While we’re on the subject of shell extensions, this little program (135Kb) will do loads of cool stuff. For that paltry footprint, you’ll get 4 Virtual desktops, programmable window icons (like your close box etc) and the ability to set the opacity of windows too.

For instance, I really like the idea of having a window in “always on top” mode. This can be done now by programming dm2 by right-clicking on the taskbar and going into the action menu. You can program all of the three standard buttons on a window to do different things if right click or middle click is used and also with shift/control combinations.

The program also has the ability to support it’s own sets of plugins, which as the program is open source means there are already a few available with the app.

[link]

Small neat and useful. If you can’t wait for Vista to come out, you can add one of it’s cool features to XP right now, for free. The download is very small and when you hover over items on your taskbar, a small preview pops up showing you what’s in the window! Very cool and so useful you’ll wonder how you got on without it within minutes!!

[link]

Greatest find of the week. This website will learn from your music tastes. The website is held in conjunction with apple and amazon (not that that should disuade you at all) and delivers the equivalent of 400,000 songs from their database not including world or classical music.

Anyway, it’s a really cool website, allows you to register for free and learns, yes I mean learns, your musical taste, through repetition. For instance, you will create a new radio station within your browser and type in an artist or track that you really like. The channel is created (and you can have up to a hundred of them) and the music streams directly via flash into your browser. This is pretty cool, but what makes the process complete is that it makes a note of what that track actually means. I don’t mean artist, length and other stuff – I mean in genre, beat, tonality, sex of singer and even down to the heaviness of the beats. This information is constantly updated, after every song you listen to. Also you can rate tracks that are played and that’s where the beauty really begins. You can choose to listen to the track, give it a thumbs down (after which it moves on to another calculated track) give it a thumbs up (which is where it makes a note of the content of the track) or choose to skip the track. After 4 or 5 choices of thumbs up or down, you pretty much have a playlist you can listen to all day long.. I mean I made the guys in the office sick of dance music after finding this website within 5 minutes (although I was in heaven!!)

So, very cool free as long as you can put up with adverts (which don’t count for much really after the window is minimised) and you love to listen to music that is tailor made to your senses! Another option is to subscibe, after which all of the adverts will be removed and you can skip and move about as much as you want (another restriction to the free version) Check it out and you so won’t be sorry…

At last an internet radio station tailored to what we want and for free!! Get it while you still can…!!

[link]

You know, retro is such a let-down, IMO. You always expect to relive the past and to feel the way you did when you played the game, or saw the film, or did the thing you did to look back and think, “aah, Retro.” It never quite lives up to the memories. Now why is that? Is it because things are so much better the first time around, or is it because over time the memories get elevated to a higher status inside our heads? I think it’s probably a combination of all those things. For instance:

Who had a Rubik’s Cube? And also who was no good at it? (probably a very similar amount of hands to the first question.) And who knew a kid who could solve the damn thing in 10 seconds? Your mum always knew somebody else, who had a son that could do these damn things..! Didn’t you hate him? Didn’t you wish he couldn’t do the Rubik’s Cube? Well if you want to relive that past moment you can do it online (without the peelable stickers) at www.rubiks.com/cube_online.html if you don’t (which is equally understandable) you probabaly want the crappy past to stay where it is..

Now hopefully this won’t cause too much a trauma.. Who also remembers etchasketch? The pictures of etchasketch art that were showed on the box were truly impossible to create. Yet still you wished and wondered over the beautiful complexities of it all… How many people had one of these? (not many) and were you envious of their skills (not at all.) Now the real problem I seem to remember about this game was remembering which way to turn the knobs. It always seemed to be the wrong damn way! Well now you can resolve that with a simple control system of cursors for the online system. You can too can feel like a angular adonis here although, again, who really wants to be that sad?

As a round-up you can also play spirograph which loses so much online it’s unreal. I mean the whole fun with this game was the pens (that were always without ink) the stupid bent pins that would either not stick in the paper, or WOULD stick in your finger, and the cogs that never meched and always ruined the picture you were trying so hard not to screw up! What is the point in trying to create something digitally when the whole point with all of these games was the tactile nature of them??

So the fact remains that retro is crap. Things of yesteryear were great because everything you remembered before them was rubbish, which automatically makes them better. If we look at things we hold dear, they are now rubbish because they are not new now. So enjoy retro, but don’t expect the same feelings. Stuff changes, and if you’re too wrapped up in what was you’ll miss what is!

