Well, it had to happen sooner or later: after 8 years with IS Solutions, it's time to move on to pastures new - I'll be starting a new job with Clarks in the next few weeks as a Microsoft Architect. It's been an eventful time at IS and I'm going to miss everyone there, but the lure of a job on my doorstep as opposed to 120 miles away is too tempting.

Time to break out the farewell beer...

I installed Vista SP1 last night and all appeared to be well, but when I tried to access YouTube this morning, the Flash video player wasn't working; instead, I got a dialog pop up complaining that it couldn't load a DLL.

The solution however was very simple; download the Flash uninstaller from the Adobe site here http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157&sliceId=2. Once Flash has been uninstalled, go back to the Flash installation page and all should be well in a matter of minutes: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash.

The BBC News website has an excellent Q&A article up at the moment dealing with the implications of DRM infested music files in the wake of the closure of Virgin Digital. In case you've not heard about this yet, Virgin Digital is closing its doors which means that any Club subscribers will now have hard drives full of media content that they can no longer play.

The article points out that we've "... been here before, most notably with the video wars between VHS and Betamax. When Sony's Betamax format lost the battle, Sony threw in the towel and started making VHS recorders instead, leaving Betamax fans reliant on aging machines."

All perfectly true, except when Sony threw in the towel with Betamax, they didn't instantly invalidate any media content that had been stored on Betamax tapes - which is precisely what's happening here.

I feel very sorry for any Virgin Digital subscribers that have been affected by this fiasco, but hopefully they'll start telling their friends to avoid DRM infested music in future and the music industry will stop treating their loyal customers as criminals.

I've just stumbled upon one of the best mash-up albums I've ever heard; it's called "Cracked Pepper" by ccc / Ill Chemist which takes each track from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in turn and mashes them with tracks by other artists making completely new songs while leaving the originals recognisable. Particular highlights for me are "With A Little Glam" which fuses "A Little Help From My Friends" with "Rock 'n Roll Parts 1 & 2" and the totally gorgeous "She's Slipping" which marries "She's Leaving Home" with Kinobe's "Slip Into Something". Wonderful.

Go grab it before some BPI/RIAA blowhard takes the tracks offline.

Here we go again; why is it that the moment a group of people invoke their own version of the ‘magical sky-fairy’ myth, they're imbued with some form of special privilege? Today’s case in point is the frankly idiotic ruling by the High Court to quash a destruction order on Shambo the bullock - because somehow, even though the animal has been diagnosed with Bovine Tuberculosis (which is highly infectious, and puts other livestock at risk) it's spared the abattoir because it'll put some lunatic religious adherents’ noses out of joint.

Why should the ‘religious principles’ of a minority be allowed to run roughshod over the laws by which the rest of the country must abide by? For crying out loud, it’s just an animal – before it contracted TB it might have made a nice steak or five – it shouldn’t earn special protection by virtue of a small community of (probably well-meaning but completely deluded) monks venerating it.

And as for those 20,000 imbeciles who’ve signed an online petition to save the animals’ life – what if Shambo had been, say, a swan had been found with H5N1 Avian Influenza and was being worshipped, would you petition to save its life as well?

Just stumbled on this face recognition system on MyHeritage.com (via Phil South's blog) and just had to have a go. And the results are, well, slightly dubious!

David Lloyd George? Naah.

I just stumbled across this video by Pat Condell while I was looking around www.earthsgreatestlawsuit.org (I hope they're serious; if there's one thing I despise as much as religion it's slimeballs fleecing those guillible enough to believe in the first place. Step forward Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton, Mike Murdoch et al).

Anyway, here's Pat's analysis of Religion in the UK. Nailed it as as far as I'm concerned...

As various sources have reported, yesterday was the 25th birthday of the ZX Spectrum - the launchpad of many a software developer (myself included). The speccy was my first home machine, originally in the 16k flavour before quickly getting it returned and upgraded to a whopping 48k.

In honour of this auspicious event, allow me to donate a completely useless piece of code - isn't it amazing what rubbish gets stuck in your head? I've not touched a Spectrum since, oooh, 1990 or so and I could still remember the POKE involved without having to look it up. Sad really....

10 LET A$="Happy 25th Birthday Speccy!"
20 FOR X=1 TO LEN(A$)
30 FOR Y=15 TO 0 STEP -1
40 POKE 23606, Y
50 PRINT AT 10, X; A$(X)
60 NEXT Y
70 NEXT X

Fire up a Spectrum emulator, type in the listing and see what it does! It's hardly OpenGL, but what the hell!

