bring more longer lasting meaning to every action in my life and I hope maybe we all will too.

Searching the world for the love of my life

2009-07-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

In the past i've felt like that. Like I was searching the universe for that special someone, that soul mate. I found her (for me) when I met Alex, she is everything to me (and I know she cares deeply for me too, but just "not in that way"). Then, *sigh* it seems she's everything to everyone who gets close to her, she's the love of everyones life! So, now i'm thinking to myself, are you searching the world for the love of yours? Is everyone?

Somehow, I choose to stay single because I know none of the relationships I could have are right because I don't care for those people in the right ways (also, those people are opposite to me in that they tend (in general) to form a relationship with everyone until they happen to love someone). I know girls who are very beautiful and (thanks to them being very direct) I know they like me (which is always lovely to hear) but I also know I could never be happy with them outside the simple gratification that comes from having someone beautiful that wants me (and that is very gratifying and possibly something to be shared more, letting people know it anyway). Its not simply that they have some minor incompatibilities here, its they have major apposing life style choices (Smoking, Peircing, Tatoos, Drug use, a Player which-ever). Not that they are bad people in any way, just they aren't for me. I'm not a great looker myself, I seek the right heart more than I seek the right looks, but looks aren't unimportant to me either. So, i've got the worst of both worlds, i'm not someone who will just get close to anyone whos around so i'm not alone, I am not someone who will settle based on looks nor based purely on personality (though, I believe this could happen as long as they love me with their whole heart and seek not to hurt me and I can love them), nor am I someone whos going to be happy with just lots of great friends. I'm sounding pretty fussy huh.

Funny thing is, I have to wait to see what happens with Alex! Shes the first person in my life I would do that for. In a way, I almost hope the last too. Otherwise i'll be dead before I know it lol. Alex is the first person I love completely and unreservedly, she has the keys to my heart. I hope she chooses to use them.

The trauma of being English

2009-06-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

We can't we say what we mean when it comes to our hearts! Maybe this is the trauma of being human, but I think its very specificly an English middle class thing. I've been in love with my best friend for over a year now, and we've fallen out over it, but I've not once asked her out. I've suggested it in a 1000 different ways but never once actually just said the words, "would you like to go to x on a date?" or simply "will you go out with me". Its not that I don't want / wish / desire / crave to say those words (maybe she thinks I don't or can't... :( ) its just that I susspect they might not be well received (even if I did think they would be well received, I think I would find a way to say them without saying them). What the hecks up with me >.<. Funilly, I do tell her I love her, thats actually easier to say! Its a statement of fact and it can't be rejected, it just is.

I'm probably in the whole mess because I gave in from the start :(. Well, more accurately, I took her at her first words that she was just looking for a friend (back then I wasn't in love). I feel so damn pathetic for that, for trying for it to be her to make the move. My only saving grace is that I did once genuinely ask her to marry me on the phone once, and meant it with the whole of my heart (I'm glad I did, I was surprised at the time because it burst out of me because it was so wanted to be said. I didn't realise how much before then). I didn't get turned down then, but I did get asked never to say it again and told it has no answer, which i'm not sure isn't the same thing. I negotiated to a "maybe never" *sigh*.

She is the only girl that I would marry. Only other time I've even thought about marriage I regretted thinking it the very next day (but sadly in that occasion I told the person I could see myself marrying her...). With A, I will never regret it, but I do wish I had been so much less pathetic about it. Especially as it seems that attrition seems to be the way to the heart of the girl I love.

In love or just sick?

2009-06-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

I know its the first, but i'm left feeling like i'm mentally i'll or sub-normal. How can I be so absoloutely unshakably convinced of something that all evidence from the party in question suggests can never be. I know love is blind, but surely it shouldn't be deaf, dumb and unchangable? Then, I guess thats what love really is, I guess people are just "lucky" or "carefull" when the fall in love with someone who can and will love them back (and the carefull one I cannot quite get).

Also, love is apparently distressing when its out of place? I must admit I've never had anyone incontrollably in love with me, infact usually the exact opposite, someone very controllably in love with me. Though, i'm sure if someone was hopelessly in love with me, I wouldn't be upset by it? I'd be sad for them, I might feel guilty for how I might have had a hand in them getting there, I might get fed up of them telling me constantly but thats hopefuly all. Still, I guess you never know till you've been there.

I guess I need to gain more control of my heart. Though somehow I hate that idea, because I believe a heart needs to be free. Then its brining me saddness and worse its bringing upset to the one I love.

I want to appologise to the person I love, I hate that I hurt you by loving you. I hate that the very thing that makes you so great to be with is the very thing which makes me fall for you over and over and ultimately force us appart.

Its hard to try and control ones own heart, because of that internal feeling when you censor your heart that you could be losing something (even though, its probably not true.. well at least I hope its not true.. and thats what drives me mad. Turns an ordinarily extreemly secretive person into someone living anonymously online... its therapy).

Life changes us...

2009-06-19T04:03:00.001-07:00

Theres times in life when things happen to make changes that ripple through ones whole being leaving you no longer the person you once where. Some may observe this is happening every day, that each day we become someone new as we live, learn, adapt. What I am talking about though is that sense you get in yourself when you've become someone else. Someone new (and hopefully wiser).

Life phases, prehaps thats the word. I wonder how many times this can happen in a life time.

Its been implicitly noted that my blog is a bit self involved. Well, it is my blog, lol. Also, I don't feel I have the right to blog about others and have my work for writing productive articles. So, this trend is likely to continue. Fortunately, no one reads my blog, excepting me so thats ok :).

I am feeling a little self involved at the moment though. Friends are marrying off, having children and generally fully occupied living life. Whilst I am pretty fully occupied trying to arrange my life (and also creating new exicting software) I'm also pretty alone. I have great friends and I love them all but theres not quite the right kinds of challenges in my life right now (but plenty of the wrong kind). I'm so far behind the "crowd" that I can only see the tops of heads. Still, I have 3 best friends, each so very dear to me, and the last the most. Actually, I have about 6 ammazing friends all of whom deserve that title in some way, but in fact there are 3 who are beyond all others. One whos so irriplacable, so needed, that I go slightly mad in knowing it and do stilly things and upset her *sigh*.

I've not actually told any of my friends about my blog, it really became an anonymous outlet for aspects of my life which feel like they need working out/writing down. I told one online friend about it the early days before I decided to just blog everything and I am not sure that was the best of ideas as I want this to remain largely annonymous.

I'm so happy.. if I don't think too much.

2009-06-15T10:17:00.001-07:00

I just talked with my life love, I was so happy to talk to her, so pleased she called :). I know she doesn't see me the same way as I see her, but, somehow I know she did/would have (see earlier post). Talking with her really does make me so blissfully happy, its incredible how much she makes me smile! If I can just keep myself from thinking about the bigger picture and just enjoy that feeling I can be happy and enjoy our relationship simply for what it is (and not get sad about what it is not and would seem to never be). Its so hard to do that though.

I am trying to imagine an analogy to compare it to. Though none feels quite to capture its uniquness. Though, I could imagine it might feel a bit like how a dehydrated person would feel to sight a single glass of of really fresh and pure water. If he doesn't think too much, doesn't think how he can't have that water really, doesn't think how the water is about to be spilled and lost to him if he can live in that moment, that perfect moment he can be happy without being able to drink.

I want to live in that moment. Actually, I want to drink and to always drink and forever have that drink there by my side... but thats thinking thats the road to unhappyness right now.

In some ways, I am lucky, because I get to sip from the glass. Get to feel the joy of drinking, I just not allowed to have it as my drink. Its like someone offering just a sip of their beer, its enough to make you want the drink, but you know its theirs.

If I could drink down that water, I would love and enjoy every sip and gulp, I would never want to be without that particular pure water again.

Now, I need to distract myself... I just had a perfect moment, I want to hold onto that moment like I failed to hold onto it when it mattered (or, in proper fact, I held on so tight the moment poped right out of my grasp and away from me). So now, I just need to celebrate that perfect moment in my mind, replay the joy of her company in my head live in the moment until another can come to replace its perfection, until she calls again.

I know many people will see me as a bit of an idiot, deluded, stupid.... but I for the first time know true love in my heart. I wish I had understood this from the beginning, and maybe I would not have had to learn those lessons.

DoggyDude

Update: One day later and i'm thinking again... oh god am I thinking. I hate all the people in the world who chaotically go around just kissing everyone until they happen upon someone they end up loving (double for people who do the same with sleeping). I hate me more for not being able to relax when i'm in love, for being so afraid that any chance there may have been for love is lost.

