Dave Morrison

iPhone Sync issue

2011-11-07T09:07:00.001Z

Well. That was bloody annoying! iTunes decided to delete all the apps from my iPhone because the network disk that all my music, etc is stored on was offline. So instead of just saying.. hey, I'll wait until it's back online, it just deleted everything.

So what you might say?

Well every single app has forgotten all its settings, all the data that was stored, downloaded, scanned etc into the phone is also gone :(

Arse, bugger and bollocks!

Changing what Siri calls you.

2011-10-22T06:33:00.001+01:00

Siri from now on call me "my master"

Job done ;)

Traffic

2011-10-18T11:18:00.001+01:00

I'm stuck in it and have been for 2 hrs! This has given me lots of opportunity to stare at my dashboard, which tells me that in the last 12 months, I've spent 586 hrs sat in this chair, or 0.8 months or 3.4 weeks. How inspiring to know.

Apple iPhone 4S - the waiting

2011-10-14T13:47:00.000+01:00

It's blog day it seems, probably because I'm sat at home by the window anxiously waiting for the UPS man to ring the door bell and hand over my lovely new shiny iPhone 4S. I, and millions of others it seems, managed to pre-order one last Friday as soon as the Apple Store came back up. According to the UPS tracker (did you know you can just paste a UPS tracking number into Google Chrome and it automatically knows it a UPS tracker number? - Google rocks!), my phone is out for delivery today. So yay to that! Yesterday, I had to go find a blank, micro-sim for the phone, as my old blackberry (god I can't wait to get rid of that phone) uses the standard sized one. Fingers crossed, I should just be able to call Vodafone when the phone arrives and get the sims switched over.

Addon Corner - Addon Control Panel

2011-10-14T13:46:00.002+01:00

Addon Control Panel is an absolutely brilliant and unassuming mod for those that like lots of mods, because it let's you choose which mods to load while you're actually in-game. Normally, you need to select which mods you want to load before you log in, but with this mod, you can see which mods are loaded, or not loaded, pick which ones you want to enable or disable and then with a quick UI reload, all your new choices are running.

2011-10-14T13:21:00.004+01:00

It's blog day it seems, probably because I'm sat at home by the window anxiously waiting for the UPS man to ring the door bell and hand over my lovely new shiny iPhone 4S.

I, and millions of others it seems, managed to pre-order one last Friday as soon as the Apple Store came back up. According to the UPS tracker (did you know you can just paste a UPS tracking number into Google Chrome and it automatically knows it a UPS tracker number? - Google rocks!), my phone is out for delivery today. So yay to that!

Yesterday, I had to go find a blank, micro-sim for the phone, as my old blackberry (god I can't wait to get rid of that phone) uses the standard sized one. Fingers crossed, I should just be able to call Vodafone when the phone arrives and get the sims switched over.

Come on already!

Apple Newsstand

2011-10-14T13:06:00.001+01:00

Trying out the new Apple Newsstand this morning, I was really struck by how large a 'magazine' is to download. For the current version of T3 (a gadget mag), it's only just shy of 500MB. Sure it's packed full of images and even video's, but say I subscribe to T3 and perhaps two or three other magazines too. Each month I'll be downloading 1.5GB of content, in a year that'll be 18GB sat there on my iPad and that's over half the storage gone!

If you download a newspaper, then it's only a few MB per issue, but then you would be downloading one of those a day rather than one per month. The newspapers text is actually, text, making the file sizes smaller, whereas it seems the magazines are just images of the printed pages, so a lot larger.

Chatting to a friend over Twitter, I came up with the 'wi-fi' only version, where video content could be streamed from a server, rather than included directly in the magazine file. I can't see how 500MB magazine issues can be sustainable on portable devices.

Time will tell.

Dieting for Idiots

2011-06-28T10:50:00.003+01:00

Want to lose weight? Can't be arsed to read up on how? Here's my top tips for shedding pounds.

Cut out sugar. Sugar is energy, if you don't use that energy because you've got your arse wedged in the sofa watching day-time TV, that energy gets stored as fat.
Cut out fat or buy low/no fat versions of everything. Fat is bad, but you can replace much of it with no or low fat versions, i.e. 1% milk instead of 2%, fat free yogurts etc. See, easy.
Cut out Sandwiches. Bread is made of carbs.. carbs means energy (see 1. above). What do you put on a sandwich, butter? That's fat (see 2. above). Then you fill put on some kind of dressing, mayo etc. Mayo & dressings usually contain a lot of fat or oil (see 2. above).
Cut out Alcohol. What makes alcohol? Sugar. (see 1. above). You can do it! If you can't, at least do it Sunday through Thursday.
Run around more. Yes, even if you walk around more (you lazy phuck) you'll burn off more of that lard.