As a long standing atheist (product of a Roman Catholic education), I have long been uneasy about the grip on education exerted by various religious groups – be they Islamic, Church of England, Roman Catholic or Pastafarian.

One of the presents I was given over the festive period was Richard Dawkins' superb "The God Delusion" (yes, I am aware of the irony) - a book which I suspect will only be preaching to the converted, because those that really need to read it will have had their minds long closed to the uncomfortable truth. This tome has convinced me that it's about time that atheists stood up to religion in areas such as education - there is no excuse in this day and age for any institution to promote one divisive creed above another, and with the rise of nut-job fundamentalists who are determined to promote rubbish such as Creationism and 'young-earth' doctrine the need to take a stand has never been greater.

Why on earth should my daughter be indoctrinated by the school she attends?

For those that feel the same way as me, I would urge you to visit this online petition and make your feelings known. It's unlikely to have an immediate effect (especially with our current Prime Minister), but over time it might serve to influence future occupants of Number 10. We can but hope.

... and no I'm not being sarcastic either.

It has to be said; Microsoft does make some of the best PC hardware around. Like a lot of people, I've been using their mice for some considerable time, but it wasn't until I started experiencing excruciating pain in my wrists and along the back of my hands that I started to use their 'Natural' keyboard range.

Within days of using the Natural MultiMedia Keyboard at home all the pain from my hands had disappeared and my typing speed was as good if not better than it was before I switched over - impressed, I got my employers to order an identical unit for when I'm in the office. However, apart from the annoying double-sized Delete key and the infuriating F-Lock status on startup there appears to be a slight design flaw with these keyboards. On both units, the feet that raise the keyboard at the rear snapped during normal use. To be honest, this was not a huge issue for me - I simply used a couple of old paperbacks to raise the rear of the units when in use at home, and a couple of unused DAT cartridge cases at work.

However, it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that maybe Microsoft could send me a couple of spare sets of feet - I was quite willing to pay for them - to make my work environments slighly less messy. So, I phoned Microsoft Technical Support. Or at least I tried to - the Indian support call screening centre that I was routed through at first refused point black to give me a support request number or to let me speak to anyone at Technical Support. Undeterred, I used the online support request system on the Microsoft site - and within a hour I had a phone call back.

I explained that all I was after were a couple of sets of replacement feet, and that I was quite willing to pay for them, at which point the technical support representative asked for my home and email addresses. "Terribly sorry", explained the representative, "but we don't carry any spare keyboard stands - so I've ordered you a pair of brand new keyboards. Are you happy with the service you've received from Microsoft today?"

Sure enough, two brand new Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 units arrived at my front door earlier this week. Now that is what I call customer service.

Last night, Bec and I went to watch the recording of an episode of "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" at BBC Television Center; I've not laughed so much in ages - Phil's team consisted of Tony Livsey (editor of the Daily Sport) and Blak Twang (can't say I've ever heard of him before).

On the other hand, Bill's team consisted of Jo Caulfield and the truly fruit-loop X-Factor finalist and ex-Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta. Naturally she stole the show, but unfortuately for her it was definately not intentional - she seemed to forget almost from the first second that she was filming a comedy quiz, and was convinced that Mark Lamarr was picking on her - but you can hardly blame him when she's coming out with (unprompted) anecdotes about how she once sat in Kim Basinger's urine. I kid you not.

Seeing as a lot of the content last night was not merely close to the knuckle but way past the elbow, it'll be interesting to see exactly how much they let in to the transmitted show. I'll never be able to look at a canteen of cutlery in exactly the same way again....

We've just come back from dropping India off at her new school. Naturally, she had absolutely no fear and unlike some of the other children there she could not wait to get into the classroom to start drawing.

Somehow, I think she'll do fine....

So, Davina McCall reckons that those of us who think that the nauseating Big Brother is obnoxious, vapid, mindless, soul-destroying crap are "pseudo-intellectuals who have never really watched it". Fair enough, I've not watched it at all - saturation media coverage has ensured that I know more about what happened on the programme than I want to. Pseudo-intellectual? Possibly.

But I'm sorry Davina, you can't seriously expect us to buy the line that "The people who go into that house are a cross section of British culture. They're not freaks."

Really? Is British society really soley comprised of media whores looking for Z-list celebrity status? If it is, maybe it's time to emigrate.

If you've never heard William Shatner murdering the Beatles classic Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds before, you've missed out on a truly horrific moment in popular culture. Head on over to http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/29841/ for a video celebrating this camp masterpiece.

The Shirley Temple Pilots were due to play at Finns this coming Saturday (the 13^th August), but Drummer Bloke seems to have broken his hand which means we're minus a bongo player. So, unfortuately, we've got to cancel the gig. Sorry to anyone who was going to come down.

