Devblog

PayPal and therefore eBay are the top targets for spam and phishing emails (with the possible exceptions of the big banks). For those that get these emails claiming to be from PayPal or eBay, never click on the links on them, just go to the website and login from there. Anyway, back to the point.

PayPal is trying to come to an arrangement with some of the major email providers so that any emails that appear to come from PayPal will only make it into peoples inboxes if they are digitally signed by PayPal. So far they haven’t made much headway but it’s still early days but I think PayPal should be applauded for there efforts.

The other big companies out there should take note and join the fight on spam by following PayPal’s lead. If they can eliminate this source of spam then the ISPs and email providers can concentrate on removing the other sources of spam from our inboxes.

Just a thought, bet it never happens

I’ve had my Nokia 8800 for a little over a year now and I still love it to bits. It’s still very very good looking and just as importantly to me, it’s got a simple feature set and does just what I want it to – calls, text, alarm, reminders and that addictive golf game. Nothing more.

The only problem is that it’s recently started playing up a bit. When texting, occassionly the screen will go completely white for a few seconds. Also, it sometimes has a bit of a fit and insists that the hands free is plugged in when it isn’t so I can’t make calls as noone can hear me. Luckily it’s indestructible so I haven’t broken it by whacking it on my desk yet.

Unfortunately, it’s probably just a case of phones not living as long as people… It might be time for an upgrade. I was tempted to go similar again and go for a Nokia 8800 Sirocco as it’s pretty much the same, but black. Hmmmmm…. nice! The only problem is that it’ll set me back at least £600 and I should probably pay the rent instead. So, the alternatives?

I’m not bothered about the Nokia N77. It’s quite a nice phone but like the Samsung D900 and all the rest, it’s all become about live TV, 20 mega-pixel cameras, smart phone features, etc, etc and none of this interests me since I never used any of it when all this stuff started coming out on 3. I’d rather have a good looking phone that just does what I want (that said, the camera on the 8800 is useless).

So, the rest? Top of the list at the moment would probably be the iPhone since it looks good and as mentioned previously, I broke my iPod so that would take two things of my “gadgets to buy” list. Only problem is: it’ll cost about £350! Oh, pricy.

At the moment though, thats the only real contender… Unless Google actually makes the gPhone (or whatever it’ll be called). There’s not currently much information about it, about as much as the Google OS, but considering Google is always brilliant at simplicity, all they have to do is come up with a nice design and it could be the winner. The problem with this one? It doesn’t exist.

Any others? Hmmm… not really. I’ve been googling for about an hour and there’s a lot of nice phones out there but they’re all Mazda MX5 ‘nice’, not Aston Martin DB9 ‘nice’ so they’re off the list.

I think I’ll just have to work harder and get the Nokia 8800 Sirocco!

I haven’t mentioned it here before but I’m a MASSIVE Stagte fan. I love it and walways have, ever since the first film. SG-1 did go down a notch after O’Neill became a general and it was a sad, sad day when RDA left altogether. But once I’d got used to the change, I have to admit that Mitchell is a brilliant replacement. But cancelling SG-1 altogether? Why, why why?!?

Luckily the last episode of series 10 was brilliant, a much better way of finishing off the last ever series than going out with a big finale (like, for example, Buffy or Angel), and with the two films coming up at the end of the year (one starring RDA as well) it makes the loss easier to bear.

You also have to remember that there’s still Atlantis coming back for at least another season, and with Carter moving over there as well.

I was reading GateWorld the other day and found out that there’s also going to be a third Stargate series made. At the moment there isn’t much in the way of information flying around about it except that it’s not a spin-off the way Altalntis was, but a completely new concept.

Looking forward to it!

I was a late comer to the computer, geek, technology world as I only got my first PC in 2001 and before that the most technical thing I knew was how to load Doom from Dos on my mate’s 386 laptop. That said, within a few months of getting my first box, I was stripping it down to see how it worked and a month or so after that I was upgrading and experimenting with various expansion cards. I had the whole range of peripherals, TV cards, various drive configurations etc, but the best extra I tried was adding a second graphics card and going dual monitor.

Since then I’ve had dozens of bozes and laptops and most of them have been single displays but I’ve always made sure that my main machine has always been a dual display setup. It’s usually my work box as I spend most of my time (when I’m trying to be productive ) working on that one, plus going dual screen usually tends to involve scrapping decent game play so that rules out my home desktop, but there’s always one.

Recently I’ve been considering moving over to a Mac since I spend my time at work using only three applications – Outlook, FireFox & Dreamweaver and they’re all available on Mac OS. Plus there’s all the extra benefits of having a Mac. And all the extra benefits of NOT having Windows. Only problem is that getting a brand new Mac Pro with dual screen and a few extras to get it up to a pretty good spec is a bit on the… pricy side. But, there might be a solution!

First job on Monday is to come up with a list for the accounts department of how me having a Mac Pro would make me so productive that to compensate I would need a Windows box with one these. Think it’ll work?

Check this out! Hilarious…

Everybody knows that pretty much any nokia charger from the last decade will work with any nokia handset from the last decade which is great as I’ve got the charger cradle from my Nokia 8800 at home and an old charger from a 3310 at work in case I need a bit of extra juice to get through the day and don’t have to worry about remembering to take a charger with me.

A couple of weeks ago I had a few days off and because I was in a rush I forgot to take the charger home for my Core Duo Vaio and although the battery life is good, it’s not that good. I have however got an old 700MHz Pentium Vaio with a broken screen at home that’s not much use to anyone. As I couldn’t go for three days without my laptop I checked out the spec on the old charger and it matched up with the battery from the new Vaio. It also fits.

