Retro Computing

I've been having a bit of a retro computing evening. Was digging around trying to find a DVD earlier, and found the box of floppies from when we got our first Pentium PC back in 1995 I think it was.

Such relics were found as:

• The Secret of Monkey Island
  On three floppy discs, unfortunately Windows XP won't touch it with a bargepole, also I'm not so sure that it gets on with hyperthreading.


• Lotus Smartsuite
  On about fourty floppies - had we ever installed this from floppy it would have been hell


• Instructions for Meridian '59
  Hmm, I don't think I ever got this to acutally work on our internet connection back then

In looking for a way to get Monkey island to install, I found that it was also released for Mac, so I might have more luck getting hold of a version for that instead.

Sleep is overrated

Cabin fever is starting to set in, which is also possibly why I've been having trouble getting enough sleep recently... Starting to look at photography courses again, as I need something to keep me at least vaguely sane and in human contact.

On the positive side, I'm all being well off to aber for the weekend... I've got friday off, and this is really the first time I've stopped since graduation, so I'm looking forward to a break, even if it is a little on the short side.

Getting rather fed up with all the annoying bug things that seem to buzz around in my room at night... I'm quite sure that the damned little bastards are feeding off me or something, so I could do with investigating suitable devices for instigating MASS CHEMICAL GENOCIDE.

In other news, I've finally started sorting through all my files on my main PC so that I can start the blat-and-reinstall process... it has been over 18 months now, so its quite overdue. Oh, and I also ordered a copy of Jeanne Michel Jarre's new album "Aero"... It is apparently a 5.1 recording (on the DVD, you get both a CD and DVD in the case). I think I can hook up another set of speakers as rear ones for my PC, so that could give me something to do.

Weekend

Well, another not particularly exciting weekend. Town is starting to feel rather quiet now the students have made their merry way back to uni. Went for a quiet pint or two in town with Mat on Friday night, and walked back in a record 26 minutes. I don't mind walking how the weather is at the moment, but as winter draws in, it could get a little inconvenient.

Washed the car on Saturday morning, just as the weather was starting to look really rather nice, vaccumed the car, then sorted out a bucket of water and various products needed and started to wash the wheels. As I did so, the heavens opened and completely drenched me, as I wasn't going to stop mid wash... I suppose that'll teach me to comment to the neighbours about how nice the weather is.

Strangely, I never seem to get any energy for web design until about 11.30pm, and in a slight forray of activity, I've sorted out my right hand bar on my site... It now sports links to the last ten blog entries - officially my first dabble with RSS/Feeds/Whatever.

Thought I'd start adding the mood/music tags again, also.

Mood: Bored
Music: Chicane - Overture

Dreams and Working Life

Had a really strange one this morning, sort of in that time when you are just waking up and nothing really makes sense… I dreamt that I had a "nice" meter for my bike (i.e showing the scheduling priority of my bike compared to the other people on the road) and I was riding around using this meter. Hmm, possibly one for the dreams book, but I don't think it'll cover that.. When I was finally awake this really puzzled me, and in the end I reckoned I must have misheard something on the radio which my dreamy mind had warped into something rather strange, ah well. (my first alarm clock is the radio, followed by a second alarm clock that goes off 15 minutes later, and then finally as a backup, my phone goes off)

Social life is still annoyingly scant, not really been up to much the last few evenings apart from working through the ales I picked up the other night, which have now unfortunately finished. I guess this is just the “culture shock” of not being a student anymore, and whatever people may think it is strange, as I've pretty much been in education continuously since I was four, and here, 18 years later, I've only just drawn a line under that.

Been fairly busy at work, and been spending some time in the server room, however what I’m working on is directly underneath one of the main air conditioning vents, meaning you are frozen after about ten minutes :/ Can't really think what happened to the rest of the week, apart from me being designated “social secretary”, which equates to being the person who has to organise the Christmas meal… which means I’m going to have to do it quick before everything books up, due to the usual hysteria regarding such arrangements. However, there is talk of a free bar, so I can't really complain.

New Website

Version 2.0 of my website has just been uploaded. There are a few teething problems and I have to upload the rest of my content tomorrow, but it's good to finally get rid of the old one :o)

Back From Visting

Overall, weekend visiting was good apart from the 5.04am phone call from Dad to say he'd arrived safely (I think I'll get him a time zone watch for christmas). Had a splendid meal on saturday night, and I think my gran really enjoyed herself, which is good.

