Yes it’s that time of year when we eat too much, drink too much and have unnecessary arguments with relatives over the pitiful TV that they laughingly call entertainment.

As one of my readers, you’re probably going to be in receipt of a number of gadgets, gizmo’s and techno-treats this year (despite the death of the British Pound according to my friend HERE)

The question is… what do you do with all your old tech? Well here are some ideas of how you could repurpose that equipment:-

Laptop’s

Despite your apparent need for 4Gb’s of RAM and Quad-core processing, that old laptop of yours seemed blisteringly fast a couple of Christmas’s ago… so what happened? Well ‘you did’ apparently… Most PCs and Laptops just get slower due to lots of unnecessary software, media and temporary files. Of course at this point you already have a nice new shiny one, so why don’t you format the hard-drive on the old one (or use the recovery disks) and give it to your Nan or Grandad so they can Skype you? One useful idea is to put Ubuntu on it as there is then little danger of Trojans, Viruses or Malware infecting your poor unsuspecting (and unknowledgeable) Grandparents.

Ubuntu Installation Guide: [link]

Old Net-tops, Notebooks and Underpowered PC’s

There is an excellent article on LifeHacker.com that details how to create your own Media Center PC from an old computer [link] or you could even turn it into a NAS (Network Attached Storage device) for your home network for the purposes of Backup (Pictures etc), Media (Music, Films) or for downloading .torrent files etc. Again this is detailed in a nice article from LifeHacker [link]

Mobile/Cell Phones

Yes… we all need the latest iPhone or Android (obviously the latter if you are a proper tech-head!), but that Nokia or Samsung you use to use for making calls and sending texts is still a perfectly functional bit of kit. Here are some ideas for that too:-

• Stick a Pre-pay SIM in it (on a different network to your usual one), and put it in the boot of your car with a cigarette lighter charger for emergencies – e.g. Your phone is dead/lost/no signal and you have broken down.
• Stick a Pre-pay SIM in it, enable ‘fixed dialing only’ (A mechanism that only allows the phone to dial pre-configured numbers), and give it to your young children to put in their School bag. They can’t call anyone or play games on it, but again, in the case of an emergency or missing a School bus…
• Give it to Phone for Heroes – they use the sale of these old handsets to support the Help for Heroes charity

Televisions

Its patently ridiculous how many TV sets we are throwing away because they are Analog… You can purchase a Freeview box for about £20 and turn it into a Digital TV, so why not put it in the spare room for when the kids are home for Christmas or make sure that Granny can watch TV in the Kitchen and Bedroom?

If you still have no use for it, then take it to a charity shop as they can then use the proceeds to fund a good cause.

My Guide to Reusing old TV and HiFi equipment: [link]

Games Consoles

Its frightening how many games consoles end up at the local tip… Those old XBOX consoles are probably one of the most hackable devices out there. By making a minor internal modification with an xecuter chip, you can use XBMC (XBOX Media Center) software and turn your XBOX into a full-blown Music and Video media box. Marry this up with one of the old TV’s above, and you’ve created a Media box for your games room/summer house.

Installing XBMC on an XBOX: [link]

Surround-sound / All-in-one players

Well these are fantastic for enhanced the kids games-room – add one of these to their games console and they have a more immersive experience, and the volume levels tend to go down. Another good use for these is to add to the Media system detailed above and place in your Summerhouse/Shed for those garden parties. Its just a case of unwinding the speaker wires and you have a sound system in the Garden. Add an old Radio Receiver and you can pipe your favourite music station into the garden whilst sunbathing.

My Guide to Reusing old HiFi equipment: [link]

First of all, lets get the obvious out of the way:-

I am in no way responsible for any damage, voiding of warranties, loss of data or inability to use your TouchPad based on the information below. The use of this information is completely at your own risk, and it is your fault if you brick your device.

SPECIAL THANKS should go to Dalingin and all of the CyanogenMod team for making this possible – You guys rock!

This information presumes the following:-

• You are using Windows
• You know what a “Command Prompt” is
• You have at least half-a-idea what you are doing…

Please do not email / msg me with questions, place comments at the bottom of this post, and I will (if I can) try to answer them.

This information is gleaned from RootzWiki, XDADevelopers and #cyanogenmod-touchpad IRC channels.

