Eczema Flare Up

Back when I was in my late teens, my GP told me that I should have grown out of my eczema by then. I'm now in my mid thirties and eczema is one of the many things that I have yet to grow out of.

What I have found is that when you tell someone you have eczema, they imagine that you have a little patch of red skin on the back of your leg or maybe on your elbow. Most of the time, that is the case, which is why I say that I have mild eczema (my uncle has extreme eczema where he's even managed to get it behind his eyeballs).

This common assumption that eczema is primarily a patch of red tucked away somewhere hides a nasty truth that many people live with all their lives. For me, I have had to live with a slightly more severe form for the last few days.

I've always had some on the back of my neck or behind my knees but recently, it has spread like wildfire and it is all over me like the proverbial rash. Apart from gallons of hydrocortisone, I don't know what to do. So far, these are the steps I've found that I can do;

• Drink lots of water so that if there's a toxin in my system that has caused this, it'll wash out
• Drink less cows' milk and more goats' milk
• Moisturise with unscented moisturiser
• Stay calm (yeah, right)
• Stay cool (temperature, not style)
  
• Don't scratch
  

I'm trying the above, but it's particularly hard to moisturise when the rash has spread over my entire torso (front and back), my arms and legs and neck and face. It's almost impossible to not scratch and while I am drinking goats' milk, it's not as nice as that of the cow. As for staying calm and cool, it's a struggle but I'm trying.

But that last one is the corker because whenever someone tells me "don't scratch", I just want to smack them in the face with a flaky fist because if there's anything an eczema sufferer knows he shouldn't do, it's scratching but if there's one thing that an eczema suffere can't stop doing, it's scratching.

It's not funny and it's more than a hindrance.

It can stop you from walking, from being able to concentrate or from being comfortable in a social situation yet there's no scope for me to take sick leave because of eczema because eczema is perceived as merely a deficient appearance, but I promise you, when you got eczema, your appearance isn't always at the top of your list of concerns.

Sometimes, all you want is peace and you ain't got it because every square inch of your body is crying out for attention, screaming for you to scratch or rub or stroke and all you can do is wish that one night, just one night, you could sleep right through until morning without waking up every hour finding yourself scratching the living daylight out of yourself.

Nokia Maps Keyboard Shortcuts on Nokie E61 (probably E61i and E62 also)

I've found the following keyboard shortcuts for use with Nokia Maps on my E61;

Zoom In - Left Shift
Zoom Out - Right Shift (or Backspace)
2D / 3D Switch - Space Bar
Map Night/Day Mode Colours - Ctrl

Build Me Up, Buttercup

The 'Evening Do' is one of the more recent of the annoying phenomena that come attached to weddings. These always wind me up, and when coupled with the 'Wedding Gift List' I find myself being pushed to the edge of wanting to rush into a packed wedding 'Evening Do' with a beehive and a honey spray.

What I can't understand is what is it with the 'Evening Do'? It's evidence that we're living in a more permissive society because if the young couple had decided to abstain from bonking until marriage, they really wouldn't want the tedium of the extended evening, making them even more tetchy and even more likely to be 'too tired'.

So what is the idea with the Evening Do? My experience suggests that there has been a not-so coincidental parallel growth with Evening Dos and Wedding Gift Lists.

Think about it; people don't invite any old Tom, Dick or Harry to the wedding reception. This in mind, though, the more people that are invited, the more gifts received. Great, except that some of the gifts received are worth less than the 'cost per head' for a reception.

The fix for this is the Wedding Gift List which allows the couple to set a minimum price for gifts thus ensuring a return on each seat in the reception.

But why stop there!? Why not have the reception but then, after that, another 'half-reception' where all the guests are still expected to bring expensive gifts but this reception will be cheaper with crappier food, dilluted drinks and music so loud that the couple won't have to make conversation with 'The Outer Circles'.

This really is a win-win situation for the couple; more gifts and fewer upset uninvitees.

But I don't buy it.

I don't like weddings at the best of times and as my chances of being in a wedding of my own fade like a British Summer Sunbeam, my mood isn't going to get any better, but I know that if someone wants me to go to their wedding reception, it's at least only half about the gift and I can half respect that. But I'm not a stocking-filler for an 'Evening Do' to spend an evening watching loose-tied yobs dance with skinny 19 year olds to 'Build Me Up Buttercup' holding pint glasses on their heads and thinking they're the lovechild of Tom Jones and Rambo.

