Posts from 2008

The Blog After the Blog Before

Richard Green on 7th September 2008

So I couldn’t think of a good title for this entry, so the random title will just have to do. I haven’t written anything for a week now, so I’m going to play catch up.

Last week Monday was Labour Day here which means bank holiday: Made up for missing the bank holiday Monday in England as that day was a working day here. The four of us went to Gilroy shopping outlets on the Monday and probably spent too much money, but it was all so cheap and people did give us spending money to spend after all.

Good Day Santa Cruz

Richard Green on 1st September 2008

Today was another great day.

After writing my blog from last night I continued my search for my Black 80GB Zune and I found a store called CircuitCity which had them in stock at the San Jose branch. Needless to say, I swiftly placed my reservation and we collected them first thing this morning, so Gaz – it’s in the bag.

Jessie and the Teeth

Richard Green on 31st August 2008

Although I just wrote a blog, I thought I would blog this one seperatly.

Jessie is no longer Jessie two fang: She has been upgraded to Jessie 4 fang. Her top two teeth have been teetering on the edge of coming through for the past few days and today it’s pretty must offical that they are through, so say hello to four fang!

What a cute little podge 🙂

San Francisco

Richard Green on 31st August 2008

So today being Saturday, the start of the long Labour Day weekend in the US, we made our first proper trip out somewhere to San Francisco as the title kind of gives away!

We had to change the rental car this morning because Hertz where charging a $25 per day young driver excess so we picked up a new car from Enterprise in San Jose Airport and then drive in convoy to San Francisco Airport to drop off the old car, the old car being a Pontiac G6 which was pretty nice in exchange for the new Ford Fusion, although it’s nothing like the Ford Fusion on sale in the UK.

San Jose Here We Are

Richard Green on 29th August 2008

So we flew out of Heathrow Terminal 5 on Sunday at about 2pm, landed at San Francisco about 4.45pm, 8hrs behind UK time after a traumatic demon child filled 10hr flight here, but that said the flight was great. We flew British Airways on a 747 which was an experience being on something that big, and I have to say I was most impressed by their in flight entertainment service which was an on-demand video, music and TV service meaning we could watch what we wanted when we wanted and it worked really well. I’d love to know what they had running that for a media server because it must have had a hell of a lot of horsepower under the bonnet!

DNS Exploit Now Officially Breeched

Richard Green on 1st August 2008

Recently a DNS exploit was discovered by Dan Kaminsky. This exploit was reportedly so big that he decided to keep the details close to hand until everyone had a chance to plug their DNS servers, however this plan failed somewhat and details of it got online.

Whilst most people fixed their DNS some major players like AT&T and Apple are still yet to fix the issue, and the first released reports of the exploit being performed came to light today.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/31/dns_cache_poisoning_goes_wild/

Whilst there are incidents prior to this known by Dan Kaminsky he has signed NDA’s to keep the details quiet.

Lets hope people start to look more seriously at fixing this one huh.

Windows Vista Ã¢â‚¬Å“MojaveÃ¢â‚¬Â

Richard Green on 30th July 2008

So Microsoft has decided to change the way it markets Vista, and they have realised that due to the bad press it got from the word go they need to try to turn the feelings of these people.

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/#

Apple Fan Boys Desert

Richard Green on 28th July 2008

No, I’m not talking about a group of Apple fans sat around eating cake, I’m talking about a lot of Apple fans seeming to be quite annoyed with Mr Jobs and his crew and it would seem to be sparked by the iPhone 2.0 firmware and MobileMe.

I was doing the normal rounds with a quick read of some of my RSS feeds and found this article.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/26/apple-admits-to-lost-mobileme-messages-bad-karma/

I sounded like a topic to start a row between the fan boys, the Microsoft lovers (that’s me) and the people sitting on the fence and staying the hell out of it. I read down to the comments and wow Ã¢â‚¬â€œ This is the first time I have ever seen Apple fans actually taking words against Apple, so come on down the big M and enjoy the view.

PS: Did I mention that LiveMesh is free, works on PC, mobile devices via m.mesh.com and soonwill be supporting mobile devices using an actual client and Mac support too. Did I say it was free?

File Sharing Warning Letters

Richard Green on 25th July 2008

So in the news yesterday on TorrentFreak, Engadget to name a few news sites was the talk of the agreement to mass mail people about downloading of content from the Internet Ã¢â‚¬Ëœillegally’.

According to news, the big six ISP’s in the UK will be part of this deal being Virgin Media, BT, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse (AOL and TalkTalk). The current deal seems to be that they will issue warning letters to people they suspect of downloading content, a step which Virgin has already taken of late to be much ignored it would seem.

What Another Day to Work in Farnborough

Richard Green on 11th July 2008

So this morning, I wrote about what I’d seen yesterday, but today the Red Arrows have blessed us with a 20min overhead display.

It would seem that they’ve landed at Farnborough also, so whether they are just popping in for fuel or staying until Monday who knows.

Britain just isn’t British without the Red Arrows 🙂