New Blogger App

This is the first post/first attempt at a post from a new Blogger app.  Google appear to have abandoned their IOS blog users and haven't updated their app for several years.  After much reading of reviews, I settled on Blog Touch Pro.  It wasn't free and, at £4.99, it wasn't cheap, but it does look much more like the Blogger web interface than the Blogger app did.   And I can add photos, etc, which I can't do using the the Blogger web interface via Safari.   Here's one from Lucky, taken a couple of weeks back when I was commuting out to the far reaches of Oxfordshire:

 

I think he was being a little optimistic with his range estimate - he usually does about 500 miles before screaming "Thirsty!".  (After 120.8 miles, I'd expect him to claim a range of about 400 miles.)

- Pam (Now to see how this posts.)

My Favourite Toy

There's something I have been meaning to rave about it on the Blog for ages.   Do you remember back in the 1980's/1990's, when you'd read science fiction books and the hero/heroine would reach for their "communicator" or "link" to look up something on the computer?  Or to make a video call/read a document/watch TV?  Or to record something?  I remember wistfully thinking "I wish I had one of those!".  Well, four years ago, I got one - I purchased my first iPhone - and, as far as I am concerned, my iPhone is the Best. Toy. Ever!   I use it for everything.

Really, I do. I currently have a 64GB iPhone 5, bought a year ago, and there's less than 10GB free.  As well as making calls or sending text messages via my phone network, I access my bank from it; quickly surf the internet to find out or confirm something; read my latest book via Kindle at lunchtime; chat to Our Man in the Middle East via WhatsApp;  chat to my sister in Australia for free on Viber.  It's my primary camera and stores most of my music.  I've written blogs on it (although the Blogger App is a bit clumsy).  I talk to friends and family on Facebook; visit Ravelry for knitting inspiration; download and listen to podcasts, as well as audio books while I drive.  Every morning, you'll find me doing my daily French lesson on Duolingo (which is free).   There are exercise programs I attempt follow (look out for the free 7-Minute Workout and RunKeeper).  For calorie counting, I use My Fitness Pal.   I use the BBC apps all the time, including iPlayer and iPlayer radio.

So much of what I use on the iPhone is free.  As well as podcasts, most of the 100+ Kindle books I have were free via BookBub (or discounted to 99p).  All the BBC content is free.  As is Duolingo and the Learn French videos on youtube.

The only thing that detracts from my iPhone is the network.  A year ago,  when I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I switched to Vodafone and I'm not impressed. Can't get a consistent signal anywhere.  Can't get a signal at all for large tranches of the day in my office - never had a problem with my old network - and even in the centre of London I've had problems.   I am counting the days until I can break the contract.

Excuse me.  I'm off to play with my Toy.

- Pam

New Scam in Progress

I've just had a phone call from someone claiming to be the "Windows Help Desk" and saying that they're getting loads of error messages from my computer and that if I didn't do what they told me immediately, my computer would break down!   The background noise sounded like they were calling from a large call centre and the accent was Asian.

Err.... I don't think so.  We aren't stupid enough to sign up for a service like that for domestic computers (waste of money) and the people who run those services commercially don't make calls out of the blue on a Saturday.  You have to register a problem first with the help-desk - they can't monitor you remotely (companies can, but that's because you log into the company network before you do anything else).

Also, I'm geek enough to know there is nothing wrong with either PC.  If there was, I know a reputable business in Uxbridge that'll fix it for a flat fee.

However, someone who didn't have much technical knowledge might get caught out, follow their instructions and download the spy-bot as instructed or pay over the money for the service these scammers are selling. 

For heavens sake, if you get a call like this, engage your common sense first and then hang up!

- Pam 

Got my voice back

Hello, did you miss me?  It feels like forever since I last wrote.  Where do I start?  I've written a thousand blogs in my head but now they've all vanished. (Typical.)

OK, let's start with the computer.  I took it to a local tech place, where they found a damaged sector and nothing else.  There were no viruses, no bugs, no identifiable cause for Windows going SNAFU. I got it back last weekend - they did a complete rebuild and reinstalled Vista together with all the drivers.  £69 very well spent.   There is only one remaining problem:  my bluetooth mouse won't work.  I haven't tested yet whether the problem is the mouse or the computer.  If the latter, then it's a physical problem and not the driver - I've managed to test the driver.  Any suggestions?

