About two weeks ago, when I was checking out my Flickr Stats, which I do everyday because I’m obsessed with the line graph, I happened to see that one of my pictures had 50 views that day. 50 might not sound like a lot for most other Flickr users, but for me 50 is a HUGE amount of views of one picture in a day. I went to see what site the views were coming from and it told me they were coming from the bbc.co.uk website.

Now I thought this we very weird, because the BBC is a big company and why on earth would I be getting clicks from there. I went a little deeper and found it on the BBC Internet Blog on a post about the BBC’s iPlayer for the Nintendo Wii. The odd thing was, my picture, which is of an S-Video port on my laptop, had nothing to do with the Wii. I read through the post and saw that the author was talking about watching shows from your computer on your TV. I thought it was a little weird that my picture got chosen but looking at other first page results from an S-Video search on Flickr, I can see why mine was picked over the others, I just don’t know why a more suitable picture wasn’t chosen.

Well today, the picture made it into my top 10 most viewed pictures on my Flickr photostream. I’m pretty happy my picture got used on the blog site and generated hundreds of views of that picture, but I don’t really care that much. Its nice to have you picture on some biggish website for everyone to see, as long as the picture isn’t crap or humiliating. This is a win for me

Yesterday afternoon, we had a visitor come into our section and have a look around, and a play. I have no idea where it came from or where it lives but I have a fair idea they are from down the road, which is where it eventually went off to. Anyway, here is the full story.

When Mum went downstairs to hang the washing on the line in the garage, she thought she saw a tail. Then she looked again and saw the cat. When the cat saw her, it decided to come inside the garage and started rubbing itself against her. She tried to get it to go away and go back home but it didn’t. Mum then proceeded with the washing and she climbed up hang it and the cat climbed up with her and then onto the car. Then she called my sister, but I ended up coming instead.

When I got downstairs, I saw the cat on the hood of the car and I told it to get down but it just looked. Mum was in the way so I couldn’t reach it so I got the cat off the car with metal pole. I wasn’t crewl I just tapped it gently on the legs and tried to push it lightly but it decided to climb onto the roof of the car. I could just reach it but I still used the pole and managed to get it off the car, via the boot, where it ran out the back door.

When it was out the back door, it was having a look for where it can climb up to. It was looking at the tree but saw there were no branches it coud climb to. It then decided to climb up the fence and it was going to jump into the neighbours section but I stopped it. It then started walking along the fence. At this stage, I went to get camera, and returned take pictures of it but it went along the fence and was on the fence of another property.

I tried to get its attention by making sounds and calling it but it just ignored. Then I meowed and it looked at me and started coming back. I managed to get some pictures which it was coming back. Then it was back onto our fence, it was looking for a way to get down and it started meowing. It then saw the black compost bin and jumped onto that and then onto the garden. I then tried to lead it back to the direction of its place and as I guided it behind the house and along the side of our section, it saw the other neighbours driveway and open gate and decided to go and visit them.

Unfortunately it was going home the wrong way so I failed at getting it back to it owners. I just left it but kept and eye out the window to make sure that if/when it does come out, it is okay and doesn’t get hit by a car. Shortly after, I saw it on the street chasing a duck or two and then sitting under a tree. A while more after that, it proceeded down the street towards it home. It was nice to have a visitor, especially one that was as interesting as this cat. Hopefully it made its way home safely.

One of the podcasts I listen to daily (well Tuesday to Saturday) is Cnets Buzz Out Loud podcast. I have been listening for about a year now and in that time, my favourite host, Veronica Belmont has left, and the show has become dull, we at least in my opinion. For this reason, I have unsubscribed from the podcast.

There were other factors that also influenced my decision for example news that I am not interested in and/or news that I have already seen on half a dozen websites and end up hearing on another (or a few other) podcasts I currently listen to. I am interested in mainly technology news, which is what BOL mainly consists of, but before I get to download and listen to the podcast, I have already read most of the news, especially the big announcements, either on Digg or in my RSS reader. I don’t really need to hear it again in a podcast, even though if it is big enough, I will hear it on next weeks TWiT or other podcast on their network.

So I have unsubscribed from their podcast and now have about 40 minutes extra each day, or 200 minutes a week, to listen and watch the current media I download. I couldn’t think of any good reason to keep downloading it everyday and listening to it. The past few months, I haven’t really been listening to what they have been saying and generally zone out or use it as background sound while I am on the computer. Oh well, I won’t miss it that much, I still have my other podcasts to listen to and watch.

A week or so ago, a new bunch of icons were included in one of the nightly Minefield builds. These are more than likely going to be the same, or very similar to the buttons that will be part of Firefox 3.0. They have changed a little, and the first thing you will notice is that they are shiny. The back and forward buttons are closer together and take up less room on the Navigation Toolbar, the drop down arrow buttons have merged into one and feature both previous pages and pages you have went back from, and the refresh button and the cross on the stop button have lost a bit of weight.

