Over the past six months I have had an extremely irritating problem with my desktop computer - whenever I went to play games in 3D it would last a couple of minutes, and then crash out. Sometimes the game would just die, but I also had some hard crashes. Now, for the uninitiated, Linux (which my desktop runs upon) doesn’t do hard crashes - there is no blue screen of death - and so 99% of the time this indicates a hardware failure of some sort. There sometimes is the potential for a driver issue, but there were no reports of similar problems anywhere online.

The first candidate for failure was the graphics card - after all, it was 3d graphics causing the problem. An overheating graphics card could well be the problem. Finally, 2 weeks ago, a new gfx card arrived fresh from ebay. But it didn’t fix the problem - I almost cried.

Next candidate was dodgy memory - I had noticed that a kernel compile was falling over in different places each time. But an overnight run of memtest86+ showed that nothing was wrong.

And so we reached the CPU fan. One new Akasa fan later (plus a couple of system fans for good measure) and on Friday night I was back in action. 2 mammoth Enemy Territory sessions over the weekend proved that all was well.

Happiness

mrBen

Well, it would appear that the UK is top of the infected PC charts again. (At least according to Symantec, who aren’t exactly unbiased given that they sell security software - not sure I always agree with their ideas).

The (much aforementioned) Metro ran a (scaremongering IMHO) article today suggesting that the Internet was doomed because of spam, worms, viruses, etc. which would eventually make it unusable. Lots of people complain about the increase of spam in particular, but I wonder: “Are you part of the problem?” Lots of spam, viruses and worms work using ‘zombie’ PCs - PCs that have been infected and are being used by crackers to send out spam, or spread viruses. Do you know for sure that your PC isn’t infected?

Do you:

1. Regularly scan for viruses using a decent virus scanner (ClamWin does the job)?
2. Regularly update your virus definitions?
3. Regularly scan for spyware?
4. Regularly update your spyware definitions?
5. Have a firewall installed?
6. Regularly check to ensure that the firewall hasn’t been breached?
7. Regularly update your Operating System and Software to patch security holes?

Are you:

1. Running a mail server that could be used as an open relay?
2. Running a web server that could be exploited?
3. Opening any ports on your firewall that are needed?
4. Keeping an eye on security reports?

I don’t believe that the Internet will ever be unusable. I do believe, however, that there may come a time when ISPs start to deny access to people who are unwilling or unable to keep their machines free of malicious code. Will you be one of those? Or do you want to cease being part of the problem?

mrBen

Over the past couple of years since I started taking public transport to work, I have become an avid reader of the Metro. It may not be the best quality publication, but it’s free. (The quality has dropped since they removed the crossword ) However, the more I read news from around the world, or even just the UK news, the more I become convinced, and thus saddened, that we are living in a blame culture. Everything has become someones fault, there is always a scapegoat, and that scapegoat always has to pay - often financially.

I believe in accidents. I believe that people make genuine mistakes, and that mistakes shouldn’t be punished. (When I say “mistake” I mean genuine lack of intent to perform said action, as opposed to the “I did think through the consequences of the action I intended”) I don’t want to grow up in a litiguous culture like America. I don’t want to be afraid that my children might sue me if I’m a bad parent, or that the teachers at a school my sue me for the behaviour of my children.

Sadly, most people are happy to continue to be part of the problem, and many are unwilling to admit that they are.

mrBen

Well - here he is for the first time. Our new kitten, named Tigger (after much deliberation). He’s settled in surprisingly well, and is very friendly (and already taking visitors).

tigger/tigger.jpg

(It’s also a nice time to show off the new Gallery2 and accompanying Wordpress Plugin )

mrBen

Okay, maybe a little melodramatic.

A better title might have been “The countdown to the great big Scottish Power cull”.

At some point in the next two weeks I (along with everyone else in the company) will find out if I still have a job to do, as part of a restructuring/costcutting exercise.

Ah, big corporations. Dontcha just love ‘em?

This might all tie in with the possible take over by E.ON, a big German energy company, but that would be coincidence surely?

BigAl

There’s not really anything to be said about the last 2 England football games, other than that they were rubbish. Completely rubbish. Plus in the Wales game they did something that I always hated when Liverpool did it under Houllier, and that is trying to sit on a 1-0 lead. Grrrr.

However, the thing that is disturbing me most in sport at the moment is the fact that the test match that starts today is the last test match that will be shown on terrestrial TV for a long time. We live in a country that has a nationalised television service, and (with the advent of digital) a good number of free to air channels, some of them part of the BBC, some funded by advertising. And I believe that everybody should be able to watch national sporting events. Everybody with a TV. Without subscription charge. The loss of the Premiership was bad, but the loss of international cricket, especially at a point when people are becoming more interested in it, is a death-blow to the sport. People won’t traipse down to the pub to watch cricket. And not many will by Sky Sports just to watch cricket.