For this I used:

• 1 x HP TouchPad 16Gb
• 1 x Sony Laptop (Win7 64bit)
• 1 x USB Lead
• 1 x Coffee
• 1 x Cheesy Comestibles

(the last two aren’t necessesary, but make the experience a bit nicer!)

Before Installing watch this video for an overview of the process for the initial install:
http://tinyurl.com/3exy2v8

NOTE: YOU MUST HAVE JAVA INSTALLED – you can check this by opening a command prompt and typing: java -version

If you don’t get something similar, goto:  http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Lets Begin!

1. Download files from http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?4011-Discussion-CyanogenMod-team-Touchpad-port

Note: The links above is for the Alpha Release – Check the RootzWiki forum for later versions

README and Installer: – REQUIRED
CM7: – REQUIRED
Clockwork Recovery: - RECOMMENDED

(The 3 above items are contained in the Alpha Release in the above Rootzwiki link)

Moboot(bootloader menu) – REQUIRED
http://code.google.com/p/moboot/downloads/list

GAPPS (Google Apps) – REQUIRED FOR GOOGLE MARKET
http://goo-inside.me/gapps (select 20110828 Universal” at the top)

Moboot(bootloader menu) – REQUIRED
http://code.google.com/p/moboot/downloads/list

GAPPS (Google Apps) - REQUIRED FOR GOOGLE MARKET
http://goo-inside.me/gapps (select 20110828 Universal” at the top)

NOTE: If you are ‘upgrading’ from Alpha1 to Alpha2, just use the ClockworkMod Recovery (described in Step 15) to install the CyanogenMod main ZIP file.

2. Novacom  (The tool that sends the update to the TouchPad)  - REQUIRED – WITHOUT THIS NOTHING WORKS!

http://forums.precentral.net/canuck-coding/278224-universal-novacom-installer-uni-v1-2-1-a.html

Also note, if you have older versions of Novacom, uninstall them first to avoid conflicts.

3. Install Novacom, then go into Windows Services and ensure that the “Palm Novacom” service is started – If you don’t, you’ll get a “cannot connect to server” message later.

4. Insert USB Cable and click on “USB” option that pops up in the top left of the WebOS screen

5. On the PC, you’ll see this:-

6. Create a folder called cminstall on the TouchPad drive

7. Copy the following files into the cminstall folder:-

• update-cm-7.1.0-tenderloin-a1-fullofbugs.zip     (or whatever the latest one is at the time of reading this)
  
• update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip
• moboot_0.3.3.zip
• gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip

8. Safely Unmount/Eject the TouchPad drive from your PC (use the Windows Tasktray option) but leave the cable plugged in

9. On the TouchPad WebOS, go into “Settings, Device Info, Reset Options, Restart” – The TP will reset. As soon as the spinning icon (Before the HP Logo) appears, hold down the Volume-up button until a USB logo (smaller than the one in step4) appears on the TP Screen. If it doesn’t appear, try power and volume up.

10. Unzip the Copy Readme/Installer and copy the ACMEInstaller into the Novacom program folder

Note: This could be “C:\Program Files\Palm, Inc”, or something like “c:\program files (x86)\HP SDK\bin”

11. Start a command prompt – NOTE: In Win7 use ‘right-click “run as Administrator”‘

12. Navigate to the folder where you unzipped the ACMEInstaller (cd “\program files…. etc”)

13. At the PC command prompt type : novacom boot mem:// < ACMEInstaller

14. You should see the TP start installing CM7 – BE PATIENT – This can take about 10-20 mins.

You *MAY* get a lot of ‘Alarm Expired’ warnings – Ignore them and wait, wait, wait….

When it reboots, you should see a nice CM7 Desktop, but we still need to install some more goodies….

15. IF the main Google Apps (e.g. Market) are missing, then perform this step:-

First we need to get all the standard Google Apps, this is done by downloading the latest CM7 Google Apps package from http://goo-inside.me/gapps (“20110828 Universal” at the top) and place in the ‘downloads’ folder on the TP. Reboot the TP into ‘recovery’ mode (press and hold power and select ‘recovery’), and then select “install zip from sd card” and select the gapps zip file you copied onto the system, then reboot

(More information can be found here: http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?7809-How-to-Install-Google-Market-amp-Apps-on-CM7-Alpha-TouchPad)

16. There are various other ‘key’ apps that may or may not work, and here is a workaround for Maps, Facebook and Twitter

Mount your USB on the TouchPad (slide up the notification bar. touch “USB Connected” and then “Turn on USB Storage”). Copy the following ZIPs into the ‘Downloads’ folder.