Quite frankly, I have better things to do with my time and I can do without being used like that and if I ever get married (what follows may partly explain why I'll never tie the knot), there'll be no evening do, no wedding gift list and the reception food will be good old fashioned nosh; fish and chips or home made mashed potatos, gravy and a good bit of beef.

When You Can't See The Greater Good

It's amazing the things that come to mind out of aparently nowhere. For example, something (I don't know what) has reminded me of something that happened some twelve years ago that has obviously left its mark on me;

There was a leader in my church to whom I could go for sound advice. He was open minded, clear, wise and solid as a rock. I trusted him and my family trusted him, and to this day I've not had cause to distrust him.

But, one day, he told me that he'd received instruction to turn me away. Someone who had authority had told him it was wrong for me to seek advice from him and he, being a man under authority, had to obey.

I have to assume that this 'authority' was the pastor (who has long since moved on to larger - if somewhat shallower - pastures). I'm sure that many of us have had to face situations which were unpleasant or confusing at first only to see the bigger picture later on, but in this instance, no such moment of revelation has ever come.

I've never found out the reason, I've never understood the action and nobody has ever thought it considerate to explain the thinking. It just is.

The Bible has lots of examples of why we should trust our leaders and listen to what they say, but when nothing is demonstrated to earn that respect, they have to understand that they are spending borrowed trust. Christians in places like China, Africa and the former Soviet Union see these demonstrations on a regular basis as miracles become an almost regular thing, but here in the West where faith is more about method and emotion, things aren't so clear.

I take my hat off to people like David Hathaway, an English evangelist who is seeing really powerful miracles in Russia, and I'm wondering what's needed to again see a tangible demonstration of the miraculous in Britain.

Not Cool To Care Too Much

I'm fascinated by the values that have taken hold of western countries, forbidding people from caring too much about things that others either don't care about or don't like.

What I mean is that if you care about the environment, you can go in your clapped out V-Dub to the pop concerts where rich pop singers who can afford solar panels, wind turbines and dentists for their dogs tell you to be green, you can buy the recycled bog-paper and talk about the latest play that shows us how environmentally unfriendly your neighbours are but, you mustn't allow it to change the way you live if it means that the way you live must become less comfortable, less 'normal' or (god forbid), less cool. You certainly must never allow yourself to care about it in equal passion if your opinion is the opposite.

In the 'woteva' world, caring is uncool if it's not what others are caring about or telling you that you should be caring about it. If it was, then the unnamed charity worker who has spent ten years in a third world country looking after children who orphaned by HIV AIDS would be as celebrated, adored and 'cool' as Madonna or Bono or pop over every now and again before returning to their not-so uncomfortable lives.

What prompted this post was this YouTube video where some Christians (allegedly) walked out of a performance by someone who was using what they considered to be crude language.

I'm not defending the person who poured water on the performer's notes, but I am defending the right of those who walked out, because they cared about something. They actually cared enough about something that mattered to them that they allowed it to change what they were doing and planning to do.

That's not cool.

They're not supposed to care about that, and the comments on that video make it clear.

In my opinion, those who are saying that these people are somehow inferior to everyone else for caring, are as wrong as the person who poured the water on the performer's paper because inasmuch as that man was saying the performer shouldn't perform with such language, they are saying that those who walked out shouldn't care.

It's sad that so many people are being swept along by the tide of popular culture that they never seem to stop and think about what they are doing. Sure, they stop and think about what people are doing differently and how they're odd and maybe even a terrorist threat because they care enough about something to let it change their behaviour, but they don't seem to stop and think about what is influencing them, what is making them do what they are doing.

Christians, Jews and Muslims are often criticised for allowing a book (or books) to tell them what is right and wrong, but what's telling you the difference between right and wrong? How did you come about your moral compass? If your moral compass different today than it was ten years ago? I'm not saying it shouldn't have changed, but what changed it (if it has changed)?

You see, everything we do is about what we care about. What we care about comes from our revelation, and many people don't even know what their revelation is.

To follow the crowd is easy and proof of that is that this is what most of us do, even when we try not to; It's like the whole Western world is like the teenager who is looking to be an individual by dressing like the person they most want to be like. We all did it... and we all do it.