I downloaded a copy of Windows Vista Beta 1 last night (legitimately I might add) and installed it on my 3Ghz workhorse system first thing this morning.

Installation itself was a breeze - I'd already prepared for the installation my shrinking my primary XP partition by 25Gb. The installation procedure pretty much boiled down to:

1. Boot system from DVD
2. Select empty space for installation
3. Name the system
4. Provide activation key
5. Wait

Unfortunately, it looks as though I'm going to have to wait before I can see what the Aero Glass experience is like, as the 6600 GTOC I currently have installed doesn't have any LDDM (Longhorn Display Driver Model) support yet. Hopefully it won't be too long before nVidia provide a beta driver to play with.

Update: nVidia released some alpha LDDM drivers almost immediately, but on my system I ended up with a physical screen resolution of around 640 x 480 with a much larger 'virtual desktop' which does not pan or scroll. I'm going to wait until nVidia come up with newer drivers before I play around with Vista again.

Joy of unbounded joys, Ed Wood's seminal (and truly abysmal) film Plan 9 From Outer Space has been released to the great unwashed under the Creative Commons Public Domain license. Thanks to the wonderful people at archive.org, it can be downloaded here.

I was reminiscing with some of the younger developers at my workplace about the systems that they grew up with, and rather predictably it seems that most of them have grown up knowing nothing else but x86 architecture (with possibly the odd Amiga or Atari ST thrown in for good measure).

All this got me thinking about the 8-bit machines I cut my teeth on, and started to make me feel really old in the process!

ZX80

This is the first computer I ever laid my hands on while I was at The Pilgrims School in Winchester. I must have been about 10 when our Maths teacher (a certain Captain Roberts if I remember correctly) showed us this wondrous machine at the end of the summer term in 1981. I remember blagging a couple of hours on the unit and working through some of the BASIC examples in the manual.

ZX81

But when we came back for the winter term 1981, miracle of miracles, instead of the one lonely ZX80 the maths lab was now equipped with an entire room of ZX81s!

As the intention was to use these machines for educational purposes, there was the issue of loading the maths quiz du jour (written by Captain Roberts) on each machine. The solution that the school came up with was to have one cassette player by the teachers' desk with the output signal split to all ten ZX81s via cables trunked around the room. All the machines would therefore load from the same tape at exactly the same time. Ingenious!

ZX Spectrum

My initial Speccy was a 16k unit (I'd gone halves with my Dad to buy the machine, and I couldn't afford the far superior 48k machine). However, after enduring the chronic wait for the machine to arrive it eventually turned out to be faulty - part of the onboard RAM wasn't functioning and I was only left with approximately 13k usable.

This machine was sent back to Sinclair Research, and arrived back about three months later with a full complement of 48k. After quickly getting bored with "Hungry Horace" and "Penetrator" what else was left to do with rubber keyed wonder? Well, learn BASIC of course.

BBC Micro Model B

A new school brought new computers; the Beeb was the ultimate educational machine - just about anything that you could imagine at the time could be attached and controlled. But the coup de grace with the machine was the quality of the onboard BASIC interpreter. Not only was the dialect ahead of its' time (DEFPROC and DEFFN anyone?), but it also included a full 6502 assembler.

BBC Micro Model B+ 128

This is probably my favourite 8 bit system of all; the B+ 128 had Sideways RAM (ROM images could be loaded into memory and behave as though they were physically installed in the machine), the more advanced 1770 DFS (which caused no end of problems with some of the more 'interesting' disc copy protection systems). This was coupled with my very first personal non-tape based storage medium; a Pace Electronics 5.25" 40/80 track switchable unit. The luxury!

I kept my beloved Beeb until about 1994 by which time I'd collected the Z80 Second Processor (which allowed you to run CP/M) and the Teletext Adapter. Of course, by this stage I'd already been firmly entrenched in x86 development.

Ahh, memories...

I know you shouldn't mock the afflicted, but Mediawatch really have a knack of making complete pillocks of themselves. From their site:

More outrage as Dr Who 'crucified'

An episode of Dr Who is set to cause outrage by showing a sado-masochistic style torture scene with characters using inappropriate sexual language.  Media watchdogs last night condemned the sixth part of the BBC series, which will go out before the watershed at 7pm later this month.  It will depict the central evil character ordering one of his cronies to "canoodle and spoon" the Doctor’s assistant, Rose.  In one scene, viewers will watch Van Stratten torturing Dr Who to try to work out his identity by binding the topless time traveller to a crucifix with metal shackles.  John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk, branded the BBC "irresponsible" for including such inappropriate imagery and language in a pre-watershed show.  "This is not a programme designed for children", he said. "I’m surprised the BBC have gone with this, they should have been more attentive to youngsters.  It seems that the broadcasters are taking the view that if youngsters are offended or disturbed by the show, then hard cheese."  He called on the BBC to review the scheduling so that it is shown after 9.00pm.