I appeal to anyone whos found someone they love, have faith in your heart, don't have doubts that they might not love you. Be confident, be strong, and if things go wrong then, then they where never meant to be.

Pinball Addict

2009-06-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

About 2 years ago I bought Gottlieb Pinball Classics for my PSP. I have to say that this was a great purchase and well worth the money. Two years later and i've got one Table Goal to complete, and it looked almost impossible. The table was called "Central Park" and the goal was "Win 5 or more credits". It seemed like the way to do this was to rack up the bonus until you lit the special light then hit that target 5 times. For many weeks I tried to do this goal with only three balls before giving up and accepting the 5 balls it wanted me to have ;).

So, one day, I won 4 credits... then lost the ball, but then I won the "match" to give me five credits.. I felt the sense of acheivement (and the sense of how much life i've wasted *lol*) but then, it didn't award me the goal. I came up with a theory why it hadn't given me the goal (maybe it doesn't count the "match" credit) and played again, this time winning exactly 5 credits just as I lost the ball. No goal awarded :(. Some time later, I had a godly go where I won 11 credits. I wooped and celebrated, this was sure to be the winner... no goal >.<. So, I came up with a new theory, I had 999 credits by this time, prehaps it was not counting the gained credits because there was no room? so I went to the gambling table and bet all my credits on a sure loser. Tried again, won again, didn't award the goal (but did suddenly put me back on 999 credits again). Wondered if there had been a saving bug, so, lost all my money again, saved the game... turned off the PSP and reloaded, made sure I had no credits and began to play. Won 4 credits and the match again... returned to 999 credits AND NO GOAL! >.<

So, for anyone else owning this game, I think there is a bug which prevents you attaining the table goal for "Central Park" if it is the last goal you have to make (or possibly at all?). My one final hope is that "maybe" just "maybe" the credits need to be attained by score alone (and not by hitting the special)... i'll let you know.

Incidently:

I've now deleted my game data and I am attempting to finish Central Park earlier.

Its useful to note that completing the table goal on "Elderado" gives free play on Central Park. Though after furthur thought it seems that it just awards the unlockables in a set order and is independant of which goals are completed.

Well, I have finished (and been awarded) all the table goals and I am disapointed that none of them unlock the tilt feature (oh, I know I can buy the code, but I like to win my unlockables).

Also, for the first time I completed the Gottlieb Challenge (and really trounced it too) and was bitterly disapointed to discover that you get excactly the same message for completing ALL the tables in the challenge you do if you only completed one then failed. What a crock!

So that was very disapointing. Its such a shame, Pinball Classics is such a great game, but it falls down on just a few minor points. I've been having my ball fall out of the table more offten these days. Its happend three times in the last 30 games. Thats like a 1 in 10.

Still, for all my bitching, its a fantastic game (indeed its the devils own game because I can't stop playing it lol).

Why Windows Media Player is Crap

2009-05-31T05:01:00.001-07:00

Prelude: I've read this back and this article does not represent the "every day" DoggyDude. This is a pressure release rant which I enjoyed writing just to get out some of the frustrations caused by poor product design. Please read it taken with a grain of salt, but enjoy, hope you might relate.

I am SO sick of Windows Media Player!

Heres the shortlist of reasons:

DRM Bullshit,
Atrocious interface
Spyware Mentality
Bloat

I think i'll just list some of its failings:

1) Cannot control Brightness/Contrast on all Media (Especially annoying when watching DVD's).
2) The ability to control the video stream is dependant on the media (how stupid is that, its all Video! If its not streaming of a server you damb well should always be in control).
3) One watches a Movie, exits the player to do something else (say a call comes in), one reloads media player and press play again. What do you expect to happen? I certainly don't %*£&$ expect it to play my b**ody music library from a random location when I don't have shuffle enabled).
4) How many £"(%*& executables does a media player need! Not "$%*(&£ 3 thats for sure (wmplayer.exe, mfpmp.exe, wmpnscfg.exe).

Yes. I know what they are all reportedly for:

wmplayer.exe - Main Application
mfpmp.exe - Media Foundation protected Pipeline (DRM?)
wmpnscfg.exe - Network Sharing Component

If I want network sharing i'll $£&(£"&$ enable Network Sharing.. don't force me to have it loaded! If you have to have DRM £"*($& integrate it already! or at least put it in a £*(%!@ DLL.

5) Stupid interface (which is never in the right place at the right time)... what the "£%(@ kind of stupid tabs are:

Now Playing,
Library,
Rip,
Burn,
Sync and
Media Guide!

Where is the design? Where was the thought? A clue, NONE!

I loaded the £"$*(% player, I KNOW what is playing, i'm listening to or waching it (well I would expect to be). Library? If I wanted a £"$(&* libarary i'd use a database! >.<. I just want to play my media (I didn't want a Media Library, and even if I did, i'd want it to be an addin). Rip? Rip! Stop !"£%@ trying to be cool, your supposed to be a professional company Microsoft! Use something normal like Copy, Duplicate, Replicate or something (If I wanted to use something "cool" i'd buy a £%(&*ing iPod or a Mac). I want easy to use, I want purpose, I want well designed (in short, I want traditional Microsoft product). Burn? Are we trying to commit arson? NO! Write to CD, Save... Output to CD.. even if you have to use burn. Why the heck is is jumbled in with all those other different options?

6) No matter what options you configure for Windows Media Player it always trys to interact with the internet! Always! >.<. If your not running either a decient software firewall or a hardware one you would never know its reporting on you. I can't say I know what its reporting, but it IS reporting (often). Whatever it is reporting, there is NO reason or excuse for it.

I'm in a very bad mood with Media Player!

Imagine loading Notepad and it offering you script editing, Visual Basic, OCR, text sharing, mobile notes and sticky notes... then imagine that when you load it, it has a menu system like "Banner, Swat, Text List, Mobile Comments, Visual Basic".. what the HELL! You would never load it, but because Media Player is "integrated" I use the damn thing. Clearly, i'm a fool for doing this, but that makes whoever layed out Media Player clearly a moron.

Why not have the main tabs:

Audio,
Video,
Live,
Network,
Manage

Then have sub-tabs

Audio:

Sounds,
Music

Video:

Videos (Clips),
Movies

Live:

Tv,
Radio,
On Demand,
Service

Network (leading to the same menus without network option):

Streaming Media

Manage:

Just opens up the right folder view, configured as desired... with maybe a side pane so when u click on a file you can lookup its details and store it nearby (or linked to the file).

Its not hard! You've done the hard part, now make it good.

ps. Thanks for all the comments :) and its fine to vent, feel free.. I feel your pains!

Motivation

2009-05-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

Motivation is something lacking my my life right now. I have had motivation in the past but enevitably I always reached a point which leaves me feeling "why bother!".

I don't think the motivation goes away? What I susspect is that I come to a realisation that the activity itself becomes pointless (I think this needs an example):

I've always been motivated to "be the best" at what I do, excelling in my field drives me. At first, this seems like a great situation! In time though, I came to realise, life rarely rewards / appriciates "the best" people think they want "the best", but utimately what people demonstrate to really want (life has shown to me) is the best for them e.g:

The Cheapest to obtain,
The Fastest to obtain and
The Easiest to obtain.

People seem to feel they want the best, but, there are always conditions. I came to realise that there is no point putting-in the effort to make something that I know / feel to be the best because it is so rarely appriciated / rewarded. I found people would praise and reward me for doing something quickly, but would rarely praise me for doing something well / properly. It seems I can either be the best and be unappriciated / under rewarded, or I can make money and have quality of life.

That motivation leads to a depressing conclusion.

I need to find a motivation that I can live by which is compatible with life? but I seem to have the worst combination of character flaws and virtues which preventing / exclude this goal.

I guess what i'm learning from writing this out is that being "the best" is not a sustainable motivation.

The nature of life

2009-05-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Life is funny. If you get things right, for long enough early on then you have room to get things very wrong later on for longer. However, conversely, if you get little things wrong early on, no amount of rights can entirely counter those early mistakes.

This of course is a generalisation of the highest order. When you look at life, there are all sorts of variations out there. However, in the things I find to be important in life this holds true. This does beg the question, do I hold these things important because they are the very things I cannot atain due to the nature of those mistakes?

Honestly speaking I don't know the answer.

I know that very few people make me happy and right now only one soul completes me (Alex).

