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!
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
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!
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!
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
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
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!
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!
Thursday, 19 February 2009
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:
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.
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:
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
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.
Friday, 13 February 2009
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.
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.
Monday, 9 February 2009
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.
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.
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