For crying out loud - they're complaining about the words "canoodle" and "spoon" as being inappropriate sexual language? It seems to me that John Beyer needs to get in touch with reality.

The Vatican denies rumours that the process of electing a new pope has been dumbed down...

More pictures can be found here...

It's Zaks' second birthday today. Here's a picture of the birthday boy taken at stupid o'clock this morning.

I must have missed the announcement that today was National Dickhead Driver Day, but I've seen some fine examples of idiot motoring this morning - so well done to all concerned.

For those of you who don't know, I commute by car from Yeovil to Sunbury three days a week; a journey which normally takes me about two hours. So naturally I've had plenty of opportunity to observe the nation taking enthusiastically to this special day.

The first example this morning happened within five minutes of leaving the house; carved up on a mini-roundabout by a Subaru doing (at a conservative estimate) 50mph in a 30mph zone. Excellent start.

But the award for the day has to go to the driver I witnessed on the A303 at about 07:15 this morning on the single carriageway eastbound just before Chicklade.

I was three cars behind a lorry travelling at (an admittedly frustrating) 50mph. A car five positions behind me decided to overtake the entire queue while going around a blind corner. Sheer genius.

I’m looking forward to the journey home this evening to see if this mornings efforts can be outdone.

While I was out at work today, and while Bec was briefly sorting things out upstairs, my nearly two year old son Zak took it upon himself to remap half my keyboard to various squiggles and symbols that not even Prince could pronounce, with a permanent marker pen!

Ahh, the joys of parenthood...

I'm really grateful to id for releasing Doom3 back in September. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of near pant soiling terror, the shocks when turning on my flashlight in a darkened area to see a zombie poised to rip out my throat, the awesome special effects like the heat haze around the imps' fireballs and the creepy 'System Shock 2'-esque PDA plot device.

An excellent game that I still highly recommend.

But, if Valve had released Half-Life 2 before id had got its magnum opus out of the door, I doubt I would ever have played it. Once again, the bar has been raised when it comes to first player action; in fact, not so much raised as moved wholesale by several miles.

I got home from work last night, started Steam which promptly started to unlock the preloaded copy on my hard drive. Off to the kitchen to make hot steaming cup of caffeine, and when I came back the game was ready to play - no hassles, no dramas. I know some people have had problems, but for me the experience was seamless.

And then on to the game; first things first - the videos that we have all been drooling over for what seems like forever (insert obligatory DNF joke here) do not do the game justice. The game feels smooth, the action is fluid and the facial animation is something else. OK, I don't have the most sluggish rig in the world, but it's certainly not the best (FWIW; Asus P4P800-SE Deluxe; P4 HT 3.0GHz; 1Gb 2700 RAM; MSI FX 5700 Ultra; 160Gb DiamondPlus 9 SATA); by contrast, Doom 3 struggled to get a decent framerate at 1024x768 on this machine whereas Half-Life 2 simply seems to take things in its stride.

So far, I've only played for a couple of hours (I'm still on the wonderfully named 'Route Kanal' level), but already I've come across a couple of wonderful touches; in particular, Barney's jibe that a degree from MIT must have come in really useful for throwing a switch is priceless.

My other favourite touch at the moment has to be feeding exploding barrels to the barnacles, and then exploding them.

I cannot recommend this game highly enough. The temptation to throw a sickie was very strong - but as I work in an IT environment, I suspect I would have been rumbled! Go buy, go play. End of story.

Apparently I'm a .DLL....

Which File Extension are You?

Bored of the Windows XP Fisher Price Luna theme? Thanks to someone who commented on Don Box's blog here, you can install the Windows Media Center 2005 'Royale' theme on your XP system. The great thing with this theme is that is doesn't require mucking around with StyleXP to get it to work.

Download the Energy Blue Theme Pack and extract the files (if you've got WinZip installed, you can right click the file and extract). You need to copy four of the files to:

%WINDIR%\Resources\Themes\royale.theme
%WINDIR%\Resources\Themes\Royale\royale.msstyles
%WINDIR%\Resources\Themes\Royale\Shell\shellstyle.dll
%WINDIR%\Resources\Themes\Royale\Wallpaper\energybliss.jpg

You should now find the Royale theme available in the Display control panel applet.