Still, at least my whole life hasn't been a mistake (not entirely).. though at the moment things are a real mess.

Modern business practices are a millstone to quality!

2009-05-14T07:57:00.001-07:00

The mantra of all modern business is buy buy low sell high. This is after all is the modern basis of profit. The problem is that this mantra does not necessarily lead to profit for all, and, infact, usually leads to negative profit for the consumer! This is the fundimental problem with the modern concept of profit.

There are two types of profit (as I consider it), there is the type of profit where all parties involved profit (positive profit) and the type where the person selling the goods profits, at the expense of the person buying the goods (negitive profit). The problem is, modern business does not seem to really care wether profit is a positive or negitive profit so long as it is a profit to them.

See my point yet?

Positive and Negative Profit

Now, I can think of lots of arguments around this topic, the most obvious being that "positive profit is an illusion". Well, lets give an example of positive profit (just to prove it exists):

Person "A" can't cook but loves to sew and has an abundance of clothes. Person "A" doesn't want to learn to cook, but person "A" wishes to eat.
Person "B" has a surplus of food (he/she loves to cook) and the food is of low value to them because they can't use it, but person "B" hates to sew.
Person "B" can exchange food for person "A"'s clothes. It always leads to a positive profit because "A" receives something they need and so does "B" and both only lose what they do not need / require.

This is of course describing a bater system. Though, in theory, money can equal this system by someone external to the two parties (fair and impartial) setting a price for both goods based on effort put in to produce the goods.

So, this is prositive profit. It does exist. The profit here is for all, even if only one side is receiving goods and the other money (e.g. in the case of person "A" buying what he needs with money.. in theory person "B" can at a later date use said money to buy clothes).

What money allows is for a delay between "selling" and "receiving true compensation".

If I came to you today and said "If you give me that egg, i'll give you this note saying i'll work for 1 hour in exchange which you can use at any time to get 5 hours work from me" and you though that was a fair exchange for your egg so took the paper. If then you didn't have a job for me for 6 months, you would not expect in 6 months time 1 hour to last 1 minuet instead of 60!

This is what happens with money though! The value of it is constantly changing. If you have one pound today, it might buy you an egg, but in the future, it might buy you two eggs? or more likely half an egg. For the same amount of work provided. Therefore, money is a huge enabler of negitive profit!

This is how people who control the money remain "rich" and the population remain "poor". Whilst at the same time, keeping the population motivated (in theory) to work and collect money. It does mean that people within the population can become relatively richer than their neighbour by the amount of work applied.

Money does have many positive aspects (after all it needs them), but, modern business constantly tries to exploit the negative aspects of capital. This is "because discuised negitive profit is an increased profit to the seller/business because they receive both their own share of the profit and the consumers share as well". Not every business deals "directly" with negitive profit, it is of course obvious that you would not want to deal with a company offering a negitive profit (once you are aware of it). So, the negative profit is normally applied in a fashion which makes it either "indetectable" without the full facts or applies it internally within the business (in the form of unfair sharing of rewards). Many instituation hide behind the complexity of money as a way to ensure that negitive profit continues to flow in the correct direction (to them).

Companies can also themselves be the "victim" of negitive profit (for example "Piracy" results in a negative profit for businesses). Companies can "choose" negative profit in the short term (with themselves as the victim) in order to recieve a larger negative profit in future (with themselves as the victor). This can be a valid way of attracting new customers, but at the end of the day no matter who is the victim of negative profit it always has a negative effect! Two negative profits, distributed equally in both directions does not lead to an equal positive profit!

Why? because whilst whichever party is suffering from the negative effects they are bound to pass on those effects to who they deal with or just suffer themselves.

So, business is always trying to pay less for more.. this either leads to people being "ripped off" (wether they are consious of it or not) or to people the quality of products and services falling as people trie to undercut one another for the business (again, leading to negative profit all around).

Too tired to explain it in more detail, or go into all my considerations... post comments please!

God I miss her

2009-05-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

I miss Alex so much!

It's been around 4 days since we last talked, not long in the terms of a normal friend, but feels like forever when it comes to Alex. Whilst I am "mentaly" accepting that she has decided to keep looking for her "Mr Right" I am still living and reliving those two weeks where I made every possible stupid mistake to guarentee we could never become anything more than friends (and even lost some of that friendship for it).

There are bright points to all this depression. Alex is still the most ammazing friend I have, one with whom I share more of her true heart than any other I've meet (and I'd wager, "alive"). If it where not for how close we where from the start, then I think I wouldn't have been able to do anything to make a difference (but, thats not how it was, was it :(). It was the closeness we shared from the day we meet that made there mistakes to be made (or to put it another way, it was that closeness/deep connection that overrode the impossibility of a relationship for her). People can argue that, if someone doesn't like you enough in the romantic sense then eventually you will make the mistake that ends it. What I've learned is that, whilst it is more difficult to win a partner (in this case girl) who is not as attracted to you as she is to other men it is not impossible (as long as she is attracted to you and you can demonstrait to her your love in terms of true love). It is just a case then of proving to her your worth it (in terms she will appriciate and understand) before she finds a reason to not like you.

The person she is seeing now knew that much better than I... and, in the unlikely event he didnt I actually warned him not to make the same mistakes as me (hes a decient guy and Alex has told me she liked him and I love Alex so I will always put her first) . Sometimes it sucks to be a decient person, but i'm glad I am (not saying i'm perfect or great, but just, decient [though I try to be great ;)]).

We used to talk every day Alex and I. Sometimes we would talk for 8 hours at a time at the weekend. She used to fall asleep on the phone to me and I loved that she was that relaxed and happy in my company. I am suffering serious withdrawals, it wasn't what we said, it was just the presence of her, she always made me feel so loved. Though, she never claimed to love me... it was the way she made me feel. I hope I knew how to make her feel loved back :(.

Well, theres nothing I can do now. If I phone her, she won't call back for days, and I'll feel worse because I will feel rejected. I have texted her, but she never used to text me back anyway (excepting some very perfunctionary ones and the occasional panic if she didn't hear from me). I know she will call in time, she still needs me, just not the way she used to.

On the flip side

I guess I know all this too because of the situation with my ex-girlfriend *sigh*, I loved her so much when we initially got to know one another. When we got together, I found quite a number of serious points on which we where entirely incompatible, but, at the time I knew I loved her and this was the person I loved "we could work out anything", at this point, I firmly believe that if she had shown me that kind of love back, we would be together today (even she has said as much). She didn't, she ripped me apart (after first putting on a face of understanding leaving me "comfortable" to tell things like they where). It was that "betrayal" that put the first knife into my love for her, and then the number of times she crushed my love into the dirt and made me beg not to lose her finally made the part of me that loved her hide forever (or at least, take a form which meant we didn't need to be so close). Its more complex than just that of course, it always is, I made a ton of mistakes there too, but we both learned together.

My mistake was to feel that "because she loves me, she will understand" love and understanding are very seperate, you lucky if you have a partner which gives you both. My mistake was to not to realise how I could hurt her feelings. So, in a way, we where both as bad as one another. I did several things which "upset" the relationship too. In the end, we both have to take equal blame I guess. I just understand my own pains better, because i'm me.

So, given all that, I know that if things had been "different" (less stupid mistakes on my part, and more understanding on hers) then I might still be "in love" with my ex-girlfriend, instead of just loving her as someone who has been important in my life. She is still is an important friend, infact, I'd say shes still is a best friend (in terms of being there if I need her) *happy* which is probably where it should have remained from the beginning (oh, btw, she lives 22,000 miles away *lol* so we definitely not still together, just friends there for each other).

Seventeen Important lessons to learn before you meet the love of your life

2009-05-06T04:07:00.001-07:00

I have learned leassons of love the hardest way possible, after my last post I've decided I should share the do's and dont's I have learned through this experience in the hope that maybe I can save someone else from losing the love of their life (I dedicate this to Alex, the love of my life):

Seventeen Important Lessons:

Don't: Always think about what you don't have in the relationship.
Do: Always value what you have in the relationship.

Don't: Describe your emotional need of your desired partner.
Do: Show how much you need them by the actions you take to be with them and to consider them.

Don't: Fear that they don't know how much you care.
Do: Continuiously take actions in your life which shows them how you care. Call them (though not too offten, say at least twice a week at first). Bring or send them little things you know they like (show how you know what they like).

Don't: Get jelous over other people who pay them attentions, even (and this is very important) if they return them.
Do: Simply be there, stay with them through whatever and hopefuly be the one who they choose to leave with.

