Fire & Hell Seamless Tile

Posted 28 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I was working on a website for 3M, the people who make sticky take and post-it notes and was messing about with some fire graphics when I came up with this. I thought somebody might find a use for it. You can make out a face in the fire. It is a seamless tile and will work well as a background on a website. Perhaps a mmorpg site or some such place.

Flash Actionscript Set Focus

Posted 19 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

If you want to set focus to a text input field / text area in Flash then use the following code:

stage.focus = myTextField;

Selection.setFocus(instanceName);

How much is free broadband?

Posted 10 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I signed up to Talk Talk broadband the other day. I was already with them as a phone customer, and I must say I am pretty happy with the service considering the very low price we pay.

As for broadband though I have been dragging my heels for a long time over this. It is “free” but the word free always worries me. Nothing and I mean nothing comes without a cost of some kind or another. Free is always a lie.

But… I did it. I was sold. I would save around £15 or $30 a month and I went for it. Firstly the free became £20 for a wireless modem. OK I could have done it with my old modem but I needed to get wireless as the wires in question have been driving my wife mad. £20 is not too bad either for a modem. I was told the modem would take 7 days to reach me.

The next day my old modem broke. It was a kind of zen/karma/yingyang thing. It had gone though years of dropping, bashing and tea, and only when it realised it was going to be retired did it give up the ghost, may it rest in peace. This left me in rather a pickle however. I had at least another 6 days to go before my new modem would arrive.

Should I spend £50 on a new modem just for 6 days or wait? Most of my design work is web based but it was so very very hard to pay £50 for something that was going to last 6 days. It was a false economy of course and I knew it. I probably would lose a lot more than £50 by not having one, but it was still hard.

I lasted 5 days! I bought one knowing that a new one was meant to arrive the next day. I know it is insane but I got an important phone call offering me work that had to be done urgently.

Back to Talk Talk though. Did the modem arrive on time? Nope. No surprise either.

Let me define “free” for you. This is the definition large companies use, not us normal people who can read a dictionary. To them it means, no money up front but make it back in other ways and at the same time deliver an awful service justified by the fact that it is “Free”. In the case of Talk Talk, I am now bound to an 18 month contract. I can not go to another company for my phone service. This is not free the way I think of free. I was assured that the price would not go up during the 18 month contract but the guy who told me is a salesman and he gets a commission for every sale. We shall just have to see about price rises.

I phoned them up about the missing modem and this is where things got interesting. Of course I was put on hold. I held, and held and held. When I get through, I am told to phone another number. Been there done that a million times. “Free” is starting to cost me in lost work time. I call the other number and guess what? I am put on hold.

Eventually I talk to a women. She is Indian and obviously in India and although she speaks very good English it is just hard for her to understand me and visa versa.

Anyway… She tells mes the modem was sent and should not take more than a couple of days to reach me. Great thinks I, but then she starts to tell me how they have run out of stock of the modem and are waiting for a new batch. I raise an eyebrow and ask her what that has to do with mine as it has already been sent. She confirms that it has been sent, but they are now out of stock. This goes round and round a few times, and in the end I just smile. I know it has not been sent and I know she is very confused. I thank her and hang up. Oh well. At least the new modem I bought was coming in handy. It arrived about another week later, and looks nice. I ain’t using it though. It was provided by a company that does “Free”. It is more trouble than it is worth. I am sticking with the modem I had to buy. It just works.

Oh by the way. This information is free. (unless you take into account the time spent reading it, your connection fees, software and computer costs. The cost of downloading those adverts on this page, etc. etc. etc.)

Back to Top Buttons

Posted 10 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I had to make a back to top button today for a client and thought I would share it. I know it is not much work to create one but it should save you 10 minutes.

See more in buttons.

PC versus Women

Posted 9 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

 My PC has a temper. It gets upset and you can tell when the hard drive drones on and on like some grumbling old man. It just stops and grumbles about all the work I make it do. Grumble grumble stop… grumble stop… Just when I think I can carry on it grumbles a little more.

