Pluto has officially been booted out of the Solar System after a Czech conference determined the ex-planet falls outside of the official specifications.

The 26th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has declared finally after a long week that Pluto, after it’s 1930 discovery, has been deemed to be not a “planet” after all..

According to the new ruling, Pluto will be refered to as a “Dwarf Planet” because it’s orbit crosses Neptune’s. Below is the definition for a Planet, a Dwarf Planet and Small Solar System Bodies (comets and asteroids and the like.)

(1) A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar System Bodies”.

It’s not all that surprising to me though, everyone knows pluto’s a dog.

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Wow that was a big gap between posts! Sorry about that.. No really I am.. The thing is I’ve had a week off work and things have lapsed a bit while I’ve been trying to relax and >shock< tried to ignore the PC for a bit..!

Anyway, that is the main reason for the delay. The second one is my purchase of a iPod Nano, so I thought I might use this post for my baptism into appledom.

If you're a regular reader you'll know that my previous audio gadget of choice has been a Windows Mobile device (an orange M500 to be exact) and I've used that device for tunes and podcasts and lots of other things, which it is really good at. But that which is always the case, you don't really know how you lived without something until you actually get it, is also the case here. If there is anybody that has any spare cash floating about and have been thinking about getting an iPod, I highly recommend you do! And here's why:

Firstly, I think this might be a bit of a secret in the Microsoft Windows fraternity, but ...iTunes is pretty damn good. There I’ve said it. To hell with the consequences! I’ve been struggling with Winamp, Windows Media Player, various other freeware and shareware alternatives and sure they all have great functionality. However, I’ve always found myself having to use more than one app to get the whole job done. For instance, the radio is excellent in Winamp, but the syncing to devices sucks (unless you have an iPod of course.) Also the syncing is excellent in Windows Media Player but the feel is a bit clunky and you have to pay for the radio! If you want to burn a CD from mp3s in Winamp it only burns at a certain speed. Now this is all with a Windows Mobile device – And I know that iTunes would also still have problems with anything but an iPod so spare me that angle. If you want to adjust EQs for different songs Winamp’s way of “adjust EQ, tick auto load EQ, select presets, save, auto load preset…” is just laughable (this needs to be done everytime you want to tweak something too.) And the EQ within Media Player, although potentially good with some nice effects, falls down because all settings are tied to the player and not the track.

However, in true apple style (so I’m learning) everything within iTunes just seems to work. As long as you know how to use a computer, everything within the player is where you would want it, and everything works predictably too. For instance, when you first fire it up it can search for tunes and categorise them for you. Nothing new there. However it will also convert any wma files you have to mp3 or aac, because iPods don’t support wma files (I’m sure that’s a rant for another occasion!) You can also burn CDs, rip CDs or re-encode songs in good quality without sacrifices. You can select a volume adjustment, or EQ preset without saving everytime. Just select and you’re done. I could go on, but I’ve already seen the size of this post already!! PHEW!

So lastly but not least, the integration with the iPod is absolutely seamless. If you listen to a song on your iPod and rate it while you’re listening, it will update your library automatically when it’s plugged back in – as will the stats regarding how many times you’ve listened to the track and the date. It also knows the difference between a podcast and a song and treats them differently. A podcast will be played once and marked as listened to, and will also not move onto the next podcast in the playlist. Kind of how things should be in my opinion.

OK so I think I’m done. And I know, most of you probably already have iPods, so this post isn’t really for your benefit (although you can exert a certain amount of smugness on the rest of the readership if you desire) – it’s really for those of us that are either thinking of moving over to an iPod or flatly think it’s the wrong thing to do.

Oh yeah, I do have one minor gripe with iTunes. Where are the damn skins guys???

What a great idea. Kind of obvious when you think about it..