See - easy. Do those things and you'll lose weight. I did.

HD or SD

2011-05-16T22:19:00.000+01:00

Well here's a nice hidden bonus. Inside the settings menu, you can ask the Apple TV to rent only standard def videos instead of the default high def ones. Why on earth would you do that I hear you cry?! Well, for starters, they're cheaper - like £1-£2 cheaper per movie. That's going to add up if you're a movie-holic like me to being a free movie every 3-4 you watch.

But!

I hear you! Do you really need HD? Really really? For every movie? Do you.. really?! No, of course you don't, and if you said yes that you're bought into the hype factory that wants you to believe that streamed HD is as good as Blueray, and it's just not. There is a small, discernable difference between SD and HD that's streamed, but not a massive Oh-My-God-I-NEED-that difference.

So switch to SD, give it a try and in these times of austerity measures, enjoy.

First Impressions of the Apple TV

2011-05-16T22:01:00.000+01:00

This year my family gave me an Apple TV as a birthday gift. My first impressions are, blimey it's small! I mean teeny tiny small and how the heck does it do all the groovy things it does so quickly in such a tiny package?

Speaking of which, what can it do? Well the general idea is that it will stream movies to your TV, over the Internet, from those nice (read greedy) people at Apple. That's the fundamentals out the way, but else does it do? Well, if you have used iTunes on either a Mac or a PC, then it can access stuff from there are display it on your TV too.

Stuff like songs is kinda pointless, but stuff like pictures from your holidays? Stuff like movies you might have downloaded from other places? Stuff like podcasts... YouTube, Flickr? Yup - all that kinda stuff too. In fact, the ability to connect to another PC/Mac running iTunes and showcase all that on your huge TV is frankly outstanding.

I mean sure, my PS3 does that too but it's pretty dog slow at it. And my PS3 also has LoveFilm on there too, which you'd think would be a direct competitor considering it allows you to stream movies on -demand from their video library? Well, LoveFilms attempts at streaming are all well and good, but seriously, this little baby just does it instantly.

I don't have to wait ages for the movie to buffer, and it doesn't pause every few mins while the server catches up.. the Apple TV simply shows you a MASSIVE library of movies, and for a fee of £3-£5 you can start watching it instantly (OK, there's maybe a 1 sec pause on my 50Mb connection) and that my friends, is darn-right-flippin-ace!

The thing that I also love, is that you can actually just unplug this thing, take it to a mates house and start watching a movie, any movie. Like I can go to my dads, who thinks digital TV is complicated, plug this in and we can start looking at photo's from my Mac, or watching black and white movie from 1950 he remembers. It's a portable super mini media hub and all you need is a TV with an HDMI port.

You know what else impresses me? It works. It just plain, flippin-well works. Like everything else that I've come to find from Apple over the last six months since picking up a Macbook - they design things that you can switch on and use. It's simple, does an outstanding job at what it says it will, doesn't add a hundred things you never will use - in fact, it does exactly what it says on the tin, er box.

Morzine

2011-02-28T21:33:00.000Z

I'm here again.. fourth year running. This year is so much better than last, with the proper chef on duty (last year he was on vacation) so the food is great, the staff too are all new and fantastic as are the guests who all seem to be very friendly and relaxed this time around.

The diet is struggling, I won't lie to you. I haven't succumbed to a monster cheese fest yet but for lunch today I ordered steak (good) with fries (bad), and the steak was utterly inedible - I couldn't even cut the thing with a knife - so I ate the fries instead.

The snow has been good the last two days around Morzine itself, but I think after today that'll be it for the lower slopes as it was really heavy and slushy on the way down tonight. I skied Avoriaz this morning with the ski guide here and two other couples. and the weather was awesome, bright sunshine, warm, empty pistes and no queues. We skied pretty hard from 9 until 12, then I left them and skied over to Morzine to meet with the Bradford for lunch. The difference between Morzine and Avoriaz was amazing as Morzine is a good 1000 feet lower and I was back into the low clouds, so a bit crappy really. Still, was a fun afternoon skiing with the kids and Oli certainly brightened up from yesterday and was skiing his little heart out (of control mainly but speed is key at 5!)

Tomorrow I think I'll stick over on Avoriaz the whole day - take it easy and learn the area.

To blue skies and powdery trails.

Diet - Day 5

2011-02-25T20:05:00.000Z

Well, I made it through the "attack phase". That's five days of only eating protein based foods and I absolutely can't wait to get my teeth into some veg tomorrow! It's very difficult to just eat protein day in day out. I've eaten a lot of plain chicken, mackerel, ham slices, low fat yoghurts, eggs etc. It really doesn't make for a tasty dinner, but now I'm in my cruise phase from tomorrow, which means I'm allowed some good veggies, and I'll be on a one day on, one day off routine switching between just protein days and protein+veggies days for the next few months.

