Failblog retards!

I recently started reading Failblog, it's good fun, there's some funny images/videos in there, so I stuck it in my RSS.

Unfortunately, they haven't managed to get videos working on their feed (others have, so not sure what the problem is), so I have to visit the site to watch the videos.

Now, anyone sane person who has been on Failbog, will have seen the amount of unintellectual drivel that is posted in the comments area. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the comments area of any blog or online forum etc, was for comments related to the actual post/picture/video?? Photoshop Disasters blog manages this concept quite well.

Not on Failbog, no, they have their own completely shitty random languiage they talk to each other in. I have no idea if these people are adults, or just babies mashing keyboards across the world. They obviously have nothing to do during the day, no jobs, family, friends to talk to, just 24/7 commenting shit on Failblog.

FAIL!

Take this one for example, 806 comments, with only the first 2 or three actually about the video posted, some example comments:

Yeah, you gotta think of the most retarded response possible and then write it using inane gibberish.

You said it!

I type 80wpm.
.
*sQuEeZe*

Right.....

I need TP for my bunghole!

WTF

I’ve been a bad, bad boy, Mommy!! Are you going to spank me now??

errrmmm

*Brings skewers of marinated lamb, lemon wedges, and cherry tomatoes*
*looks hopeful*

I am now going to hang myself

Epson Wireless Made Easy

I had one of my worst technological experiences last night, trying to setup an Epson wireless printer for a friend. Never in my life have I come across a bigger piece of crap, the software was the most un-intellectual load of shit. How the layman is supposed to pop down to Curry's and pick one up I have no idea, I think it is safe to say that using the provided software, it is impossible to get more than one machine working with the printer:

1. For a start, the software is different to how it is described in the manual.
2. The "Easy" setup and "Advanced" setup are not just different in their skill requirements, but they offer you options you cannot find in the other. For example, to setup a second computer with the printer, you have to go on the easy option, wtf??
3. The easy option does not offer you the option of setting up with a cable, rather than wireless, you have to go on advanced for that.
4. The wireless setup flatly did not work, I took all security off the wireless and it still would not connect.
5. Finding the only option would be to cable the printer in with Ethernet, I managed to get one computer printing OK, for the second I tried the first time setup option, just to see, but it stopped the first one working!! Even if I put the same IP address in etc, it still would not work with both computers, I didn't get what it was changing at all. Thinking back, maybe I should have tried web access to the print server, but not even sure it had web management.
6. The easy install would setup one computer OK, like the advanced install, but setting up the second computer, just stopped the first working again. This remember, is on the easy install, which the average person is going to use. The rest of it worked OK, but it just failed to do the setup properly.
7. The other thing with the easy install, at one point, you have to take the USB cable connecting the printer and the print server and plug the print server end into the computer, I guess so it can install the printer drivers (although you don't have to do that on the advanced install, go figure). This continues the install OK, but a few screens on, it complains that the print server cannot be found properly, NO SHIT, THE USB CABLE IS IN THE COMPUTER. So you have to put it back into the printer to carry on. This is fine, but the wizard does not tell you this. Did a bunch of fucking chimps design this shit? Did they try and follow their own software when they finished it.

Anyway, that's the main points that seriously pissed me off. I was seriously speechless by the end of it. I just felt stupid, surely I was doing something wrong, but I tried so many different ways to get the thing to work, in the end I was just wasting my time, told my friend to take it back, not fit for purpose. I feel sorry for anyone how has bought one of these things.

Digital Britain

"Content owners like the BBC can't expect to continue to get a 'free ride'. They will need to make a fair contribution to the huge costs of bandwidth to deliver their iPlayer programmes,"

So I read that BT expect the BBC to pay for bandwidth costs, wtf? BT has contracts with its customers, not the BBC, or any other content provider for that matter. But BT think that the BBC should foot the bill for their iPlayer service.

This is absolute crap, utter utter shite. BT provide a service to its customers, they offer xMbps and xGB download per month. If a customer decides to use all of that, that is up to them, they could max it out on iPlayer, or anything else for that matter, like porn, FTP whatever, so why should the BBC pay any money over the rest of the web? If I had some images on my blog and they got viewed trillions of times a second, would I have to pay BT for people viewing my content? I don't think so.