Don't: Judge your own worth by their actions or present feelings towards you.
Do: Be confident, be paitient, be attentive and most importantly be yourself (not who you become based on how they act.. this is very important to understand).

When I meet Alex for the second time, she already meant so much to me, I wanted everything to be perfect. Since I wanted everything to be perfect, I tried, subconsiously to interperate her every action or emotion and adapt myself to make her most comfortable. I cannot stress enough that "This always has the complete opposite effect". Instead of making her comfortable, I made her uncomfortable and irritated (even annoyed by me). It pains me to think how I acted now. I suffered from being my emotions, not myself. People don't fall in love with someones emotion, they fall in love with people and personality, whilst we are living by our emotions we fail to be ourselves. I am not advocating being completly detached, but I am advocating tight emotional control until such a time as she shows she needs you to be emotional (*and this is important, you need to be open to emotion but under control... this is made very difficult with Alcohol involved... I recommend that you don't go out drinking with someone your crazy for until shes also crazy for you).

Don't: Fear your attentions will be rejected.
Do: Reserve your attention until you are both relaxed and happy, or when she shows signs of needing support. In the second occasion never be afraid or worried about giving a supporting cuddle (to not give a hug when its needed is far worse for any relationship than one being rejected). Always restrict yourself to support when it is the second case! Unless she changes the situation.

Don't: Try and adapt to what she wants of you.
Do: Try to be respectful of their wishes, curtious, paitent and understanding (though, you should always be this IMHO). Within the bounds of yourself, be flexible but also firm.

I've realised that people don't really know what they really want, people know history, what they have enjoyed and what they think they will enjoy.. but people don't know from moment to moment what they truely want. It is defined by continuing experience. There are some things people have, from their experience, already defined they definitely don't want though. Unless you can outweight that existing experience you can't overcome such things. So, my point is, don't be a complete pushover but make things enjoyable.

Don't: Stay too long in her company at a single session (unless they desperately want you to).
Do: Leave her when you are both still enjoying each others company. Have a good reason for going, sleep, food, previous engagement, appointment or whatever (don't just up and leave them cold). Let them know whenever you leave how much you have enjoyed the day... if they ask you to stay longer, unless this request is heartfelt and pleading just say your really sorry, look how you feel (harder than it sounds, stupidly) and say goodbye. If they really want you to stay, never just flat stay, make them aware what you will be missing out on (not in a way to make them guilty) just in a way that makes them feel your staying only because they mean so much to you.

Don't: Talk tabout their ex (even if you feel you can add something).
Do: Listen to them talk, you need to understand, sympathise if appropiate, relate where possible and gently try to steer the conversation away from the topic. This one is the hardest to do, because this will be a very sensitive subject for most women (if they where ultimately rejected in some way). If you can't understand a person with the people from their past, they its not a good sign for your future together. Thats not to say you have to understand, but you need to at least understand the way they see it and feel they are right.

I can't talk much about my personaly experiences on this point because I love Alex and it involves her life and I am already stretching things by even mentioning her first name. So I will just say what I have and move on.

Don't: Establish yourself as a "best friend". Once you become a "friend she can't live without" she may stop thinking of you in romantic terms, you risk always being seen as a friend (risk her feeling that what you share together already is so great, why risk things going wrong by having a romantic relationship? more would be to risk loosing too much?). This is a sad but true fact.
Do: Be her best friend (because you want to of course, after all this is the love of your life, you should be hers and if you aren't well, think again about wether your looking at the right partner), be there for her. Always keep that "up in the air feeling" about the definition of your relationship. Don't define it, live it. Giving things names too soon can spoil things (or trying to be something too soon).

Don't: Hesitate if she goes to kiss you. Hesitation is a killer for romance, no matter the real reason for the hesitation (which you will know) unless shes already massively into you (unlikely if its early days) the doubt of why you hesitated could cause her to doubt her own feelings!
Do: If a "kiss moment" occurs, do kiss her, no matter what shes said prior to this moment. Kiss her even if shes previously said "Never Kiss me" (as long as she goes to kiss you, for whatever reason [excepting of course something obviously ment only effectionately, like if you just found her lost cat or something]). It is important to note here that your never to force a kiss on anyone. The situation I am talking about here is if she goes to kiss you but then possibly hesitates herself or looks unsure and goes to withdraw. If you have the chance, kiss her at this moment (and make a quick one, you don't want to end up with her fending you off). If she does anything to truely prevent the kiss (hands up in front of face, looks petrified of you).... you should just smile at her reasuringly and with love, reach for her hand and draw her close, or possibly lead her to dance. Then, wait until she is relaxed and go to kiss her in the same way she tried to kiss you except be confident.
Do: Let her control the kiss. If you think she wants you to kiss her, move slowly but obviously to kiss her. If she recoils from a kiss you are initiating, don't ever look put out, look "disapointed" but smile and if possible squeeze her hand as you withdraw. Don't be offended. See what she says.

"It is better to kiss her and for her to tell you it is wrong, than to not kiss her and for her to feel rejected or unattractive to you". This is not to say you should not respect her wishes, this is assuming there is opportunity. A "No" is a probably "No", if she still leaves herself open for a kiss. Watch her body language. You can make the first kiss, but, if it is rejected, then after that it is entirely down to her to initiate any other kisses. Just make sure if there was a moment for kissing, you kiss.

Don't: Be over gentlemanly. Don't always wait for permission from her.
Do: Be respectfull and mindfull of her wishes. Be open and honest, not so much that your rude though. It is better to show her how you feel /the way you see her and risk her not being happy by it than for her to think that you don't see her as a beautiful, sexual creature.

There is a very fine line to draw here, and its not an easy one to walk. It is equally bad to force your attention onto someone who doesn't want it as it is to not show it to someone who is unsure how they see you. Its made much harder by the fact that most girls are not sure what they want, so it means you can't just listen to what they say. Most importantly, kissing a girl you like despite her saying you should not is not wrong. Doing anything more against her wishes is criminal. If in doubt, ask her if she will hold you, if she will / does then see where it goes from there (just let her do any esculating).

I was so scared to offend Alex that I kept my distance. I was a complete gentleman and I regret it so much. She wanted to hold me, wanted to be close to me, wanted someone... but didn't know what to think and err'd on the side of, "No". If I had just relaxed and cuddled her, held her, let her know I loved her things may well have been very different today. I didn't because she was so afraid, and I thought it was because she didn't like me or want to be with me. I now know it was because she didn't know what she wanted. Was playing safe. She did like me. Though, that died because I was too nice.

People might have lots of "opinions" here, but I am telling you confirmed fact. I can't go into details, but I know this is true.

Don't: Buy too much into what they feel they want when its not in the romantic interests of you two as a couple.
Do: Listen to what they want, understand it in terms of the girl you know and love (this all is only for the girl you love truely). Support that which is good and you see yourself. If they fancy someone else, contradict them in a playful way, make light of the person. Say "What him?" (but with a smile and make it clear your teasing). Always place yourself as "superior" to whomever it is. Say something funny, like "well then, I'm in with a great chance" and don't take whatever she says next to heart.

Don't: Ever "back down" about your feelings. Don't keep pushing them either, but just don't ever show if your hurt or think you will never have her. Your doubt will become hers.
Do: Let her know your feelings in an unambigious way. If you make a mistake and say something ambigious, don't get flustered, wait a little to see what she says. Maybe next time, let her know more clearly. Once your certain she understands (or if she gets impaitent) let it go. Don't bring it up again until either she does or months have gone by.

Don't: Ever be afraid to ask her on a date!
Do: Make sure you make at least one occasion spent together in the early days of knowing her, "a date". Even if shes not sure she liked you, a date is unthreatening, flattering and establishes intent. If she refuses to go on a date, your in a bit of a sticky situation, however, if she will agree to spend time with you that day just as a friend. Take it. Make it a really great day for her. Next time you see her, ask her on a date again. If she refuses again, ask her if she enjoyed the day spent as friends? see how that goes... keep alternating time spent as friends and asking her on a date.

Don't: Reveal your emotional weaknesses. Don't cry, get insecure, worry (unless its in care for her) or get hurt.
Do: Be emotional with her. Show it though very, very subtly. A frown at the right moment, a sad face. Then try and move on quick. If you can't deal with your emotions there and then, leave it for the day... say you need to go. If she asks you to stay, excuse yourself to the restroom and get it out of your system.

