skippy.org.uk

Before Christmas the company I host with (iFuse Hosting) was taken over by a company that no one has heard of, a magical holdings company called Yomura Holdings. who don’t have a website, don’t show up in Google (other than stories of them buying up loads of small hosting companys). as such we were still sure they were a figment of our collective imagination. But they did keep sending emails telling us that our service would improve and reliability would be better.

Well since they took over the mostly reliable iFuse hosting has had a number of extended outages, and response to support tickets and emails is non existent.

Things have got even worse recently when they invoiced my for my hosting fees, I went to try and pay them but have they wanted to take my money? have they responded to my trying to give them money? well no. so unable to contact them (they have no contact details in the public domain that I can find) my account has been suspended.

Due to my set up not being the normal set up on the server, (thanks to Ross being Awsome when he did work there) everything other than CamCrew.co.uk still works

Now with a lot of digging and poking it seems that Yomura Holdings is a part of LTT, Libya Telecom and Technology who have a twitter account, so I am now waiting for a response from them.

I have a slight dislike of all “Target Marketing” weather its pizza leaflets through my door [1] fake charitably organisations requesting my old stuff so they can profit [2]. or some annoying person phoning me.

Thursday last week I got a call from some guy working for an organisation called “Consumer Lifestyle” who are owned by Data Locator Group (DLG).

After searching online for a short while I found the contact details for the Data Protection helpline, after speaking to Nick Hubbard I have now got a copy of my Subject Access Request, and Order History report.

Now the next cunning plan is to hunt down the three company s who sold DLG data of mine and find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

• CACI Limited
• Data Media and Research Ltd
• GB Group PLC

I will post full details here as and when I get results

Oh and in the short term there are these services to remove your details:

• Mailing Preference Service
• Telephone Preference Service

A long while ago this popped up on BoingBoing.

I am getting increasingly fed up with the amount of junk mail that comes through the door, so after a bit of a search on Google I found the post.

After a quick run through Paint (yes Paint) I have adapted it for my use:

If it is unsuccessful I will edit it a bit more, and start to charge a £5GBP handling fee for every bit of junk I receive.

I store all my images on my mac in iPhoto 09. and as you can guess this has resulted in a library that is a little on the large side.

One general accepted way to speed up iPhoto is to vacuum the database using the inbuilt sqlite command. this is a bit like defraging the database and reducing the stuff contained in it.

1. Open Terminal and type cd and a space
2. Drag your iPhoto library into the terminal window and hit Enter.
3. Copy the command “for dbase in *.db; do sqlite3 $dbase "vacuum;"; done” and paste into the terminal window.
4. Hit carriage return, wait till the line prompt comes up and your finished. The larger the library the longer the time the vacuuming will take.

Mine took just shy of 15 minutes (did I forget to say I had a large library?) all in all it didn’t speed it up any where as much as I would have liked.

Another way of recovering a few bits of a second from iPhoto slowness is to remove the photo counts next to each album and library in the left-hand pane. The task of updating these counts whenever you modify your images appears to cause iPhoto to slow down sometimes.

To disable the item counts

1. Open iPhoto’s preferences,
2. Goto the General tab,
3. Uncheck the “Show item counts” box. (there may be a delay of a few seconds).

That may show an improvement for you; it also may not.

If iPhoto continues to be annoyingly slow for me, I may get desperate and try Fat Cat’s iPhoto Library Manager to see how that works with my iPhoto collection.

On the Weekend Loupie, a few of TermiSoc and I went to see the SteamPunk exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. The trip was suggested by Stewart Starbuck as he was going to meet up with a group of Steam Punk geeks from Brass Goggles, and invited others from TermiSoc to come along for a Trip. so all in all there were 6 of us intrepid adventurers; As well as the three mentioned there was bma, Laces, and Sayyan.

The exhibit itself was in a small gallery on the basement level. along with the steam punk exhibit there was a work shop to learn how to make steam punk jewellery and an area where you could play with Maccano.

Apart from the size of the gallery, everything else was really cool. We went for lunch in the (well according to Laces) the Burning Baby, or as the rest of us called it The Eagle & Child. a small pub of No notability at all

The Eagle and Child was once a favourite watering hole of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. They often met for discussion (and argument) over a pint.

On the bar wall is a signed note to the landlord written in 1949 stating that J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis have drunk to his health. well we mostly stuck to one drink each.

[View with PicLens]

While at the University of Plymouth studing, I came accross a peice of software that was used to keep all the machines clean and free of student installed crap. The University installs a application on every one of there terminals called Deep Freeze by a company called Faronics; It is about £22.50 for an install licence (you get 30 days of trial).

I have had a play with this software before, and based on that trial I have had a go at installing it on my parents computer; in the hope that it reduces the time I have to spend keeping the computer clean.

Deep Freeze works by freezing all the data on a patition and removes all changes made everytime the computer is re-started, to avoid wiping out all userdata I have the Documents and Profile folders on a diffrent patition.

I hope that at the end of my trial that it will have worked as well as I hope it will.

Although for those times support is required I have installed Cross Loop, fundimently Cross Loop is VNC wrapped in an easy to use userinterface that allows you to connect to another computer without needing to open up firewall ports and such; making it easy for parents to allow me to connect to their computer remotly.

For some unknown reson, since my dad bought the full copy of My Heritage’s Family tree maker the computer has been running slowly. and taking an age to do anything (well that could be because its a 1GHz dell box, with 512 meg of ram. but that should be more than enouth to run Windows XP Pro.

