Week of 16th August, 2004

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Monday, 16th August

Middle shifts start today - the noon to midnight shift. And there's no tape dubbing work - it's all ingest, ready for the relaunch/rebranding of the movie channels. So that's all I did.

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Tuesday, 17th August

More of the same. Although there was some tape dubbing - apparently the barcode printer the tape traffic troops use to put an identifying barcode on the master tape was borked yesterday, otherwise this material would have been available for processing then.

One of the guys at work is plagued with pop-ups, particularly those pointing to sex sites,  and other such malware on his WinXP laptop (this is the guy who had problems setting up his ADSL broadband, and evidently he picked up a nasty or two, due to surfing without a firewall) He swears by Pest Patrol, and gave me a URL for the corporate version (which is officially payware)

So I tried it, and it claims Antbear is clean - so he should be, I've got Privoxy running as a banner ad. blocker and cookie cutter, and I do regular scans with AVG antivirus and AdAware. I try to practice safe hex. Mark you, Pest Patrol graphical version doesn't run on Antbear - it freezes part way through loading. The command line version works, though and it's schedulable - probably run once daily, in background..

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Wednesday, 18th August

I installed Pest Patrol on Celery today, and it found a number of things it didn't like - WinVNC counts as one such. Well, it is a potential vulnerability, but I'll only be using it within the home network, so I'm not too worried about it. Most of the rest was advertising cookies.

BTW, the problem with the graphical Pest Patrol client on Antbear was my impatience - the app takes a while to start up, and there's no hourglass, just a progress bar that leaps to 42%, and then stops for about 30 seconds or so, before scrolling to completion.

But, I suspect that somewhere among the other 49 things PP found, and which I allowed it to delete, was something vital. Now Celery's Internet access is borken, despite a full reinstall of the PCI card (a Netgear FA310TX) and all the software appertaining thereto. Note: all the other network functions are OK - NetBeui works, I can see and access other machines in Network Neighborhood, but TCP/IP doesn't.

The symptom is that I can get to sites by IP address (pings at least) but not by name. Obviously a DNS problem, but how to fix it? I use DHCP here, and the network settings on Celery are the same as e.g. Antbear. But Celery no work.

Interestingly, Privoxy also doesn't work on Celery now - it says "fatal error - cannot bind to 127.0.0.1 port 8118". Be it noted, I've only just tried to install Privoxy - after Pest Patrol.

In other Internet news, Sharman Networks (the current owner of KaZaa) have served Google (and probably other search engines) with a takedown notice, requiring the removal of links to  a few sites relating to KaZaa Lite, alleging DMCA-related copyright violations. This I find to be a bit rich, for two reasons - first, if Sharman (or their predecessors in interest) had not seen fit to load full KaZaa with various spyware and stealth applications (CyDoor, and Brilliant Digital come to mind) the developers of KaZaa Lite would not have felt it incumbent upon them to remove such malware. Secondly, this comes from the proprietors of an application whose de facto main use is wholesale copyright violation, regardless of theoretical non-infringing uses.

Of course, it's only the overt sites that have been removed from Google, at least. You can still find KaZaaa Lite, if you try a little harder. It only took me about an extra 5 minutes to locate and snarf a copy.

BTW, Google have posted a link to the lawyer's letter that provoked the takedown - and that letter was instrumental in my finding a copy to download.

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Thursday, 19th August

Repeated reinstalls of the networking software haven't fixed Celery. For a while, I could ping and traceroute to selected sites on the Internet by name, but not others. Finally, another network reinstall seems to have totally stuffed something, so I suspect my only option is going to be a full reinstall. If I do that, I'll upgrade him to WinME - I've run out of Win98 licences. And aren't the incessant reboots annoying?