In other news, I have new glasses - my first pair of verifocals*.  Collected them this afternoon. They look pretty similar to my existing glasses, so no great change there.  First impressions of verifocals:  the reading "corner" by the nose is fine, easy to adjust to;  it's the change of focus out by the arms that is weird.  I wasn't expecting that.  It's like looking into a mirror in a hall-of-mirrors and using the reflection to see with.  It only happens if I turn my eyes instead of my head to look at something at a range of 3 feet or so away.  Monday night's rehearsal is going to be a big test - can I read my music and watch the conductor without feeling sea-sick?

- Pam


* This feels like a further step in the transformation into my mother.  Not only do I look like her and suffer her infertility problems, I've developed her eyes too.  Short sight and long sight in the same eyeball.  < sigh >

Ramblings

DH is at work so I've nicked borrowed his computer to do a quick update.  I've been at Site most of the week, got home an hour ago and will be back there on Tuesday.  (Sunday night = Superbowl night.  With the match finishing around 3.30am, I've taken Monday off.)  The laptop situation is really, really annoying me.  I'm not on it all night, everynight when I'm away, but I resent having that choice taken away from me. And I miss the ability to witter away write down my thoughts as I want, when I want.

I had plans for this year.  It's amazing how those plans are dependent on having a computer.  I wanted to work out to an exercise DVD in the mornings when I'm at Site.  My choir will be singing in Nancy, France, in June and I wanted to learn some French beyond Ici est le facture pour le BlahBlah project (after four years dealing with the staff of a French client, my grasp of their language is still embarrassingly bad).  I wanted to blog more often.  I wanted to practice my singing using the rehearsal midi-files my choir provides.

Had a conversation yesterday with one of our tech guys at work.  My original plan was to drop the laptop off at the clinic at PC World but he suggested finding a local place instead, saying PC World's customer service had a bad reputation.  There's a place in Uxbridge I may try.  It needs Vista reinstalled and, probably, all the drivers.  Fingers crossed, I can drop it off tomorrow and get it back, fixed, on Monday afternoon.

On the way home tonight, I dropped into Costco and was very tempted by one of the netbooks.  I didn't buy it but it remains an option.  I could spend the Sanity Fund (currently £375 and all earmarked for an iPhone).  We'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess.

- Pam (feeling like a moaning minny)

Apologies for the radio silence but...

Meine Laptop ist kaput.  Or at least, very, very sick.  Sunday, it struggled to get to the log-in screen and had to "repair" itself.  When it does load, there are so many "Driver xxx has stopped working" messages that it takes 15 minutes to get the desktop up and running. 

I don't even know what half of those things do.   Why should software that comes preloaded fail? It's only two years old, for heaven's sake - why should it be having these problems?

I'm taking it to the clinic at PC World on Saturday and they can rebuild it.  In the meantime, I probably won't be blogging much.

- Pam  (suspect the cure will be "Windows 7" and an expensive bill)

Involuntary Silence

At one point this month, it seemed that everything I touched broke.  The Toy kept revving strangely every time I changed gear.  My mobile phone had a temper tantrum.  The files I needed to use at work?  Crashed. 
And the laptop, my computer, refused to load my profile.  Instead, I kept getting this weird message, "The User Profile profile service failed to logon" and then it would return to the log-in screen.  This happened the day we were going away for New Year.

It took some frantic internet searching to find out what had gone wrong:  Vista has a bug where it renames your profile as a backup and then tries to create a new copy.  Except that the new copy has nothing in it to load.  There is a solution:  you have to change it all back.  If it happens to you, here is the discussion board that helped me - you need to read the entire thread though.  And it does work. 

I've spent the last week cleaning up the laptop:  deleting old podcasts, running a backup, creating a restore point, running a registry cleaner.  Things aren't perfect when I login the laptop takes ages to load and I get dozens of "xxxx Service Failed.  Windows is checking for a fix" messages.  Even the service that checks for fixes failed!  I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do next.

Anyway, while it wasn't working, I started to compose a New Year post.  It seems a bit to late now to give it a post on its own so here it is:

Getting my head around 2011

Happy New Year!  Did you do anything special to celebrate?  We went to friends.  How was your Christmas?  Have you made any resolutions?  How did last year's go?  I promise to have a Sit-Rep up on last year by the end of Sunday.