But before you call someone a 'pussy' because they don't like to hear a comedian say 'fuck', where is your moral compass pointing, how did it get to point there and, more importantly, how uncool are you willing to be in order to follow it?

Or will you just not bother to think about it, call me a fundamentalist terrorist and get on with your cool, individual, completely original and totally uninfluenced life?

Two Of These Things Don't Belong Together

Top Tech website The Register often publishes instances of poorly positioned advertisments on websites. I found one of my own, on The Register. Click the image to see it properly :-)

The Chocolate Dream Machine

How about this for a cracking idea;

A device that induces the user to dream all night that they're eating the most fantastic chocolate this iniverse can offer mere mortals.

By the time they wake up, they will feel that they've eaten so much chocolate that they can't eat any more all day!

Think of the benefits; the taste of chocolate so good it can't exist but no calories! In fact, you might be able to argue (if you can get someone like Richard Dawkins to lend a hand) that the calorie intake is negative when you consider tje reduced intake as a result of the dream-chocolate!

Anyone reckon this is a winner?

;-)

Product Support?

My first rule of blogging is that I never blog about work, but today I will make an exception after coming across two of the best named departments ever!

I was with a client and waiting for BT to respond to a call. After some time on the phone to a support engineer, I was told that the call was to be sent to the Inconclusive Team. What do these guys do? Do they do anything?

If you have a problem and nobody else can tell you what it is, and if you can find them, maybe you can call the Inconclusive Team!

But it didn't stop there. A further call from BT informed me that they have now moved the call to the Poor Performance Problem Department (I guess they refer to themselves as the PPPD). Someone suggested that a word be added to the start of that name, a word that rhymes with 'this').

Anyway, it looks like the call is stuck with the PPPD for now, so I'll wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, another company has been teaching me how to play the game. You see, I have documentation for a process that needs to be run on a database we have, but I need some help with a part of it, so I e-mailed customer support and asked them to help me with pages 17 & 18 (I think it was). They asked me to e-mail them an electronic copy of the documentation so that they could know what I was on about. I told them that I didn't have a copy of that but gave them all the details I could of the document. Not good enough.

So, I logged another call with the same company. I logged a call saying that I'd lost the documentation for the database process and would they be able to send me another copy. They sent it to me and I sent it back to the person who needed it.

Sheesh! I thought I was bad, but this takes the cookie!

Two Graves and a Dozen Gardens

I took the opportunity today to visit two ancient burial sites and, in the process, stumbled across some beautiful gardens.

The first burial site was Tinkinswood and then I went on to St. Lythans. These places always blow my mind, to think that somehow, people from around 4,000BC were putting these together to commemorate the death of their fellow human beings. I don't think I can imagine what they thought they were doing such is the distance between them and me. Heck, we go on today about the culture gap between The West and the Middle East, but these guys may well have been my ancestors and I'm even farther away from them!

I'm thinking that the only thing that can possibly be in common between them and me is death - it awaits us all. Here is their mark, mine is to come. Could they begin to understand my lifestyle with electricity, cars and mobile phones? Could I even begin to understand their values? Did they really live in an age where death is more revered than life? Could their values teach us something about making the most of life by preparing for death?

I then saw signs for Dyffryn Gardens and decided to call in and see what it was about.

It was a serene experience. Sure, the house was being renovated but the gardens were stunning (and that's without considering the redheaded woman ;-)

I loved the different compartments to the gardens with different moods, atmospheres, colours and ways to relax. It really was a place for a brain to rest and relax. The green was so soothing on the eyes I felt I might not be able to leave! Well worth the £6 it cost to get in and I can't wait for Autumn so that I can see all those greens turn to gold.

I do feel I haven't made the most of my two weeks of work, but I think that this is as great a crown as it will ever get, and I always like discovering a place that I can't wait to visit again.

iLife '08 - First Impressions

I've gotten around to installing iLife '08 and so far, I'm really happy. It seems that Apple have finally made an effort to make their flagship multimedia applications useful to their users, and with a half decent iDisk capacity, I feel I can finally make some use of the tool.

I'm not into making music, that't not my bag. I listen to music, so GarageBand doesn't quite float my boat. I gave it a shot and tried the whole Magic thing and it was fun, but since I'm as musical as a testicle, it wasn't going to go very far.

As far as video is concerned, a couple of YouTube videos is all I've ever done so I've not yet got hold of the iMove thing. What I have been digging though is the iPhoto and iWeb enhancements.

