Stop telling me what to do!

Just once I would like to wake up and be told that it is perfectly safe to do something.

But no, that's not going to happen. I'm fed up of politicians telling me what I should do.

If I eat I'm going to get fat and have a heart attack.

If I smoke I'll die horribly of cancer.

If I go out in the sun I'll get skin cancer and die.

If I drink alcohol my liver will explode and I'll die.

If I drive fast I'll crash and die. If I take drugs I'll go mad,die, or end up in prison. If I eat red meat I'll get colon cancer and die. Download music or films a big corporation might want to make an example of me and I'll be penniless. Park in the wrong place and I'll get a ticket or my car towed. Fail to pay my road tax and my car will get crushed. Accidentally miss a payment and my credit score is ruined. Put the wrong rubbish in the trash and they won't take it away.

I'm sick of it. It's getting to the stage where everything the individual does is assessed, monitored and judged. The thing is its the good citizen that seems to be the one that bears the brunt of this scrutiny while the criminals, politicians and celebrities seem to be able to get away with it. Rant over.

Incy wincy spider.

I'm always surprised how many people I meet in the UK who are scared of spiders when there is not a single venomous species of spider in the British Isles.

Spare a thought then for the people of the world who at this time of year need to check the toilet seat, under the bed, in their slippers and should definitely wear gloves when clearing out the shed. The pictured brown recluse spider is not the most venomous spider found in the US however it's bite can leave very unpleasant and painful wounds. It has an unfortunate habit of hanging out in basements and sheds.

The worst we have to contend with in Scotland is the adder our one venomous snake. The poor wee persecuted adder is a small snake who only ever bites the overly curious. And its dinner, in this case a mouse.

George Bush Auditions for Dunkin' Donuts Ad

"Hey King, can I borrow your keffiyeh to go with this robe I'm wear'n. I'm shoot'n an Ad for Dunkin Donuts"

Well I suppose he is going to need a new job soon and it seems that Dunkin' Donuts have a vacancy.

Now, did a stylist pick that robe out for him, or is it a symbol of his support for a monarchy state which thinks it is ok to flog and imprison women because they had the misfortune to be raped?

Oh look there is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on George Bush's right. Did a stylist pick that keffiyeh out for him, is he expressing support for a Palestinian state or is that the traditional Arab headdress?

What about all the people in the British and US armies who wear the keffiyeh are they supporting terrorism?

My head hurts.

My hard working worm friends.

Six years ago the ancestors of my worm chums arrived through the post in a little plastic carton. I had ordered them online from www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk. Having geared myself up for their arrival I had already made up their bedding, shredded newspaper soaked overnight in water, so straight into their new home they went.

They must have liked it because six years on their ancestors are still busy munching their way through our kitchen waste. Amazingly in all this time I have never once had to empty the bin despite the mountain of left over vegetables, tea bags, egg shells, kitchen roll, coffee grinds etc. that have gone in there over the years. The worms are not huge fans of onions but will tolerate a limited amount. Fruit is a bit of a no, no as well because you end up with vast quantities of flies that billow out of the bin and into your face when you open the lid.

The worms produce a lot of fluid that I refer to as worm juice. Its good stuff (for plants). My worm bin traps this nutritious soup in its base where there is a tap to siphon off the "juice" which you can dilute and use as liquid fertiliser. When the worms really get going in the summer they produce a lot of juice so if I am going away I leave the tap open to make sure they don't get flooded out. Apart from that, and siting the bin out of the frost and direct sunlight, the worms don't really need looking after at all.

The little wrigglers seem to be most active at night and if you listen closely you can hear the sound of a mass of slithering worms. Its not a sound that's easy to describe in words, suffice to say, its lovely.

Custom built computer tutorials for free.

I've turned into a bit of a yahoo answers addict recently. You can see some of my yahoo answers here on my test bed blog. It occurs to me that if I like solving peoples computer problems so much why not do it through my blog instead. I'm building a bank of screen recording tutorials at the moment, if you need to know how to do something, blogger or windows XP related on your PC, leave a comment and I will build you a tutorial that you can download. This is an example of the sort of thing I am on about. (flash)

How to make a top 10 commentators widget using yahoo pipes and widgetbox. Free custom widget build.

If you get really stuck with this, contact me, and I will build the widget for you in exchange for you linking to my blog.

You can see my effort at this, there it is, at the top left hand sidebar. It displays the top ten polyborers (commentators) in descending order and links them to their last comment.

