10 or possibly less reasons that i know I am getting old!

1. I am mystified as why a sixteen year old would go to a fancy dress party as a schoolboy/girl;
2. I listen to radio comedy from the late 1960s and find it 'superior';
3. I find myself shouting at political commentators on TV to 'Let the other guy speak for heavens sake!';
4. Er...I talk to televisions...;
5. I automatically assume that any advice from anyone under the age of 25 will be wrong in some fashion;
6. I feel able to address a group of thirty-something males as 'you lads';
7. I actually care what the weather will be like tomorrow and find myself saying that the 'nights are drawing in' from about mid-September onwards;
8. I share emails via the social networking sites with old school friends that I barely knew in school and recall 'the good old days';
9. I use phrases like 'well in my day' and refuse to listen to any version of a song except the original;
10. Just in case anyone is unsure that I am getting old, I make lists on my blog to prove the fact!
    

Dr Who spin offs

http://www.radiotimes.com/blogs/425-who-spinoffs-never-filmed

The Doctor Who spin-offs that will never be filmed

• Posted at 4:55pm
• 02 October 2008
• by DavidBrown-RT
• 6 comments

Who'd have thought that when Doctor Who returned in 2005, there'd be so much scope for spin-offs? The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood and now even the possibility of a Who movie being mooted. Not bad for a sci-fi show whose only previous stab at a TV offshoot was the creaky K-9 and Company back in 1981. So how long will it be before they milk a winning formula so much that we end up with the following?

The X-terminate Factor

Saturday-night entertainment as Davros and Dalek Caan audition potential allies in their bid to enslave the universe. The X-terminate Factor: You're Fried! will immediately follow with analysis of that week's executions, plus behind-the-scenes footage of Davros reaching near hysteria over relatively trivial matters.

The Long Haul

Sitcom centred on the frustrated attempts of Harwood's Haulage transport manager Rhys Williams, husband of Torchwood's Gwen Cooper, to start a family. Gwen is never actually seen, but can often be heard shouting "Reeeeeeees!!!!" down the phone as she abandons her hubby for work yet again, leaving him eating pies alone on the sofa at home.

The Wilf Files

Alien conspiracy drama starring Bernard Cribbins as newspaper-selling astronomer Wilfred Mott. Armed only with a paint gun and a rolled-up copy of London's Evening Standard, Wilf does battle against extraterrestrial forces, assisted by fellow allotment owners Peter Sallis and Donald Sinden.

Top of the Class

Krillitane headmaster Mr Finch is given one term to turn a failing school around. Can he get the tearaway kids computer literate without bringing in his crack squad of supply teachers to effect a transformation?

Who Do You Think You Are?

One-off special of the hit genealogy show as the Doctor delves into his own history to find out about his past selves. Features moving footage of Christopher Eccleston crying over missed opportunities.

Run Rose Run

Urban adventure featuring a jaded Rose Tyler who, realising she's been lumbered with a sociopathic carbon copy of the man she loves, tries to abandon him at a motorway service station. She soon realises that the cloned Doctor will stop at nothing to get her back and will slaughter anyone who gets in his way in order for them to be reunited.

Life Swap

The Slitheen highlight dietary and health problems when they move in with Britain's most obese families after killing a member and using their skin as a disguise. Might not get beyond the pilot stage once the human participants realise what the trade-off actually involves.

Are You My Mummy?

The gas-masked Empty Child tries to reunite adopted children with their birth parents in a heart-warming Sunday-evening family entertainment series co-hosted by Cilla Black.

Acting Up

Fly-on-the-wall documentary as Martha Jones - having failed to convince anyone that she's a doctor, a scientist or a member of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce - roams the country hoodwinking employers into believing she's capable of work. As disappointments pile up, will Martha resort to acting lessons in order to succeed?

Freddie Horton circa 1993

A little Youtube blast from the past...

Used to listen to this band back in Croydon,in the mid 1980s in a complete dive called "The Cartoon". I hear courtesy of Facebook that his band is still playing.

Memories of "Faust" lager, a brew so indescribably awful that in more enlightened times it would be regarded as some kind of chemical weapon and after one particularly heavy evening of "New Town Soul" and lager, staggering into the local mini cab company and slurring "Gitttacbburef's'helarrrrrrrr!" and having this successfully translated as "A cab for St Helier." Ah. Grey days...er I mean great days indeed...

A walk in the park...

The art of the possible

This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands and access to a half way decent editing application called GIMP.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) on Facebook

Taken from Cook's first epistle to the Face Book comunity Chapter 1, verse 1-3

Hello all!