The whole iPhoto image manipulation thing has changed and the UI is a little clunky in one or two areas (for example, how exactly do I save changes?) but there facilities and functionality has been improved vastly, from controls for shading and lighting to a totally excellent Event-based organisation system for your photos.

Cool! Now you have albums, tags and events by which you can make sense of your photographs. Can't go wrong.

iWeb has finally got all the stuff it should have had in the first place, including a facility for inserting HTML code. What this means to me is that I can now use an iFrame to show my Blogger blog (this one) in an iWeb page.

I can add some really, really cool photo albums direct from iPhoto using the Photo Gallery which means I don't even have to start up iPhoto to update the photo galleries.

You think that's cool? Wait until you hear this one; The photo gallery is a cross-platform web-based application that has optional password protection. It shows your galleries using a very similar interface to iPhoto (you have to see the image scrolling on the album icon!) allowing you to share selected albums with everyone or specific individuals. Not only that, if you have the right permissions, you can add to that album, from wherever you are, from whatever platform you're using, without having to start up iPhoto, iWeb or iAnything! How insanely cool is that!?

You can see my photo gallery either by clicking on Photography on my main website (www.rcopeh.com) or you can go to http://gallery.mac.com/rcopeh where you can see the gallery of albums and choose which album you want to view.

I really am well happy with the iLife '08 suite and to think that you get all that software (music making, video making, DVD making, photo albums, web page making) for only £55 is breathtaking. And don't even get me started on iWork which is the same price and offers some staggering functionality with the new Numbers application. These may be my first impressions of iLife '08 and I'm sure that I'm going to find some frustrating 'feature' or annoyance but hey, so far, this stuff is fantastic and I'm loving what it can let me do with minimum effort and maximum creativity.

Universal Music - Peeing Into The Wind

Universal Music has decided to start selling DRM-free music for a trial period, just to see if people are interested.

But they're not doing it with iTunes, one of the biggest music vendors in the world. That's like saying that a computer game company giving away games to see how popular the game is likely to be, but it will only run on BeOS.

How much of a moron do you have to be to be an executive in these big corporations?

More Tech Adventures

As if it wasn't enough that I was up until the small hours of 'Sparrow Fart' trying to get QuickOffice to work (it does now thanks to the diligent support of the QuickOffice support guy who was dealing with my query), I had a mobile phone bill for £211!

I can talk for England, but I don't so I couldn't understand where that enormous bill came from. After looking at my bill, I think it started a few weeks back...

I was clearing my minutes allowance such that it made more sense for me to move up a tariff so that I had a higher line rental but more minutes. I contacted 3 and they duly changed me to the new tariff. My next bill was for £175. I queried this and it appears that it's the result of me changing tariffs and the system will balance out next month.

The £175 left my account, Ok. I got this bill and it was re attributing the £175 plus my current spend! That wasn't on, so I contacted 3 and they're suggested that I clear the current spend (some £38), cancel the Direct Debit, wait for the date of the bill to pass and then re-set up the Direct Debit before September 1st.

So, I've cancelled the Direct Debit, settled the Current Spend and now I'm wondering what's going to happen on the bill date. I don't have the money to pay such a whopping bill as the one that slapped my chops this afternoon, so let's see what happens eh?

Why do all these systems need to get so complicated?

I was visiting a place, one day, where people receive residential care. They were able to look after themselves and do basic things, but there were carers there to help them if they needed it.

Into the office came someone who looked like he had the confidence of a burst balloon and the self assurance that was as absent as a British summer. He was upset and confused. I overheard him speaking with in worried tones about his subscription to Which? Magazine. He didn't know how he had received the subscription, but he wanted to cancel the Direct Debit but didn't know how.

It got me thinking about how many of the difficulties in life are brought about because we haven't learned the rules set up by other people (usually) in another place. People are made to feel inadequate and stupid because they don't know the rules that someone somewhere made up and these poor sods don't have a clue how to get to the website that explains it all.

Society looks down on people who don't know how to dress in vogue, how to speak with the latest politically correct lingo (when I was small, black people were called coloured because 'black' was offensive, now it's the complete opposite), who don't know what the benefits of fuel injection are and who think that you only need to iron clothes for special occasions. These people are treated as simple, but what haven't they done apart from learn the rules set up by a person or bunch of people who matter as much to the course of human suffering as the coffee stain on this table.