Over the last two weeks, I've eaten too much, drunk too much, cooked, knitted, watched 50+ episodes of CSI, broke the laptop, visited the Imperial War Museum, gone to the football, attended 3 Christmas meals, attempted to fix the laptop, played with the Best Dog In the World, gave blood, shopped a little, caught up with friends, de-stressed, snuggled with DH, etc, etc.  I am so glad I booked the week off before Christmas and that my employer closes between Christmas and New Year.  I was knackered and tired and (probably) had another dose of shingles.

The period between Christmas and New Year has always been a special time for me; a time for reflection and day-dreams and making plans for the future.  This year it seems like everyone is getting on that band-wagon: everywhere I look, I'm getting the same message "New Year; New You".  (It even appeared in the subject line of emails from two yarn stores. What on earth is that about?)   So far, I only have one New Year's Resolution:  to get fit.  

It's incomplete, but I hope you get the idea.

Oh, and the problem with the Toy?  Needed a new clutch.  

- Pam

Dear Blogger or the reason I've switched the comments to moderation

Dear Blogger

I am at my wits end.  My blog keeps getting spammed via the comments.  I have the word verification set up but that is not effective against manual spammers.  I've repeatedly reported these spammers to you but they're like a hydra, cut off one and another takes its place.  And there is no way to send you examples of what they're posting.

The format of the spam comments is always the same.  A user ID in Chinese characters, followed by a nonsensical comment of, maybe, 20 words, followed by a hyperlink.  Click on the hyperlink and you get a porn site.  Here is the latest example:

王妍妮 has left a new comment on your post "Damn volcano":

Knowledge is power...................................

I've cut off the links, so don't bother clicking on them (no point giving them any more publicity).  If you get comments like these, click on the user ID and the Blogger blog that they list there and then click on Report Abuse and follow the instructions.  It doesn't allow you to report what is actually posted on your blog, but it is all you can do.

Anyway, this is why I've changed my comments set up to "moderate comments".

- Pam

Conception 2009

THURSDAY 29TH JANUARY 2009

I'm spending most of the week at a games convention, Conception 2009, together with the crowd from the games club DH runs. The Con started yesterday and runs until Sunday. So far, I’ve played two sessions of Cthulhu and I’m booked into five more. Both my characters have survived – no mean feat in this environment.

There is wi-fi here, but at £5/hour or £25 for the week, I’m trying to avoid logging in. I can’t justify the £25 – it would just be a wasteful luxury (either that or one of the other members of our party would attempt to monopolise my laptop and I’m damned if I’m paying out for them to play internet games). I think I’ll just do one £5 session either tomorrow or Saturday.

Bringing the laptop was my idea. As well as its role in character generation for one of the games, it’s acting as an entertainment centre – the backup of my MP3 player is on it and the speakers are reasonable.

=======================================================

NOTE TO SELF:

Next year when we come to the Con, remember to pack the following:-

1. - kitchen timer
2. - tea towels
3. - oven gloves
4. - the garlic crusher
5. - a chopping board – the chalet only comes with one and a second would be handy
6. - my main dice bag! (Fortunately, I have my travelling dice in my handbag.)

========================================

FRIDAY 30th JANUARY 2009

For the first time in the history of RPGs, a knitting needle has been in anger! My character had "knitting needle" as an offensive weapon at 40% skill level. In the heat of battle, with no other weapons left, she drew out a needle and stabbed an attacker through the head for 9 points of damage. Almost, but not quite killing the attacker.

Later, the GM tells me that he designed the character with me in mind.

=========================================

DH has been using the laptop to generate certificates for games the club is running ("Most heroic death" ... that sort of thing). We've lost count of the number of times someone has asked whether it is a netbook, then "wowwed" over its features. If Acer needed salesmen, we've done a really good job this weekend.

=========================================

THE VENUE

The venue is one of your typical British holiday camps. Not quite “Hi Dee Hi”, but an obvious descendent. Picture a hundred acre, partially wooded site, populated by “chalets” (mobile homes to you Americans), with a communal bar and banqueting suite. Every possible inch of the communal areas is occupied by gamers; even the bar has been overrun by LARPers.