I have a number of objections to Sky, which I will outline here:

• I object to paying for a service outright, and then having to watch more adverts on Sky than I do on channels funded only by advertising
• I object to have to pay for multiple channels for a single purpose - Sky Sports 1, 2 & 3 just to watch Premiership football?!?
• I object to having to pay additional money (on top of the subscription) to watch “special features” - Premiership+ and the like
• I object to a company having a monopoly in this fashion - Sky don’t get peoples viewing because they are providing a better service, but because they provide the only service.

Suggestions for improving the situation:

• All national sporting associations should refuse to sign ‘exclusive’ television rights for national sporting events.
• Sky should offer packages that allow people to buy the TV they want, but not what they don’t. I would consider Sky if I could pay a simple fee that allowed me to watch all of the Liverpool games.

mrBen

For those of you not yet avid readers of Illyria, we are getting a cat, but are unsure what to name him.

He’s an 11-week old tabby. Sensible suggestions welcomed. Non-human names, or obscure human names preferred. Literary and/or geeky references gain extra credit.

mrBen

I spend a huge amount of my time looking at bits of software. I have, as you can imagine, an active interest in computing, but there are certain areas of software that I often feel are lacking a certain edge, and I am constantly on the lookout for software that pushes the boundaries, either of quality, or creativity.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Content Management Systems, for example. I’ve tried loads of them, and some of them have been excellent, some poor, and many have great potential, albeit unrealised. For this purpose OpenSourceCMS.com has been invaluable - they have a huge roundup of software, and demos of them all. There aren’t just straight CMSs either - Wordpress is there as a blogging system, and there are some Wikis too.

One area that has always piqued my interest is that of groupware. Or, more realistically, email and calendaring with “proper” scheduling and invites. OSCMS has a load of groupware suites, but one that isn’t there is a suite called GroupOffice. GO is available in a ‘Professional’ edition, which costs money, but also a ‘Community’ edition that is GPLd. It will install (despite the documentation) quite happily on a shared webhost, and has good support for mail and calendaring, as well as modules for forums, wiki, notes, to-do, project management, chat and a few other things (including a slightly lightweight CMS). But, most importantly, it works. And it works well. So well, in fact, that I am tempted to install it here on the Moose and offer it as an option to people who have their mail hosted here (yes! you too can have an @jedimoose.org email address!!)

Most important (for me at least) is the good scheduling support. You can invite anyone you like (as long as you have an email address) and they will receive an email with accept/decline links to click (which will then update your calendar accordingly) and a .ics file which most calendaring software these days supports for adding items, so that they can add it to their own software. Marvellous.

The interface is fairly bog standard - nothing like the Ajax-goodness of Hula, but then, Hula won’t install on a shared-webhost. But it does the trick, and is very straightforward to use.

If you’re interested in GO, check out the demo on their website. And if you’re interested in having a proper calendar (+other features) on a JediMoose mail account, then leave a comment.

mrBen

You’ll find out here.

Looks like I’m…

Whoo… Brilliant.

BigAl

Bwah ha ha!!!

The fools! What have they done?

They gone and given me broadband again. Ha ha!

Settling back down to Earth for a moment, it wasn’t the most straightforward setup. According to the nuggets at NTL customer service, the only way to set up your account (through an ethernet connected cable modem) is to go through an IP address that you have to sell your firstborn to get hold of.

Then the whole shambles gets worse.

Note to NTL: Wise up, halfbrains. You’re not making any friends here.

Then came the Wireless Broadband Router which, with a bit of tinkering, is now setup and working a treat.

Ah, technology. Dontcha just love it?

BigAl

Probably one of the funniest cricketting quotations leads me nicely into a short homage to this years Ashes contest.

I’m a football fan, through and through. But over the last 5 years of so I have come to appreciate cricket in a new light; it’s very relaxing to watch, and, on occasion, can be exciting too. I admit that not all cricket is exciting (but then, not all football is either), but this years Ashes have been something else. I’ve never been so rivetted to a game of cricket in my life. And I, for one, am glad to see people getting back into the sport - some of them even north of the Border.

As an aside, I thought that I would take a look at the demos of a couple of cricketting games - EA’s Cricket 2005 and CodeMasters’ Brian Lara thingy. Here’s a quick summary based on the demos:

• Both games look and sound fine. Both have a tendency, however, to spend ages on replays and crap like that, meaning that playing the game takes a while. BL is probably better than EA in that respect.
• EA is far to complicated to bat. Trying to get anything but a defensive stroke is really tricky. The demo doesn’t let you bowl or field, which is a pain too.
• BL is fun to bat. It was a great feeling to hit Glen McGrath for six You also get to bowl, which I haven’t mastered yet, and some fielding. It just feels more “fun”.

So - buy BL if you really want a cricket game

7 days until the final test.

mrBen