Did I lose weight this week? Hard to say as I didn't have any scales to measure myself with at the beginning of the week, but suffice to say, I now way 98.8kg.. that's 15 1/2 stones. Before I went to Orlando in January, I weighed myself at my girlfriends house and if memory serves I weighed 16 1/2 stones.. it was definitely over 16 at least which means I've lost between a stone and half a stone in the last month! Even if it's half a stone that's pretty brilliant in my books.

Now I have a real challenge as I'm going on a skit trip next week, noturiously famous for the odd beer, glass of wine, and EVERYTHING comes with high far or carbs. It's a pizza, beer and cheese-fest.

Oh dear.

Apple Rumour Mill is no better than a crap British Tabloid

2011-02-23T17:38:00.001Z

It's insane. How can you call yourselves news websites when every statement contains a might, maybe, could, perhaps or a question mark. That's just speculation and pure rumour building, so get a grip and report something you know about rather than jumping on the band wagon and making crap up.

In other news, it has been confirmed by an inside source that the maybe the new iPad 3 is being released next week and will contain dancing elephants as a new innovative power supply! It's true - I read it on another website.

Diet - Day 2

2011-02-22T19:46:00.000Z

I've been good today, sticking rigidly to the plan which for me is five days of protein ONLY. Nothing else, just protein based foods, which is actually quite limiting when you think of a meal. We're looking at fish, meat or zero fat dairy products which doesn't exactly make for a good looking meal. However, this morning I had a pancake (gallette) and some salmon, lunch was a pack of ham and a yogurt, and tonight was baked salmon with a creme fraiche sauce with some dill and parsley. The food is actually pretty tasty, but it just looks pretty anaemic on the plate. I'm drinking tons & tons of tea, more out of boredom and to feel full, as I usually have a glass or two of wine when I get home and the odd snack.

Stomach was definitely in full gurgle mode this morning but calmed down after about an hour. So that's two days out of my five day "attack phase" done. Apart from that, I've felt like normal really, although after two days I guess you can't expect to feel any different :)

Black Swan

2011-02-21T18:01:00.001Z

We saw Black Swan on Thursday and I have to say... 'whut'?!

That's one freaky messed up movie on the one hand and yet utterly absorbing and brilliant on the other. I really do need to watch it again to understand some of the things that were going on.. yes, it's that type of movie, along the lines of The Sixth Sense that has you scratching your head at the end, and then on the car trip home things begin to fall into place and you have a few 'ahhh!' moments.. but not enough to completely answer all those questions.

Highly rated and recommended - although it really is a very dark movie at times so you might need to be brave ;)

9.5/10

Cornwall

2011-02-21T17:32:00.000Z

This weekend, Rach & I decided that we needed some fresh air and after a few mins of quick texts to each other, went from 'how about my house, some walks, cycling' to 'let's go to Newquay'. And, that was that, we'd booked a hotel and drove the 4 hrs down there on Saturday afternoon, had a sauna, dinner and relaxed in our huge bedroom with its four poster bed & overlooking the sea below. Sunday morning was papers in bed, big proper breakfast and then a four hour walk along the coast line before getting a taxi back and relaxing in front of the fire. There's something truly amazing and restorative about a windy walk along the sea. Needless to say we both slept like logs on Sunday night and the thought of heading into work this morning didn't seem that bad after all.

Day 1 of new diet

2011-02-21T17:23:00.001Z

After my gorgeous girlfriend lost around 7lbs quickly on this diet, I've decided to give it a go myself. Today is day 1, and as long as I keep reminding myself why i'm doing this, then I think I can really achieve something good for once.

There are key defining moments in peoples lives that make them take a stand, decide to do something positive over and above the 'yea - i'll try it but..' type things. I'm talking about the moment the light bulb goes off and you think to yourself, I'm going to change. During the weekend I had one of those moments and have decided that I can no longer eat and drink to the level I do as it's affecting my health and life to an extent I'm not going to put up with anymore. That's not to say I'm this huge monstrously obese person that needs to loose 500 lbs, not at all. I've set myself the ultimate goal of losing 3 stones (50lb) in the next six months which will get me down to my college days weight.