This is my third year and DH’s 6^th or 7^th. Each year, the chalet we’ve hired has had a different layout but universally they seem to be well designed. Far more thought has gone into their layout than your average British home: the open plan kitchens are bigger, with more food preparation space; each chalet has three or four double bedrooms with built in wardrobes and at least two bathrooms (one en-suite); the L-shaped living rooms can host a dinner party at the dining table without requiring the other furniture to be moved out of the way, and the sitting area is large enough to seat everyone for coffee afterwards. How ironic when you consider how much these buildings are sneered at.

==========================================

THE KNITTING

As far as I can tell, I'm the only knitter at the Con. I'm knitting a pair of the Herringbone Rib Socks which featured in the Winter 2008 edition of Interweave Knits. Here is the picture from Interweave:

I'm using Wendy's Happy, a 75% bamboo yarn, in the Scorpio 2505 colourway.

I've had a love-hate relationship with this pattern over the last few weeks. (I started the socks I'm working on about 3 weeks ago.) It is easy to learn but not easy in execution - if you drop a stitch or make a mistake and need to go back and correct it, it's hell on earth. On both socks, I made different mistakes that required tinking back, and the tinking was harder than knitting them up in the first place. This is not a pattern for your knitting autopilot - you constantly have to watch what is happening on your needles. The stitch pattern is fiddly in the extreme. It's also slow. Two years ago, over the course of the Con, I knitted DH a pair of socks in 4-ply sock yarn; last year, in two days, I knitted a pair in Regia 6-Faedig (DK weight, I believe). This year, I've managed one and a half socks, in five days of almost constant knitting.

I hated it for almost all of the first sock. Interweave says, "This versatile unisex pattern may well become one of the go-to sock patterns in your repertoire". If you'd asked me four days ago, my response would have been a sarcastic "Yeah, right. You've got to be kidding!".

And yet..... The results are stunning. The stitch pattern shows up the varigations in the yarn beautifully. And even the fiddliness stops being irritating after a while. Will I knit it again? Yes.

- Pam

New toy to play with

Having umm'd and ahhh'd for about a week, I bit the bullet on Sunday and purchased a new laptop: an Acer 2930 laptop with a 12.1 inch screen, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, DVD writer, webcam, bluetooth.....



I could go on and on. This is the PC I'd hoped to get 3 years ago, when I purchased that rather expensive doorstop I rebuilt last month. It's small, almost small enough to fit into a regular sized handbag. It's light, weighing in at 2.2kg/4.6lb.

I got a good price, too. PC World were selling it "on special" for £449.99, down £50 from it's non-sale price of £499.99. (Today, they have it listed for £479.) A web-search turned up an additional 2.5% discount if I bought it from their sibling company, Dixons. So I did and got the lowest price I could find on/off the internet, £438.74. Ordered it online and it was delivered yesterday.

Now it's time to have some fun!

- Pam (DH has comandeered the doorstop)

Terminal decline?

I am writing from a doomed laptop. As if the Blue Screen of Death episode wasn't enough, it has decided not to recognise its own sound card (whilst still making all the usual Microsoft noises), can't work its internal wireless modem and has begun to ignore the USB ports. Oh, and when I tried to view a file on my data-stick, it couldn't view it, attempted to "install new hardware", looped on trying to find a driver (there isn't one - it is only a flash drive), and seized up.


This has never been a 100% happy relationship. I bought the laptop blind in 2005, through a scheme at work, the year the British Government decided to give tax breaks to fund its "home computer initiative". There were only two laptop choices in the scheme and I rejected the Apple one on the grounds that it didn't contain a DVD-writer. So I ended up with this, a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo D. I can't recommend them. I've been disappointed from the day I opened the box.

From the start, switching it on was a nightmare. I thought the problem was the on-off switch, but it turned out to be a battery connection. (This is one machine that won't work unless it's battery is in its socket. And battery life is abysmal.) I spent an hour on the phone to Fujitsu sorting that out.

The current sound-card problems are just an extension of an intermittent problem it always had but was hard to demonstrate on demand: the first time I wanted to play back a recording to my singing class, it failed. It had worked fine the day before, but at class we only got the video playback without any audio. Since it was still under warrantee at the time, I got onto the help desk and naturally it worked perfectly.