Don't: Overstate your attachment to her. Nor should you let her know how much she means to you too early.
Do: Show her by your actions always, but if your having to say it your either not "acting" enough or not acting in the way she needs. If it is the second case, ask her whats wrong, ask her what you can do, tell her you care and want her to be happy (which I know you will do if you love her).

Another day, Needing a reason to go on

2009-05-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

I seem to be afflicted with the foolish folly of falling in love with people who can't seem to love me back. What gets me the most about this emotional affliction is that it seems that it is very much the way I am when I am in love. When I am in love, I am utterly and completely devoted to that person, which as some people have pointed out is rather insane because until I know that person welcomes that devotion im just hurting myself. Rather effectively.

The point is though, that until someone is ready to feel love for you, loving them will just, like magic, near guarentee the prevention of that love growing (unless introduced very gently over a long time). Though out life i've learned (for myself) that love is like bamboo, it can be used to make houses, it is incredibly strong material when used in the right ways and given time can support almost any weight. However, it is also like bamboo in that when it is young it it very brittle and fragile (this is the age of the love not the people) it has positives aspects in that it bends easily and adapts, but it is also weak in that excessive bending or pushing leads to it becomming broken and unable to grow strong in that particular direction or toward that particular person.

We are all responsible for nurturing the growth of love. Sometimes, like Gardeners we need to stop it growing in certain direction and certain ways. Always growing towards the sun. Unlike gardening, the garden is also growing us.

I have some advice for anyone who thinks they may have found the love of their life (and this is only for the genuine people, players FUCK OFF!). First Relax breath! They probably can be, but the most important things to do are (learned from hard lessons and too late):

1) Be there for the person when THEY need you. No matter why they need you.
2) You must, quickly, find a way to become physically part of their life and a friend (internet dating and phone relationships can be fun and can lead to a relationship, but until your in that other persons life your at constant risk of losing them every day your not there).
3) Establish very early on your intentions and be sure to stick by them (that is to say, tell them just exactly how beautiful, attractive and sexy you find them.. subtly of course!). Also establish that they mean more than that (if they don't mean more than just that to you move on immidiately! your wasting your time and ultimately hurting someone elso who does/will truely love this person for all they are).
4) No matter how they seem, or what they say, how they appear to feel for you.. stick by your own feelings (i'm not saying become a stalker here!!! but I am saying, they will only distract you from your true course. Listen to them of course, but don't take anything too deeply to heart. Whilst they want/seek/accept your company, they want you [no matter what they say. This must also remain unsaid, no one likes it when they know someone is consiously manipulating the situation, I don't, but by not being consious of it myself I may have lost the love of my life]). You need to do this though without being arrogant, know whats right for you, but don't presume whats right for them. Let them decide that at their own pace.
5) Be confident! This is vitally important, don't try and protect your heart by being meek like I did, be confident, know your worth it and show them they are worth you (and only them). Never cry, be a man. This was one of my biggest mistakes with the love of my life, I was so afraid of losing her, I came over so needy and desperate (its a killer for any passion in a relationship).
6) Nurse them through their crushes. They will have them, and they will likely not be you! Espcially if the woman you love is very attractive and your less "traditionally desirable".
7) Let other women like/be with you, but always choose her first. There is something important about her feeling she has "won" you or "taken" you from someone else. This doesn't mean go around flirting with other women! This just means, neither encourage or reject attentions. Excepting of course attentions from her which you should always embrace (no matter what).

Choose very carefull! Don't go around thinking you love someone, or trying to love someone. It can never work (unless by happy coinicidence you where actually destined to truely fall in love).
Love will find you, it will also wait the longest time to do so. You do need to be out and living your life for this of course!

For a long time, people told me "you just know when your in love" and this answer used to "piss me off rotten" because I was like, oh yeh... so how do you tell it appart from just passion? how do you know its going to last etc. Well, this thinking lead me to my previous relationship, which lead me to find out what love really is. Even though my ex told me "its everything or nothing" I didn't belive her and she had her own dobuts about this herself. She, of course, was right.

When your in love, and I mean truely in love, you don't have a single doubt in your mind that this person is the right person for you. Thats not to say that happens from day one (though I guess it could, but would be "dubious" of it if it did possibly?) its something you realise and once you realise it understand there can be noone else for you. If you find this love, and you find it shared, the important thing to do is write down how you both feel, talk about all the things which could go wrong and understand them together and then comitt yourselves to make this feeling be how you forever forward feel, no matter what... to be for all tommorows the way you are together today. Once you can promise that each other, get married. Things will never be perfect and lots of work will be required, but as long as you have that thing to hold onto, and you both are willing to humble yourself to each other, everything will work.

Ok, this turned into a bit of a lecture.

I am just devistated that I learned all this too late. I bent and broke our bamboo we shared together, it wasn't a strong growth and there was a lot of stony ground, but it could have grown so strong if I had known.

Some battles we can never win (love matches not meant to be) but, as long as those shoots of love are tended, they will always grow.

Wishing you never go through what i'm going through,

DoggyDude

Sick with Love

2009-05-04T21:47:00.001-07:00

I feel so sickly this morning I could almost vomit. I am not medically i'll, I feel this way because I just talked with the girl I have fallen so deeply in love with (Alex) and listened to her describe a friend who she lives with as though he where an inescapable inevitibility of them becomming a couple. The thought of her not becomming my life partner, my wife, is making me sick to my soul.

She is the first true love of my life, I say the first true love because, with her, for the first time, having got to know her, I am completely and utterly certain only one person will do for me and that the person is her in particular. She knows my feelings, at least, i've told her how I feel, but she doesn't want to return them in the same way. I can't be without her though, even if I have to feel sick this way for the rest of my life, and worse when she is properly together with him, I need her as a part of my life.. I can't imagine life without her.

I messed up so many things when we meet for the second time, so many ways in which I made her scared of me (my feelings being too strong, too quickly). So many things which might have made such a difference. I need her like I need oxygen in the air to breath (I feel like I am choking in a very thin atmosphere between breaths of her), I need her like I need light to see (I can't see life without her) and I need to be with her, whatever the cost. I need help!

I am still so glad of her, even though she is moving slowly and seemingly unstoppably towards the person who can be with her every day (I live 9 hours travel away). I can't need her less, I could't ever need anyone else more, she needs me too, but not as much as I need her it seems. This last sentence would seem to prove me to be a needy person, but its only her I need (oh, and a new job, but thats not an emotional need).

I feel so helpless, only by being there could I change events in motion, but being there is so hard without the resources and I guess more importantly without the demand for me to be there (he wasn't demanded, but he was there and he was paitent, I am not impatient but I am emotionally demanding in manor when around her. She would always like to see me though, but she could never ask it somehow.

All I can do right now is feel so very sick, but try and look for a good job which will give me the resource I need to be with her. Though, even if I find that, the inevitable might already be unstoppable *shivers*.

Say NO to Symantec!

2009-04-18T06:42:00.001-07:00

Many years back I began recommending Symantec Anti-Virus solutions to my clients. At the time it had the simplest interface and live update made keeping on top of virus definitions a snap. I took my own advice and for many years I was happy with the solution provided by Norton Internet Security.

However, today for me my oppinion of the company has changed. I would now not recommend using symantec and I'm here today to cover why:

I used to recommend Symantec for the following reasons (and, mostly they are still reasons to recommend their software today):

Simple to use
Flexible (provides for both a novice and for an expert solution tailored for each)
Informative (gives plenty of details and keeps you aware of what you want to know and suppresses what you do not).
Reliable

As I say, many of the above are still true today. The one thing that has really changed though is the fourth point. I no longer trust their software and have found it more unreliable of late.

I purchased Norton Internet Security 2007 towards the end of that year, I installed it on my Windows Vista Ultimate machine and found all the familiar features to be there. Towards the end of my licenced anti-virus updates period I received a "free" upgrade to the 2009 package (seemed very nice) which installed without much fuss.

After this, I ran into a number of situations where NIS claimed bo no longer be working. I ran the Live Update on two of those occasions and this appeared to resolve the issue (this was with the Anti-Virus portion of the suite). This happened a total of 3 times, but each time live update resolved the issue excepting on the third occasion where I needed to download a patch from Symantec to resolve the issue. Whilst this was all mildly irritating, it wasn't too onerous of itself.

