New day, new host, new background

I have had to dramatically dump my hosting last week, which was a shame in some ways because I have been with them for about 4 years and they used to be very good.

Earlier this year the company seemed to go bust (without warning) and then reform and then email all of its customers saying they needed to pay more money. At the time everything went kaboom – lost emails, databases, pages and despite assurances that everything was backed up it was all lost in the ether.

I would have liked to bail out at that time, but stupidly my domain was registered through them and there was no longer any domain controller and my administrative email was at the missing domain.

So like a Muppet I coughed up. Net result as soon as I had done so and got my emails back I went about liberating my domain name going directly to the registrar and getting my domain name transfered somewhere safe.

Last week I looked at the site and discovered that a load of recent posts had gone missing – explanation the server had died and everthing had been restored from backups – but about a month old backups. Never heard a thing from my hosts either. I was pissed off, but too busy to do anything so I just re-posted.

The next day I recived an email saying 10 days till my hosting expired, time to pay up, again.

Bugger that, so we have parted company and I am now very happy. Haven’t told them, but they will no doubt find out in due course when they try and ransome my domain back to me and find out its gone… anyway new host, I thought a new background might be in order. Much as I loved the William Burgess wallpaper things should never stand still on the interweb.

The Curse of Removable Media

These days when everything is USB tastic and we are all swamped with more gadgets and widgets than we can shake a stick at, there is one problem that gets me time and time again. It got me again this orning and I thought I’d write it down so I didn’t have to ask Rob how to get it all working again…

The problem is this – what happens when your camera gets the same drive letter as your data stick?

Answer: You can’t see one of them in My Computer and you can’t grab those lovely files.

So here are my notes on how to fix it.

  1. Right-click on the My Computer icon
  2. Click on Manage
  3. Click on Disk Management
  4. Locate your missing widget
  5. Choose a new drive letter for it.
  6. Bingo !

Why do you have to be a Hero to wear boots ?

On Tuesday night I went to the cinema and saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean (excellent) and then last night I saw Serenity – also excellent, but as I sat watching my film enjoying a bottle of fine wine, something occurred to me:

Why do you have to be a Hero to wear boots?

* (based on the assumption that you and they are men)

Think of all the great heros of cinema, they almost all wear boots, and not just walking boots but great knee high black leather boots – and they still manage to kick ass. If you or I walked down the street in a pair of knee black boots, you would get your ass kicked. I mean you could get away with it as a Goth on your way to a special club, but not for a cheeky pint or a few vegetables.

  • Serenity – boots galoore
  • Jack Sparrow – a fine set of boots – although I guess this is historically accurate.
  • Han Solo – boots
  • Luke Sky Walker – boots
  • etc.

I have also identified a few sub types, for instance Bad guys and Super Heros normally wear a kind of fetish wellington boot (as does a good friend of mine, and mutual friends know exactly who I mean).

For example:

  • Darth Vader – black wellington boots
  • Super Man – red wellington boots
  • Batman – black wellington boots
  • Spider Man – red wellington boots
  • etc.

The final sub type is heros who do not wear boots:

For example:

  • Bruce Willis (die hard films)
  • The Hulk

I have only able to identify a single hero who wears boots that would make being a hero or a farmer a prerequisite of ownership:

  • Indiana Jones