You get to know your PC. You know when to wait and when to keep going. Women on the other hand have no idea. I hate it when a woman uses my PC. I feel for the poor old man. If things start to slow down a woman begins clicking, and every click is adding to the tasks that the poor PC has to deal with. It’s grumbling away and she is clicking and getting upset, and I am gritting my teeth because every click is hurting me. I know the PC just wants a break. A little chance to catch up but oh no. The woman clicks some more as though that will speed it up. She tries clicking harder. That gets me the most; clicking harder. No! What gets me the most is double clicking web links. They only need one click. The hyper link takes one, not two, but the woman double clicks anyway.

After a while the woman turns to me and tells me that the PC is not working. By the sounds of it it is working. Working very hard to try and catch up with all the clicking that has gone one. Twenty windows open up. There is a nasty sound like the hard drive is having a heart attack and then grind, grind, grind and that fucking message telling me there has been an error pops up and do I want to tell Microsoft about it?

Yes I do. A woman used my computer!

There must be some bug fix for this. Perhaps some service pack. When logging in to Windows, you should state your sex. If woman, only allow 1 click per 10 seconds. I know, it’s a hack, but it should get around 90% of the problem.

Nintendo Wii Wii

Posted 9 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I am waiting for the next generation Wii. The Wii Wii.

If I get a Wii now I just going to get pissed off. Nintendo will announce the release date for the Wii Wii the day after I got my Wii, and the price of a Wii will drop by half over night. I want a Wii but I know I will be ripped off and then want a Wii Wii.

How about an X-box? They already did a next generation X-box, but they did not call it the XX-box. They where thinking ahead. If they called it an XX-box then the third generation would just get awkward. The demographics would alter from teenagers to confused ageing men, and the letters of complaint would rocket. They are smart at Microsoft. Stay away from more than one X.

I suppose I could get a Sony Play Station. Oh what the hell. Lets have a Wii Wii, an XXX-Box and lets say… a Sony Play Boy.

Super by eRightSoft

Posted 7 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

Super by eRightSoft is a free video conversion package.

It is perfect for converting your DVDs, AVIs etc to just about any other video format. With DVRs (Digital Video Recorder) becoming more popular this package is great for moving your vids to the new format.

You will probably find that your DVDs are protected from copying and you will just have to get around that using something like DVDFab Decrypter. Please note that I am against piracy but making copies of DVDs you own, I do not have a problem with. How else are you going to put them on your DVR?

It is also very simple. Just drag the file to the prog, change the setting and run.

Best of all… It is free free free!

Sumvision Zengo

Posted 6 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I just bought one of these devices. It is a 3.5″ DVR or so it says on the case.

It is a hard dive (320gb in this case) in a case. The case is clever in that it not only acts as an externat Hard Drive for your computer but you can also hook it up to a TV and both view or listen to media files and record video or TV.

The theory is great. The problem is that mine does not work. There sems to be a problem with the firmware. It works fine as an external drive o my PC but when I hook it up to the TV I just get a corrupted version of the graphics that you see on the packaging and promo.

Very sad as I was looking forward to getting all my videos and music on to it and shoing it off to others.

Guess where it was made? Oh yes. China. It was cheap and Chinese, and so either does not work, or breaks after one day. The manual was that typical idiotic tranmslation where you get english words mixed up by some computer translation into something totaly illogical.

An example, the chapter is on updating the Firmware and step 7 reads:

7) According to pointing out finishing progressively, upgrade movements.

WTF?

So not only is it broken, there is fuck all I can do about it by reading the manual.

As for upgrading the firmware, there is none! None to be found anywhere on the net.

Oh well. What else do I know? 

The device is the size and shape of any other HD cases and is in fact well built with a nice solid feel to it. I know. Chinese and solid? Yes it is true. It does not work but it is a very nice object.

Apparently recording is not so good as it skips frames. It also uses FAT32 so your files can be no larger than 4gb. This is not so bad in that most movies in Divx or xvid format will be around 700mb. I read somewhere that files are split after 1 hour when recording so movies will be split into 2 or 3 files.

One nice feature is that it can take SD cards too. This is great if you want to keep the device by your television and transfer files from your PC, or from any PC.

I got it on ebay.co.uk from seller tmsuppliesuk who have 100% feedback with over 32000 feedbacks. So it looks as though I should not have any trouble getting a replacement. Do you think they will pay for the return postage? We shall see.

Find out more about video conversion.

I will write more when I get it replaced.