I've decided to try the Dukan diet, which has both good and bad press. Good is that you lose weight as long as you're strict with yourself and follow the rules, bad is that some people say its unhealthy. The idea is that you starve yourself of fats and carbs and focus on high protein meals that will force your body into eating it's fat reserves. Sounds OK to me, especially when you mix it with good healthy vegetables every other day. The bad thing is, no fruit (because it's high in sugar) and you're recommended to take a vitamin tablet each day to over come the lack of fruit. I don't like having to take a tablet as a concept, but think that as long as I eat very good veggies then I should be able to get all my vits from them anyway.

So the fridge is stocked with low fat dairy and fish/meats ready to tuck into. Let us begin.

Stuck trying to use shortcuts

2011-02-10T10:51:00.000Z

As a Windows man, I'm struggling with the keyboard shortcuts that are subtly different on the Mac. Luckily, there is a handy list of all short cuts that you can find here http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343

The Mousepad

2011-02-07T08:39:00.000Z

Well what a strange and yet curiously wonderful beast the Macbook Pro
mousepad is. Having come from a world of Thinkpads that have the red
'nipple' mouse, moving to a mousepad of any kind was always going to be a
difficult change. However, after a few days of using this now, I actually
really like it although I do find it rather slow to move around accurately,
but maybe that will come with time.

One button - this works wonders most of the time and I find I prefer just
gently tapping the mousepad instead of actually clicking, however the real
downside still for me is in dragging anything. It's a real pain and very
un-intuitive to have to click, and then drag all using the same finger -
and I usually end up paddling with another finger as I run out of space.

Gestures - this are just awesome. two finger scrolling is great, a swipe
left and we go back a page - just loving these features

Games - are basically a no no with the mousepad though, the right mouse
button is needed to often in conjunction with a left mouse click and moving
too. I plugged my two button travel mouse and it worked fine. In fact, if
I'm not travelling then I'll probably be using an external mouse most of
the time as that extra button is just too handy.

My First Mac

2011-02-04T10:44:00.000Z

About me

I've worked for a large IT corporation for the best part of 22 years, and every day I've been there I've used a standard PC to do general work. As a technically minded person, I know more about the inner workings of DOS, OS/2, Linux & Windows than I care to mention, but I have never even used a Mac before. So finally, after 22 years, on a business trip to Orlando this year I popped into an Apple store and came out with my first Mac Book Pro. I chose the 13" for a number of reasons that I'll get into in another post, suffice to say I wanted something that was light, portable, had good battery life and wasn't going to be dog slow.

About this blog

I'm going to write about an old timer Windows user like me gets on with a completely new device from set up to day to day use, finding new software for home & office, joys and frustrations and anything else in between.

Page one of the Engineering to English dictionary

2010-01-31T09:56:00.000Z

2010 Top 25 Engineer's Terms and Expressions

(What we say versus what it means)

1. A number of different approaches are being tried.
We are still guessing at this point.
2. Close project coordination.
We sat down and had coffee together.
3. An extensive report is being prepared on a fresh approach.
We just hired three punk kids out of school.
4. Major technological breakthrough!
It works OK; but looks very hi-tech!
5. Customer satisfaction is believed assured.
We are so far behind schedule, that the customer will take anything.
6. Preliminary operational tests were inconclusive.
The darn thing blew up when we threw the switch.
7. Test results were extremely gratifying!
Unbelievable, it actually worked!
8. The entire concept will have to be abandoned.
The only guy who understood the thing quit.
9. It is in process.
It is so wrapped in red tape that the situation is completely hopeless.
10. We will look into it.
Forget it! We have enough problems already.
11. Please note and initial.
Let's spread the responsibility for this.
12. Give us the benefit of your thinking.
We'll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn't interfere with what we have already done or with what we are going to do.
13. Give us your interpretation.
We can't wait to hear your bull.
14. See me or let's discuss.
Come to my office, I've screwed up again.
15. All new.
Parts are not interchangeable with previous esign.
16. Rugged.
Don't plan to lift it without major equipment.
17. Robust!
Rugged, but more so
18. Light weight.
Slightly lighter than rugged
19. Years of development.
One finally worked
20. Energy saving.
Achieved when the power switch is off.
21. No maintenance.
Impossible to fix
22. Low maintenance.
Nearly impossible to fix
23. Fax me the data.
I'm too lazy to write it down.
24. We are following the standard!
That's the way we have always done it!
25. I didn't get your e-mail.
I haven't checked my e-mail for days.

iPad thoughts

2010-01-28T11:37:00.000Z

First up - I'll say out loud that I'm no Apple fan-boy or to that matter an Apple hater. I've never owned a Mac but do have an iPod touch and have had various iPods in my time. I keep getting an urge to go and buy a Mac or a Mac mini of some description because I really do like the UI and everyone tells me their great. Then I look at the price and think, I already have a laptop, I have a PS3 for streaming music and video so I don't really need one.

