Geoff advice to anyone buying a new Microsoft WinXX machine is to MAKE SURETHE STORE supplies it with all latest updates installed!. After the fiasco with Mary's machine where it picked up viruses in the short time of connecting to cable modem.

Also the downloads are so large that you will find it very dispiriting to go through the palava with Microsoft. see here

Lovely catch22 from NTL. When fitting cable modem disable all virus protection, you then get welchia virus twice during registration. You call NTL help to be told no help is given unless virus protection is installed!! That little saga equals 3 hours of my life!

The full report here about the threat to security because Microsoft has such a dominant influence on home software. I think its probably correct especially the way its impossible to seperate the software into its components ie impossible to remove media player with all its hidden parts that can be activated remotely.

A bank offering very high interest rates with security as long as your cash is tied up for 5 years and your capital helps dis-advantaged communities. Triodos Bank

Here is the best justification I have ever read about blogging and its future importance, Wth the Salam Pax piece in The Guardian.

A very sad day indeed poor old Concorde " Concorde will be visiting Toronto (1 October), Boston (8), Washington (14) and points around the UK after that. The final scheduled flight lands at London Heathrow on 24 October, when it's being said that three will land on the south runway one after the other. I'm not sure my two year old son will appreciate it, and I'm not sure Mrs R will understand, but I might take him anyway, just so he can say "I was there"" taken from Chris Rand's Engineering Talk newsletter

Apparently NTL have blocked out cable modem users from accessing Hotmail etc. This is certainly affecting Tony and others. A solution has been posted on the bigblueball forum here and there is a load of spiel from Robin Walker on setting up proxies at NTL here
--------------------------------
Instructions for Tony :-)
Goto Internet Options in Internet Explorer, click the connections tab, and then click the Lan Settings button.
Check Automatically detect Settings.
Check Use Proxy Server.
Type in one of the address's below, and the port (NTL is port 8080).
The NTL Cambridge proxies are:
inktomi1-cam.server.ntl.com
inktomi2-cam.server.ntl.com
inktomi3-cam.server.ntl.com
inktomi4-cam.server.ntl.com
-------------------------------------
I'm sitting pretty behind my smoothwall server, so no problems so far.

Succumbed to the google toolbar today creating a new blog at http://geoff-cool-links.blogspot.com/ so taht I can easily add links from sites that I like. Better than favourites as I can use them anywhere and add descriptions.

Added the apartment in Les Gets to the website tonight, after much huffing and swearing because you can only post a limited amount of text into each text field on the Trellix template then struggled with ftp stuff finally using WS_FTP, excellent and free.

An incredible site here at www. nationmaster.com for all of us who are interesting in statistics. It allows you to compile your own, goodness knows where all data comes from. Pretty appalling death rate in South Africa with 1 in 1,400 people been murdered with guns . See here

Strange old world, today in Cambridge we were blessed with the NATO top dogs meeting. Crikey the University Arms Hotel was turned into a fortress surrounded by police and fencing all the windows blacked out and that major UK innovation of covering all the rubbish bins with polythene bags, upto 1 mile away!! at least they didnt take them away like on the railways.

Must be a bit weird been a top dog, Question is. Who are they frightened off?

A test blog

First posting to blog from a pop3 accouunt

Good news on the Treo front after emailing handspring at their service centre in Norwich. Chris promised to get it fixed, and he did. received a bright shiny new Treo270 serial 102.004 today. So will defintely be buying Treo600 but the contract will not be with O2. Also just amazing to hoysync it back into my laptop, workPC and homePC so all the addresses and diary dates are once again beautifully in sync.

Wow this personal networking that ecademy has set up really works, within two hours of posting on my ecademy blog I received phone calls emails etc all very relevant with folks who had contacts in exactly the right places. Hope my Nick and his www.baboongear.com really seize the opportunities and go for it. Oh! and if you are bi-lingual French English want to help out with selling in French ski resorts then get in contact with him at baboongear.com!

Interesting site here for checking out obscure english words and phrases. However, no mardy or nesh from my childhood in the midlands.

A bad day for my Treo yesterday - its aerial snapped away from the casing! also was the last day of my O2 contract, which included insurance! Aghh.

Rang the so called member services number for O2 on 0870 444 3333 to be left hanging on for 30 minutes (you would thing that a telecomms company would just say please type in your number and we will call you back - some hope they must make a fortune from lousy company service!) to be told - insurance is only dealt with on weekdays.

So today being Monday, I try again, usual wait and then "OK I will transfer you to insurance service", after 30 minutes gave up - so much for customer service!.

So I emailed handspring at a-novoradiophone.co.uk, within 10 minutes Chris rang back, very concerned, yes he would try and repair it under warranty (lets hope so £100 otherwise) and he would courier a carton etc over. What wonderful service, he should have it tomorrow so fingers crossed.