Went shopping(yay) for clothes(boo). Apparently I have no taste. My liking for primary colours (and orange) never seems to fit with what passes for sartorial elegance in these (or indeed any) parts. I also tend to buy things "because they are really cheap" rather than "because then can be worn without causing embarrassment to those who have to admit knowing me". I once bought an entirely white suit (of course it was surprisingly inexpensive). This I thought was the height of style and I wore it whenever possible on social occasions. I had to give up in the end because too many people thought I was (a) the cabaret or (b) dead. I ended up using it to wash the car, as in with rather than wearing. Ho hum. Escaped today with just a pair of jeans.

 

Hah. Worked. I now have a DVD which will play on all the machines in my house, and the X-BOX. Rob's recipe for DVD success is PIONEER 106 DVD burner, ULEAD DVD Movie Factory and Bulkpaq DVD-R disks. There may be better solutions, but this lot seems to work OK.

Not necessarily true dept: "Concern is growing about the state of the links in some of the pages on the internet world wide web. Some of these links have been in constant use for over ten years and are beginning to show signs of wear and tear causing browsers to spin off onto random sites. The BBC is having to replace frequently used links on its web pages and there is increasing concern amongst government scientists that a terrorist attack which "wears out" a link by repeated visits to it could cause the internet to come to a crashing halt, leaving millions cut off from civilisation and having to resort to conversation and meeting real people".

Colour me stupid. I've only just figured out why Nero is a good name for a CD burner program. I think it should make this clearer by playing violin music as it runs....

 

Hmmm. Pesky wasps. We have a wasps nest in the flat roof just above the porch. Just the way to greet visitors, with a cheery hello and a sting which makes their head swell up like a balloon. I know that we are all part of the fabric of the universe and every creature has its place in the wonderful tapestry of existence. But the wasps have to go.

I guess it is that time of year. We have had nests before, usually just before a child's birthday party with half the school class coming round to trample jelly into the carpet. The first nest we had a guy come round who brought a space suit kind of thing which he wore while he squirted white powder into the nest. This was good, but cost us thirty quid. The second time I bought some white powder from the local shop (price six quid) and did my own squirting - without a space suit. I really wanted to buy a space suit but they didn't have any in stock. I wanted to wear it one morning to wake the kids up, but it was not to be.

I hate hot weather. It makes me do stupid things. Like play with DVD burners. I've just acquired one and I've been trying to convert a video into a DVD. I downloaded an evaluation copy of Nero (the premier DVD and CD writing program) and captured my video using Windows Movie Maker, thinking that I could then use Nero to burn it. Wrong. You need an authoring tool. So, off to the web and get an evaluation copy of ulead Movie Factory. Then I worked my way through the program and got to the point where I think I've made a DVD. I quite like ULEAD products, but they always have this fake menu system laid on top of windows. They probably think it makes it easier for novices to use, but to people who know what windows and buttons are supposed to look like it can be a bit confusing. Anyway, now to burn my first ever DVD. Crack the seal on the box, open it and put the the top disk in the drive and close the door. And curse.

They put these foam spacers on top of the disks in the container. I'd of course forgotten this (hot weather I guess) and had to watch the DVD and foam widget vanish into the drawer. Of course when I pressed eject the foam thing stayed inside. Cue much cursing and stamping. Followed by lots of prodding, followed by stripping the drive down to remove the cursed ring. I've now got the thing sitting in the corner chugging whilst the disk is built. The counter currently stands at 3 hours to completion, i.e. sometime tomorrow. I'll let you know if it works.

 

Blimey. Just got an email from a lad who attended the open day on Saturday. He has sent me a screenshot of a browser he wrote in VB. And he is 14 years old. I've told him about Gotdotnet, Codeproject and Devhood (three places that any aspiring programmer should take a look at) and maybe we'll see him one day. Or perhaps he'll just buy us all out.

Hah. Just fixed the dishwasher. Some jobs you have to sneak up on, and the dishwasher is one of them. It has been getting stuck in its program for some time. I'd traced it to a problem draining, but despite attempts to clean it out the problem persisted. Until now. I'd been meaning to take a look today but it wasn't until 11:00 pm that I dared try. It it had known I was coming it would have been able to put up a fight. As it was, I had it away from the wall and the pipework out before it knew what hit it. And found a huge blockage in the pipe. Which is now no longer there. And so we are now a home of happy gurgles and speedy draining. Which is the way it should be. And I'm off to bed.

 

Last week I was standing in a large computer store (of course I can't tell you the name but they had a whole World of PCs in stock). I was holding a little tank of black ink priced at 35 quid. They say that inkjet ink is now more expensive than vintage champagne. Anyway, I was all set to buy this when it dawned on me that I hate inkjet printers. They are slow, noisy and they run out of ink. Even if you don't print anything the ink fairy comes and empties the tanks so that next time you press the button it prints half a page and then runs out. The really advanced ones have special chips in them that tell you the cartridge is empty even when it isn't.

I've tried refilling cartridges (the world is divided into two camps, those who've tried refilling ink jet cartridges and those who don't have stains all over their trousers). I've also bought "compatible" ones (some of which have actually worked) and tried to love them.

However, standing in the shop, holding the little plastic box and thinking "Hey, in two or three weeks I'm going to be doing exactly the same thing again" was just too much for me. So I went and bought a cheap laser printer. It cost me four and a bit cartridges (or 150 quid). It will be good for around a couple of thousand prints (around the same as four and a bit cartridges) and it will be quick and silent. As far as I know toner does not evaporate and you get that nice, invigorating, ozone smell while it prints.

Of course I'm going to miss the spot colour which was nice when you print out web pages and I'm going to keep one inkjet around for prints from the camera, but as far as I can tell you'd be mad to get an inkjet if all you want to do is print black text on paper. Of course at some point I will need to buy a new toner cartridge, but it comes in at 60 quid and at least I'm getting some mechanical bits for my money.

One other note, don't ever, ever, get tempted to fill up the toner in a laser printer. I have done this precisely once. It was a long time ago, I was young and desperate (as opposed to old and desperate). The toner ran out in the middle of a really important print job. So I snaffled some from the photocopier and poured it into the laser printer. Bad move. The first print came out great. Strong contrast, lovely definition. The second print came out great too. But it had the first print on it as well... Things went downhill rapidly from this point, eventually printing out what looked like wordsearches with black blobs all over them. It took me around half a day to clean the drum and get the printer to work again...I've since been told by people in the know that refilling toner cartridges is quite OK if you are sensible enough to use laser printer toner rather than photocopier toner. However, I would add a couple of warnings - I seem to remember being told that laser toner is carcinogenic so try not to touch or breath in the stuff. Also, if you get any toner on your clothes you should wash it out with cold water. If you use hot water it fuses the toner to the material. For ever.

 

Writing software again. We are producing some upgrades for a product that I might be able to tell you something about one day. Ian and I reckoned we knew what to do, but the occasion really demanded a specification. So we started writing one. If there is one thing that I've learnt over the years as a programmer it is that there is really, truly, nothing like writing a specification to convince yourself that you don't know anything about the problem. Never, ever, start coding without one. Our simple, tiny little fix is now described in a couple of pages of closely reasoned text which cover everything from installation and upgrade issues to the order in which buttons are to be pressed on the screen, and who can press them.

And we can now be quite confident that we know what the customer wants, and that we can give it to them in a way which will work.

 

I don't post much on Sunday. It is the official day of rest. However, suffice it to say that we had a barbecue and it didn't rain!