This is just typical of ISPs, they sell over the capacity they can provide, so when something like iPlayer comes along, that the layman who normally just downloads a few emails/web pages every day, would actually use, the ISPs shit them selves, they can't provide the capacity THEY have sold, I'm sure you could get sued for that!

This is where contention, limits, throttling and all that shit comes in, the ISPs are selling you a service and them sticking a load of restrictions in, that's just unfair, why should people who use bit-torrent suffer over people who don't. They have paid their fee just like anyone else. The opposite applies to the BBC.

Vista just proved to be mega wank

OK, I've backed up video and video projects, taken on my DV camcorder, since about 2005. I wanted to keep the raw avi video of everything I did, so I always split the video up into 4.7gb chunks and stuck them on DVD. I also backed up my Studio projects etc.

So, I recently thought this may not be the best way to continue, with HDDs coming down in price so much, so got a 1tb HDD to copy it all onto, groovy.

Have been doing this bit by bit for the past few weeks, going fine, organising everything into folders, much easier to get to in the future. Then I noticed that not everything was being copied (after I was on my last case of discs, each holding 48 DVDs). Vista's copy window would start (at which point I didn't watch it and did something else) and would then close, for no reason, wtf?????

I can't see any reason for this, it doesn't seem to like copying folders, so it just closed, no error message, nothing, how the fuck is that helpful?

So now I have to go back thorugh everything, compare folder sizes on the disc and on the HDD, to see if everything is there, seriously annoying.

Oh, for this taks I am now using an Ubuntu live CD, which rapes M$ for copy speeds and for just getting on with the copy job regardless!

Sue! Sue! Sue!

As if the county isn't fucked enough as it is, debt coming out of its area. Not just the people, the government too, organisations struggle for funding etc. But still, people who think they have been ill treated, 50 years ago think they can Gold line their pockets, to the sum of millions!

Just rip the area out of the country why don't you? Have you no consideration outside of your self centered, single purpose lives? This fucks me off so much!

These ex-servicemen, who did what they were told, got on with their jobs, are now applying modern logic and law, to what happened 50 years ago, how does that make any sense? Whats gone has gone, whats now is totally different, you can't compare then two, apply one to the other, its bullcrap.

So, if they succeed, the MOD will WASTE millions paying out these fuckers, money that could be better spent on equipment in Afghanistan maybe? How loyal these guys are to their country, "we did our bit 50 years ago, but fuck them all now, I want a nice retirement and a carriage clock".

another mother passes the buck

There have been a couple of news stories on tanning beds being used by under 18s, they fuck their skin up and the irresponsible mothers then call for action, shut the shop down etc.

This of course, is just to try and move the pointed finger away from the mother being irresponsible. If her girl fell out of a tree is it the Forestry Commission's fault? No, it is hers because she was not providing her child with an adequate amount of supervision, same principle applies to sunbeds.

This is why I am irritated when I read about poor Kelly Thompson, aged 10, yes, that's 10. She burnt herself on a sunbed because she spent to long on it.

She must be ill educated by her mother (Sharon Hannaford, yes, different surnames, I know), because sunbeds should be banned anyway. Even worse for a 10 year old to even know what one was, that just shows what kind of society she has been brought up in. I guess Mummy plops herself on sunbeds whenever her dole rolls in, great example to be setting to young Kelly!

So we continue in this crappy world, where everyone wants to be completely void of all responsibility, non of their actions to be anything to do with them, blameless.

Shitheads

Hard hitting adverts

HA, I've just read the BBC's "Top 10 most controversial ads" article.

Guess what the TOP advert was, ordered by number of complaints?

Barnardo's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, adverts by charities and the government are supposed to be hard hitting, get the message across and all that, surely people would understand that?

The thing that is even funnier is the number of complaints, bearing in mind this is the WORST advert of 2008 as far as the ASA goes.