To do this you are going to need a yahoo ID so that you can log into yahoo pipes and you will need to register with widgetbox.

My polyborers widget is displaying a stripped down rss feed. Thats where yahoo pipes comes in, it strips out just the names of those who have posted a comment, adds up the number of entries and displays them in descending order. You are going to need to set up your own pipe but don't worry this is very straight forward because you can use my polybore pipe template.

I've done a video tutorial of how to copy (clone) the pipe and set it up for your blog which you can see here. (java) or better quality flash version.

It shows how you can block comments from yourself, anonymous or anyone else. Also you can change the truncate value if you wanted say just a top 5 or a whopping top 100. The end of the video shows how to get the rss feed from your pipe.

If it is going too quickly hit the pause button. The url you need to enter (for blogger) is "http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default"

Once you have the rss feed address of your yahoo pipe copy it to note pad you will need it for widgetbox. At widget box click make a widget. Choose blog/feed and it will prompt for URL, copy and paste in your yahoo pipe feed. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=a4a615ae04f94ebf98cf79d14ce83e5d&_render=rss) is roughly what your yahoo feed URL should look like.

After that it is just a question of configuring what the widget will look like and the widgetbox interface makes this very easy to do.

Thanks to assessmyblog whose pipe I cloned then modified with a truncate function and whose instructions got me started assess my blog. Need more help or want me to build the widget for you? Leave a comment or contact and I'll get back to you asap.

The single most useful tool for the blogger ever?

Well it is for this blogger anyway.

Ok this applies to boring old internet explorer. I know there are other browsers out there, and I have had a look at most of them, but I always go back to comfy old IE7. Polybore is stuck in a rut and it seems well and truly in Bills his clutches. Well, browser wise anyway.

Another polybore weakness is atrocious spelling, well maybe thats a bit extreme, I can probably spell around 95% of the words of my vocabulary. The correct spelling of the mysterious missing 5%, and its always the same blasted words, just never stuck and continue to fail to stick in what remains of the polybore brain.

ieSpell to the rescue, it will check the spelling of any online form you happen to be filling in. A lot of forms these days do have spell checker functionality built in, but for those that don't ieSpell saves polybore's blushes. ieSpell simply plugs itself into internet explorer tools and context menus. Why not give it a go. Like much of my favourite software it is, of course, free.

Are zimbio and technorati leeching hits from your site?

I think they probably are.

I'm rather new to this blog malarkey. It is proving to be more fun and enlightening than I thought it would be. For one thing I have discovered that I am rather vain. This blog started off as a way of discussing things which interest me without having to witness the eyes of my audience glaze over (which is what happens when I do this in person).

To my surprise I started to care how many hits my blog was getting. Now that's a contradiction, how can you write what you think is a boring blog yet expect people to visit it.

Anyway to try and pump up the hits I enrolled in digg, technorati, zimbio, and propeller. Currently I am monitoring which is generating the most traffic.

Although its early days yet I think I have already made up my mind that its going to be propeller and digg that I stick with. I'm toying with the idea of dumping technorati and zimbio.

The reasons for this are simple. I am providing technorati and zimbio with free content which someone can read without ever coming to my blog. I have to hope that someone reading my post at zimbio or technorati will click the tiny link to my site that they provide. There is no way of even knowing how many views my material is getting there. Why don't they show this? Maybe it's because if you saw how many views your post got there and compared it to the referring link stats for your site you would quickly do the math. Another problem for me to consider is that when I do a google search, on a topic I have discussed in my blog, then the results will come back with the zimbio and technorati results for my material far nearer the top than those from my own blog site. It seems that there is a big danger of loosing search engine hits also.

With propeller and digg the person interested in your post is linked directly to your blog so you definitely get the hit as well as the possibility of getting a digg or equivalent.

I feel a bit bad about being down on zimbio because they did but one of my posts on their front page. It was encouraging that they thought it was good but did it generate more hits for them than it did for me? I need the hits more than they do. I suppose it depends why you are doing a blog. If you just want your stuff out there then technorati and zimbio are fine. If you are like me and get your kicks from actual hits on your site (and maybe your ads) then perhaps you should have a think about who you use for your blog publicity drive. Oh vanity, vanity, vanity!

