Author Archives: Richard

The best way to navigate

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

One of the big problems I find about travelling abroad is navigation.

I am an avid map reader, and have no problem with actually finding a place, but when it comes to driving there, maps have serious shortcomings.   For a start, either the route has to be memorised or frequent stops are needed.  Also, the majority of maps that I carry tend to indicate a large town as a blob on the paper which isn’t much use.

Last year, I bought myself a SatNav – a Garmin Nuvi 760 – and this has become more than an essential part of my trips abroad.

Not only does it give extremely accurate information about where I am, such as what speed limit is currently in force, but is invaluable when looking for, say, fuel or an ATM.  Where it really comes into its own though is in direction finding from A to B.

There is an inherent problem though, as I usually know where A is, but programming B in can be problematic.  Suppose I want to visit a town some miles away?  I can type in the name of the town, but then the SatNav requires an address to go with it.  Usually it gives a list of streets that I can select, but for all I know, I have just set directions to the middle of a housing estate some distance from the town centre where I actually want to go.

I have developed a technique which I find extremely handy.

Suppose I want to spend a day wandering around a town some twenty miles away.  I have never been in that town before, so I have no idea of street names, or of one way streets.  The answer could not be more simple.

I go to Google Earth and look up the town.  I then zoom in looking for car parking.  Car parks are usually very easy to find on satellite images.  Having found the spot I am looking for, I read the Latitude and Longitude coordinates off Google Earth and feed them into the SatNav.  Simple.

I have done this for several towns now and the result is uncanny.  Not only does my SatNav give me directions to the town, but it navigates me safely through any one way streets and deposits me at the car park of my choice.

What more could anyone want? 

Typing backwards

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Lately, I have been experiencing a very strange problem.

I can be quite fast on the keyboard, and I tend not to look at the screen while typing.  So I bang a couple of sentences into the comment fields of my site, and then look at the screen only to find my entire effort there only in reverse.

.sdrawkcab era noitautcnup gnidulcni ,sdrow eht llA

Just out of interest, I did a search on Google and found that I am not alone.

Various theories are put forward, with most suggesting a virus.  I can understand that as it is a typical manifestation of some of the older viruses (viri?).  No.  It’s not a virus.

Others have suggested an operation system, but it appears on several systems by all accounts.

Quite a few have suggested the keyboard which is obviously not the case.

The one common thread seems to be Firefox.

I have checked though quite a few inane suggestions, some misguided ones and quite a few who just suggest closing and reopening Firefox.  The only reply that seems to make any sense is that it’s a Java problem?

My Java is as up to date as it can be, so I am a tad suspicious of this, but it remains the only plausible explanation.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Improving Site Rankings

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Some months ago, back in April I wrote about how I was going to try to improve this sites standing on the Internet.

Quite frankly, I haven’t had as much time to devote to this as I would have liked, so my efforts have been somewhat sporadic.

I had intended to do some subtle (and somewhat sneaky) advertising by posting on forums, using a link to this site in the footer of the posts, and to comment more on other people’s blogs.  That never happened.

I have posted slightly more frequently and that appears to be having an effect however.

My preoccupation with rankings , and Alexa rankings in particular arises from the fact that Alexa seems to be used as a yardstick by advertising companies.  I advertise on this site and on Head Rambles, and as this is now a major supplement to my income, any improvement is welcome.

Head Rambles has always done well in the rankings game.  It initially gained a Google ranking of 5, which is quite unusual for a blog of its type.  Normally “humorous” blogs seem to rank around the three mark, and when Google did an update about a year ago and Head Ramble’s rank dropped to 3 where I presume it belonged.  It has since climbed to 4, which is a bit of a puzzle

I  first started monitoring this site’s Alexa Ranking last April, when it had a ranking of 1,627,533 which is average for a nondescript site.  I have found that by posting infrequently but regularly, that figure has risen to 1,015,315 which is a considerable improvement.