And then there is the fact that it has always been too big and heavy. We've always had a desktop computer - I'd wanted a small, lightweight laptop that was easy to carry around with me. I've been using laptops for work since 1997, when "going out on audit" meant lugging around a Cannon 386 laptop equiped with Windows 3.1. Even that dinosaur was lighter than this one!

There is only one thing for it. It's time to buy a new laptop. We went window shopping yesterday. I saw some pretty netbooks (keyboards are two small for this touch typist). My inner-accountant thrilled at the new wide-screen laptops that come complete with a built in number pad (no more struggling to enter columns of numbers into Excel). But I've defined what I want: a 12-inch screen; minimum of 3GB of RAM; integrated webcam; 250GB hard disk; DVD-writer with Blu-Ray, Dolby surround sound, etc. Sadly, my budget is a bit lower than the price of my wish list, so I will have to compromise somewhere. But a girl can dream.

The next problem is what to do about Vista. I don't want it and I don't need it. I own licences for Windows XP and Office 2005. I haven't heard a good thing about Vista from any of the users I know. I want to wait for the next generation to be released, when all the bugs will have been sorted out, before I install it. Any suggestions as to how to rid myself of this blight?

- Pam (got to go. DH wants to go shopping.)

Where was I before I was rudely interrupted?

Yay! My laptop is working. It took six weeks to sort out. I felt as if I'd had my voice switched off. Blogging from work isn't practical (or safe, job-wise) and I hate using DH's computer when he's around - I feel as if I'm depriving him of something.

What caused the Blue Screen of Death? A virus infecting the boot directory. Don't know where it came from, although I suspect it was attached to a midi-file player I downloaded. The advice I was given really didn't help the process, either; running CHKDSK broke the computer because it crashed in the middle and damaged the ability to run in Safe Mode. Here is what I learned:-

1. CHKDSK will not solve the problem and could make it worse.
2. If you have auto-reboot set up, disable it so that you can read the Blue Screen of Death. This option will appear when you start the computer and hit F8 (the same key that gives you Safe Mode). You need to record the error message (all gazillion digits of it), to help decipher the cause.
   
3. The most useful website for information belongs to Dell. (My next computer will be a Dell.) Everything I learned to solve this problem, I learned from the Dell website last week, after DH's computer also developed the Blue Screen of Death. Dell has a downloadable fix that worked on DH's PC. Use "Safe Mode with Networking" to access and download.
   
4. The second most useful place for information was McAfee. I emailed them asking what I needed to do to re-install their anti-virus software before I wiped the laptop. They also sent me a link to a fix, but by this time the laptop was so corrupted I couldn't boot in Safe Mode. Thank you McAfee, your customer service is superb.
5. Windows XP has a special "reinstallation" mode which means you don't need to reformat your hard drive first - it overwrites the existing software leaving everything else intact. Put the Windows CD into the CD drive and then boot up the computer. Sadly, it Blue Screened in the middle of the reinstall, so I bit the bullet and went to Plan D.
6. Plan D was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything, which I did last night. This was another option on the Windows CD.
7. The most useless website for information belonged to Fujitsu Siemens, the makers of this expensive near-doorstop. Try searching it for "Blue Screen" - you will find absolutely nothing useful. Yet another reason why I won't buy another laptop from them.
   
8. The most important thing you can do is run regular back-ups. When the Blue Screen of Death first appeared, I took a complete copy of My Documents and placed it on our external hard drive. It's better to use a program like McAfee, but I couldn't get that to work at the time.

- Pam (Did you miss me?)

Quick update (posting from work)

To put it bluntly, I think my laptop is buggered. It's had the computer equivalent of a major stroke. Even CHKDSK can't complete before the Blue Screen Of Death shuts it down. I am considering taking it to the computer-doctors.

Posting from me will be intermittent for a while. Sorry folks.

- Pam

Bugger! I killed the laptop

I was mid-way through a post when it failed! It went into a re-booting loop. I've started it in safe mode, tried the "restore last good settings" feature (which failed) and am now backing up my files. I know, theoretically, that the next step is to reformat the damn thing and then reinstall Windows, etc, but I've never done it. Can anyone tell me what I'm to expect?

- Pam