I was therefore hoping for great things with the new iPad. Having spent a few hours reading about it and seeing how it looks it sure is a nice looking gadget. But, it has some huge short falls that means it'll just be one of those things I look at and think, that does look nice, but I don't really need one.

Can I use it as a work device? No, not a hope.

It has a word processing, spreadsheet and presentation app sure, but can I print anything out? Doesn't look like it.. in fact it looks like I have to email things back to my laptop so I can print. Useless!
Can I give presentations from it? Yea, actually it looks like you can if you buy the VGA adapter.
Can I connect it to my work network? No. Sure it has wireless, but will I be able to connect to the encrypted IBM wireless network? Nope. Does it have an Ethernet port then? Nope. Can I connect remotely from home and check my iNotes email. Nope. Useless!
Can I synch my Notes mail, calendar and addresses with it. Nope..

I'd love to have something super light with very long battery life so I can work on long trips, trains,

It's, therefore. a home only tool. Something to read books on, write emails while you sit and watch the TV and check Facebook.

It think it would also make a great travel companion, watch movies, read books, play some games - but you know what, I already have an iPod touch, and for $500 that's a LOT of books I'd need to buy and read to justify the price of a nice book reader.

del.icio.us Tags: ipad

The ice-rink at Somerset House last night was more of a swimming pool than ice, but Wagamama was great

2010-01-03T17:48:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

YouTube - Record breaking cocktail genius!

2009-12-11T23:39:00.001Z

via youtube.com

Posted via web from dave-morrison's posterous

Sushi Etiquette

2009-12-11T23:27:00.001Z

via theworldsbestever.com

Posted via web from dave-morrison's posterous

BBC News - UK injunction granted over golfer Tiger Woods

2009-12-11T23:07:00.001Z

Woods has not been seen in public since the accident on 27 November

Lawyers for US golfer Tiger Woods have obtained a UK injunction preventing certain information purportedly about him being published.
The order was granted by a judge at the High Court in London, and concerns alleged information which cannot be disclosed for legal reasons.
Last week Woods apologised to his family for "transgressions".
Speculation about his private life has been intense since he was involved in a car crash outside his Florida home.
Newspaper allegations followed about extra-marital affairs.
Woods has not been seen in public since the accident, in which his car hit a tree and fire hydrant.
The golfer, who was found bleeding and semi-conscious, was later charged with careless driving, which carries a $164 (£98) fine and four points on his driving record.
Woods has become an international sporting icon since winning his first major in 1997 at the age of 21.
At 33, he is just four short of equalling Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major victories and is regarded as one of the world's all-time great golfers.

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Tesco sparks iPhone price war with £20 a month contract | Mail Online

2009-12-11T23:04:00.001Z

Tesco sparks iPhone price war with £20 a month contract

By Sean Poulter
Last updated at 1:21 PM on 10th December 2009

Comments (54)

Add to My Stories

Price war: Tesco will sell the iPhone for £222 with its one-year contract

An iPhone price war has been triggered with news Tesco is to sell the iconic device on a £20 a month contract.
The entry of Tesco into the iPhone market means that the cheapest way of buying and running one amounts to £462 with a one year contract.
This is made up of £222 for one of the original 3G models with an 8GB memory and 12 monthly payments of £20.
Over 18 months, the figure would be £582, which is some £43 cheaper than the equivalent deals from current iPhone providers.
The supermarket is taking on established mobile phone networks, Orange and O2, in the battle for sales in the crucial Christmas trading period.
The pressure to cut prices will be turned up in the new year when Vodafone will also start offering the iPhone.
Currently, both Orange and O2 insist on customers signing up for a minimum 18 months for those who buy the iPhone on a contract basis.
This means the cheapest way of buying and running an iPhone 3G works out at £624.98 with Orange. That is a handset price of £96.50 and a monthly charge of £29.36.
The price with O2, which originally had exclusive rights to sell the iPhone when it was first launched in November 2007, works out at £625.73 for a similar deal.
Mobile phone handset prices and tariffs are notoriously complex, which means making a like for like comparison is virtually impossible for consumers.

More...

Pupils given free iPhones to use in classes as 'educational tools'

The cutting-edge TV that streams websites direct to the screen

This works to the advantage of the salesmen who routinely blind customers with a myriad of figures in order to push handsets and meet sales targets.
The picture is complicated by the fact that the amount of call minutes, texts and internet minutes included in the monthly charge will vary between the networks.
Another important factor is the geographical coverage of the network linked to the handset. All the major networks have blackspots which can mean a good value phone is useless if one of these falls over your locality.
Tesco will also be offering the iPhone on a pay as you go basis. It will charge £342, which is just £1 less than Orange and O2.
Apple's iPhone has changed the entire mobile phone market. Before it arrived, networks were giving expensive handsets away free of charge as part of their contracts.