About 1 week before my licence expired, I had need to use system restore to reverse my configuration (after a failed/unwanted software installation). System restore completed as expected (very good) and the system started back up. At this time NIS said it had been corrupted and refused to start the AV component (though the firewall continued to work). After some faffing around with Live Update I managed to restore the A/V system to a working order.

Time passes... The licence expired... now the expected behaviour from any AV product when the licence expires is that it will continue to protect you as it would have protected you on the date the update licence expired. This simply prove out to be the case with NIS! The AV component broke about a week after the licence expired and of course, the fix involved a live update (which would necessitate a licence renewal). It happened that at this time I wasn't prepared to renew my licence (given the problems i'd had) but was annoyed to find that it had more or less crippled the A/V engine (meaning I didn't have even the protection I would have been afforded before the licence expired). The firewall portion still functioned so I "forgave" this shortcomming (and, no I didn't contract a virus).

Time passes again and NIS informs me that I can either renew my licence (re-activate the product) or it will no longer protect me full stop. This is completely unacceptable behaviour in a purchased product. I don't mind warnings that i'm not protected against the latest threats, as this is a fact.. I don't mind them even nagging me at my chosen interval about renewing my licence... but I find it completely unacceptable to take away purchased functionality at the end of the update licence (which was only for updates.. not for use of the product).

So, I have not uninstalled Symantec and looked around for a solution that will not take back paid for features.

Sadly, I have to admit though that Symantec still offer one of the best Anti-Virus products so I can't completely eliminate it as a possible recommended business solution (though, I will push the shortcommings). However, products like Nod32 also offer an excellent solution and whilst lacking some of the simplicity of the NIS suite it provides excellent anti-virus detection and prevention and does not remove functionality if the licence expires (however, as its name implies, it is only really a 32 bit solution, then NIS still has many 32bit components).

I (for my personal useage) have chosen to replace the NIS firewall (previously much liked) with the Comodo Internet Security solution. This free offering from Comodo is a true 64 bit solution (also available in 32bit) and appears to provide an excellent firewall and basic anti-virus services. They also offer a professional solution which I plan to upgrade to myself should the solution prove stable on my system.

Tell me what to want?

2009-04-17T11:28:00.001-07:00

Somehow, I always seem to enjoy things more when external events has brought whatever it is about. Why is this?

I think that Marketing has become so important to business and financial success that it has almost made commercialism a relgion. Adverts are forever telling us what we want, what we need, what we can't do without.. and even trying to make us want, need, crave whatever product it is the company has to sell. On top of this, Universities and other learning and commercial establishments have grown marketing into an science and because its the science of making people wish to buy whatever they wish to sell, its also the science of human psycology (or, in case of point, the manipulation of wants and needs).

In the early days, I'm sure this was all more or less innocent. I think it probably involved looking at the market, figuring what people did actually want and showing them how the product would provide that. Thats fine (and good). However, then I think it probably evolved to tapping into our sense of excitement over something new and different by showing how the product could change our lives (and therefore replace the existing item in our lives). This was the beggining of what I like to call "the road to consumerism".

I think the problem simply speaking is that marketing ran out of "ordinary" and "ethical" ways to sell new products. They where no longer actually required. Yet, the business still wanted to sell them us anyway! So started the era of manipulation using marketing.

I've grown up with this phenomenon pervading all the media in my life. Worse, i'm of the TV generation which brings media into the home in a way not before possible. The second generation to have television at least in part define my life. Worse for me as I bought into the media in a big way!

Each advert telling me I should be unhappy with what I have and that I would be happy again if I got that product (cut in a 1000 different descuises).

I wonder if it hasn't left me deficient in knowing what I actually want?... I always seem to want to be told what I want. In some ways. I also never seem to stay happy (though, that could be partly just the human condition).

I'm not saying I don't have my own mind. What I am saying is i've been manipulated in so many subitle ways and for so long and in so many forms by all media that now I don't feel confident that what I want is what I want? Yes, I know, that sounds somewhat mental lol.

I am a fairly stubborn person, I have always been fairly specific in what I wanted... but what I wanted has been defined my whole life in a large part by market forces. These days we are all products of marketing in some form.

Even religious groups have become little more thank marketing bodies. Pusing their religions views as "the best", "the one", "the only"... selling their ideas..

Sopism lives. Its just gone corprate!

Message to Nowhere

2009-04-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not really expecting this to be read. So why am I writing it? Well, i'm writing it for me. Then why am I publishing it? Well, why not!

I've come to a point in my life where I've realised that i've probably wasted over half of it trying to stay out of sight. I hate attention, I loath celebrity and i'm no fan of fame. So, whats changed?

Well, I guess I realised a couple of things:

Nobody really cares / is interested (woo),
Anyone who might would have never have know I existed without this (by the way, i'm not looking for someone to care, thanks you if you do anyway),
Whats the point in recording anything if its never read.

So, based on this, why not...

I think what bugs me the most about life at the moment is that I have a huge hole in my life, the person who had proved to completely and utterly fullfill me (thus completely identifiying and revealing this hole when she was found not in my life) can't be my other half, which leaves me unwhole. Simple huh.

Funilly, whilst that is a real and on going pain in my life (understated) its not what is really bugging me! What really bugs me is that all the major religions seem to claim to be the solution to this "life hole" issue >.<. Thats what bugs me! What really gets under my skin though is that i'm pretty sure thats not the case! However, I can't actually definitively say it is not or disprove it in any way so am left with this nagging sense of "well, I could be wrong? but I don't think so?". That combined with not actually being sure what the "hole" is in the first place, and only being sure of how it gets filled is driving me crazy (if I wasn't there already).

I think that whomever invented religion (and it was a human, not a god or son of god) was one hell of a Phycologist! He/She (probably a she, they are always better at it) really understood human nature and exploited it to the upmost.

Don't get me wrong here, theres alot of good in many religions... sadly that too is also annoying because those religion sometimes leverage that good they hold to justify their ends and its not offten possible to seperate the ends from the goodnesses.

Well, actually, thinking about it... there are groups out there who don't do that (though they are unlike any traditional religion in that they don't claim to be everything and the only way. I mean, they may well be? They simply just don't need to justify themselves except through their own lives and to the the universe or common good). I digress....

Sometimes I wonder if that hole thats in me is the place where all the happyness in the world would dwell. For, when I was so fulfilled by her, I felt whole, completed with happyness.

Hmmm, well, I guess before I meet her I had times when I was happy... had times when I felt full (though, never quite as full). However, before meeting her, I never felt completed?

It can't simply be happyness. You would think other people could make me as happy. You would think I could find other ways to fill that space. Only she will do. Maybe I made her be the only one who could fill it? Then, she came along and filled it without me choosing her to.

Oh, I don't know.... and i'm even boring myself with this thinking ;).

I don't want religion comments, but if anyone has any "personal" and "non-religion specific" answers to whats missing in my whole that takes the shape of she, please do share.

Are Microsoft on the make?

2009-04-14T02:16:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I was browsing the web today (nothing unusual there) and I logged off my hotmail account and was taken to MSN as usual (Microsoft being crafty with their hit counts there, I wonder how many real hits the MSN web site gets? e.g. how many people meant to go there lol).

Well, anyway, Microsofts strategy worked today because I was interrupted by something else and went away without closing my browser window. When I came back MSN was up on the screen and I figured, what the heck, i'm bored, so I read the article which caught my eye and seemed curious.

Well, at some point during my browsing the browser crashed (something to do with Flash) so I re-opened it and went to try and find the article again. So, I visited a couple of MSN sites (and only Microsoft sites) but none of them where the same one that appears on hotmail log out (frustrating). I was about to, for the first time ever, deliberately logout of hotmail just to visit MSN and find and finish reading the article when I noticed that a new browser tab had been opened on my behalf in the browser window I was about to close (not opened by me).

Curious (since my browser had just crashed and re-loaded whilst browsing MSN) I opened it up. It was pointing at "Microsoft Live Search" and it had automatically entered the search criteria of "HDTV" and performed the search.

Now, firstly, I never use Microsoft Live Search (Google is truely the best, and not an ad whore like the others!) and secondly, I didn't clicked anything that remotely might have justified this outcome.

This is deeply concerning, are Microsoft getting paid money for people searching using Live Search for terms like HDTV? Are Microsoft trying to fake usage of their search engine to bost their market position? are Microsoft in fact "on the make"? its hard to see another reason why Microsoft might automatically carry out searches from my system on their search engine (which I might well not try to block at the firewall).

