Skippy.org.uk

The reason Vista sucks is that it doesn’t need to be any good, because people will get it anyway. - Ben A’Lee

And i agree, Vista is so sucky that it did not last 10 days on my desktop, yes it was shiney, but it told me i didnt know how to use my computer, and locked me from doing things i wanted to do (all those files on a NTFS drive belong to Skippy, (XP install Skippy) not you Skippy, you need to log in as an Administrator, Mr Skippy of the Administrator group to change ownership to Skippy, from Skippy. that is not the only time that the rediculus security muck things up thing bugged me.

When using the computer, and you want to change your networking settings, do you want to wait for the screen to go gray, and then have to click a box which should have been marked "get out of my face, i know what i am doing!"

As for "easer and simpler file sharing" well the danm thing didn’t remember that the wire that connects it to the network is a trusted network (its a Desktop….) and my network has only trusted devices on it. so turing of the share //hlin/skippy$ every boot annoys the hell out of me.

I installed Vista (Business Edition) about 48 hours ago, spent 2 hours configuring it to use my document stores, and install Outlook 2003 (Legal Copy). the full list of installed software is as follows:

• Vista Business
• WinAmp (because it would be silly to use EMP WMP)
• Outlook 2003 (as 2007 is found through other sources)
• Mozila Firefox.

So not a heavy workload by any stretch of the imagination? so why is it that my 2.0GHz PC with 1GB of ram runs slower (boots faster) than my XP laptop (still the hi-grade pile of poop 1.4GHz 512MB ram),  that runs more stuff? (running as we speak)

• Windows Live Writer (to write this)
• Pidgin
• Mozila Firefox
• Mozila Thunderbird
• RSS Bandit - RSS reader.

True my desktop loads images faster than my laptop, but i think that is down to my ‘My Documents’ being located on a SATA hard drive away from the OS, as well as dedicated GPU.

A strange set of observations:

• It connects to Outlook for searching, yet it has its own calendar, and contacts folders? surly it would be more helpful if it data-bound to the Outlook PST and displayed them? at the log on screen on XP it tells you how meany unread emails you have in Thunderbird.
• It has its own Contact Folder, (all contacts are flat file .contact files) but you cant Tag these things, or group them. I can tag all my photos (using the Windows Imaging Component Meta Data space, doesn’t seem to be EXIF. See Comment one) so why not tag Contacts? or Documents?
• The Vista Search does not seem as fast as the Add in for XP, despite the XP one being an Add in. True the XP one does spend half its time writing an index for itself. but doesn’t the Vista one?

I am going to go back to XP on my desktop and by adding the following tools, most of the usefull parts of Vista can be replicated.

tools from MS:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta - not a bad lite photo manager, with tagging capabilitys
• Windows Live Writer - Anyone know if there a Linux Equiv that will work with Ubuntu?
• Windows Desktop Search - It works, it reads Image Tags, it connects to my Outlook stores.
• Alt-Tab Replacement - A windows XP power toy that makes Alt Tab nicer

And tools not from MS

• iTag - works with the Tags to give you a Tag Cloud. (Vista doesn’t do Tag Clouds)
• TeraCopy - Makes the Copy/move progress bar more friendly, as well as speeding up the process.

Now to find my instructions for setting up Notepad2 as a Notepad replacement.

I have installed Windows Live Writer since coming to the US, I have to say that as a application it is not bad, one of my two complaints with it is, that it is slow… and the other complaint is that it installed MSN Messenger (or what ever they called it today).

Well today I am sat on a train between NYC and Rochester, as such now is a good time to try out off line blogging, and see how well it works.

Windows Live Writer claims to work with a number of blogging packages, not just Wordpress, and Windows Spaces, (I cant check the list at the second, due to being off line).