Literacy problems? Then try a screen reader they are not just for the visually impaired. textHELP vs NaturalREADER

Click here to listen to this article. (mp3)

Its really important that everyone gets the opportunity to access the internet. One of the barriers for people who have literacy disabilities is that the internet is mainly text driven. One of the ways to get round this is to use a screen reader. Screen readers have been historically closely associated with use by people with a visual impairment, however, they can be an invaluable tool for people with literacy problems as well.

Screen readers that are designed exclusively for people with a visual impairment are not great for people who have vision. They tend to read the text very quickly and they include information about everything which is on the screen and this can be confusing if you are not used to it.

A good free screen reader for internet use is browsealoud by textHELP. The only snag with this, and it's a biggie, is that the web site that you are visiting needs to be browsaloud enabled. Although the browsealoud screen reader is free the website developer has to purchase browsealoud in order to enable their web site.

What we want is a screen reader that will read any text from a web site or document on the screen. textHELP have a product that will do this called Read and Write Gold. This is undeniably a good product. I have helped people to use it to excellent effect. Having said that there are a couple of major problems which have put me off the software. At one time textHELP would sell the screenreader element of Read and Write Gold separately however, they no longer appear to do so, I can not find it for sale on their web site. Instead it has become an element of the Read and Write package. This has resulted in the software becoming much more expensive. Secondly textHELP no longer have a free trial version available from their web site. I find this unforgivable, I would never buy software that did not allow me to try it first.

So textHELP get a grip, start focusing on individual customers, you seem to be totally focused on selling to organisations.

If you want to try a screen reader I suggest you go for NaturalREADER. Do not be put off by their horrible home page (I just mention that because I am scared of people who wear headsets). Again, I have helped people to use this software to excellent effect. NaturalREADER provide a free trial version (without annoying reminders) that has all the functionality you need to make a good assessment of the product. Once installed put it into minibar mode, select the text you want it to read by highlighting it with the mouse in the usual way, then click the speaker icon on the minibar. Works a treat. Great stuff NaturalReader guys, keep up the good work.

If you should decide to buy NaturalReader you will get more functionality and importantly it is reasonably priced, especially if you are in the uk with the present $/£ exchange rate.

Need more info on this? Then leave a comment or use the contact button to email me.

Polybore has started a forum on this topic click here to contribute.

The Last Trip by Dr Malcolm Finlay

Click here to watch the film.

I'm excited and green with envy. Because of their involvement in the production, friends of mine are off to Cannes. "The Last Trip" was shot, directed and produced by Dr Malcolm Finlay and is among 12 super8 films chosen to premier at the film festival. I say I am excited, they are more so because if it wasn't enough that they were going to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, they haven't even seen the film yet!

The straight8 prize has very strict rules, you have to shoot the film on one film cartridge (three minutes),so no editing, whats more you have to submit the film undeveloped. The first time the film makers will see the film is the screening and premier at Cannes. I'd love to be there to see their faces.

Its a tremendous achievement the film beat off 163 entrants from all over the world to earn its premier at Cannes. I can't wait to see it. I'm surprised that there is not more about this in the press. I might give my friends a call and scoop an exclusive. In fact I'm sure I will, when they told me they were off to Cannes I reacted as if they had told me they were going to the shops or something. Its only today that full realisation has kicked in.

If you are in the UK tune into to Channel 4 on Wednesday 21st of May at 7.55pm. If not then you can see the films here http://onsuper8.blogspot.com/search/label/3mw

The perfect Gin and Tonic

Like this recipe? Check out all the polybore recipes here.

The sound I associate most with warm summer evenings is the tinkle of ice in the perfect, refreshing, gin and tonic. Now, the gin and tonic may seem rather straight forward when compared to it’s more complicated, flashier cocktail cousins. However there is an art to the classic gin and tonic. It’s the little black dress of the cocktail world, simple but classic. Let’s explore this fantastic drink.

First off you need a good quality gin. When making cocktails it is tempting to go for a value gin as its flavour will be masked by all the other ingredients. Not so with the gin and tonic, it shows off your quality gin to its best advantage and demonstrates it’s creator’s knowledge of a good gin. Then there is the tonic, again we need the good stuff, no scrimping here either. Avoid the diet/ slimline tonics, lets live a little, we want the perfect gin and tonic. Tonic is best bought in single serving cans. If you buy a large bottle of tonic then by the end of the evening it, your gin and tonics, and your party will be flat.