As part of the re-installing software I had to choose a PDF application, and as we all know Adobe Acrobat reader is never the sensable choice. Previously I have used Foxit’s Reader which has been light and always done what it says on the tin, being that it claims to be:

• Foxit’s NO BLOAT PDF Reader
• Small download, fast, accurate rendering

However what it doesnt tell you is that every stage of install it will try and install crap you dont need, and that you have to make sure you de-select from the install. I am not sure how this behavure sits with other people,. but I consider it very anoying.

I have included the Screenshots from the install process below so you can see what it looks like:

[View with PicLens]

Also on this note:

• SUN -  I do not want the Yahoo bar with my Java
• Microsoft – No I dont want any extra crap when I am forced to use MS software
• Apple – Why on earth would I want Safari with my iTunes?

I am sure this list of Grrr will grow.

Loupie has been doing her 101 things in 1001 days for a while now. I can’t quite remember how far through she is.

After subscribing to the Project52 idea; I wondered what else I could do. and the DayZero Project Sounds interesting;

The Challenge:
Complete 101 pre-set tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part).

Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple challenges such as New Year’s resolutions or a ‘Bucket List’. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips, study semesters, or outdoor activities.

So while I am thinking about my list of 101 things I will list the ones I come up with below, with a view to start the challenge on the 1st February 2010 which puts my end date 1029 days. (you can see my day zero profile here).

1. Take a picture to celebrate each goals completion (and perhaps a blog post )
2. Get a Job
3. Move away from Swindon
4. Give up alcohol for a month
5. Give up Tea and Coffee for a month
6. Organize my photos
7. Finish reading the books I own
8. Learn how to edit videos
9. Climb at least 10 Munros
10. Complete the P52 Challenge
11. Develop all of the Photos I have on Film
12. Attend a LAN party
13. Sell off all unnecessary things on Ebay
14. get rid of clothes not worn in 2 years
15. Host a wine and cheese evening
16. Buy a new CD each month for a year
17. Give £2 to charity for each task I don’t complete
18. Go swimming at least once a week for 3 months
19. Complete the “The Most Ancient and Venerable Order of the Skylark and Hawthorne” challenge [ref]
20. Drink only water for 1 month
21. Watch 25 of 100 “Best Movies” [This list]
22. Host a board game night
23. Have dinner by candlelight
24. Put £25 for every goal completed into a Savings account
25. Not log into facebook for a whole week
26. Keep my bedroom spotless for a month
27. Go for a walk every day for a month
28. Spend a whole weekend (Sat-Sun) without TV/Computer/Etc.
29. Get a new camera
30. Get a new Phone
31. Learn how to scuba dive
32. Skinny dip
33. Update my Curriculum Vitae
34. plant a tree
35. Go to at least 10 concerts
36. Stop biting my nails
37. See the Rocky Horror Picture Show in drag
38. Complete the C25K
39. Complete the One Hundred Press-up Challenge
40. Complete the Two Hundred Sit up challenge
41. Complete the 7lb in 7 Day supper juice diet

I will have to have a think about this and work some more on it.

Things that have been removed from my list:

• Give up chocolate for a month [1]
• Give up fizzy drinks for a month [1]
• Inspire someone else to make a Day Zero list [2]
• Complete the “5,000 Question Survey” [this] [3]

1. Loupie Correctly pointed out that these would not be a challenge for me, as I so rarely do the activity I would be giving up
2. After reading this blog bma and Natalie started their own lists but before I had started my DayZero project.
3. This Task has no real aim, and or point; and as such has been removed.

Some one in deepest darkest TermiSoc Twittered about Project52; and as such I had a look

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

And because this site so often is devoid of new content I have decided to sign up both this site and PhilipMcGaw.com to the challenge. This all coming from some one who has posted about 5 times in the last 3 years, so please wish me luck.

A fair while ago I bought a Three.co.uk Huawei E160G data card. on Pay as you  go. this would have been over a year ago, and since I am o2 customer and have the simplicity £20 contract, with unlimited internet.So why do I need a second number for Internet. When I used to have my HTC Touch I used WMWifiRouter to make my phone into a mobile hotspot. it is an awesome bit of software and does everything it says on the tin.

Jethro Has previously told me that there is no point to unlocking Mobile Modems as data only sim cards always come with them, however I just want to use mine when I really need internet and not as well as a mobile phone.

To unlock the Modem (I try to avoid calling them Dongles) your first port of call is getting a copy of Mobile Partner, this can be downloaded from here.

If You like pain you can try talking to the wonderfully unhelpful droids at Three [3] – (Hutchison 3G UK Ltd) but am not a huge fan of Phoning expensive phone numbers I use the 0800 358 6796 (or 01442 456050) that they try not to list.

This is where talking to the Droids gets interesting; as Three are not willing to have call centres in the United Kingdom they have all of theirs in India. and the script that they has tells them that the modem can not be unlocked. After getting through to the UK call centre (really the sales department) They tell me that they are willing to ‘unlock’ the device for £14.00 but this requires me to book it in for repair and will take 7 days (Phone 0843 730 500 (or the numbers above) and try and get through to the Pay as you Go Retentions Team.

So with that path not really viable, onto option Two: Option two seems to be much easer, as I found this on Ebay, follow the instructions as laid out by Grumpy Grayhound, and wait for the email back with the code in it.

Less than 24 hours (in my case 2 hours) you receive an Email with all the information you need in it, including links to the software to de-brand your modem.

Once the Modem is unlocked you need to change a few settings, however they are as follows for all UK mobile networks: (Found on this site).

So We now have a Mobile Skippy just in time for running away to the frozen north,