Why is it that technology usually works fine when you’re ahead of schedule and could actually afford to wait for something to be fixed, but if you’re up against a deadline, anything that can fail, will? Due to my being ill last week, our latest school network project was in danger of over-running. We’ve brought it back under control, but halfway through the day, the Internet connection for all the schools on the Island went down. This mean that most of the tweaks and adjustments we had left (such as printer drivers, SMARTBoard software updates, a few software activations etc.) can’t be completed until at least tomorrow - which is when the students are back.

Still, the fact that it has affected all schools, and possibly the council as well should mean that BT fix it fairly promptly. Hmm… perhaps I’m not quite as recovered as I thought…

In an effort to post more -I’m not going to call it a New Year’s resolution, since that would be the quickest way to make it fail- I’ve added WordBook to both steve-c.co.uk and my Facebook page. It’s a surprisingly painless experience, and although it’s rather lacking in configuration options does appear to do the job.

Shock horror - some form of update!

Actually, I’m mainly doing this as a dry run for upgrading Wordpress to 2.3.2 for other places - if it was going to break any site, I’d rather it be my own. I’m (marginally) less likely to shout at me.
Another reason for this post is that without it, I’d not have made any changes here since 2006!

I fear most of my on-line presence is now at Facebook; I know it’s got a load of privacy issues, but I’m fairly sure I’ve switched off most of the major intrusive bits on my account (aside from the whole not-being-able-to-really-delete-your-account one anyway).

We’re up to 11 staff at DataSwift as of Wednesday - at this rate we’ll need another new office!

Whilst on randomly different topics, I’ve just watched the Bourne Ultimatum, and whilst watching the end credits noticed that there was one for “Pigeon Wrangler”. Also, there were specific credits for Bassoonist and Percussion, but not for the other members of whatever orchestra was used. Most bizarre.

As reported first on The IconBar and then in more depth on Drobe, RISC OS Open Ltd have announced that, along with Castle, they will be releasing various parts of the operating system under a “Shared Source” licence. Apparently this will allow people to contribute changes to the source code and distribute their resulting programs for free; if the code is used commercially though, the writers much pay a small royalty for the privilege (although in this case, they are no longer obliged to contribute back the code they have added).

I think this is potentially a very good thing for RISC OS, I just hope it hasn’t arrived too late in the day.

It’s amazing how much better a weekend is when there’s an extra day attached!

The August bank holiday is always a bit crazy on the Island, as several thousand scooters arrive for their annual gathering. Anyone on the roads also runs the risk of getting stuck behind many tonnes of steam-powered vehicle as it’s also the annual Havenstreet Steam Fair.

After setting up another school network recently, I’m puzzled by the fact that the method for creating a standard, mandatory user profile in Windows hasn’t changed since the days of NT4. It wouldn’t matter if Microsoft had cracked it at the first attempt, but the procedure is convoluted and clunky. There is a command-line utility for copying profiles, however that isn’t included with any current version of Windows, and is hardly widely publiscised.

It’s not even as though many major changes would be needed, - just the ability to set the type of profile to ‘mandatory’ when using the GUI would be a major help.

Maybe Longhorn Server (or whatever name it ends up with) will improve matters…

Well, I’m finally settled in (almost) my flat, just got a few dozen more boxes to sort through (although for now they’re all up in the loft). Since I’m going with work to the LAN tournament in January, I decided I ought to learn how to play Battlefield 2 Special Forces. It took me several attempts before realising I needed a parachute on the first level I played (not having played either this, or the original before, and of course, I hadn’t read any instructions!). Still, once I got that sorted it’s great. I’m rubbish though.
Games seem to be taking longer and longer to install and load these days - it was at least 20 minutes before I could actually play (and my machine’s not exactly a slow beast either).

According to the counter at Spread Firefox, the browser has now been downloaded over 100 million times! Although that total probably includes multiple downloads by the same people, it won’t take into account the fact that many installations may have been carried out from a single download. So, maybe Firefox is on track for a 10% share by the end of this year?

We’ve just got our G5 iMac at work, and I’ve just received my Beta edition of the new A9 Home RISC OS computer. The iMac is a very classy bit of kit, but I still prefer RISC OS to use, - it’s just more intuitive.
It’s a pity that RISC OS Ltd (who develop the OS for all machine except the Iyonix) and Castle (who actually own the OS, but use their own custom version of it on the Iyonix) can’t seem to get along.