Now we start to explore more deeply the art of the “G and T”. Cool and chilled are the bywords here. Chill the gin overnight and make sure the tonic is also icy cool. Get plenty lemons and limes and chill them overnight also. Make sure that you will have a plentiful supply of ice.

A massively important component of the perfect G and T is the glass that you are going to serve it in. Please do not even think about using anything plastic. You are going to need a good sized tumbler; we need to get plenty of ice in there, as well as the lemon and lime slices. Nothing beats quality crystal glasses and it’s the only way to achieve the tinkling sound of ice against glass that I find so evocative of summer. Hey, it’s the perfect gin and tonic we are after here. Make sure that the glasses are nice and cool, put them in the refrigerator an hour or two before your party.

Now with the ground work done we can relax and look forward to treating our guests to the perfect G and T. Its time to pour.

Because we chilled the glasses we don’t need to put the ice in first. This is important, if you put the ice in first it is difficult to judge how much gin you have put in and we need consistency here. Take note of how much gin you put in for future reference then add plenty ice, top up with tonic and pop in slices of lime and lemon. I suggest as a rough guide one part gin to seven parts tonic but you know your own palate. Taste your first G and T and adjust accordingly. I usually get someone else to taste it as well. Remember it is refreshing and light we are after here, not, that was fantastic but my head has just exploded.

To really show off your perfect G and T invest in some light up ice cubes and put a couple of these into each glass along with plenty of regular ice. Blue lights work the best in my opinion and give a really classy effect which is just what this splendid drink deserves. This is great for a night time party and will help you keep track of guests who may have become “lost” in the dark.

My widgets for Blogger round up.

Wow there are a lot of widgets out there that you can add to your blog or web page. Here is a round up of some the ones I have used so far. You can see how they will look by having a scroll round the blog.

Google ADwords. Very easy to get set up and going. Click on the Get Google ADwords box to get adding adverts to your site.

Kontactr allows visitors to my blog to contact me by email without having to leave my blog. As you can see you can use this without showing your actual email address. It has anti spam protection and was an absolute breeze to set up.

Instant messenger widgets,well there are a few out there but I opted to go with Plugoo. Plugoo works with my existing messaging software ie MSN Live Messenger which is why I went for it. Perfect for my needs but it has one disadvantage over the others in that you can only chat to one person at a time.

I got the clock from Google Gadgets. There are loads of gadgets of every type and description to choose from there.

The RSS button I picked up from feedburner.

Introducing the PC to someone on the autistic spectrum.

I've had a bit of experience introducing computers to people who are on the autistic spectrum. I'm going to share some of what I have learned by posting it here at Polybore. If you need more info please don't hesitate to contact me.

First off I'm going to suggest having a look at Jigsaws Galore. You can download a free trial of the software. Jigsaws Galore comes with some jigsaws that you can start using straight away or you can use a picture file of your own and the software will convert it into a jigsaw. I particularly like this feature as you can make the jigsaw more interesting for the person using it by reflecting their interests. You can make the jigsaw easy or difficult by setting how many pieces the jigsaw will have, this is good as you can start the person off on a really easy jigsaw, then as they get the hang of it you can increase the difficulty.

Whats the advantage of this computer game over the traditional jigsaw? The person doing the puzzle on the computer is learning how to click and drag items on the desktop of a PC. This skill is essential for using a computer. Also some people on the autistic spectrum find it easier to communicate via a third party, in this case the computer is the third party. People love to show others what they have done (show and tell) and this can be true for people on the autistic spectrum too.

Todays most searched.

Ever wondered what other people are searching for with google and yahoo? I have and the results are often surprisingly obscure. Here is where I check them.

For yahoo http://buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com/overall/

For Google http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Online punk ransom note creator package.

Edit. Since I did this post I have found a widget that does the same thing but a lot more professionally. Mind you the widget will not do numbers unlike my diy masterpiece which will. Get the widget here.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK its a rather grand title for a bunch of letters cut out of various newspapers and scanned into a computer but it does the job. It took me quite a while, searching, snipping and scanning so I feel it deserves an elaborate title.

All you need to do is click on the image (above and to left) and a much larger one will open in a window. Right click on it and select save picture. Once saved open it with Microsoft Paint (Start/ all programs/ accessories paint). In paint use select (its the rectangle icon at the top right of the vertical toolbar at the left of the screen). Once you have selected a letter you can move it, copy it, paste it, stretch it, bend it, anyway you like it. I find its easiest if you open paint twice, one for the letter "bank", the other to paste to. Just a bit of punk fun.