840 complaints!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Every week there is something on the news, people complaining about posters that mis-lead people, adverts that on on too early, TV programmes, people swearing on live broadcasts etc. All of these are like "14 people complained", to investigate at such a low threshold is just stupid, well so I thought. But if 840 is the maximum they ever get, then I can understand why they investigate such low ones, they have sod all else to look at!

boo hoo for teachers

I hate the start of term, the time when whining teachers come back to work:

"I could have done with another week off"

"I wish I was in my garden right now"

"2 weeks just wasn't long enough"

blash blah blah

I was fuming listening to them babble on about holidays, the poor teachers, so hard done to, all this work they have to do and they only get 2 weeks of at Easter, my heart just bleeds for you.

Also, without fail, I yet again got the famous line:

"Did you get any time off over Easter?"

NO I FUCKING DID NOT! They know full well I work all year round, like every other trade in Britain apart from teachers. I get 20 days per year, school holidays or not, why don't they get that? Or do they just ask me to rub it in.

In summary, a quote from The Daily Mash:

"TEACHERS should be entitled to a 10% pay rise when the children they teach become 10% less moronic and unbearable, according to a new survey."

FUCK YOU Nicola Fisher

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

That has just pissed on my morning, I read this BBC news article entitled "G20 officer 'hit me across face'"

You know why he hit you across the face, because you fucking deserved it, that's why!

So, watching the video, it starts off all calm, no issues.

Then, something kicks off, the police sort it out.

The crowd is not happy and they turn verbally on the cops.

Now at this point, how would you feel, with a potential of 100ish people kicking off. The police would just want to diffuse the situation as quick as possible.

So Nicola Fisher starts shouting and coming in close to the cop. Now she could have shouted from where she was, but no, she had to come in close.

The cop is obviously dealing with a lot of other people as well as her, trying to keep them back.

So next, he pushes her back, as he was doing to other people. It wasn't a hard push, that much is obvious from the video.

OK, so she has been told to keep back. But no, she wants some more, because as she is a woman, she shouldn't have been pushed. What crap, male or female, the police should treat them the same, otherwise they would be in court for being sexist.

So the cop reacts to this REPEATED offender by moving round to strike her and push her back again. It is my opinion, that he didn't mean to slap her like he did, more to just push her back with a bit more force than the first time. Either way, he delt with the problem well under the circumstances. I'm sure he was looking at the bigger picture of the potential problem this crowd could cause.

So, for the third time, Nicola Fisher still hasn't got the message and goes back to the copper again, this time she gets the baton. They carry them for a reason, so why is it wrong that this guy used his, when 2 previous attempts to remove this woman failed, he went to his next resort as I am sure they are trained to do!

So now Nicola Fisher is on the news with her "huge" bruise, boo hoo!!!

So now, to quote the BBC news article:

"was making her way to a vigil for 47-year-old Ian Tomlinson who died during the 1 April G20 protests"

So why the hell was she getting mixed up in protesting? She wasn't even going to protest in the first place!

"Ms Fisher, who is being represented by PR agent Max Clifford"

Surprise surprise, you know then that name is mentioned, it's usually some shit head out to make a bit of cash. I bet her eyes lit up when this video was released and she saw a chance to make a quick buck. Well done Mr Clifford on another shit story, remember the Hamiltons? Remember ruining their lives?

"Ms Fisher added: "If he had wanted me to move he could have asked me politely or he could have just picked me up and moved me"

You are kidding? In the middle of a demonstration/protest, the cops are just supposed to say "please keep back ladies and gentlemen".

Can you imagine if he had picked her up? Then he would be up for sexual abuse charges, "he touched my boob". Let alone the absolute waste of time it would have been.

So how much have you made out of this Nicola Fisher? You wouldn't tell the BBC that now would you?

"File sharing site"?

Well, I have heard a few reports on todays news regarding TPB staff and non of the media outlets have a clue what they are reporting on.

On Radio 1's Newsbeat, they referred to TPB as a "file sharing website", which it is not, that implies that TBP hosts and dishes out material, which it does not!

To quote the BBC News site:

"The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website...."

and

"Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day"

The service? What is that supposed to mean? Hardly explains it properly does it. Gives the wrong impression as to what TPB and bit-torrent actualy is.