Things it claims it can do:

1. Manage more than one weblog, across a number of services.
2. Basic Formatting, numbered lists, tables, the etc.. if the company who write word could not do this.
3. As well as the the ability to post normal URI’s in posts, it seems to have the ability to remember the recent posts, as well as having a list of blogs you post about often [set up your self].
4. Inline picture (and pictures from a web site), will test this latter. but it seems to suggest it can upload the image at the same time as posting the post (or upload it via ftp)
5. Inserting maps and videos inline, not sure how video will be dealt with, but I will test out maps on my post warm and tall land.
6. tagging, but since I have not used them before I am not sure how much use that will be.
7. Previewing the post in a number of views, including using your sites style scripts, and a snap shot of the code, useful if you have strange rules relating to the layout I guess.
8. oh and offline writing mode. (what I am using at the moment).
9. More plugins are available via Download from the web… (can’t test at the second)

I would suggest that if you have a blog, you should have a look at it, and see if you like it.

Microsoft are giving office away to students, well selling at a low price (Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for £12.95 (1 year) or £38.95 (perpetual license - i.e.: forever) - usually the software costs £599.99), and who can blaim them.

Rich and Ben (who’s permilinks never seem to work) have been descusing this on Planet TermiSoc. Some of you may remember i was a Office 2007 Beta Tester, and I still use parts of Office 2007 today[1]. so i though i would join in on this one and comment on some of the points. Continue reading »

I have been playing with this bit of software on my Desktop PC,

It works by monitoring my web cam, looking for my face, and when it finds it, i can use my PC, when it cant it waits 10 seconds, locks the PC, and waits till it can see my face again.

Have to find out what its limitations are, and if it thinks me and my brother are the same person. but it looks good so far, as better than the security on my desktop was.
I think using blue tooth on a MAC would be cool though (here) via [LifeHacker]

Some of you may remember me playing with my password strenth a while back. so i think it may also be wise to check my password strenth has not decreased.

The Origional Bolt is dead, After 10 years of online-ness, they closed it today, that is 10 years of my online life closed, all the REG’s i have met and know from there have moved around, some i can keep in contact with through Facebook, Tedious Path, and helldot[seems to be down]. but it wont be the same without the Wiccan Board.

Bolt(folio) is no replacement, if your an old Bolter and want to keep in touch please check here.

Ben in his blog makes refrance to MySpace. I dont use Social networking sites to tell me who my friends are, they are more like a wiki,

one where every one can fordge links to eachother and common inttrests or groups, I have both a MySpace, and a Facebook. Myspace sucks, mainly because its UI is attortius, Facebook is better, but i am guessing they would have learnt a lot from MySpace, this all goes towards making it a usefull way of keeping track of people.
The two complainte, One no pingbacks, or useable blog addresses, (this blog post will be sindicated in facebook, but you cant ping back to the origanal or anything), Two. no RSS feeds, call me sad, but RSS made me a lazy surfer.

Untill recently my home page in Firefox (at home, work and on my laptop) was the defult google page, this was mainly due to it being convenant, and not having a better page to load by default,

I have though about using a Wiki to store random data, some of it which lives only for a short time, (links, quotes) or some things that dont fit anywhere, and are only required for online activitys, such as links to sites at work. (Tagging works :D)
i know i could have used some bookmarks syncronisation tool, or a text file that i can keep with me, but then i found TiddilyWiki its a single file Wiki, using only javascript, you just keep it on your hard drive (my case i store it on my PDA) and carry it round with you.

There is a Google Earth Panorama Viewer Tutorial that kicks arse, when i get around to fixing PhilipMcGaw.com I think i will distribute my panoramics as KMZ’s as well

My Free Fon was delivered yesterday, but i have only just got round to writing about it, as Rich says, it is quite good, I have now got three AP’s running in my house (with my Fon box being AP3)

Its Public AP i beleve runs in a VPN through your network to there servers, as such it totaly bypasses any of your network, making it imposible for a person conecting to it to get access to your network.

One anoying thing about them though, (reason that the Fon AP is not high on my prefered conection list) is that between the LAN port and its privert SSID is a Router, compleate with NAT and firewall, this stops me accessesing my own network in the open way i ushaly do.

Seth said yesterday that the One Year offer page had gone, and as such i dontated my invite to him. I think ben will be getting his soon, and then we should have a more technical autopsy of the free Router (including how to flash it and stop sharing your wi-fi).