Who's rules are we obeying? I'm not talking about the law which stops us from killing, raping and stealing from each other, but the rules that govern the daily routines? Does the source of our rules mark us out as better than others who follow different rules?

Think about the things that vex you and I bet that a good number of them are man-made issues with man-made solutions.

Quickoffice Nightmare

I'm having a nightmare with the support at Quickoffice (an Office suite for Smartphones). This is what has happened;

1. I installed the version for which I have a download and it worked great. I entered my license code and that worked great (well, kind of - I hate how Quickoffice accepts my license key but KEEPS THE MENU OPTION THERE TO ENTER IT AGAIN).
2. I run the Quickoffice Update Manager thing and it says "Hey, you can have a free upgrade!". I think "W00T! Yay!" and ask for the download to start.
3. The download starts and the install kicks in, and it fails. I check the Knowledge base and it appears that you must install the software to the Phone Memory and not the Memory Card (like most people would do). So I uninstall, reinstall and it goes through.
4. I run the software and it crashes with a 'BIF 4' error.
5. I contact QuickOffice customer support who reply with an e-mail telling me to format my phone and my memory card. That's a good idea, I figure, after all, it beats the 'turn it off and turn it back on again' solution that falls so sweetly from the lips of many an IT expert. Heck, what kind of software is this that you have to jump through so many hoops just to get something to work!?
6. I reformat my phone and my memory card and reinstall. I run the update and it installs.
7. I run the software and this time, I do not get an error message. Nope, nothing. That's right. Nothing, not even the application because something else has gone wrong but it can't be arsed to tell me what it is.

I am not at all impressed with QuickOffice. It isn't the Customer Support that sucks as much as their software if reformatting the device is necessary to get it to work.

UPDATE: I've just had a reply from QuickOffice asking me if by resetting the device and formatting the card I am actually resetting the device and formatting the card. No, I'm actually waving my magic magnet over the screen scree and the card - could that be it? (I'm being sarcastic)

The Internet - It's Dangerous Out There

About six or seven years ago, I was a regular attendee on an MSN forum. Through that forum, someone got hold of me and we started talking on MSN Messenger. I was immediately concerned and worried because I was a twenty six years old and she was thirteen (so she said).

Instantly, I was worried. She started to talk about suicide and how she felt that nobody loved her, so I really felt that I couldn't just block her and disconnect her from my MSN buddy list, but I also knew that it was not a healthy thing for me to be talking so much to a stranger so young, or for her to be talking to a stranger so old.

In the end, I got the Samaritans in touch with her and she vanished. I hope to God that she's Ok and growing into a well rounded person with all her issues sorted.

But what I find fascinating and concerning at the same time is how she was looking for someone to talk to and she didn't seem to care who it was.

The media portrays the internet as a place where dirty old men are looking for youngsters to groom, but what society must face is that it has created a such a loveless environment that these youngsters are actually going out to look for whoever will listen. In the case of the young lady I just mentioned, I guess she was lucky that I wasn't a predator, but what if I was? What if she had gotten in touch with someone who was more interested in something that would ruin her?

While we must try and clear the streets and (virtual) highways of those who would seek to harm vulnerable people, something also has to be done to address the needs of those who become vulnerable because of a society that tells them they're worthless unless they are economically active.

What has prompted this is a video and a person I have stumbled across on YouTube, someone I shan't mention here, but it has alarmed me at how people are looking to belong and find hope. The internet will only give a sugar coated pill to take the pain away for a few hours, the TV and video games just mask the pain with a numbness and everything else just gets given the 'WOTEVA' treatment.

People are hurting and we think that we can heal them by giving them a webcam and an internet connection?

People who live for state benefits, who hang around bus stops drinking beer, who would rather buy three rings for each finger rather than a baked potato, who would rather vote for Big Brother than a politician who actually cares, who let their toddlers roam the streets at ten in the evening and who only wreck their own houses for the insurance they can get are not the cause of a rotten society, but the symptoms.

I'm not a pinko liberal and I certainly don't think we should molly-coddle people who would rather watch TV and drink beer all day in a house that has more fleas than Tony Blair has teeth, but when we tell people to pull their socks up, we need to try and identify the things that are making them not want to pull their socks up in the first place.