Poppys are for one day, NOT all year

How many of you have seen cars driving around with poppy's on when it is not November 11th (ish)?

I must see at least one a day (not including the one I drive past on my way to work, which is always parked up) and it annoys the hell out of me.

I think it is more insulting and disrespectful to the people of the World Wars, to display a poppy all year, rather than just not buying one at all. To have that poppy on your car all year is just lazy and shows that NO thought in going into the actual meaning behind the poppy. It just saves a bit of time each year to buy a poppy and put it on your car or whatever.

When November rolls up each year, I think about buying a poppy or pin badge and the reasons for buying that poppy.

The same thing now goes for these stupid red nose car stickers, that people are going to just leave on their cars. I can't wait until they take them off and find out how much car paint fades over a year or so, then they will look stupid!

G20 police, job well done!

I feel really sorry for the police who have been suspended recently over this G20 crap, were they really in the wrong?

I can't imagine how difficult it must be for these guys to do their jobs under such pressure from crowds of joe public. Not just any job public, but hissy annoying protesters, who don't have jobs and therefore ample time to waste at rallys etc.

The same goes for military personnel, who have to justify everything they do, why they did it. In the heat of the moment, you are just going to be driven by instinct. For someone afterwards to whinge and moan about people being shot who shouldn't have been??? It's just harsh on the guys trying to do their jobs.

staff room antics

Lots of odd things go on in staff rooms, the politics of it all! Anyway, all staff are "expected" to pay £20 into the staff pot each year, this covers things like flowers and grapes for ill staff, Birthday cakes etc etc. Now that's fair enough.

But, what I HATE, is that whenever someone retires, or leaves, they set up ANOTHER tin for donations, separate to the £20 staff have already paid.

Now non of the teaching staff seem to complain about this, they abviously earn enough for it not to matter. But if I could afford it or not, I would not give money a second time. It's wrong to expect and ask for more money, at the end of the day this is my JOB, I shouldn't have to spend one single penny to do my job.

We have 130 staff, so at £20 each thats £2600!!! Maybe a bit less, as part time staff don't pay as much, but what the hell do they spend that kind of money on every year.

My other staff rant is the separation between staff and ICT support staff (even amongst other support staff). There is a leaving do meal this lunch time, the network manager and myself are not going. Not because we are unsociable, but because we weren't invited. All of the other support staff are going, science, reprographics, art techs etc.

The only reason I know it's going on, is because I was asked to "keep an eye" on the ICT rooms over lunch. The reprographics girl normally does this, but she's out for this lunch.

The joys of IT, at least I can doss in my office all week reading BOFH and CAD.......

Joke, I do shit loads!

XD sucks ass

I am amazed at companies that destroy themselves with proprietary formats.

Take Olympus and Fuji for example, their use of the XD picture card. It wouldn't be so bad if XD was any good, but it isn't, its terrible, the more I have thought about it recently, the worse it gets!

I have used an Olympus tough camera for about 3 years and recently upgraded to the excellent Tough-8000 model. Great for all my outdoors stuff and being clumsy I guess.

It came with an XD M+ card, which and I quote

"has built-in software to support the Panorama, 3D and Art Effect functions"

bullshit it does, the camera has the software. How can they even get away with saying this? Surely its false advertising. The card just contains a header that says what kind of memory card it is, which then tells the camera which functions to unlock.

That makes me so mad, they limit the functions of the camera according to how much you spend on their small, overpriced cards.

Luckily, Olympus have seen slight sense, as they now include a converter which allows you to use micro SD cards in the camera. I just received my 8Gb Micro SDHC card, it only cost me £18 delivered (note XD ONLY goes up to 2Gb).

Now I can fit over 1 hour of video on the card (640x480 @ 30 fps) and 1300 13 MP pictures.

What is even better is that SD is massively faster, when taking a multi shot photo on the camera, with XD the buffer fills after about 10 photos. With SD, it takes the photos until the card is full, no full buffer!

So, rant over. XD needs to be binned! Olympus should stop with the forceful tactics to make people buy their expensive cards as well. Love the camera though!

Gmail, IMAP, Thunderbird and MyPhoneExplorer

Now, quite a long post! Recently, I have become fed up of Outlook and SE PC Suite, it's crap, they don't talk to each other correctly.