Christmas battle: Tesco will offer the iPhone with an 18-month contract for £582, £43 less than equivalent deals from other mobile providers
Today, customers have to pay hundreds of pounds for an iPhone if they want to avoid paying ruinously high contract fees.
At the same time, it sparked a raft of supposed iPhone killers which have copied its touchscreen technology, such as the Palm Pre and LG Cookie.
Today it still leads a host of smart phones that double as music and video players, digital cameras, web browsers and email devices.
Tesco will start offering the range of iPhones from Monday. The higher spec 3GS model with a 16GB memory will cost £320 on a 12-month contract of £20 a month. It will be £440 on a pay-as-you go basis.
Tesco Mobile services operate over the O2 network which is a partner in the business with Tesco.
The firm's chief executive, Lance Batchelor, said: 'iPhone is now available and affordable for all, with the best deals in the UK market.
'This is a fantastic announcement for us and we’re delighted to make iPhone available to our customers. It shows what a serious player in the mobile market Tesco Mobile has become.'

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Comments (54)

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The iphone like all Apple products is over priced and over hyped. Apple make good products (I own a few including a couple of ipods and a laptop) but you can buy just as good for half the price. Sony are also guilty of this.
Apple products are made in China as well, so with the need to cut CO2 I assume all the liberal elite (who seem to own an iphone) will stop buying them?

- Martin, Ashford, 11/12/2009 12:28

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Great phone but too big and expensive, including the Tesco price!!

- K. Walsh-Johnson, Muscat, Oman, 11/12/2009 11:52

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There's really no point in buying a 3G when you can get a 3Gs though. New iPhone updates are designed for 3Gs, and will make the 3G phone slow and sluggish.
So yeah, it may be the cheapest option on the market, but it's not really the best deal.

- Sophie, Chelmsford, Essex, 11/12/2009 11:28

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Over £400 a year for a sodding phone???
I am 47 and remember when mobile phones were not part of our lives and it was not too long ago - I don't want one and never will. What an utter waste of money...£462!!!!!
Some people have more money than sense.

- MissCulture, belfast, 11/12/2009 11:26

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@AM - your figures are ridiculous. you can get unlimited 3g for 6months for just £20 from t-mobile (anyone with a bit of nous can unlock their iphone in a few minutes). so your £150 figure for 20mins a week is in cloud cuckoo land.
why do so many people on here whinge negatively without checking their facts.

- john parsons, cheltenham, uk, 11/12/2009 10:45

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@olutec - sorry to disappoint you but 12 months after the launch of the next iphone there will be yet another one. same as buying a pc, its not a game you can ever win by waiting, only by buying when you want/need one.
me? i think the tesco iphone on 12mnths is a great deal, and im off to buy one 1st thing on monday morning.

- john parsons, cheltenham, uk, 11/12/2009 10:42

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Posted via web from dave-morrison's posterous

Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping. Here's how it works:

2009-12-07T19:17:00.001Z

Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping. Simply going out to get supplies has turned out to be quite traumatic for me and is having a lasting impact. Here's how it works:
Two gorgeous young ladies come over to your car as you are loading the shopping into the boot and start wiping your windshield with a rag, their breasts are almost falling out of their clothes. It was impossible not to look. When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say 'No, but could you please take us down to McDonalds?' If you agree, they get into the back seat. When this happened to me, on the way to McDonalds they started undressing. Then one of them climbed over into the front seat and started crawling all over me, while the other one stole my wallet.
 I had my wallet stolen September 4th, 10th, twice on the 15th,17th, 20th, 24th & 29th. Also, on October 1st & 4th, twice on the 8th, then 16th, 23rd, 26th & 28th, and then the same thing started all over again in November. It happened three times last Monday and it is quite likely to occur again this coming weekend.
 So tell your friends to be careful. What a horrible way to take advantage of older men. Warn your friends to be vigilant and watch out for this scam. Aldi has wallets on sale for £2.50 each. I found cheaper ones at the Pound Shop and bought out all their supplies. Also, you never will get to eat at McDonalds. I've already lost eight pounds in weight just running back and forth from the Poundshop to the Supermarket.

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Last meeting done - now to join the crawling crowd from Manchester to Leeds and find my hotel

2009-12-07T16:14:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Google launches it's own free DNS. Speeding up the internet, or knowing more about where people go?

