Twits and their twittering

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

Grandad is really pissing me off.

He has this habit of messing around with software, and has installed a load of useless crap on this PC.  It could now be outpaced by a snail on Valium.

Of course I keep uninstalling things, but for every program that is removed, there is half a ton of crud that is left behind, whose sole function seems to be to slow the machine down and take up large chunks of disk space.

I wouldn’t mind too much if he used the programmes but invariably he plays with them for an hour or so, gets bored with them and then heads off to the pub leaving me with the mess.

His latest fad is Twitter.

I don’t like Twitter.  It is just mindless chatter that epitomises the modern generations and is a distraction.  Unfortunately, he seems to like it.  He has garnered quite a following by all accounts, though I can’t understand why.

I tried removing it, but he came back from the pub the other night, a little worse for wear and threw a mighty stroppy fit.  He demanded his Twitter.  As we are running low on crockery (again), I had to relent and reinstall it.

Now I have to suffer a barrage of notifications every time one of his pals writes something.  It is very irritating.

The sooner he gets bored of it, the better.

The Twit.

Fireproofing WordPress 2.7

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

So WordPress 2.7 is out in the wild.

Nice one.

I have been using the pre-release on this blog and I really like it.  It has some really nice features, and some plugins are now incorporated.  Most important of these (to me) is the update feature, which means no more FTP.

For my sins, I host quite a few blogs on my servers.  Confidentiality prevents me from naming them, but you know them and love them!  The problem is that every time there is an upgrade, I have to flit from blog to blog, taking them off line, updating the files, updating the databases, testing them and then putting them back on line again.

Some may suggest that I use WPMU, the multiuser version of the software?  I played around with that briefly, and may go down that path. 

But, in the meantime I am going to have an easier life doing my upgrades.

I’m just a bit concerned that 2.7 may not be able to handle a red hot site like Head Rambles, with its profanities, blasphemies and general nastiness.

Is 2.7 well coated with asbestos?

Big numbers

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

Sometime back in the early 90s, I bought my first PC.

At the time, I wanted a top of the range model, as I wanted it to be future proof.  I therefore went for the maximum amount of memory and a huge hard disk size.  Everyone said I was mad, and that I would never be able to fill the hard disk, but I went ahead and bought it anyway.

It had 2Mb of memory, and the hard disk was a massive 40Mb.  It was a very fast PC too, and ran at 16Mhz.  I was the envy of the office.  It was worth every penny of the £1,800 I spent.

I’m writing this on a laptop.  It cost me under €800.  It has 2Gb of memory and a 250Gb hard disk.

So it has 1,000 times the memory, and 62,500 times the hard disk space, and cost about one third the price.

Grandad uses the laptop from time to time, and has filled up most of the hard disk with his files.  Frankly, I’m a bit wary of those files, and I’m a bit scared to look at them, but he is very possessive about them so I have to leave them there.  He says it took him a long time to find those files on the Internet and has threatened violence if I remove them.

I decided to buy myself some additional hard disk space.  It is a 1Tb drive.  A Terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, or the equivalent to 25,000 times my original PC’s capacity.  Numbers like that scare me a little.

I am expecting delivery any time.  My problem is that if Grandad finds out about it, he is going to appropriate it for his vast collection of images.

How many glossy photos can you store in a Terabyte?

A hell of a lot, I would imagine…

While the mouse is away

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

Himself is out at the moment.  I’m not sure where he has gone, and frankly I don’t care.  It’s just a relief to have a bit of peace and quiet about the place.

I’m trying to catch up on a bit of work today, which isn’t easy as the client keeps changing the goal posts.  The joys of running my own business! 

I have been trying to run this business into the ground for the last few months, as I’m getting too old for this lark, and I fancy taking things a bit easier.  When the recession came along I thought it was a gift from Heaven.

What happened?

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since! 

I’m turning away work, which is a pain, but it has to be done.

Oh God!

I’m listening to Rick O’Shea on the radio [Himself hates the radio on during the day] and what happens? 

Rick has just read out a message from Grandad!

Is there any way I can get away from that Bastard?

An Introduction

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

If any of you have been reading that other blog Head Rambles, you will know Grandad who is a crusty old bastard.

You will also know that he doesn’t do his own typing. That is all done by ‘The Other Fella’.

Well, that’s me.

For the last couple of years he has been ranting and generally venting his spleen on an unfortunate world, and I have had to put up with it. I have had to tolerate every single word of his ravings.

I thought the time was ripe for me to set up my own site, as a means of retaining some of the sanity that remains. Now I will be able to write as I want, and not as that cantankerous old bastard dictates.

I’m not yet sure what I will be writing about. Maybe some of my own thoughts? Maybe some of the true stories about Grandad?

This could be interesting?