I sync my contacts, calendar and tasks between the 2. I get constant duplication, Outlook changes the timings of events by 12 hours. When we went from 2008 to 2009, it totally screwed everything up! Anyway, frustration ensured.

So, I started looking around at alternatives and stumbled across Gmail's IMAP support (nothing to do with calendars etc, not directly anyway). I have been using POP3 with Outlook to download my Gmail's for a few years now, always worked OK for me.

So, I thought, I could move over to Thunderbird (I love open sauce stuff and it seemed to have better Gmail support than Outlook, then theres addons, yum). I could use IMAP for emails (nice and synced emails, POP3 doesn't do this).

What I also found was that there were plenty of addons to sync up Thunderbird and Google Calendars and contacts. Brilliant!! I never really used Google Calendars, so now was a good time to start, 'cos it's frigging amazing! Quick add features, SMS reminders, multiple calendars etc. I could also sync this local copy of my schedule to me K850i phone, super.

Here is my Thunderbird guide, pulled from a variety of sources (all linked to for reference). Non of them quite had everything listed, I've tried to pull it all here:

Install Thunderbird

http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/

Install Thunderbird Google IMAP addon

This addon basically makes all the changes listed here - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77662 but it does it all for you with no fuss. It also does the advanced stuff here - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892.

1. If you haven’t already, enable IMAP in Gmail - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695
2. Install the addon from - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/6381
3. Restart when prompted.
4. When Thunderbird loads, either follow the new account wizard that should show if this is your first account, or go on “Tools > Account settings” and click “Add” to start the wizard.
5. You will now have Google IMAP in the options, select this and follow the few steps to get it setup.

Making Gmail folders “root” - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/reviews/display/6381 (comment on 31.07.08).

1. Under “Account Settings”, select “Server Settings”, then “Advanced”. Enter “[Google Mail]” in the “IMAP server directory”.
2. Restart Thunderbird.

I found that, after doing this, no labels were shown in the Thunderbird view, this is a shame, as it looks much tidier. I reverted back to not using this. Any ideas??

Gmail View In Thunderbird - http://nathanostgard.com/archives/2008/1/21/gmail-imap-thunderbird/

You can “fix” the sort order to be like that of Gmails, sorted by thread and date. Thunderbird’s thread interpretation is rubbish and nothing like Gmail’s. It threaded all of my emails that had a blank subject together, not good. Try it if you like

1. But to do this, firstly, “Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor”.
2. Filter for “mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads”.
3. Double click the item to change it to false.
4. Back in the main window, go on “View > Sort by”.
5. Tick “Date”, “Decending” and “Threaded”.

Check For New Emails In All Folders - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/setting-up-gmail-imap-support-in-thunderbird-2x/

By default, Thunderbird only checks your Inbox for new emails. Other folders will only show new emails when you select them in the folder list.

1. Right click on the folder you wish to check in the folder view and select “Properties”.
2. Check “Check this folder for new messages”.
3. Repeat for all folders.

Update: Just found that there is a config option for this:

1. Open the config editor.
2. Filter for “mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new” and change it to “True” by double clicking.

This means that you do not have to select the above option every time a new folder/label is created.

Offline Usage - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/setting-up-gmail-imap-support-in-thunderbird-2x/

1. Back in “Account settings”, select “Offline & Disk Space”. -
2. Under “Offline”, check both boxes, then click “Select folders for offline use”.
3. Tick whatever you need to be downloaded for offline use, personally, I want all my emails available if my internet goes down, like when I used POP3.
4. Download the “Sync On Arival” addon - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/1396.
5. When downloaded, open the .xpl addon file with Winrar, Winzip or similar.
6. Extract the “install.rdf” to your desktop and open it with notepad.
7. About half way down you will find the following:

1.0
1.5

Change the “maxVersion” bit from “1.5” to “3.0”.
8. Save the modified file, close notepad and drag the file back into the zip archive, overwriting the original.
9. Install the addon as usual.

Now, when you receive an email, it will all be downloaded. The normal IMAP method is to just download headers (good for mobile devices).