2009-12-04T10:29:00.001Z

Google Public DNS, Google's own free Domain Name System, is an attempt to make Web pages load faster at a time when millions of users are accessing the Web several times a day, triggering multiple DNS requests and bogging down the Web page rendering process

I'd say this was almost redundant. How many DNS's today are slow or 'bogged down'? I could never call my own ISPs slow, or my company servers either. So, Google, just be honest and say you want to know more about where people are going.

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/google-launches-own-free-domain-name-system-2660?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+eweekeurope/uk+(eWEEK+Europe+UK)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Wow.. frosty. Clear skies & sunny here in southern Hampshire. Coffee on and emails being worked through.

2009-12-04T08:44:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Yay, I'm at 53% of my half year target! Boo, only 2 months left to book $2m, Bread for Xmas again :(

2009-12-01T11:11:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

I just looked outside and everything is covered in thick frost. Back to duvet!

2009-12-01T07:13:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Malware can be hidden in English language text, say US scientists

2009-11-30T21:53:00.001Z

A team of US security researchers has engineered a way of hiding malware in sentences that read like English language spam.

The work is a breakthrough because current network security techniques work on the assumption that the code used in code-injection attacks, where it is delivered and run on victims’ computers, has a different structure to non-executable plain data, such as English prose.

One of the researchers, Dr Josh Mason of John Hopkins University, Baltimore, said the team wanted to broaden its understanding of how malicious code could be deployed, and highlight the need to design more efficient techniques for preventing this kind of attack altogether.

Dr Nicolas T Courtois, an expert in security and cryptology at University College London, said the work was an important paper in virusology, challenging an assumption that code has a different structure to non-executable plain data. He said malware deployed in this way would be “hard, if not impossible, to detect reliably.”

The research is a proof of concept, but Mason doubts any hackers are currently using the English language disguise technique for their code. “I'd be astounded if anyone is using this method in the real world owing to the amount of engineering it took to pull off,” he said. “A lot of people didn't think it could be done.”

Courtois says the paper has significant implications for technology companies, and argued that companies such as Intel should redesign their instruction set to make this kind of attack easier to detect.

And Professor John Walker, managing director of forensics consultancy Secure-Bastion, argued the research highlights the flaws in the anti-virus community's approach to security exploits. “There is no doubt in my mind that anti-virus software as we know it today has gone well past its sell by date,” he said.

Walker consults for GCHQ and is sure hacking groups will look to leverage the technique.

The research paper, presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago in November, is called English Shellcode – after the hacking community's generic name, shellcode, which refers to the payload portion of a code-injection attack.

This payload typically provides attackers with arbitrary control of system resources, applications, and data on a vulnerable computer. Attackers then choose how they want to continue their attack.

A tool that takes a piece of normal shellcode and generates some text to hide it could be the next step in the hacking and virus arms race. The advantage to hackers is simple. Alphanumeric shellcode can be stored in atypical and otherwise unsuspected contexts such as syntactically valid file and directory names or user passwords.

The challenge is that the alphanumeric character set is significantly smaller than the set of characters available in Unicode and UTF-8 encodings. This means that the set of instructions available for composing alphanumeric shellcode is relatively small. You couldn't have long strings of mostly capital letters, for example.

“There was really not a lot to suggest it could be done because of the restricted instruction set,” said Mason.

The team trained using English texts, roughly comprising 15,000 Wikipedia articles, and 27,000 books from Project Gutenberg.

The team can now generate English shellcode in less than one hour on standard PC hardware with 4GB of RAM.

Below is an example of an automatically generated English encoding. The text in bold is the instruction set and the plain text is skipped.

“There is a major center of economic activity, such as Star Trek, including The Ed Sullivan Show. The former Soviet Union. International organization participation.”

Mason said that with a lot of work, the quality of the English prose could be improved, but wouldn't really be worth the effort involved.

Mason worked with Dr Sam Small of Johns Hopkins University, Dr Fabian Monrose of the University of North Carolina, and Greg MacManus of iSIGHT Partners.

The paper is available here http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~sam/ccs243-mason.pdf

via feeds.computing.co.uk

fascinating, and troubling too

Posted via web from dave-morrison's posterous

Brrrr!! It's flippin' nippy out there today!

2009-11-30T14:19:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Tea, e-mails, shower, Hursley, coffee, work.

2009-11-30T10:49:00.001Z

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Time for bed, said Zebedee

2009-11-29T22:11:00.001Z

On 29/11/2009, Dave wrote:
> I found this earlier this afternoon and wanted to try it out. You send it an
> email, and it updates all your blogs and social media site. Let's see how it
> gets on.

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Posterous

2009-11-29T16:57:00.001Z

I found this earlier this afternoon and wanted to try it out. You send it an email, and it updates all your blogs and social media site. Let's see how it gets on.

