dom.blog

I’m in such a good mood right now I could sing (but you don’t want that, trust me)

– Half Term! Whole week of school-less life.

– Last ever Friends! And wasn’t it great. We watched it as a family, like 99% of the country I’d imagine. And managed to switch off before Big Bore came on as well.

– Darren Brown! (Hell, I just like this show. 23:10)

– I’m going to Rome! Yup, on Wednesday. So better make sure I do all my coursework before then. I’m going to Rome!

– NEW PC! For those of you who chat to me on MSN you might be familiar with the long, difficult birth of PC3. Well it’s finally ordered – 2.8 Ghz, Office 2003 Professional, Windows XP etc etc etc – and it’s going in my room. How I managed that I have no idea, but I expect my sisters will be poking their heads round the door a lot more often now, right

(Just to demonstrate what a strange family we are, we’ve had a big discussion over what to call it. It’s NOT ‘Dominic’s Computer’ because, well, that’s wrong – it’s not. So we’ve settled on PC3, cause it reminds me of BBC3.)

For those of you who are having an utterly miserable, depressing time – I’m sorry for any mental damage I may have caused. In fact, that goes for the rest of you as well. Sorry!

That nonsensical title cleverly (well, stupidly really) introduces my three topics today…

1. Billie Piper is Doctor Who’s new companion, Rose Tyler! Apparently she can act as well as sing, buy loads of houses, endure Chris Evans and look lovely. Well, I trust the new production team to get things right, so it’s looking good as ever. Roll on 2005…

2. I’ve decided to install Zone Alarm (free version) on all computers in my network and so far, fingers crossed, it seems to be working well. I’d delayed getting a firewall before now because I was kindof protected by NAT already, but what’s the harm in a little extra security? After all – it’s free!

2. I get to learn Java! My very large and heavy manual arrived today from Goldman Sachs who are paying for the online course (don’t ask me why). Should be fun if I get the knack of programming, I’ve only ever done QBASIC before (!) – but that was fun

Today I met up again with the one and only Bill Thompson of www.andfinally.com, and had a great discussion about Google, Gmail and whether we should be trusting private US companies to handle our mail and carry out our searches (hint: maybe not)

And today’s other hot IT topic – Messenger Plus! released version 3 of the brilliant add on to MSN Messenger. I use it mainly so I can monitor non-Hotmail email accounts but it’s packed with features so I’d encourage any heavy MSN user to check it out! It does come with a sponsor program but this is entirely optional, as long as you READ the installation carefully you won’t install it and will have no problems. (Well, you’ll always have problems cause it’s a computer, but just slightly less problems that you would have done.) Am I making any sense? (hint: definitely not)

Oh, and finally – you’d have thought Google owned Blogger would have recognised ‘Google’ or ‘Blogger’ as a word in its dictionary? Apparently not.

For those of you desperately staying up till the early morning worrying about my stolen phone the good news is that my SIM card and replacement phone both arrived and that I’m back to normal with the same number.

I’ve also developed a strategy – if I get mugged again, assuming they don’t hold out knives I’m going to act completely crazy, sprouting nonsense words (very loudly!) and asking them questions like “What’s your favourite colour?”

That ought to scare them off – or have me shot, of course. Well, we’ll see. Bring it on, London’s street dwelling cowards. I’m ready!

Well after ordering a replacement phone (with £25 free airtime – woo hoo!) from Virgin Mobile I noticed on their site that picture messaging and GPRS (a faster type of WAP) are both now officially on the way.

Virgin Mobile

Here’s hoping the prices for them aren’t sky high…