• Facebook APK:
• 1.5.2 – http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1018816
• 1.6.4 – http://www.apktop.com/facebook-for-android-1-6-4-themed.html
• 1.7.2 – http://www.filesonic.com/file/2349366644 (this one will FC unless you use FakeGPS or something similar)

• Twitter APK: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1270284

• MAPS APK: http://alchemistar.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-maps-v50-now-in-3d.html

• Lots of useful apps together in one place: http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?7828-Missing-Market-Apps-Installer (courtesy of SonofSkywalker3 on IRC)

Unmount the USB and then use File Manager on the TP to browse to the Downloads folder and install each of the APK’s.

Another Market Fix – Show ‘hidden’ apps (Like Google Maps) – NOTE: Not needed for Alpha 2

This one is a ‘recovery’ fix (see item 15 for example of how to install)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27861013/update-cm-7.1.0-tenderloin-marketfix-Flemmard.zip

Pairing the HP BlueTooth Keyboard

Wallpapers look a bit pants?

Getting write access to /system (for things like AdFree, Chainfire 3D Pro and ES Explorer to work) – Thanks to <exiles> on IRC for that one.

Note: This can be dangerous – Not for the faint of heart… and will be fixed in the next release. This is issue 113 – Please check for updates here: http://code.google.com/p/cmtouchpad/issues/detail?id=113

Open a Terminal Emulator and, and type the following commands (the ‘su’ command will prompt for superuser privileges – select ‘yes’):-

su
busybox mount -o rw,remount /system
cd /system/xbin
ln -s busybox mount
mount -o ro,remount /system
exit
exit

I’m stuck and need more help!

The first thing to do is check the ‘issues’ list here:- http://code.google.com/p/cmtouchpad/issues/

Or you can visit http://webchat.freenode.net/ and chat to the guys in the #cyanogenmod-touchpad channel

Some of the common FAQ’s

Q: How can I install ClockworkMod after installing CyanogenMod?
A: Repeat the install process as you installed CyanogenMod, but this time simply put the ClockworkMod zip file in the cminstall folder in the “media partition”. Now repeat the process of running the ACME Installer, and ClockworkMod will be installed. A new option will appear in moboot for selection to boot ClockworkMod.
Q: How can I install moboot after installing CyanogenMod?
A: Repeat the install process as you installed CyanogenMod, but this time simply put the moboot zip file in the cminstall folder in the “media partition”. Now repeat the process of running the ACME Installer, and moboot will be installed. A new menu will appear on each boot, to allow you to select the desired boot option using the volume keys, and then the home key to select.
Q: HELP HELP my Touchpad is frozen. It’s been like this for over 20 minutes.
A: Hold down power + home for at least 20 seconds and the Touchpad will reboot.
Q: How do I select in moboot?
A: Select the desired boot option using the volume keys, and then the home key to select.
Q: Selecting “Reboot to WebOS” reboots to android
A: Install moboot per the instructions above.
Q: How do I install Google Apps? (Gapps)
A: Download the latest CM7 Google Apps package from http://goo-inside.me/gapps, and pick “20110828 Universal”. Install this ZIP via either ClockworkMod as you usually would flash a zip, or use the ACMEInstaller, like you were installing either moboot or ClockworkMod
Q: My touchpad shut off and wont turn back on now.
A: HARD REBOOT (POWER+HOME BUTTON) for 20-30 seconds works.

The question that I have to ask myself is; How can I really protect myself online?

Ask yourself this simple question: Do I use the same/similar passwords for all my accounts?

Now I happen not to, but I am in no way adept at protecting myself. In fact this very blog has been attacked in the past by Spam Bots, and when the Gawker sites got hacked, I quickly found my Facebook and Twitter accounts had been accessed.

How can you prevent the cascading loss of your identities?