Now, I'll grant you i'm a big fan of Google :D, but, you know why i'm a big fan of google? precisely because they don't perform automatic searches on my behalf in a sneaky fashion >.<

Sick to death of Vista

2009-04-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I have to state that I am a big fan of Microsoft Products in general. I've made my career with Microsoft products and they have, on the whole, overall, been good products... Now, to the point:

I bought a new machine, so I wanted to get myself the latest operating system and Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate seemed the way forward at the time.

Initially, I was impressed, I even touted its new superior features to my Vista-less colleges and made fun of one college who after a month reverted his system to Windows XP (I heavily hinted he was technologically backward). Well, after having used Vista for over a year and a half I am absoloutely sick to death of it and completely don't blame him and actually feel bad for being mean to him!

When I first installed Vista, it was a pleasure to see. It looked great and the 3D and transparancy effects gave my PC a feel of "the wave of the future". This was all great whilst I was only really using my PC as an entertainment centre (Vista is a top notch entertainment center style operating system).

So, during the day I worked using Windows XP in the office (I was running Windows XP, not out of any particular preference over Vista but just becuause my system was already setup and configured exactly the way I liked it and had been for 2 years) and I would come home to play games and relax with Music, Video and DVD using Vista. Life was ok.

Anyway, time moves on. I left my job. I went back to working for myself, so I used my home PC for both work and leisure purposes, and this is how I came to loath Windows Vista!

In my experience, Windows Vista simply does NOT support productivity, and I find it hard to detail why, but the main problem is the Window Vista shell, Windows Explorer!

It fails to be usefull by a number of subitle ommisions or ill conceived additions that serve to frustrate rather than to aid one in whatever task one wishes to perform.

The first frustration is Windows Update. Three times Windows Update has restarted the computer without my permission interrupting and preventing the completion of important running processes. This is unforgivable! It wasn't like these programs where badly written, they correctly responded to the shutdown requests, Windows Vista Update just decided it "knew better". So complaint one, unacceptable loss of work.

The second frustration is the Windows Explorer view. In Windows XP this was simple to configure how you liked the view to be, you could select your columns and save your settings for each folder. You could even set a single global setting for everything. Windows Vista has the same options, but they simply fail to work (yes, i'm on the latests updates, didn't my machine reboot without my permission on three occasions to make sure I was!!! >.<). To qualify exactly how these views fail, I shall list the main faults: 1) Windows attempt to "guess" what view you want when you enter a folder. This guess always happend regardless to wether you have or have not configured the desired view. What this results in is that as you add and remove files from the folder the view can change from whatever view you choose.

2) Configuring a single view for the entire system simply fails to work (or, if you apply the fix mentioned on the web for this, works breifly until you change the content of any folder at which time all folders seem to revert to a single column view).

3) In Windows XP, if you had a large number of files selected then you accidently double click you would be asked if you really meant to double click those files. Under Windows Vista, it just tends to go ahead with the double click!

4) The behavious of the "Backspace" key in Windows Explorer has been changed to be the same as in Internet Explorer. This is stupid because whilst this might be usefull behaviour on the internet it is not desirable in Explorer. So, if I want to return to the "parent" folder from an explorer view in Vista I must navigate to it using the Tree View because the back button will take me to some random location from which I have just come (which is rarely the parent folder).

5) Which brings me to the Folder Tree View in Windows Explorer. Under Windows Vista this tree view does not have any horizontal scroll bar. Just stating that, it sounds like a pettie complaint! However, when you realise that this means if you have a long file path you can't see it without expaning the Tree View Pain you might start to see how irritating this is.

6) There is a bug in internet explorer which means a malformed web page containing Java Script in its header can cause the we page to load over and over again and prevent you exiting Internet Explorer in the normal fashion. So, if you are debuggin web-scripts it is made b***y difficult.

There are many more seemingly minor irritants, which, when experienced as a whole and with a view towards productivity are major drains.

The one thing is odd is that many people have complained about UAC. For me UAC is the one saving grace of Windows Vista! UAC works really well and really helps me take control of the applications running on the PC.

In balance, the technology underlying Windows Vista is sound, and the security improvements are excellent! Its just such a shame it is so poorly aligned to the work environment by stupid bugs in Windows Explorer etc.

Missing Hellgate London

2009-04-10T03:56:00.001-07:00

I miss hellgate *wails*.

I hate that petty squabbling between investors has totally killed any possibility of this great game to become a classic (yeh, sure, it needed work... but the game play element was awesome). Can't these people see that whilst the have their petty battles their losing tons of money and losing/lost their fan base (and the money that would go with that).

Yes, theres been massive losses for them I can see, yes its a real mess... but their not going to get out of the mess by fighting over the IP *sigh*.

Thanks to the way Hellgate London had been managed I will probably never "buy in" to another MMORPG type of game again. Hmmm, so I guess I really should thank them because HGL did really eat all my spare time in a massively unproductive (but extreemly addictive) fashion.

*bah* I still miss the darn game. Since it was my first real adventure into online gaming since MUD style games back in 1997 (it seems I go 10 years between online RPG's ;), look out 2017) I feel especially cheated.

Well, for the record, heres is Serial (now sadly gone from us):

With some vanity shots of her enjoying Halloween :)

Oh, and Serials sexy ammerican sister, the very beautifull, SerialX:

I went all out for Hellgate London, I bought 5 original copies of the Game and had paid for founders on both EU and US servers (that was a BIG waste of money, I would have been better off paying subscriptions, would have been cheaper).

Oh well.... such is life. At least I didn't have money invested in the failing banks ;). Then, I do feel sorry for who ever did :(.

People who ammaze / impress me...

2009-04-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as not without tallent, and I do indeed shine more than many of my peers, then it was from those whom where without peer that I have been inspired to become what I am today :).

It is to these people I dedicate this blog entry!

I'll start from things which are impressing me most reciently, and funilly, whats impressing me today is something that comes from years gone by. Not that i'm slow to be impressed lol, just I keep being impressed by people like these.

Check out this picture, this is one of the many pictures to be found in the Atari 20 Years Demo and it is fantastic (especially when you understand it only uses 16 colours).

This is but one of many impressive screens found in this demo, created by some ammazing people. Having a fondness for Atari and understanding how difficult it is to make it do what these people can make it do makes these demos like fine wine for me. It is possible the uninitiated they might not see the artistry and interlect which has to go into to producing these demos, though prehaps when I tell you that on a machine was never intended or designed to have a resolution greater than 320x200 with 16 colour and these coders blow away these rules and produce screens running in resolutions much, much higher and with up to 512 colours. It might give you a little incling of things. For example, the following screenshot shows a demo running at 415 x 270 resolution.

Or this one running nearly 800 x 600:

You have to see these demos to really appriciate them (and it really helps if you ever tried to code them too lol). If you want to check them out, you can download HAtari which is one of the most comprehensive Atari emulators. You could also download Steem 3.2 which is another excellent Atari emulator (but only supports Atari's up to the STE).

So, for a list of groups or people who have really impressed me (there have been so many, I may forget some, if I miss you i'm sorry):

Sector One

This group wrote the smoothest fastest scrolling routine for the Atari ST i've ever seem with great music to-boot. Simple, elegant, impressive.

These guys are heros! You just run the demos and drop jaw.

Infact, I think I could just stop there LOL.

There where lots of other groups which impressed with some of their intos. Like Elite and the Pompey Pirates to name but two. However, given that they routinely ripped stuff out of other games/programs its hard to say if it was their work which impressed or a compilation of the best of the others (though obviously to rip stuff like that takes a massive amount of skill in itself.. so doubtless they where great hackers). Though the overall composition was obviously theirs alone.

Flame of Finland, whos menu introduction has my most remembered favourite chip-tune. It can't go wihout a mention!

Heres a screen from one of the Pompey Pirate menus, the scroller on this is just fabulous (I wonder if they coded it or ripped it? the music was ripped, great music tho).

Why do we love?

2009-04-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

Theres lots of reasons it seems for love, from the scientific through the synical and skeptical right through to it being a reason in itself. The film the Matrix explores this topic in depth, showing the many faces of love and indeed of lust somehow so intertwined with love yet somehow entirely seperate.

Lets look at a few answers to this curious question (note, these don't represnet my views. They just represent possible oppinion, though if any does represent me it would be Caring, Practical, Romantic and Good):

Poetic

Love is a wisper on the wind, the sweetest and deepest care for the one carried in the heart for all time influencing, changing, clamoring to be shared with another equal. Love is the kiss given freely to one who held your heart safe and you know will be there.

