Author: Richard

Last Laugh

| Richard

Bernard Manning is dead! Hahahahahahahahahaha!

“Two Asians and a Jamaican walk in this pub …

and have a fookin’ good laugh that the fat, racist bastard has popped his clogs.”

Gah! (Rare anti-Microsoft Rant)

| Richard

I’m starting to become A Little Bit Fed-Up with Microsoft.

One of the best pieces of kit I own is my Toshiba Portégé 3500 Tablet PC. Quite why Tablet PCs never really set the world on fire is frankly beyond me: the never-ending notebook* for you to scribble on when you’re making notes or suggesting a layout to a client is just fabulous. (*OneNote – the ‘killer app.’ for the Tablet PC which isn’t too bad on a regular lappy either).

Until…

Until it decides to get a bit tired and emotional and Windows XP SP2 Tablet PC Edition (phew!) throws up yet another BSOD every time you try to start it up, blaming the (unchanged) video drivers.

My main work machine is a three year old, dual-screen PC that was many thousands of pounds to buy and is still super fast and super-spec’d. Except that it takes 15 minutes to start up from being turned on or restarted to have the desktop and start-up apps. loaded and the PC usable. 15 minutes. Try timing that yourself – it’s longer than it takes to go and make a cup of coffee and come back to my desk.

I have Windows Vista ready to roll out. Except that it tells me that my sound card drivers won’t work and because the sound card is three years old, the manufacturer has not written Vista drivers for it. The card and surround sound system is working perfectly here on XP Pro as are a number of apps. which won’t apparently work either. So no, I shan’t be running Vista here for the foreseeable future.

Office 2007, on the other hand, has been installed here. Some nice features for Outlook, but boy is that slow! Oh and it prompted me to download and install Windows Desktop Search which is a truly bizarre little app. which seemingly doesn’t understand what snoozing actually means (i.e. it carries on indexing even when supposedly snoozing) and can’t seem to keep track of how many items it has indexed (often counting backwards) and has still to index.

I also have an old iMac (the CRT TV type) which is ready to go in about a minute. Apparently, Office 2004 for the Mac (I presently have Office X) includes Word 2004 which includes similar functionality to OneNote. Hmm.

So, back to the Tablet PC. How to replace it?

Well Toshiba does seem to be soldiering on with Tablet PCs but we’re looking at £1,000 – £1,600 (plus VAT) for one of them. Pros would include being able to run Office 2007 including OneNote and using my Outlook post file on the PC and the Tablet. Cons would mean the same instability and slow booting time.

Or I could always get a new Apple MacBook. Prices are more or less comparable and if I chose to use Parallels or Boot Camp I could even run Windows XP on it. The downside is simply the lack of the Tablet PC functionality.

Or I could simply buy a cheapo laptop from PC World for £500 and junk it from time to time. No Tablet PC functionality and probably a tad heavier.

Decisions, decisions..

Logo

| Richard

Purple Ken*: “It’s just a logo…”

No shit, Sherlock? Well in that case, why did you/they/whoever spend £400,000 on it, you fecktard?

*well he ain’t exactly red now, is he?

"Nigger"

| Richard

So then, “Emily said: ‘Are you pushing it out, you nigger?’ to Charley Uchea, while they were dancing in the living room on Wednesday evening.”

So a white, middle class, young girl does that embarrassing gangsta thing that she and her white, middle-class friends do when they think they’re being kewl and down wid it. For that, she gets kicked out of the Big Brother house at 3.30am.

Apparently, people may be offended by someone saying “nigger” no matter in what context. So then, when Nicky says “she didn’t say ‘you fucking nigger'” in the conversation that followed, that is different? How so? Likewise on one of the many occasions when Charley is regaling people with the story – in this case to Shabnam – that’s different too. How so? Is it because they’re from ethnic majorities? It’s not the context, because that’s irrelevant, they said. So what else could it be?

And if Endemol/Channel 4 were being truly concerned about outraging the public, why did they choose to show it and then repeat it twice? After all, on the live bits they regularly silence out anything they feel like keeping quiet.

So they could have chosen to silence that piece and then have a quiet word with Emily. And edited out the – admittedly large – elements where Charley is drama-queening it up. Job done.

No, it’s just the same old shit, just a different time.

More Silence from ezboard, Inc.

| Richard
This time, it’s about JavaScript, not just their CEO, “Silent” Rob Labatt. Over in their official support forum, someone asked when the promised JavaScript Library would be available to allow board owners to customise their boards. Another user asked the direct question again and it was ‘answered’ by a Customer Services [sic] representative with nothing but an [...]

Snow White in Car Servicing Shocker

| Richard

“Dwarf mechanic mistaken for ‘abducted’ boy”

German police staged a major operation to find a kidnapped child after a woman spotted a “young boy” being locked into a car boot.

The panicked woman alerted authorities as the car drove off, and police set up road blocks and dispatched patrol cars to intercept the vehicle.

But when the car was finally sighted and stopped, police found the “boy” was actually dwarf car mechanic Klaus “Shorty” Mueller, 27.

He had climbed in the boot and asked to be driven around so he could see where a strange rattling noise had been coming from.

Police in the northern city of Bremen confirmed a woman had called after she looked out her apartment window and saw a child in the boot – just before the driver slammed it shut and drove off.

The spokesman added: “A major investigation and manhunt was immediately launched and the car and its driver were apprehended. It seems the driver had been worried by inexplicable rattling noises in or near his boot. He called a mechanic, who was very small, and who climbed in the boot to get to the bottom of the problem.”

Police said the mini mechanic had often used the same method to solve the problem and had found it the best way to detect the source of strange noises.