See http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjhDF7Vuu for a video demo of how to do it.

Having problems installing LinuxMCE?

I certainly did. My first attempt was to install using the CD method of adding linuxMCE to an existing installation of Kubuntu. No joy there which was annoying because the whole process took absolutely ages only for it to fail. Undeterred I then downloaded the DVD version which installed and worked first go. If you are thinking of having a look at LinuxMCE I would heartily recommend using the DVD method with one proviso, and its a fairly big one if you were hoping to add linuxMCE to your existing Kubuntu install, this method will completely wipe the hard disk that it is installed to.

Our cat's favourite operating system is Kubuntu.

Now I can't see why a cat should have a favourite OS but it seems Dave (our cat) prefers Kubuntu over Windows XP. She (yes Dave is a female cat) has never shown much interest in Windows XP over the years. When I experimented with Kubuntu, on an old PC I had lying about, Dave became very interested in what was happening on the monitor. Maybe it was the compiz fusion desktop that I was working with. I don't know.

I was rather impressed with Kubuntu myself. It was very easy to install and once installed Kubuntu automatically connected to the Internet and the shared files on my home LAN with no configuration required. Kubuntu comes with Open Office installed so straight away you have a very capable home office PC.

EastEnders to end.

The end of EastEnders. Wow I'd love to see that statement in the news. The thing that worries me is that this UK soap will run and run forever. What a ghastly thought. Occasionally I wonder how I might put a stop to it, killing the entire cast or blowing up the set. Unfortunately those actions would result in my spending rather a long time in prison. Whats more a cast can easily be replaced or a set rebuilt. There must be a way of putting a stop to this awful and pointless television series.

Obviously while millions of people watch it every week the BBC is happy with the status quo. However I do not think that the point of the BBC is to churn out a particular soap opera forever. Especially one that seems unable to capture what London is actually like or even portray anything which might pass as a convincing character or storyline.

So I say end EastEnders. By all means replace it with some other soap opera but face the fact EastEnders time has taken its course. Two decades is long enough.

How to make a super cool ice serving bowl.

Like this recipe? Check out all the polybore recipes here.

Summer is a coming in! With temperatures already soaring to 18 degrees celcius in sunny old Scotland it is time to turn ones thoughts to ice cream, fruit, ice cool punch and the like. If you are having a few friends round why not give this a go.

What you need is two plastic bowls one smaller than t'uther, some water, a crepe bandage and a deep freeze. Oh and a towel is always handy, splishy splashy.

First put some water in the larger bowl.
Second push the smaller bowl into the larger bowl until the water comes up the sides, then secure with crepe bandage or the like (I raided a bandage from my first aid kit). You should then have something that looks like this.
Third put the whole lot in the freezer, to make more space in my freezer I removed one of the freezer drawers. Once it is well and truly frozen remove from freezer and you will then have something that looks like this.

Fourth leave it to melt a wee bit so that the inner bowl is easy to remove and the ice can be turned out of the larger bowl. Taa da!
Enter the stunt strawberries.

These bowls are great for serving fruit, salads, punch (providing its super cool before going in), ice cream etc. Or you can just pop some candles in. Ice cream brought to the table in one of these melts much more slowly, soft fruits like raspberries don't go squishy so quickly in the heat, salad stays crisp longer. The bowl is surprisingly resistant to melting especially when you make the ice thicker. If you want the ice to be super clear boil the water that you are going to freeze, this removes some of the air from the water.Best of all there is one last thing to be washed up at the end of the night. I'm toying with the idea of adding food colouring and having different coloured bowls. Or maybe I will freeze some edible flowers in. Lots of possibilities.

If you have a go I'd love to see what you come up with.

Screencast-O-Matic

I'd been struggling away to try and post a screen recording of a Captivate tutorial I made for an earlier post. I had thought I would use YouTube. The YouTube compression resulted in a really fuzzy video and my first post to YouTube was one of the worst videos I have ever seen.

However I was saved by a contribution from Beech who suggested I use screencast-o-matic. Its a fantastic bit of kit that I wish had been around ages ago. You just need java installed, it will prompt you for this, then away you go capturing your screen with just your browser. What's more it provides free hosting of your recording.