I've finally got around to updating the Yeovil Freewheelers site using DotNetNuke; I should have done it much earlier, but Real Life™ kept on getting in the way....

Anyway, they're a worthwhile charity that deserve support.

Many thanks to Andrew; he found scans of a PC Gamer review of the nearly-here Doom 3. The review: page 34, page 35, page 38, page 39, page 42, page 44. (Warning, there are some potential spoilers in the review, and in the rest of this entry).

What I found interesting was this section from the review:

As you make your way through the different levels of the base, the plot is revealed via the PDAs you pick up, and in brief conversations with the few NPCs who weren’t “turned” by the satanic attack. To make your way through the inevitably sealed-off access doors between levels, you’ll have to read through email that progressively reveals a conspiracy of apocalyptic proportions — the nefarious scheme of psychotic Dr. Betruger, UAC’s chief scientist who’s perverted a teleportation experiment to open up a portal into a hell-like dimension. (Oh, and as if you couldn’t guess, Dr. Betroger is also keen on transporting his hellion army to Earth.)

Reading that reminded me of the venerable System Shock 2 (probably one of the creepiest games ever made) - which is no bad thing in my book. Oh, roll on August!

Just about one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time; play this video to any Mac zealots you may know!

A while ago I moaned about some eegit who has been using my domain name to send Unsolicited Commercial Email (aka Spam) to the great unwashed.

The problem as it now stands is that 90% of my incoming emails are bounce-back messages from servers, claiming messages I've sent cannot reach their intended recipients. Of course, I never sent them in the first place.

I collect all the mail sent to my domain, and those emails that are not addressed to specific user accounts are fed into SpamAssassin to help its Bayesian filter. However, this means that a large number of bounce back messages are also being learned.

What I need to find is a realiable way of determining whether a message is a rejection notice or not; I could then insert this into a maildrop filter so that only the original spam messages enter SpamAssassin's corpus. Anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this?

Well, it's been nearly eighteen months but the website for the best band in the world, ever is now back online.

And now a personal plea to Matt: pull yer finger out and get Spirits, Pornography Of Despair and GunSluts released - it's about time you did!

I had a long hard look at the all new 'improved' Napster over the weekend, and I'm terribly disappointed with what I've found.

For a start, it's horribly expensive; I decided to look up an old album I had fond memories of - "The Golden Age Of Wireless" by Thomas Dolby, originally released way back in 1982.

Napster had the album available for download, so I pulled it down. Now, of course all the tracks are DRM protected WMA files, but encoded at a miserable 128Kbps. Individually, the tracks are priced at £0.99, or I could purchase the entire album at £9.95. If I decided to purchase the tracks from Napster, I would then be able to burn them to my own blank CD.

As a matter of interest, I went to Amazon to see how much they would charge me for an original copy of the same CD; they're charging £6.99

On top of this, Napster are charging £9.95 per month for the 'privilige' of downloading DRM crippled tracks in the first place.

So, let's get this right; Napster want me to buy tracks encoded at sub-CD quality, DRM crippled, to burn onto media that I have to purchase separately, with absolutely no artwork/sleeve notes for more than I can legally purchase the original album. Does that make sense to anyone out there?

So who ended up getting my hard-earned cash in the end? I'll give you a clue; the name of the company has a connection to Brazil...

Zak had an unfortunate accident yesterday; he fell over while playing and managed to break off the top of one of his front teeth, and bite straight through his lower lip.

We ended up having to take him to Taunton, where they have a specialist Childrens Ward, and under a general anaesthetic they removed the base of the tooth that was remaining and stitched his lower lip up.

The only part of the entire procedure that he really didn't like was having the IV Cannula inserted into the back of his hand - even though the back of his hand had already been numbed with a local anaesthetic cream, he really screamed at that point.

The whole operation took about half an hour (although it felt like hours to us), and within about fourty minutes of waking up in the Recovery Room he was up and running around again! We were able to take him home a couple of hours later.

India and Zak got to meet their new sister this afternoon, so I've uploaded some more photographs to the online gallery.

The gallery can be located here:
http://gallery.edcourtenay.co.uk/albums/6.aspx

Chloë Megan Courtenay arrived this evening at 20:44, weighing in at 6lbs 12oz.

Both mother and baby are doing fine, and hope to come home on Saturday morning.

More pictures will follow at http://gallery.edcourtenay.co.uk/albums/6.aspx very soon.

Some tosspot has decided to send out a ton of spam emails advertising Viagra to the world, faking my domain as the return address.

This means my mailserver is currently having to fend off masses of bounce messages from other mailservers around the wor