Well I now use this set of simple rules:-

• NEVER use the same password across all my accounts. This is the golden rule!
• I (try to) use differing passwords for differing systems, for example;
  • Banking -> I use a different password for ALL online banking accounts and credit cards.
  • Online ‘forums’ that don’t matter -> I use one password for them all
  • Chat Clients (MSN, Skype etc) -> I use one password (but not the same as the ‘forums’ one)
  • eBay -> Unique password
  • PayPal -> Unique Password (but similar to eBay so I don’t forget it)
  • Desktop / Laptop -> Unique passwords for each
• I use numbers instead of vowels and punctuation marks in order to make long/complex passwords.
  • Consider the password “password1″ – that could take Dictionary attack a few seconds to bypass, whereas “p4ssw0rd_h4rd” would probably only be cracked by Brute-force and could take days.
• I Check my password strengths here: http://www.passwordmeter.com/
• I use alternative email addresses (e.g. an unused Hotmail account) for Forum/Tech sites that force you to register.

So now you see what I do, consider these common passwords and ask yourself how many of them (or variants) you use…..

• Wifes name
• Kids name
• Date of Birth (forwards, backwards, wife’s, kid’s etc)
• Favourite pets name
• “Password”
• “12345″
• “Computer”
• “Fred”

Scared? )

This might interested you too – XKCD’s detailed description of how insecure your password could be, even following these rules…

Some of you who know me, know that I live in an area of England called ‘The Dengie Peninsular’. This is basically an outcrop of land in Essex that lies between the Crouch and Blackwater rivers, and includes the large towns of Maldon and South Woodham Ferrers. At the centre of this Peninsular is a village called Tillingham, purportedly having the lowest rainfall for the whole of the UK!

On this Peninsular is another village called Latchingdon, and this is where a good friend of mine called Vincent Basham lives.

Vince is a self-taught seascape artist, whose sharp eye for detail and ability to capture the motion of the waves clearly shows in his work.

Born in Maldon, Essex, and educated at Thurstable School in Tiptree. he has developed a passion for painting seascapes and sunsets since living in Cornwall during his early twenties. This passion lay dormant until recently when following back surgery, he had to re-think his glazing career of 30 years. He has now taken his art into a full-time occupation, and is continually honing his skills. Recently he has been mentored by another famous professional Essex born landscape artist. Although he has painted purely for pleasure during his glazing career, he was re-inspired following holidays to the Maldives and Cyprus which proved inspirational. He paints mainly in oils, and most of his work features the locations he is familiar with (such as St. Georges in Cyprus, or the Crouch River in Essex)

Vincent was recently signed to a Gallery in the west country, and has released a series of his paintings as limited edition lithographic prints of 195 or less.

You can view all of his artwork in his interactive gallery on his website at: http://www.vincentbasham.co.uk

Yes… Can you believe it… I’ve changed phone again!

I’ve left the good ship Apple, and hoisting my Jolly Roger, jumped aboard the frigate Android.

My first impressions of Andriod (2.1) is that it is more powerful than iOS4, but perhaps not as polished. Clearly there are much better ways of doing certain things, and maybe Apple’s iOS (or iPhone itself for that matter…) are not as powerful, but you have to hand it to the guys down in Cupertino, they sure know how to give something ‘form’. That said, the Andriod OS provides a lot more flexability that iOS, and there are certain aspects of it which clearly surpass iOS.

At this stage I would say that I am 50/50 as to which is better, and I will be holding out my judgment until the Froyo update appears for my Samsung (next month I hope!)

Anyway, after wrestling with Android, these are my Tips ‘n Tricks to help you along your way…

Contacts & Calendar Syncronisation

Well forget doing a straightforward Contact Sync… it’s not going to happen with Outlook, at least not directly. The Samsung software is s**t, and there is no standard Andriod<->Outlook tool our there for free [Feel free to correct me if you know different! Ed.]

What I did was this:-

• Exported all my contacts from Outlook to a CSV file.
• Wiped my GMail contacts.
• Imported (using their standard tool) the CSV file.
• Android then auto-syncs the contacts.

Calendar syncing on the other hand is straightforward; Use the ‘Google Calendar Sync’ applet from Google (free) and that’s it! Android will sync back and forth with no issues.

Keyboard

After a little acclimatisation, I’ve found that the ‘Swype’ keyboard works really well. Just press and hold on any text input box to change the ‘Input Method’ to Swype. The tutorials (available by pressing the Swype button on the keyboard) really helped me a lot.