When we start identifying and addressing the underlying causes of society's ills, we may then find that places like the internet are much safer because there will be fewer people looking for love, and fewer people looking for 'love'.

Dot Mac Looks A Bit More Useful

Thanks to recent announcements from Apple, their .Mac service looks like it could actually be useful by the end of the week!

Don't get me wrong, you still don't get your money's worth, IMHO, but I can now use it for stuff which actually means something. Whereas in the past all I could put on there were some token websites and a temporary store for e-mail, I can now use that Backup software and create an online backup of my stuff.

Going from 1Gb to 10Gb is a great thing, though I never like to see transfer limits. I guess I'll have to live with that and be confident that I'm nowhere near likely to use up my current transfer limit, let alone the new one.

You may be asking why I signed up for it in the first place if I'm so down on the value it offers, and to that I can only say convenience. I have family down the motorway who use an Apple Mac (mini) and it helps to be able to have everything in one place for management. Plus, iWeb does offer some cool stuff (which I've been able to to put to use here). Worth the money? Maybe not, but it's Ok and I live in the hope that more improvements are on their way.

Among the other announcements, I am kind of excited about the iLife '08 suite and iWork '08 looks pretty nice too. I like the look and feel of Apple products in the way it delivers useful functionality in an interface that's like a house where you feel at home the moment you walk through the door. In contrast, Windows makes me feel like someone who's walking into a house where there's a big dog barking and the sofas are impractically big, pretty but big (you ever sat on one of those bigass sofas where you could easily fall between the cushions and find an entire universe of new life forms and civilisations?)

What I really looking forward to, however, is Leopard. I'm already saving my pretty scarce pennies to get me a copy when it comes out.

Ultimate Utopia

This is brilliant. Old, but brilliant!

Night

When I look out of the window, I find something morbidly comforting in the drizzle that puts a halo around every street lamp and a glistening leathery covering to leaves, walls, cars and even the sky itself.

I know I'm not the only person who's ever marvelled at the thought of a whole community full of unconscious people, asleep, waiting for the coming day where they can spend the energy they're accumulating now in the deepest slumber of the night.

The dark is worrying, frightening, foreboding and full of potential terror, yet it is at this time we shut down, hide down, go down, fall down, descend into the realm of the dreams, vulnerably hiding behind brick walls, glass windows and uPVC doors.

In our sleep, we don't worry about rent or mortgage. At night, you will find a street, village or even a town at its most restful with more bliss than at any time.

At night, the rain washes the scars of the previous day in preparation for the concerns that will fill our vision. In the silence, there are people saying nothing but who will, within a few hours, be saying plenty. People who are now doing nothing but breathing will be explaining, excusing, hoping, arguing, heart breaking, dumping, joining, laughing and crying.

Enjoy the silence for sleeping endures for a night.

Do I Look Like Russel T Davies?

I've been told I look like the genius behind Doctor Who's recent resurgence.

Apart from the buck teeth, mis-shapen head and "just cut it" hairstyle (mine), I guess I do have some things in common with him; We both have two eyes, wear glasses and I bet he uses a mobile phone at times too. Oh, and I like Doctor Who.

After that, the similarities stop, IMHO, and I'm fairly certain that he doesn't have the same opinions as me on God ;-)

Watching a Robot Learn to Walk

This is pretty cool. Watch as the robot learns from its falls and manages to walk the ramp without falling!

Getting 3G Back on my E61

Back in the day, when I first bought my Nokia E61 on the 3 network, I was happy and pleased. Then, using Nokia's Software Updater, I thought I'd fix a few buglets. It worked, but it put one pretty nasty buglet into the works; I could no longer get a 3G connection to the internet. Not the end of the world, but a pain with slow connections.

I waited for Nokia to release a new firmware and for Three to make it available, but it wasn't happening. I waited some more, and some more and some more, but nothing.

Browsing the old 'net one day, I saw that there is a way to carry out an upgrade without unlocking the phone and this is 'debranding'.

The premise is this; When I connect to Nokia Software Update, it says "Ah, you're on Three in the UK. Sorry, there's nothing for you here" but a way had been provided which enabled me to change the Product Code so that Nokia Software Updater thinks I'm somewhere else with an unbranded phone.