Here is my first go with it. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjhlYgVt2

For comparison here is the you tube video I managed eventually to make bearable after a lot of faffing about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=474E_kHd2BI

And a link to the glorious site itself http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

Well done the screencast-o-matic chaps.

AVI file sound out of sync with video solution.

Like This? Click here for more Polybore Video Articles

I can happily say that this method using virtualdubmod to sync sound with video in an AVI file works a treat. This problem had been driving my wife and I mad for months, we were constantly starting and stopping videos to try and get them back into sync. We tried all our video software, VLC, windows media player and powerdvd but always the film would end up like a badly dubbed foreign language movie.

1. Load your completed avi (with out of sync sound) into virtualdubmod
2. Go to File, then 'File Information'. In the video details, look at the length. Compare that to the length in the audio details.
3. Take the difference and multiply by 10 (because we need to know how many miliseconds (thousandths of a second) not the hundredth of a second shown here).
4. Click OK
5. In the 'Video' menu, ensure 'Direct Stream Copy' is selected
6. Got to 'Streams' and them 'Stream list'. There should only be one stream listed there, as 'AVI audio stream 1'. Right click on that stream an ensure 'Direct Stream Copy' is selected.
7. Right click on the stream again and go to 'Interleaving'
8. In the box labeled 'Delay audio track by', enter the number you worked out before (difference between the 2 lengths, multiply by 10).
9. Click OK and then OK again
10. Go to 'File' and 'Save As'. give it a file name (don't overwrite the other file, just in case). Click save.

You can get virtualdubmod from http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/

Click here for video tutorial I cooked up using Captivate and my new fav thing, screen-o-matic!
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjhlYgVt2

Like This? Click here for more Polybore Video Articles

An Elm Log.

Here is a large lump of Elm that been sitting in my garden for longer than I care to remember. One of my excellent plans that went on the back burner I'm afraid. At one time it was part of a sculpture, the keen eyed among you will see a long band saw protruding and lying along the ground. At one time the log was vertical with the band saw in a spiral through and around the log. There were also a couple of large circular saw blades sticking out of it. An artist needed it shifted when he moved away and I thought I'd give it a home. It must weigh at least a ton and I badly broke a trailer getting it into the garden. The yellow cigar case is for scale. I need to get this thing shifted as I have been informed that massive rusting saw blades are not good playthings for young children. I would say (well to myself anyway), what's the point of a tetanus injection if you are not going to use it?

Home Entertainmentorium

Hmm a bit dusty.

Back in the mists of time my friend and I separately set out to build ourselves PCs to act as multimedia players. I’m not sure if “HTPC” had been coined back then because my friend christened his “The Home Entertainmentorium”. Snappy!

My wife was highly sceptical about my plan to build a second PC and install it into the living room. She was sure that it was simply a devious plan of mine to extend my computing related mess throughout the house. However she could see the benefit of having her 600+ CD collection collated with each track only a click away so I was in living room PC business.

Looking at my HTPC PC now it is seriously dated with its 1.6 Semperon CPU on an Asus A7V8X-MX motherboard with Gforce 6200 GFX. That said it still performs its multimedia tasks in a most satisfying way, CD and DVD burning, TV recording, music, DVD player, photos, internet access, internet radio and 5.1 surround sound to mention but a few. All told it’s a great bit of kit and thanks to the BBC iPlayer, 4OD et al it has become even more useful.

I have to admit that I am pretty smug as, after my wife’s initial resistance, it has turned out that she uses this PC far more than I do. In fact, she refers to it as “her” PC.

Currently I am thinking about upgrading to accommodate HDTV but this would require a new CPU, motherboard, probably RAM, Blu-ray Drive and TV card. Not to mention a HDTV. That’s a pretty penny and at time of writing I think it’s still a bit early to jump on the HDTV bandwagon, besides that, the thought of replacing our entire DVD library to take full advantage of HD brings on nausea.

If you haven’t dipped your toe into the HTPC sea yet why not give it a go.

Just bear in mind that you are going to want the PC to be as quiet as possible. Also don’t get hung up on what the PC looks like (as I did). For simplicity’s sake I would advise using a standard size case which, if it’s a bit ugly, you can always hide away.

First time dad.

Very recently I became a father. Apart from his one massive foot he is fantastic.

Charles Kennedy fails to turn up.

I am a big fan of Mr Kennedy and I have to admit that I'm a bit worried about him not turning up for Radio 4's Any Questions? this evening. Dimbleby made a big thing about how the program had bent over backwards to allow Mr Kennedy to contribute by setting up a telephone link to the program, after Mr Kennedy had apparently missed his train, only for him not to turn up.