Posted via email from dave-morrison's posterous

Thursday

2009-09-13T12:33:00.003+01:00

It's Thursday in San Ag and another grey day by the looks of things. An early morning start with Rach on the monoski was aborted as the boat broke down. Then I had my final dive which lasted an hour underwater and saw an octopus a fee jelly fish and a moray eel as well as lots of other smaller fish. A bit more sailing after that on a Dart with Rach the my PADI test.

Friday

2009-09-13T12:33:00.001+01:00

Grey again :( did a little sailing and windsurfing but the wind is a bit mixed and gusty today so nor much fun. Spent most of the day reading really and now off for a knock about playing tennis. Then a beer or two before dinner. Last night tonight too :(

IPhone blogging

2009-08-22T07:33:00.001+01:00

Quick test to see if this works.

Hampshire in August

2009-08-20T18:30:00.000+01:00

Haystacks in Hampshire

2009-08-20T18:26:00.000+01:00

Can you freeze cheese?

2008-10-13T17:25:00.001+01:00

So this weekend in Wales I discovered an amazing local cheddar cheese and bought a whole load back with me. I wondered if you could freeze some of it, but apparently the general advice is, that while it doesn’t affect the flavour it does affect the texture a lot after it defrosts. The cheese (especially hard cheeses) become very crumbly.

So – now I have a load of cheese to eat.. nom nom nom :)

Microsoft playing catch up…. again

2008-10-02T12:20:00.001+01:00

You know, I love moments like these. Microsoft is seen by many of my customers as being a driving force behind software development and standards when they are just playing catch up a great deal of the time. True, they do have some great desktop software but as for back end architecture, it makes me cringe sometimes when I hear I need to ‘integrate’ anything into a Microsoft system. Integration, as far as our friends from Redmond go, means we’ll make it as difficult and problematic to get any two systems talking that don’t come with the Microsoft logo on. Oh, they’ll happily tell you all over their marketing that they are xyz standard compliant, but typically that means they’ve taken a look at a open spec, and then written something that sort of sounds like it should do what it say but in reality is far from it.

So it made me chuckle hard this morning when I see Microsoft are ditching SOAP for REST. Wow… that sure took you a good two years to look at what everyone else is doing and go with the flow.

http://www.betanews.com/article/NET_Framework_40_to_become_less_SOAPcentric_embrace_REST/1222895836

Christmas in France with some Skiing

2008-10-02T10:24:00.001+01:00

My sister and I have decided not to go to Dads this year for Christmas and go to our Aunts who will be at their villa in the south of France together with all the cousins. I’m really looking forward to this, as, Xmas at Dads is always a little more stressful than it needs to be. Helen and I always end up getting all the food, cooking it, buying present and wrapping them because dad is either useless at doing any of those things, or he’s ‘too busy’, or so he tells us anyway.

So we’re also planning on a few days pre-Xmas skiing too at a local ‘hill’, I would call it a mountain but that would be giving it a very big ego boost. As long as there’s a little snow on there and there’s a bar at the top, a bar at the bottom and someplace to get good food, then I’m going to be a happy camper. I have my proper skiing holiday booked for Feb so this will just be a little appetiser. We’ve booked the chalet for us and half of the cousins, so it should be a great start to the Xmas week.

As for Xmas lunch, apparently I need to make my Champagne Jellies for desert by popular demand. So I need to brush up on my gelatine mixing skills and also want to try and get some Space Dust to add a little surprise!

… and found my wallet!

2008-10-02T10:15:00.001+01:00

Yay! So I also found my wallet after some more searching this morning. Why is it, that when you lose something, you go back to the same places over and over ‘just to make sure’? I think I looked in all my jackets, coats, drawers at least four times yesterday and surprisingly, my wallet still hadn’t miraculously appeared since the last time I checked.

Anyway, I went into the garage to check my golf bag as I remember putting it into the front pocket there when I played golf two weeks ago after sales school was finished. Digging around at the bottom, I found my wallet!

So that’s a wallet and my favourite pair of sunglasses I’ve found – so I am a happy camper!

Something lost and found

2008-10-01T17:42:00.001+01:00

This is kinda freaky. I’ve been looking for my wallet all day, checking pockets, bags, jackets, the car, down the back of the sofa and can’t find it anywhere. I wondered if I had maybe left it at the local supermarket a few days ago, so thought I’d go down there to ask them. Before I left, I looked out the window and saw it was grey and very windy, so I grabbed a fleece off the back of the door, one that I hadn’t worn in about five months. As I put it on, I felt a lump in the pockets and pulled out a pair of Oakley sunglasses I thought I’d lost!

Sadly, I still haven’t found my wallet but at least I found something else :)