I repeat, this will not SIM Unlock your phone but if you've lost your 3G connectivity, are unimpressed at how 3 has taken away some of the menu options from your phone (such as switching from 3G to GSM only) or you're just fed up waiting for the latest firmware, this may be of help to you.

• The first thing I did was download something called Nemesis Service Suite (NSS) - follow the link above and download the software (bottom of the page, click on the 'Zip' icon).
• After installing the software, I clicked to find devices then clicked on Phone Info. On the right hand side, in the Product Code, I entered 0523307 and ticked to enable it. Then I clicked on Write and it took seconds for that to finish.
• Next step was to run the Nokia Software Updater and it picked up a new firmware for me, flashed my phone and I'm away!

I didn't work this out all on my own. It took a lot of Googling to find out the solutions provided by the good folks here and here and here.

Of course, if you do anything I've written here and you brick your phone, don't come knocking at my door. Sorry and all that, but it's up to you. This is just the stuff that I did. I'm not forcing you to do it.

What's important To You - Inbox Zero

A quote that should be challenging for just about anybody;

"What would the last two weeks of your electronic light say about how it maps to the stuff that you claim is really important"

"You need to find ways to honour where your time and attention go"

This is good stuff.

Chocolate Rain

I hate MacBreak Weekly for making me listen to this. Now, it's in my head and it won't get out!

Yorskshire

Something I missed this week is that Tuesday was Yorkshire Day!

The fact that I missed it is probably proof that I'm not a true-blue dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman, but I do consider myself part Yorkshire on account that I was born there, lived there for the first two years of my life, had a strong Yorkshire accent (my parents have recordings of me somewhere speaking thus), my Dad's a Yorkshireman, half my extended family if Yorkshire and I value my Yorkshire roots.

Unfortunately, I'm the kind of person who doesn't belong anywhere because when I tell my friends and acquaintances in Wales that I'm really Yorkshire by birth, they tell me that I can't be proper Welsh, even though I've lived in Wales for thirty one years and can speak the language. When I'm in Yorkshire, I simply cannot hide my uber broad West Wales 'boyo' lingo (isn't it?) which means only my family in Yorkshire accept me as 'one of them'.

My goal, however is this; The maternity hospital in which I was born has since turned into an old people's home. Wouldn't it be cool if I could die in the room in which I was born? I would love that! I would really love that!

Talking Cats

Far form the high-brow antics of a church with a new logo, I'm amazed at how many YouTube videos there are of talking cats!



This one sounds depressed.
This one sounds possessed*.
This one sounds like an annoying kid who won't shut up.

It's said that cats are extremely intelligent but I think that they're just stupid. You can train a dog to do stuff because a dog has the brains to learn whereas a cat is just too stupid. For example, if I move my cat's food dish, why does it wait for me to put food in the old location while watching me put it in the new?

Cat's can't be trained, not because they're too intelligent to do such menial tasks, but because they're too stupid. Cats are thick. That's why they chase balls of wool and want stare at door handles. Dogs know that people open doors, cats reckon it's door handles that open doors.

Dull or what?

* No offence was intended to trendy neo-atheists who may think that I am trying to oppress the poor and vulnerable by mentioning 'possession'. I was merely using an illustration and not intending to threaten anybody with a weapon of organised religion designed to control the masses through fear of a 'fictional' hate character, allegedly invented for the purpose of instilling fear into a people or social demographic. If you feel that I was trying to instill fear or control anybody, please be assured that I wasn't.

Come On! Do The Logo-motion

Further news from the Aposolic Church conference (AblazeUK or UKAblaze - I can't remember): We have a new logo!

It has a minimalist font (think Orange Mobile Phones) and pastel colours on a black background! When animated, it's smooth as silk diapers on a baby's freshly wet-wiped bottom.

Surely, many people will see that and say "I never thought of going to church but that logo has suddenly got me thinking about Jesus. I want to get me redeemed".

Maybe we should rename the organisation from 'Apostolic Church' to 'iApostolics'?

Rejoice! Let us make merry for we have a new logo! I'm so excited I think I just wet myself. Oh, quick, get something to wipe this up! Too late.

Doctor Who and Star Trek

This music is brilliant!


And, if you can get past the terrible intro music, this is really good as well;


And this is quite funny as well;

Monkeyboy and the Zune

Apparently, someone got sacked for this, which is a shame since it's so funny!

The Importance of Backups

For the second time in a short time, my MacBook's hard drive died.