Doubtless there will be speculation in the press. I just hope everything is ok as I'd really like to see Mr Kennedy back in politics at a high level asap. I still have a list of the Lib Dem MPs who sent him the letter that ended his leadership of the party. A list of traitors. Interesting how many of them subsequently stood for leadership. Sad how they managed to effectively write the party off just when it was starting to make an impression.

Independent Scotland.

Alex Salmond leader of the Scottish National Party is a rather happy chappie at the moment. Not being a huge fan of Alex I find this rather unsettling. I've never really seen the point of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom as I am as happy with being British as I am proud to be Scottish.

If opinion polls are to be trusted then most Scots share my feelings regarding Scotland's membership of the UK. A recent poll by YouGov 28.04.08 shows that only 25% of Scots would favour complete independence.

My worry is that this figure of 25% may well rise. I can't see Labour winning the next general election and I can easily imagine the Conservative Party winning with a sizable majority. Unfortunately the Conservatives still fail to gather support in the North of England and in Scotland. Essentially we would once again see a UK government with few MPs with constituencies North of the Border. Scotland remembers what this was like from the Major/ Thatcher years and some will be forced to contemplate independence to avoid this state of affairs returning.

I have to say I'm a bit worried. The Conservatives seem to have forgotten their Unionist credentials. Labour are in real difficulties, Wendy Alexander, say no more. The SNP are cock-a-hoop. Many people in England seem to favour Scottish independence which I find a bit weird, does that mean they are anti Britain?

Bush- Clinton- Bush- Clinton?

If I were an American Democrat having trouble deciding about the nomination I would bear in mind the consequences of having two families taking turns to hold presidential office. The two term rule for a president is constitutionally an excellent idea and the people who instigated it had very good reasons for doing so. The USA is not exactly a small place and has no shortage of very tallented people so why is it that two families are governing the place?

Boring and lazy.

Just been checking over my embryonic blog and I am satisfied that it is indeed boring. However I know realise it could be far more boring. I seem to have left out a lot of detail! (Thanks Muig) Shame on me for not maximising the boring factor. If you need more info or detail on any of the topics I mention please feel free to ask for more as I'm always pleased to elaborate.

Fridge repair.

Just to prove that I can be boring about more than one subject... I fixed my fridge/ freezer the other day. After visiting http://ukwhitegoods.co.uk/ I was able to diagnose the problem. In my case the fridge was no longer getting cold. After hot wiring the compressor avoiding the thermostat I found that the fridge came on and I knew that I had a faulty "stat". A quick check on ebay and I was able to get a replacement one for £11 including p and p. Whats more it arrived the next day. Thanks to ace-machine-man for excellent service http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Appliance-Consultancy-Engineering

After this diy repair exercise I know a lot more about fridges than ever before and I will probably share this info in the future. In particular I have fallen in love with our 26 year old fridge freezer. Before I worked out that I could fix it I looked at replacing the whole thing and I was struggling to find a modern fridge freezer that came close to matching its capabilities. More about the last of the pre Whirlpool Bauknecht fridge freezer at a later date perhaps.

If you ever have a white goods problem or if you are considering investing in a new bit of kit check out the ukwhitegoods forum you could save yourself a small fortune.

Orb

I have to say I am jolly impressed with Orb. It really has some great features and its very easy to use. The only downside is that when streaming liveTV it needs a PC with a fair bit of grunt. My HTPC that I built ages ago only has a semperon 2400xp (socket A) just can't hack that particular feature.

If you have not tried Orb and you are looking for a media streaming solution, or even a way to access files on your PC remotely, you really must take it for a test run. I was surprised at all the additional features as I'd always thougth of it as a TV streamer. Whats more if you are only interested in pumping media round your home network Orb will do this for you as well as it detects that the host and client are on the same network and streams the media directly between them. Free and Amazing.

LinuxMCE

I had a look at LinuxMCE the other day. I could not get it to install over Kubuntu using the CD method, using the DVD image did however work. LinuxMCE is interesting but I feel it tries to do to much. I'd really like to get the boot over network going but to do so I would have to redesign my home network and I just dont want to do that at the moment.

For the time being I'm putting linuxMCE on the back burner until I can find a use for it. Having said that its well worth checking out.