I haven’t had a chance to see if any other Vaio chargers work with other Vaio’s but it’s a pretty big coincidence so I’ll bet that they do. Now I’ve got phone and laptop chargers at home and at work and have less stuff to carry around. That’s today’s top tip!

In past projects I’ve used MultiMap links to give directions and maps to postcodes but for a new part of the Medicology site I wanted to embed maps within the webpage. As MultiMap don’t let you do this within charging I went in search of a free solution and came up with Google Maps.

Using the default Google Maps API you can only include maps based on longitude and latitude and not on a UK postcode. After a bit of searching I found a brilliant blog post on Tom Anthony’s site that shows you how to use a few JavaScript functions to center the map on a postcode and then place a marker there as well. After following the tutorial I got the map in place but I wanted to extend it so that as the page loads it automatically centers on the postcode and places the marker there.

To keep the code clean I put the map in an iFrame and the only PHP involved is to output the postcode into the page as a JavaScript variable. The rest is done purely through JavaScript and the Google Maps API. You can see it at the Medicology Venue pages. If you want to use it, go view the page source and save the JavaScript file. It’s easy enough to implement on your own site. Job done!

Ask a group of casual internet users what the biggest problem with the modern computing world is today and they most of them will probably say it’s spam or popups (read: spyware). As 80% of all spam apparently comes from botnets, it follows that the majority of our problems come from insecure PCs that have been exploited.

Those in the pro-Microsoft camp will say that Windows is always targetted because it’s the most popular operating system on Earth, which is true. They’ll also say that Microsoft’s new offering will fix all the problems, stop spam, eliminate spyware and repair the ozone. Erm… maybe. The problem as I see it though is not just tightening up security, but educating those home users and small businesses who don’t have experienced IT staff to protect and repair their machines.

It’s fine releasing a new version of Windows that don’t have all user accounts set to Administrator level by default and the major update of XP SP2 which turned on Automatic Updates and put a basic firewall in place, but these changes either don’t go far enough to protect the end-user or in the case of Automatic Updates, still require interaction from the end-user to be effective.

Who know’s the best way to go about it, but in my little bunch of co-workers and friends/family that come to me with problems, telling them what the problem is, what caused it and how to stop it happening again seems to help a lot more than just transparently applying a few patches for them. It seems that Google has similar ideas in the bag as I noticed the other day.

I was Googling “This site may harm your computer.“. It appears that Google are taking action by educting end-usres by informing them of sites that may install malware. I think this is a brilliant first step and Google should be congratulated.

I know cars might be a bit off-topic for this blog, but apart from beer and technology, they are the things I love the most. Plus I ended up Googling for new Audis after finishing (again) Need for Speed Carbon and was wondering if the Audi that Darius drives was actually a real car.

It turns out that the Audi Le Mans Quattro he drives was a concent car that Audi did a few years ago but the new Audi R8 seeems to be the production model based on that concept. I was hoping that it might be a step up from the TT and with a year of saving and a few bonuses, I might actually be able to get one. No such luck, it’s Audi’s £76,000 super car!

The R8 is a mid-engined, 4.2 litre V8 with all of their latest technology and even some parts from the Lamborghini Gallardo (Audi now own Lamborghini) thrown in. It’s also one of the best looking cars out at the moment, possibly in my top 3 along with the Lambirghini Mercielago and Aston Martin DB9.

It’s definately on my wish list now and is also replacing the BMW M3 in my dream garage.

Ok, time for a rant. Recently there’s been a few things in the news that have been bothering me. All of them related to the damn assed morons that run this place, the government. The first is the new Road Pricing policy they are talking about. The idea is that duty on petrol will be reduced, tax discs will be abolished and we will be charged tax on a per mile basis.

The reason they’ve come up with this idea is partly to reduce congestion and partly to help the environment. I’m all for reducing congestion, but the environmentals just need a good kicking. It’s march and we’re scrapping frost off our cars so this global warming thing can’t be that bad. If you want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere why not plant more trees in city areas? Enough about this anyway, it just pisses me off.

Congestion. The thing the morons government don’t seem to realise is that the reason we’re all on the road at the same time is because we’re going to work, not just driving around to annoy people. This won’t ever change and trying to price us off the road won’t help. It might be time for a different idea pillocks.

And before you start, saying we should all use public transport is not the solution in it’s current form. I used to get the bus to work and a fifeteen mile journey through the country and then straight through the city center takes thirty minutes by car. By bus this takes an hour and a half each way and costs £8. As much as I love working fourteen hour days to spend half my wages on a big, slow box that stinks of piss, I think I’ll stick with the car thanks.

Anyway, enough on the roads. The other thing that’s been bothering me is taxes. Beer and fags have just gone up again, inflation has gone up 2.5% but prices tend to go up by a lot more and we have to pay £120 a month to have our bins emptied (except the council won’t let me have a bin outside my flat…. good one) and what have we got for all this extra cash we’re dishing over? Well… they probably used some of it to fuck up the NHS… oh, and I think there’s a big ferris wheel in London. Great.

I hate this country and as soon as the Isle of Man let me in, I’m off!

Just a few things before you leave a comment:

• I don’t give a shit about the environment, so don’t bother.
• Don’t say “You don’t know what you’re on about…”. I know. But I don’t think I’m capable of running the country.

Right, back to work!