Notes
• With this setup, it is impossible to delete an email by just clicking “Delete” on an email (as I normally do). Deleting an email from any folder just removes that label from the email, including the inbox etc. If you delete an email from the “All Mail” folder, nothing happens, it stays there, it gets marked for deletion in Thunderbird, but on next sync, it gets marked back to how it was.

If you really need to get rid of an email (I don’t see why I would, it’s not like I’m going to fill my 7Gb any time soon) then drag it to the “Bin” folder.

• If you want an email to go into a folder, for example, you have an archived email that only exists in the “All Mail” folder. You have decided that you need to follow it up, so want it back in your Inbox to remind you. Just drag it out of “All Mail” into the Inbox and a copy will now exist in each. Same goes for other folders (from All Mail).

On the other hand, if you want to add a label to an email that is already in a different label (you are looking at an email with the “Purchase” label and want it to also have the “Amazon” label. Just dragging it across would only change the label, you would have to copy and paste from one to the other to get both labels.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, that works nice. I was just going to start setting up the calendar sync addons in Thunderbird when I stopped to think, do I really need Thunderbird?

Don't get me wrong, it's great software, but I could just use the web interface for Gmail, they are constantly making improvements, its easy to use, avalible anywhere etc. What do I really want from this:

• Calendar sync with my phone and Google Calendars
• Contact sync with my phone and Google Calendars
• Tasks sync with my phone and Google Tasks (Labs)
• Emails avalible anywhere
• Offline email use

So when I found some software called MyPhoneExplorer and looked at what it could actually do, for free, I was amazed.

It syncs contacts and calendars from Sony Ericson phones, straight to Google Calendars and contacts and it does it really well, unlike Outlook.

It supports multiple calendars, so I have my personal one, the one I share with Sarah and the Air Cadet calendars that I help maintain. I now have all this info on my phone as well as in the browser!! As icing on the cake, I also subscribe to the UK holidays calendar, which is synced to my phone, never forget when daylight savings is ever again!!

As for offline use, in Google labs is an offline function which works with Google Gears to download local copies of your emails. Not all of them, just the last xx number of days, depending on your usage, but I think this would be enough in the unlikely event of network failure.

The only one I am still working on is task sync. Google have not properly implemented this yet. So at the moment, I put taks in my phone, which MyPhoneExplorer syncs as a local copy. It throws up popup reminders just like Outlook does, so I'm pretty happy with that.

Seriously, if you have an SE phone, then check out that software, it's superb. I would use it over SE PC Suite any day. It supports all the usual SMS from your PC and even initiation of phone calls from your PC.

Hope that all makes sense! If you don't have a Sony Ericson phone, then seriously check out the Thunderbird method, it's great also. I haven't played with calendar sync yet, but I guess if Firefox addons are anything to go by, it will be great.

I might fire it up every now and then to download a local copy of my emails, Google could stop offering free emails tomorrow and having a local copy would be handy. You could also add a new account into Thunderbird, drag your Gmails into that and you would have all your emails back with someone else, headers and all.

cupid killer

Valentines, bah! What a waste of time.

I think anyone who says they are "planning a surprise" or "doing something special" for Valentines is blind to the commercial grave robbery that the day has become (or always was?).

It's not "special" or a "surprise" because everyone else is doing the same thing, because it costs you more on the 14th than any other day of the year, because your "expected" to do something. Wow, what a "special" day it really is.

How much better your other half would feel if you took them out on a random day in January for example.

Footballers, everyone elses fault that they are crap...

It makes me laugh so much when I hear this crap on the news about Chelsea sacking their manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari.

Now I don't follow football, I don't give a toss, so maybe I don't understand football like all the intelligent pub louts. But surely if a football team is loosing badley, it's the players that are at fault, not their manager? He's not on the pitch scoring goals, he just stands on the side lines, gives pep talks in the showers and swaps his crap players with other crap players.

So, today they sacked him. Now I feel sorry for the guy, doing his best for the team, the players can't play football, so he gets the boot.

Maybe they should sack some of the over paid thick shit heads who can't even play football. Anyone can play football, grrrrrr.