I bring pre-Xmas good cheer to you all from the Geek at the seaside, having received my umpteenth warning about a virus/trojan/rootkit/ boy/girl genius hacker, I thought I would just slip on my anorak and send out words of comfort to all those Facebookers who have been so worried that their machines and those of their friends will be reduced to so much beige colour plastic if those evil genii get their mitts on them – then changed my mind and decided to opt for the full on rant...are you sitting comfortably, no me neither, think its these trousers...!

So if you get an email/attachment/invite/postcard/smoke signal or ethereal message from the unknown realms, 99 times out of 100 you can feel free to open it, ignore, ponder its unearthly meaning or laugh at the foolish American with no fear of crashing your hard drive, taking over your address and emailing information to all your friends about your love life or links with known terrorists groups; inviting all your mates to sign up for the 'Glen Miller appreciation page' on MySpace or causing your PC to immediately disassemble itself, pack the bits neatly and return them to the manufacturer.

Despite the assertions of various big budget films and small minded TV shows its actually quite hard to 'hack' into a PC and do any real damage - always assuming of course that you the user have decent and updated anti-virus (which of course you all have...haven't you?) and a firewall set to block all the usual ports – and the software will know which one these are.. There is, however, some danger in opening attachments from people you have never heard especially if the said attachment has a file ending with something like .exe, .scr or .bin - opening these from an unknown source is not dissimilar to covering yourself in gravy, plaiting your hair with Antelope burgers and climbing into a lions cage at feeding time.

Most warnings about how, if you let Mr X into your on-line life you will find yourself the helpless victim of his extraordinary 'hacking' prowess are complete myths, their purpose is to either get Mr X kicked off one forum or another or to simply spread the warning around the net as far as possible - big clue here, the warning always claim to be genuine and tell you to tell all your friends. They want to see their warnings spread as far as possible. Are these people idiots? In the words of Churchill, the insurance dog. 'Oh yes!'

There *are* viruses on Facebook, the 'Storm worm' is one that springs to mind, but it needs you to actually click a link which is an .exe file and takes you to an external site and no one would be silly enough to do that, would they! Hmm....seems to have gone a bit quiet out there...

So a few tips

1. if you get a warning about a virus, check in out before you pass it on - www.snopes.com is an excellent site for this.
2. Ignore spam email, if you click the 'take me off the list' link, you have just told the spammer this is an active email address, expect invites to buy Viagra and Rolexes soon!
3. Official organisations seldom ask for personal information by email! Seldom in this sense is defined as never, if your bank or similar does - find another bank.
4. Be wary of pictures and other files from unknown sources and watch for those with .exe endings
5. Never give bank details or similar out on the internet, its highly unlikely that any bank would ask for these details. If you are asked, ignore the email link and go to the site by typing in the URL in the address bar, look for a URL that starts 'https:// that 's' is important it means the site is secure.
6. If you are not sure what you are doing, don't do it. If in doubt ask. Lots of geeks about the place, myself included, who will be happy to help. You may have to put up with sentences which includes acronyms like SSH and TCIP and possibly even some references to operating system architecture but at least your computer will be safe.

OK so rant over, but the number of these warnings is getting silly..So with a little caution and a lot of common sense we can all rest easy in our bed knowing that tomorrow our is another day for us and our computer...

Ron

PS: Amazingly Facebook tagged this message as possible spam and suggested I send a nice picture instead....sigh!

Far flung Vista

Checking email this morning this was an interesting cry for help from a Vista user. It seems that he install of Vista had managed to hide all her desktop icons and then store them inside a series of recursive folders. Nothing the user has
done seem to prompt this action and it seems that Vista had just decided to difficult. It was sorted out - after a fashion - in due course but frankly should not have happened. Someone said that if Vista was a car it would stop working for no reason whatsoever and the only way to make it work again would be to replace the engine and suspension! Googling for the solution to the lady's problem I was alarmed to see advice like

Use REGEDIT to view HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell, click on Bags and select Edit > Delete > Yes. Delete the BagMRU key as well, and restart

Letting the inexperienced loose on the registry is a sure fire way to get the "it just stopped working" email or phone call pdq! What amazed me was the way that the mess was accepted by the user as one of those things and when I suggested a move to a more stable OS, practically any of them really, the note of surprise in the user voice at this suggestion clearly suggested I was in dodgy territory. A downgrade to XP or 2000 made not sense since Vista was the latest version and therefore the best and the idea of a move to Linux or OSX dismissed since they would not support the programs the person needed. ho-hum...!