Strangely, I think it was the first time I've taken my Mum out for a meal myself, and it was quite strange to be fighting against what seemed to be some sort of internal 'provider instinct' within herself. Ah well, it's all fun.

Visting

Dropped dad off at the airport this morning after getting up at stupid o'clock, so we've taken the opportunity to visit family ooopp noooorf. Had rather nice breakfast in little french café type thing, hmmmmm.

Work on new website is underway, hoping to release at some point next week.

Also in two minds about taking some leave soon, there's a possiblility of me needing it for a couple of possible holiday type events in the new year.

Right, will blog more later.

Weekend

Saturday was the wedding of Kurt (one of the guys who did the Year in Industry at the same time as me) to his fiancé Rosemary. Antony came down from Shrewsbury and took me and Richard down there, meeting Louise in the village beforehand. A great day was had by all, and I feel honoured to have been invited to share in their very special day. All the very best wishes to you both and enjoy your trip to Canada!

Strangely there wasn’t anywhere we could get a cup of tea in the little village where the wedding was held, the YINI crew and I ended up having a cuppa beforehand in the station, classy.

After travelling back home on Saturday night, Antony stayed the night and the next day me, Antony and Richard went for a trip out and a pub lunch. We went to a lovely place fairly close by called the horseshoe or something, we sat about outside enjoying the fine weather, the food was excellent and I'll certainly be going there again.

The air conditioning is certainly coming in handy, arriving places not having a back driping wet despite all the windows being open on a day like today is great :)

Some Issues (2)

Also, there’s another issue I was thinking about the other week…

Vulnerabilities And The Embedded Device

It seems that there have been a number of different vulnerabilities involving the Bluetooth stacks of various makes of mobile phone recently.

I’ve also been having a few issues with my 6230 such as crashing when using Bluetooth connections, and also there are various reports that it may well have been vulnerable to some sort of Bluetooth attack, so I decided to get its software updated at my local Nokia service centre. This was a surprisingly painless process, I just found the address off the Nokia website and popped in and dropped the phone off (it happened to be a Carphonewarehouse store) picking it up an hour later with its software updated and the crashing issues rectified, all covered under warranty.

Ok, so under the warranty period, its easy to get updates and Nokia at least will fix any problems with their firmware in that time… However, what if my phone wasn’t in warranty? And what if it needed a software update for security reasons (I.e a serious widely exploitable vulnerability)?

I asked about getting my old phone updated, as my brother now uses it, and has some strange issues with it crashing every now and then. They replied it would cost £30 to upgrade it. Now, I know it might be cheaper to get it done elsewhere, but £30 for what might be a critical security vulnerability is not really on (although I appreciate my old phone doesn’t have such problems). As more and more consumer devices are mainly based on software, vulnerabilities will always happen, so getting updates distributed to consumers is getting more and more important, and it might be that the manufacturers have to support phones outside their warranty also in order to stop a mass breakout of any sort of mass exploit (in a similar way to the myriad of Windows worms). I just hope that this potential issue is being addressed by the people who make these decisions.

Digital Lifestyles: Some Issues

There's a few points that I've thought about recently, while they aren't big issues at the moment I can see them becoming more important points of discussion quite soon.

Here's the first:

Digital Rights

So called "Copy protection" measures on CDs are now more and more commonplace, and from what I understand, most of these work by corrupting the CD standard, the "Red Book" standard et al (More info).

This is all very well and good, and the people selling these protection technologies all claim that their "Audio Discs" work in 90 something percent of CD drives (they can't label them as Compact Discs as that would infrige a whole lot of trade marks etc, protected discs just don't follow the standards so aren't CDs).

So I accept that there are a few current CD players that don't accept them (usually car CD players or similar) and a few Macs that get stuck. However, the disc vendors don't seem to have taken account of the fact that the standard is there so that all CD players, and all CD players that are currently being designed can work with the CDs around today, including those created years ago (the CD standards are now over 20 years old!).

How can they possibly guarantee that a "copy protected" "Audio disc" will work in the players of the future? I don't think they can. Especially with the convergence of the home entertainment devices so common today, CD players are also becoming DVD players, getting functionality to play the family digital photos on the TV. In fact the "media centre" as Microsoft call it, is becoming a reality, and broken discs are not going to help this technology progress.

More importantly, copy protection like this don't even work

Personally I question the legality of these discs being sold on the shelves with other real (non-corrupt) CDs, as their placement alongside the genuine article may have trades descriptions or similar implications in UK law at least.

I certainly won't be buying any corrupt discs.