The home button has been moved off the Navigation Toolbar and has moved down below to the Bookmarks Toolbar. It also features a shiny new icon. I think it is nice that they have relocated that button because personally, I never use that button. All my homepage tabs open up on startup and I don’t end up closing them, or my last session loads up. Having it down there shows that it is a secondary function and is less important that the forward, back, refresh and stop buttons.

These new spunky icons should be included in Firefox 3 Beta 3 which will be released sometime in the next fortnight.

SugarSync (formerly known as Hummingbird) is a service from Sharpcast that allows you to sync and access your files and media from anywhere” on different computers, on the web, even on your mobile phone. SugarSync securely backs up all your computers online and synchronizes them automatically so you always have access to your files. Best of all, SugarSync takes care of everything automatically in the background, so you never have to make backups or email files to yourself. Say goodbye to CD burning and emailing files to yourself; say hello to SugarSync.

I have been using SugarSync for a few weeks now. You install a program to your computer and it will automatically backup everything in your user folder, or folders of your choosing. I found it useful to backup a few important folders, but I did find the software to be a little restrictive. First off, you are limited to 1GB (but you get 10GB more for the beta) which is hardly enough space to backup much. You also cannot pick which files not to backup, which means it is all or nothing.

I did have a problem with accidentally deleting a folder that was backing up. What I thought it would do is delete the folder from the backup, but what it really did was delete the folder from my computer. Then after I managed to restore the files, it went and deleted them again. I don’t think it is right to let a piece of backup software do that. That is probably the killing point in this software for me.

If you want to try out this software, the first 7 people to comment below will get an invitation to this service.

As some of you already know, I have been using Firefox 3.0 Beta, codenamed Minefield, for a few months now. I do think it is the best update so far and will be a must have for anyone, although Firefox should be no matter what version. Something I stumbled across today was a security feature that was implemented into Firefox, and that is blocking suspicious sites.

Today when I was doing the usual browsing of hundreds of different sites, I came across a site that was blocked by Firefox. I was greeted with a big red alert with a dark grey background, a page similar to the one when the server cannot be found. The page read the following, “The web site at <URL Removed> has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.” I was very intrigued and happy that I witnessed this and love Firefox for blocking bad sites. I wouldn’t have ever thought I would come across this screen when I heard about this feature, but I did.

I do think this is a great feature to have, and hope that they get all those bad sites on the list. This may not be a big feature for me because it is extremely rare I come across sites of the nature but for a lot of people I know, this feature would be a godsend, and also to me too because I won’t be required to fix their infected computer. This function alone is enough to switch your less computer illiterate friends and family to Firefox. Thumbs up to Mozilla for putting this much needed security feature into their browser.

Everyone, at some point in their lives, has to ring up a support line for an issue they have. I have only ever once had a good experience with a support person, the other half a dozen times have been mediocre or horrible.

Yesterday I rang up Compaq support, you listen to the voice and it gives you options. That’s fine if you are ringing once, but if you ring multiple times, it gets a little irritating. Anyway, once you have been through that, they put you on hold and play the shittiest tunes ever. Who would listen to the crap they play, honestly? And what makes it worse is that you have to listen to it while you wait for a human to answer.

So back to the story, I rang them up. I gave my details. A told the support person my issue. All I want is a recovery disc so I can reinstall my operation system and an expresscard blank. The reason I don’t have either of these things are because when I sent my computer away for repair a couple of months ago, they never gave them back to me. This is thier problem and I should be entitled to them.

It shouldn’t be too much trouble to just get these two things sent to me, but no, they don’t send recovery cds, you have to use the recovery partition. After trying to explain my situation multiple times, she ended up telling me that my hard drive will have to be completely reimaged. Screw doing that, its much more convenient for me to pirate the operating system than having it sent away for a few days.

The second part was even more horrible because the person wouldn’t give me one unless I had the case number from the last support call. Like I kept that information! It would have been thrown out with all the rest of the random papers in the house. I had proof of the case on the job report, but the person wouldn’t listen. After about ten minutes, I found the first case number and also read out the job report. After being put for hold again for ten minutes or so, she said she can’t get the records and will ring me back.

Now that didn’t happen did it. I have no fucking idea what is going on, but at this point I am pissed off and want nothing to do with them. I’m just going to download it. Screw them! Then this morning, I get a phone call from the repair centre telling me they got a case sent through and wanted to know if they were getting any parts or what not. Now I might know what is going on if the support person rang back to tell me what was going on, but no, I am left in the dark.

Eventually I said that I will just buy a Vista Upgrade disc and install that so I don’t need the recovery stuff. I still have no idea on what is going on with the expresscard slot, that just so happens to be filling up with dust. I don’t think dust is good for it and it is their fault that it is doing that because they never returned my expresscard blank. They should really do something about it.

Why does support suck? I have only once got good support, at it just so happened to be on a public holiday. I got through fast, the person understood that I knew what I was doing and quickly pushed me through to getting it fixed. I was happy with the support I got there. Why can’t they treat me like a normal computer user, not some dumbass that got a virus or uninstalled a driver or some shit like that? Can you get good support anywhere???