If you want to register for anything online but want to avoid the deluge of spam that will appear after you disclose your email address, this is the site for you. You can create a temporary email address that will be deleted after 6 hours. The email address will be some random characters followed by the @temporaryinbox.com domain. Of course, once you’ve registered make a note of your details, because it would be really hard to recover lost passwords with these random email addresses. That aside this is an absolutely genius idea..! I wonder how long it will be before @temporaryinbox.com is excluded as a valid email address from these sites though…

[link]

According to press releases Dell has issued an immediate recall of 4.1 million batteries already installed in laptops, or supplied due to service calls.

After a lot of press recently, Dell have formerly announced that they are recalling batteries that have been shown to be faulty. The laptop models affected are available if you follow the link below. I would suggest you double check your battery against the instructions for identifying items included in the recall on the website, even if your laptop model is not included in the list.

This recall follows a lot of press within the internet community about alleged explosions of batteries. Stories have even made the general press in the US. Let’s just hope this release is publicised enough and the owners are notified appropriately about returns and replacements. Compensation perhaps as well? Don’t hold your breath I hear you say! There has also been mention from other sources that some airline operators are getting twitchy over this whole incident too. After all, what would an exploding battery do to the inside of a pressurised aircraft at 30,000 feet? Doesn’t bare thinking about..

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I don’t know how much of a geek you are, but if you’re bonefide like me, you’ll need this list. This list is a decent representation of some of the things you can do in Windows that you may not realise. Such as the ability to create your own fonts, contig and defrag for Hard Disk maintenance and information commands like gpresult that give you a rundown of policies in force and security groups. All useful stuff, if you’re a geek..

[link]

I wound up here the other day for no reason, but to try and see if the BBC had a stats page for their website. I was suprised to find it relatively quickly. However I was presented with a password. So I tried the first thing I thought of and it worked: Username: stats, password: stats. Simple…

It’s interesting to see they have seperate stats for the biggest crowd pullers to their website, such as when Princess Diana died. Sad but poignant.

I don’t know if they advertise this stats page or not, or if they just password protect it to prevent google from sending it’s armies of robots in!!

[link]

If you live in the UK you can now find out if your neighbours are up to the same “technological speed” as you are.

Yes that’s right, after new research (ESRC funded e-Societyproject), you can look up your technology rating according to your post-code in the UK. The rating ranges from E-unengaged to E-expert with over 20 different types in between. You can also use the information to find techno affinity with other people in the UK, as you are given a list of places with the same or similar ratings. It’s all a bit of fun, but could have uses in the future to perhaps concentrate on e-unengaged areas to raise their technical awareness and knowledge.

[link]

OK, I stumbled upon this the other day (not to be confused with [stumbleupon.com]) and decided to download to give it a trial.

Anything that’s free and will help you avoid those god-damn phising assholes deserves my attention (and hopefully yours!)

I’ve just given it a quick trial, and I’m pretty sure that’s all that’s required to test the plugin.

Once installed, an icon appears in the bottom right of firefox’s windows. If the site is good you get an icon like this:

However, if it’s bad, you get an icon like this:

Simple, just how we like it! If there isn’t any information about the particular site you’re visiting then the icon will be white. Another really nice feature is SiteAdvisor’s ability to flag any search returns from Google, Yahoo! or MSN with a green tick or red cross, depending on how McAfee rank the site.

And as a final note, have you noticed how many dodgy websites have a black background, whilst the safe ones have white? It’s like an old 1950’s western for God’s sake… =)[link]

Just a quick post, before my main post of the day to say “Happy Belated Birthday” to the Web. I missed it by a day, damn! I think people generally believe it to be 15 years old on the 6th August because that was apparently when a paper was submitted to newsgroups for the use of the http protocol with an Alpha version of a browser in the same article. I’m pretty sure this post is still available via google and I’ll post a link if I find it! However I also found another article from CNN that said the web was 15 on December 15, 2005 [here].

The only problem is that it’s hard to believe any one story, and after a while you kind of wonder “what’s the point?” I guess it’s purely for nostalgic reasons more than anything else…

Yeap, a quick post to let you know (if you care) that the ants are dead, therefore the antblog is dead. Oh well. It seems they only last a month or so before they “pop their clogs” to coin a phrase!

Oh well, on with the tech news then…