Caring

Love is the gift given to that someone whithout whom who could not be and would not wish to exist.

Romantic

Love is that feeling you have always carried deep in your heart feeling so alone without something, and it is the someone who completes your heart and makes it soar.

Practical

Love is for family and friends, love needs to be received and needs to be shared.

For the Heart Broken

Love is that cruelest of tricks played on a heart which causes sorrow and dispare when the illusion is broken and all thats left is the pain and the need.

Synical (Scientific?)

Love is a hormonal response designed to increase the likelyhood of the propagation of ones genes and to instill the desire to protect ones offspring and relations there by protecting the next generation of one's genes.

Religious

God is love, we as gods children seek to be as god and to love as he/she does.

Good

Love is a gift to be given to those that need it. It is to guide and to heal, it is selfless and sacrificing and lives forever in our hearts.

Evil

Love is a trap to be used to ensnare the unwary into bondage and oppression. Woe to those who love for they are the pupets of those they so love.

Unemotional (Detached)

To not love, is to live a life of logic and through logic true love is better served.

Selfish

Love is something to be sought out and taken as much as one can find. Love is only to be given if someone deserves it at each moment it is given.

Lazy

Love is something that will make itself know to you when its ready. I will know when I love, I will not try to love, I will just be.

New Age

Love is everywhere, we must all add to the world of love and unite everything in love.

Conservative

Love is not something which should be discussed in polite society, it is a very personal thing between a man and a woman and is nobodies business but their own.

Wet-Wet-Wet

Love is all around us, feel it in the air. If you really love me? come and show you care.

;)

From something to everything and nothing inbetween

2009-03-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well is has been an insane week this week. Its been quiet for ages and then suddenly chaos errupts (both good and bad, but gladly more good than bad).

Where are we supposed to be? Thats a question I keep asking myself, and I don't really have any "good" answers, here are some of the ones I came up with which don't seem quite to complete the question in the complimentary form a good answer should (42 ;)):

We are supposed to be wherever we are:

This never felt very satisfactory as an answer, indeed I wonder if it even qualifies as an answer anywhere outside of politics ;).

We aren't "supposed" to be anywhere, it just is.

This is very similar to the first answer, only with more of a definitive feel to it. Its basicly saying there is no purpose or reason, things just are. Whilst i'm not inherently aposed to this being true, I don't feel it to be true. The closest I could come to believing this is by saying we make our own purposes / reason.

We are supposed to be with the ones we love

This answer has always appealed to me the most, and its where I let my self be taken in life. The only problem with this answer is that I have people I cherrish all around the world. Also, whilst I will be in love only in love with a single person, until that person is my life partner (accepts that post ;)) then i'm potentialy not ever at the right location, until I am. If you can follow that twisted logic (that is to say, where i'm supposed to be may change or, looking at it another way, i'm not where i'm supposed to be until its supposed to be too).

We are supposed to be at the place where we are happiest

This answer is again very like the last. It sort of encompases the last answer and extends it. Again, it appeals, but it doesn't help... after all, how do you know where your happiest? you can know where your more happy, but that requires moving about... moving about leads to unhappyness and possibly prevents the establishment of happyness.

We are supposed to be with Family and Friends

Another variant of the above, prehaps covering the above two. Again unhelpfull, especially as I have friends all around the world. No, i'm not kidding. I've got friends in New Zealand, Britain, Ammerica (California) and Germany. Though, I must admit my strongest friends are between Britain and New Zealand (so i'm only drawn between two countries 22,000 miles or more appart).

There is no such thing as supposed

This is tempting to argue from a logical stance. "Supposed" comes from having something you are meant to do. Meaning is something derived from others or
self (We say, I mean... or you mean. Sometimes we even says "It means" but usually, upon investigation, the "it" will lead back to a person or organisation. Lets take for example someone asking "what does the alarm mean?" or just "What does it mean?" the alarm doesn't of itself have a specific meaning, we, as people assign meaning to things. Therefore, I would say all meaning flows from people. The question is, is that where meaning begins and ends?
That brings us to faith, you could define faith as a form of "self" or "personal" meaning in that we decide our faiths (choose our meanings) even if that choice is there is none (its a form of meaning, it means we don't beleive).
So prehaps the question becomes, does meaning flow from a source? are we each sources or is their a single source. Is meaning, meaningless without people for it to mean to? probably.

So what does all this mean? Well, for my life it means that I don't know really where I belong, or if even belonging is something that has any true meaning?

I feel like I belong to someone... I want to belong. Though, i'm very fussy about who my owner is ;). Theres one girl i'd give everything for, because she once gave so much to me, so much happyness... she still does in truth, but now there is a sadness too because something was lost for her, but not for me (maybe it never was for her, maybe I just lost the illusion of it).

I digress, the point is... I think belonging has to do with any "supposed to be". Maybe nothings "supposed" until we belong? maybe even belonging is not supposed until it is.

Maybe supposed comes into existance with belonging.

Well, now everyone is equally confused as I... time to leave you all thinking.

DoggyDude

One person one vote for everything!

2009-03-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

We live in a connected world, we communicate instantly by mobile phones and messaging systems yet funilly only 1% of the population actually influences choice.

This seems wrong. It wouldn't be so bad if that 1% was the elite thinkers, the genuises... but those seem to have better things to do with there time and are generally doing them. No, its the busy bodies, the opportunists and the manipulators which seem to be doing all the controlling (and if we are luck, well meaning idiots like certain polititions named Tony).

"There is no reason why the entire populus could not have a direct voting power against every major government decision in the current technological climate." DoggyDude 2006-2009.

Now, I know people might argue the following points against this:

* Not everyone has sufficient knowledge to contribute to a decision

My resonse: Even someone who is known to be mentally i'll has a valid oppinion for their own self.

Most of the people making the decisions are only considered sane by majority.. in other words everything is about majority oppinon in this world. If the majority of the world was mentally i'll it would be defined as sane and the minority well people as "statisticly insignifcan oppinion" (at best).

Sometimes, yes, if the matter requires detailed knowledge of something scientific it can be better judged by scientists. However, all science must needs have a purpose for society in general... if it does not have a social or humantiarian purpose I immidiately question its ultimate value if it will effect us all but not have a benifical purpose? If it has a purpose, everyone can judge based on the purpose verses the cost. People with the knowledge can provide a range of oppinions for the voters and each intelegent being can decide for themselves.

* Not everyone has access to technology

My Response: Well, everyone should... I bought my mobile phone for £32 in WHSmiths. That, at minimum wage, is less than a days pay.

* Only people directly involved should be making the decisions

My Response: This is a valid point sometimes. However, I did say major decision. That is, effecting everyone. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between a minor decision and a major decision. It is a relatively minor decisiont to re-surface a road, but if that road is the M1.. well you see my point.

I think everyone should have a "say" in decisions. Public oppinon should sway decisions not define decisions.

What the heck, i'm bored....

2009-03-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

Haven't really bothered getting to the whole blogging sceen, too much to do, too many things to do....

Then, I haven't been taking any time for myself reciently... its about time I did.

The world has officially gone insane! Its a new kind of insanity, and its a good deal better than insanities of the past... but its insane none the less.

How is it, that our so called leaders don't understand that money cannot solve all problems? How is it also they cannot look at what happened in other economies where more money was printed in an effort to resolve problems... to my knowledge, there isn't a single situation in which the "pumping of more money into the economy" resolved any of the issues that the extra money was supposed to resolve (yet, all the leaders doing it will swear blind it worked and was necessary... if they said otherwise they might be lynched for defrauding the public).

Also, why, oh, why is it the people who just lost all the money who are being given more? Why not give it to the people who SAVED or made a profit for themselves and their workers?

Seems to me that what the world needs is not money and talk of depression, recession, fiscal poilicy and stimulus packages but is some good old fashioned hard work, effort and a reason (not necessarily financial) to make that effort. If we devalue the currency it doesn't help!

Logic dictates there is no less work to be done in the world, statistics seem to prove that there are more people in the world. So, there must be things to be done, there must be jobs to be made or had... and it doesn't seem that money is the issue? Money has to have a bearing, of course, people need to be paid! If there isn't the money to pay the people but there are still the jobs then this is not going to be solved by adding more money... this migh be solved by re-evaluating worth, identifying why the people needing the work done don't have the money to pay for it.

Whichever way this goes, we can be sure of one thing... those at the top will suffer the least. I, not being a what could be reported "the top" will suffer somewhat...