The figure they use is a three month average, but according to their site, its one month average is 504,908 and a one week average is 627,962.  While the week average can be a normal blip, the one month figure is encouraging.  It appears that the figures will continue to improve.

So far the moral of the story seem to be that with a little patience and reasonably regular posting will improve ranks. 

I am a little baffled though as to how this site has a Google rank of 0?  !!

Kaspersky Internet Sour

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I get a couple of computer magazines on a monthly basis.  I may revise that now that the business is gone, but in the meantime…………

The last edition I received of one of the magazines came with a DVD attached with a three month trial of Kaspersky Internet Security.  It seemed like a reasonable package, and with three months to run, I felt I had nothing to lose.

I installed it, and it rather high headedly insisted that I remove my current antivirus package and switch off all firewalls.  I was prepared to live with that however, and let it do its business.

I must say, I was very impressed with its features.  It seemed to take a belt and braces approach which is not a bad thing.  For example, it would flash up any arriving email for my approval, and even then it would scan it.  If it was suspicious of any (legitimate) program, it gave the option of running that program in a sandbox, thus quarantining it.

The more I looked into the program, the more I liked what I saw and decided that I would let it run its three months, and then I would subscribe.

The next day, I went to open an application (I think it was Word) and it took an age.  I’m talking maybe five minutes to open.  This concerned me, and my first thought was that something had gone wrong and an errant program somewhere was hogging too much memory, despite all the warning lights being in the green.  I decided to reboot anyway, as that can’t do any harm.

Rebooting took about ten minutes.  This is a fairly clean machine with 2Gb of memory and a duel core Pentium, so rebooting should be slightly faster than that?

My next thought was that a virus had crept in while Kaspersky was installing.  I fired up a full scan.

Twenty minutes later, the scan gauge still showed 0% progress.

For the next few hours, work on the machine was next to impossible.  Simple operations, like opening Firefox took maybe ten minutes.  Something somewhere was obviously preventing anything from running.  By now I was getting worried.

I began to get a wee bit suspicious about my new found friend Kaspersky, so I removed it.

I reinstalled my old antivirus of choice – Avast, and rebooted.

It flew through the process!  Programmes loaded like lightening and all was well with the world again.

My machine has been running very happily since. 

My conclusions?

Alwil’s Avast – Thumbs up.  I’m sorry I doubted you.

Kaspersky – Excellent CD for playing Frisbee with the dog..

Taking the hint

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

As readers of Head Rambles will know, I am in the process of relinquishing my VPS as I am shutting down my business, and that is a tad expensive to host a couple of sites.

While I am having great fun trying to break my new server [successfully, I might add] I still have all my old accounts sitting on the VPS, waiting to be moved.  This should happen at any time, but in the meantime I have this dreaded feeling that I am still responsible for them, despite all the emails saying I had quit at the end of last month.

I received a mail last night from a client.  They were having trouble with their mail, and for once they gave a detailed analysis of the problem [which beats the hell out of “I can’t send mail – fix it please”].  It took me two seconds to Google the error report they sent – an Outlook problem.

I was delighted to receive that mail.  It reminded me why I am getting out of the business. 

While some clients had genuine problems, the majority seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable to fire me an email at eight in the evening rather than go to the trouble of seeing what the problem really was, and whether it was my problem at all.

Having just moved servers to a new and completely unfamiliar control panel, I am having a lot of problems of my own.  When something goes wrong, I try to fix it myself.  If I can’t do that, I search the Internet to see if anyone is having similar problems.  If that fails, I go to my last resort – the Blacknight support team.  They are exceptionally helpful there and will go out of their way to explain things.  However, they do not want their time wasted with trivial complaints and queries and I respect that.

I replied to my client.  I sent a mail pointedly saying that I had found the answer straight away with a simple search.  I also politely reminded them that I have shut up shop.  I finished off with a chatty note about my retirement and how I was looking forward to peace and quiet with no one mailing me with trivial problems late in the evening.

I wonder if they got the hint?