Maybe the network card has cooked up, but I don't think so. Meanwhile, King is still running well, crunching (slowly - 17-odd hours per WU) for S@H Classic, and collecting cartoon strips on a daily cron job. His uptime is currently just shy of 52 days, and the Seti stats stand as follows:-

Results Received 1196
Total CPU Time 4.336 years
Average CPU Time per work unit 31 hr 45 min 27.4 sec
Average results received per day 1.06
Last result returned Thu Aug 19 18:47:21 2004 UTC
Registered on Sun Jul 22 12:35:53 2001 UTC
SETI@home user for 3.080 years
Your rank out of 5100101 total users is 220334th place
The number of users who have this rank           158
You have completed more work units than 95.677% of our users


Katy got her A-Level exam results today, and despite the general grade inflation - newspaper reports indicate 96% of candidates passed the exams, 22% of them with Grade A or better - the results from the school are not good. And why weren't the teachers there to help?

Katy has missed out on her preferred university, due to insufficiently good grades, and now has to go through the mill of "Clearing", which involves a great deal of 'phoning around to find a uni. which does a course you like, and which will accept the grades you have. It helps if you have fast internet access at the same time.

Since Celery is not working, I had to set up Zaphod so that Jenny could help Katy with her inquiries. The girls took over the lounge, with both computers side by side, and I was required to get in a fish and chip lunch.

I also kept a low profile, given Katy's propensity to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation - and when she does that, she lashes out verbally at anyone within range. I don't need ranted at.

Talking of grade inflation, I don't know whether the exams are easier, the marking more lenient, or the students more knowledgeable - probably something of all those. Anecdotal evidence from teachers who have been involved in marking is that result thresholds are lower, and the exam process is certainly easier - you do the examination piecemeal over the year in coursework, and then there are a slew of short modular papers in the summer. In my day, it was one or two 3-hour papers in the summer, plus a practical in science subjects, and you stood or fell on the results of that. Nowadays, you retake modules, and polish your coursework as required to get the best grades.

I have to say that, grade inflation or no, the A-level exam as currently constituted is fast becoming useless as a selection criterion for further education. In my day - and to an extent, today - required grades of 2 'B's and a 'C' were common. A college might stretch a point and accept a high 'D' instead of the 'C', but now they are rigidly insisting on a minimum of the requested grades. This year, I've heard of at least one girl who was 2 marks short of the 'C' she needed, and was flatly refused. It is easily forseeable that straight 'A's will be required in a few years - no-one else need apply. The universities are already floating the idea of an extra essay-based question as part of their selection procedure, or so at least one of the public prints would have us believe.

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Friday, 20th August

Well, Katy has found herself a course, at University of Wales, Aberystwyth. There's an Open Day there tomorrow, so I've got to get train tickets. And Katy and Jane will have to travel today - they can't get there in time if they leave tomorrow. Accommodation, in a bed-and-breakfast, is booked (found on-line, booked by 'phone), and I've got the rail tickets. All this before I had to disappear to work - good going, eh?

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Saturday, 21st August

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Sunday, 22nd August

Three days of ingesting new movies at work - and the shelves are empty, which gives a sense of achievement. On the videotape side, there's not much, either - and most of that is for export.

The visit to Aberystwyth was a success - Katy seems enthusiastic about it, but getting there is a hassle - the final part of the trip is down a single-track rail line, which regularly gets blocked by weather conditions. The return trip last night was one such - leave Aberystwyth at about 17:30, and arrive home at 03:00 or so, after 4 trains, a coach and a mini-cab. Can you say "shambolic"?

I ordered me a Palm Tungsten T3 from Expansys on Friday, complete with the ProPorta aluminium case, a universal sync cable, and 128MB of Multimedia card for storage. The whole lot cost me UKP299 and change, and was delivered on Saturday morning, early - which has to be good.

Saturday morning was taken up with setting it up - new version of Palm Desktop, configured similarly to the old, and a full USB HotSync. I used to have a couple of apps on the M105 that are now redundant, since the T3 has equivalents built in, so I removed those.

Mobipocket Reader works beautifully - the screen is very clear and easy to read, although Mobipocket doesn't understand the 320x480 resolution. PocketAPRS works, very fast, but freezes the Palm on exit - soft reset required. This is a known bug in V1.94 of PocketAPRS, and is being worked on.
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