note to self

Windows SP3 on macbook with bootcamp

world — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:03:59 +0000

Looks like the SP3 update wasn’t tested on MacBook’s. I had a few excrutiating attempts to install and always being told I was 4MB short despite having 20GB free.

There is not enough disk space on C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$ to install Service Pack 3 Setup requires an additional 4 megabytes of free space or if you also want to archive the files for uninstallation,Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space. Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again.

Thankfully I found a helpful guide at windowsreference.com which is an easy registry hack and seemed to do the business with no problems.

Global Incident Map

world — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:31:58 +0000

This site makes you realise how poor the news is really with all this going on and all we ever hear about is Amy Wino-house and the spice girls reunion. I didn’t hear at all about police hunting a man after a home-made bomb was found at his house in Cumbria - check it out here
Check out all the incidents and bomb scares around the globe at globalincidentmap.com

good job I live and work on the northern line

world — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:33:26 +0000

I love the register…

world — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 10:13:45 +0000

Spammer gets 30 years in the slammer

Suddenly wishes Viagra was harder to come by

- their sub headlines are genius!

29 countries (12%)

world — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:34:03 +0000

A couple more than last time and a few more than the time before :-) Probably should be worrying about my carbon footprint but life is too short!

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Social vs Professional

world — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:52:55 +0000

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t want everyone I know to know everyone else that I know.
It’s like when you split up from someone and you suddenly lose a group of friends because they were better friends with your now ex partner.
Imagine this in the online world. It would be a nightmare. You have a spat with someone in the office and all of a sudden everyone in your social network is also affected or vice versa.

I use LinkedIn for my professional network and it works well. I use Facebook, Friendster, Thingbox and AIMPages and any number of others for social networking. Essentially whenever I get an invite I join one and when I see one I want to test or evaluate I join it and invite my friends. What I tend not to do is invite the same group of people to all of them.

There are some people with whom I get on with really well on my social networks that I would never put in my professional network the results would be far too unpredictable. Likewise there are people on my professional network I would never invite onto Facebook.

Anyway back to the point. LinkedIn is considering opening their platform to developers if you believe techcrunch and others, or likely will create an app for facebook. I’m struggling to see the market. I know in an ideal world everything would be interoperable but in the real world I think it would cause more problems than it would solve.

Now of course some software manufacturers have entered the fray. Notably IBM’s Lotus Connections which has a delicious style social bookmarking element, a blogging element - despite most companies looking at ways of reigning in the blogosphere rather than promoting it- and profiles.

Social Network Sites

world — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:14:05 +0000

So Facebook is the new MySpace which was the new Friendster which was the new Tribe etc etc.
I was chatting with Davo and he quite rightly said something Anna and I have been banging on about for years. By the time you get to grips with the new site and make your profile nice and complete with pictures and information all your mates have messed off to the new next best thing. Now I’ll admit I’m fickle and am usually one of the first to get bored and move on but it brings me back to the idea of FOAF or at least something similar. I think what’s needed is a social networking site mashup where you can pull in bits from all your other profiles.
Of course the bigger problem with social networking sites is the fact that on-line unlike off-line anyone can be your friend and can see who your other friends are. Off-line we tend to keep our social groups separate we all do it to some degree but on-line you can’t. So my work colleagues can see my drinking buddies which is not necessarily a good thing!

Google Desktop

world — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:19:06 +0000

So I’ve indexed my laptop now and was worried to see files from as far back as 17 November 1996. On closer inspection most of the really old files seem to ship with MS Office.
Now I know having worked for a large company creating software previously that sometimes legacy code remains simply because no one knows what it does.
In this case however many of the files seem to be windows meta files. Now I know most of them are only 12 to 13k (like the lovely hearts C:\Program%20Files\Microsoft%20Office\MEDIA\CAGCAT10\J0230876.WMF) but that means that firstly Microsoft have not updated the clip art in Office since 1997 and secondly all of this dodgy stuff is cluttering up my hard drive. No wonder it takes so long to install and start etc etc.

So some other random thoughts here;
Can I remove all of these files safely?
Is Google indexing the dates correctly?
Why oh why did someone create this delight? C:\Program%20Files\Microsoft%20Office\OFFICE11\BITMAPS\STYLES\STONE.BMP

wayback when

world — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:20:20 +0000

It’s always amusing when you do some surfing and stumble over references to your own stuff you had forgotten about.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.8letters.co.uk

See Australians are healthier

world — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 08:51:16 +0000

While we strive for five in the UK with our 5 a day campaign the aussies are going for 2 fruit and 5 veggies a day with a huge advertising campaign.