Right then… I made a promise to myself to not publish anything that was personal to me, or was directly linked to what was happening in my life – I guess I wanted to have a bit more of a subjective view on what I was talking about. However (here it comes!) I have come to the conclusion that “tiscali”, the ISP, suck ass, and I can’t miss the opportunity to educate potential customers what they’re in for. Now, if you’re reading this Tiscali (doubtful) then I can only vouch that these are my personal opinions and in no way reflect on your business as a whole. Have they gone? Good, I’ll continue then…

(also it kind of follows on from the last post.. ish)

First things first. I’ve been having problems with Tiscali. For probably a good 6 months or so, although I’ve been blaming everything but them.. I was bought rather kindly by my brother-in-law a copy of Battlefield 2 at Christmas. We had talked for a long time about the game and (to be honest) I think he bought it really for his own sake rather than mine, so we could play online together after such great times on bf1942. Anyway it is a really cool game and I’m glad he bought it because it is uber-fun online, which leads me to my next paragraph..

It seemed that within a few months (of doing the whole bf2 learning thing) I came to the conclusion that bf2 was a bit “buggy.” Now this conclusion was arrived at by observing the so called “red-blue bug.” What this bug means is that the odd person from my team appears as though they are on the enemies team! When this is observed by me, I kill them (natually.) I then get credited with a tk (or team kill) which costs me points during the game, ruins my stats and generally means I won’t progress at the rate I perhaps should during the game. Now I’m very anal about this stuff, so if I play a game, I expect it to work without bugs and within the confines of the game itself.

So I blamed bf2. I blamed the windows firewall (changed to zonealarm), blamed the OS (changed to win2000), blamed my USB devices(steering wheel etc.), blamed my PC and motherboard (brand new), blamed my memory… etc, etc. You get the idea… Anyway, I didn’t think to blame my internet connection until…

secondlife

I tried to log onto secondlife and (as I understand) it relies heavily on UDP traffic. This program had MASSIVE packet loss. I mean to the order of over 150%. And of course it just didn’t work because of this… Now since this experiment (and let’s face it, I don’t even care about secondlife anymore) I just want things to work, and bf2 (relying on UDP) didn’t work as advertised (although it’s not EA’s fault.)

I did research on TCP and UDP protocols over the internet and then phoned Tiscali. It appears they know even less than I did before my research because the words “bandwidth” and “protocol” seemed even to be a bit of a problem for their 1st line of support. I finally got through to their 2nd line of support, which was basically a supervisor for the plebs on 1st line… What sort of SUPPORT IS THAT???? So I get through and he’s like (his name is Gary, although his actual name is Gauraub or something) and he’s very apologetic and he promises to get the telephone company out to check my line – which after loads of research and lots of convincing on my part doesn’t help him to understand the problem’s at the server end, not the line end. However, after my explanations of “doesn’t make a difference” he still goes ahead and does this, so I give him his 48 hours of work and benefit of doubt before I contact him again…

Here I am then. 48 hours after “Gary” or whatever his name is said the problem would be fixed by some magical BT engineer with the SAME FU@K*NG PROBLEM!

The crux is that now I have moved my phone calls to BT (2 minutes after getting off of the phone from Tiscali,) and I am also about to get the MAC for my internet connection so I can move to Pipex in the morning. Well done Tiscali, like good job dudes… Your problem and your lack of support/information has now MADE me move away from your pathetic company to hopefully a more professional company in the UK that doesn’t require me to contact Bangladesh everytime I have a problem… I can’t wait for the swap over!!!!!! And I can’t wait to stop wasting my money on a company that doesn’t even care or listen to it’s customers…

There, so I promise that’s my only personal rant for the year.. OK, well, maybe my fingers are crossed OK?? Satisfied? )

It seems through recent news that the UK broadband providers are starting to enforce their limits and fair use policies and in a recent The Register article it appears that BT are starting to get serious with their customers. With emails “asking” for compliance to already plain fair use polices (which obviously nobody but lawyers read) and when they receive no response (in the form of curbing their downloads) from users, BT are in some cases cutting their bandwidth or even disconnecting the users altogether.

Even companies like Tiscali that regularly flaunt limitless broadband on TV actually have limits. Until recently there was mention of a 30GB limit in their terms and conditions. This language has now been removed but the legal speak of overuse is still abundantly clear. This is the same for the vast majority of all British ISPs. The first time you had broadband installed, did you realise there would be a cap on it, when the package you ordered explicitly said there wasn’t? Of course not, you would have shopped around if you had realised that!

Of course, with companies like Bulldog offering pretty good options like this you start to wonder at what point these fairuse policies actually become useless. If the bandwidth available to the average user keeps increasing, then surely it will be utilised more for a more interactive experience. Why watch those videos in 320×240 when on the same page it says you could watch the same video in 640×480 and better quality? It’s why we prefer DAB to FM, and FM to AM when we turn on the radio – users just want to be able to do things the best way available. I just hope we don’t get into a situation like we are at the moment, where the next generation of ADSL bandwidth is being over sold.

So the resolution? Well I guess we need to find ISPs that allow us to use the service they provision. We should check the small print before we sign. And if you’re unhappy with the service make sure they know about it because we shouldn’t have to pay the price for their over selling of a product to the point where it’s unusable if everybody uses it to it’s fullest extent. Their systems should adapt to the user’s demands, not the other way around.