The last time this happened, I lost three months' worth of work. That hit me bad. This time, I lost just one day's worth of work because I hadn't backed up the day before. That was a bummer, but less of a bummer than the previous failure.

Backups are so important that it can't be emphasised enough.

The most basic way of backing up is to make sure you just save your files in more than one place. You're saving a Word document or a project? Save it to your Hard Drive but save it to your Memory Key as well. This isn't a very good way, but at least you have a backup!

Better still is to schedule a backup to an external USB Hard Drive or even online. Just get another copy on another medium and, preferably, as far away from your primary computer as possible. Saving it twice to the same Hard Drive is not going to do anybody any good if the hard drive itself fails.

The feeling of loss when weeks, months or years worth of work goes down the pan is really gut wrenching, and if you need that work for completion within a tight deadline, then a backup is the only way to go.

If you don't have a tape drive or an external drive, you can take advantage of some online backup solutions. Some charge while others will offer you tonnes of space for free. If you're with BT, for example, you get 5Gb of backup space in their online vault (I'm looking at using this with my Mac since I've got it and I hate paying for the same service twice across vendors)*.

Basically, hunt, shop, Google, but get a safety net before it is too late. You can replace a Hard Drive, but you can't replace your data and trust me, no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to imagine the feeling you'd have at the loss of your data until you experience the loss of your data... And you don't want to feel that.


* I quite like the idea from MediaMax which gives you 25Gb free but charges you a nominal amount to download your backup (something which you shouldn't have to do if everything goes well!)

Are Atheists Missing the Point? (Repost)

Radio 4 today (20/07/2007) played host to a mouth who's head has been reading some of the new 'Evangelical Atheism' (think Dawkins, Samuel et al) and the same tired old arguments that if it wasn't for religion, we'd all be living in harmonious space stations, talking about the old days where people died of 'diseases' like cancer and HIV AIDS.

How dull are these people? If they are right and religion was invented to justify killing people, then they are already shooting themselves in their collective foot because the desire to kill people was there before religion, and religion is just another tool to help nations do that which is natural; kill.

You see, you don't need religion to kill people and if you think that removing religion would remove war, you can't have heard of; Oil, land, water, money, sex, political power, influence or even air.

What these trendy neo-atheists are trying to avoid is that religion can't be blamed for mankind's hard-wired need to be selfish. If one nation has oil and another nation wants it, sure they can *say* that they're on a mission from God, but the problem is not the spoken reason, but the real reason and driving motive; selfishness and greed.

It's not religion that causes wars, it's humanity and humanity's appetite to spill blood. Neo-atheists may like the implied purity that comes with a 'religion-free' life, but as long as they have human blood running through their veins, they are as prone as anybody else to the vices of selfishness and greed. As long as they refuse to accept the truth that humanity is the problem and not religion, they will remain 'moral cowards' (as one treaclesome mouth once put it).

When people argue that the moderates are the ones who help the extremists and are therefore just as 'evil', they are trying to wipe out the width and breadth of experience and testimony of people who believe for a reason, who's faith is based on something that has happened to them.

I've heard countless stories from people who had a disease and then don't have it and their specialists can't explain where it has gone. One or two could be a mistake, but so many? I know people who had massive growths vanish before their eyes and gotten up out of years in wheelchairs. I've met people who were in the gutter, ravaged by addiction to life-controlling substances but who are now fully in control of their lives and have a level of self-discipline that I can only dream of. All of these were 'dealt with' in a religious environment where prayer was the key instrument.

The trendy neo-atheists are free to say that these are scams, elaborate hoaxes or one-off examples of mutation in evolution, but what they can't expect is for the witnesses of these events to believe them on blind faith. They believe what they believe because they have 'seen the truth', and for them to demand that people abandon what they have seen because the neo-atheists demand it shows as much disrespect and inability to comprehend their own humanity as those who advocate forced conversions.

And what is this faith all about anyway? Religious people get it in the neck for not being able to understand how God can exist and so they 'just believe', but how many of the trendy neo-atheists really understand the chemistry of evolution, the Big Bang and the atomic physics that are important there? String theory? Multiple universes? The speed of light? They are asking the masses to have as much faith in them as the priests, imams and rabbis are asking. If not being able to understand the trinity is reason enough for me to not believe in it, then I shouldn't believe in the Big bang or evolution.