Desktop (or Winterboard for you iPhone users!)

Android has some nice features, some of which I think may be unique to the desktop on the Samsung version of 2.1, namely the ability to create folders, but not just folder that contain apps, but folders that (for instance) contain recently received files over Bluetooth, or Favourite contacts. In addition, you can add ‘widgets’ to the desktop (e.g. Facebook status, Twitter, Weather etc)

Global Search

This is acheived by pressing and holding the left-hand context menu. You can exclude/include search areas within the settings pages (e.g. Hide Twitter contacts)

Navigation & Augmented Reality

Make sure you download the latest ‘Google Maps’ and ‘Wikitude’, the former now has turn-by-turn (complete with Street View integration!), and the latter lets you use your phone to find, for instance, a local ATM by holding your phone up and layering the information over the camera’s view. Google Goggles is also very interesting and uses the camera to provide information & translations (e.g. point at a foreign road sign!)

Secret Codes (not tested by me…)

Rooting your Device (for Android 2.1)

• update (this is the zip file you will need)

1. First, install the correct drivers for the Galaxy S onto your computer.
2. Connect your Galaxy S to your computer, and mount the internal storage drive.
   • It’s easiest to find out which is which by taking out the ‘external’ Micro SD card under the cover (if installed), that way only one  drive will appear when you mount the device.
   • To mount, pull down your notification bar and select the “USB connected” notification, then tap Mount.
3. Place the file (link above) into the Internal storage.
4. Now you want to get into the recovery mode.
   • Turn off your Galaxy, and hold down Volume Up and Home keys while pressing power.
   • Hold all three until you get the opening image, and then release the Power key, but keep the other two held until you end up in recovery mode.
   • To navigate, use the volume up and down to move the highlighted area, and the Power button to select.
5. Select Reinstall Packages, and hit the power button.
6. The file will install, allow it to do so and reboot.
7. Once the Galaxy is rebooted, you should notice the SuperUser application in the app drawer. You’ve got root access, and the SuperUser applet will always pop up to ask if you want to permit an app to have root.

Once you have root, you can get some more interesting apps from the Marketplace – for instance, a screen capture app (yes… I know its built into iOS…) which works without having to use the SDK.

Rooting 2.2 (Froyo)

Simply visit here:-

http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-root-and-unroot-samsung-galaxy-s-i9000-with-a-single-click/

Rooting 2.2 + Speed Fix (Froyo + Speed Fix)

This is a *really* good site, complete with a (non-megashare style) download link!

http://hemorrdroids.net/froyo-with-new-speed-fix/

You will of course know how difficult it has been for the humble 3GS iPhone user to JailBreak his/her phone. Well finally a group of elite hackers and coders have put together a ‘userland’ Jailbreak.

‘userland’ means simply – point and click… no complex restore processes; just plug your phone in and press ‘Jailbreak’

You can download it at http://spiritjb.com/

I’m off now to download all those Cydia goodies that I miss )

UPDATE – July 2010

This has now of course been superseded by www.JailbreakMe.com – this site doesn’t even require you to connect your iPhone to a PC, just simply visit the URL from Safari on the phone itself. Once complete, run all the Cydia updates, reboot and then you can install Ultrasn0w to allow full unlocking (at present up to 4.0.1 firmware) to any carrier.

I’ve been playing with my iPhone, and have discovered that a lot of the GSM codes that work on your average Nokia, also seem to work on the iPhone – but with more detail

I’ve compiled a list of these below (and yes… blatently borrowed the information from various other websites!) – I haven’t checked all of these codes, but most seem to work as described.

Note: (Call) means press the ‘Call’ button after entering the code shown…

General Codes

Call Forwarding / Divert (for each call type, e.g. Voice, Data, etc):

Call Barring/Blocking:

For Pre-pay / PAYG phones (these seem to be AT&T specific, but give them a go!):

That’s all folks!

Paul

Ok, before we begin, you need to check that you have the following configured:-

• iPhone (Jailbroken) with Cydia installed
• A PC (or Mac) with a SFTP (SSH Secure FTP) client (FileZilla is a nice ‘free’ client)
• A copy of the ROMs you want to play
• A fair idea of how to use Cydia, SFTP, SSH etc…

Step 1.

Install Mame4iPhone, simply search on Cydia for ‘Mame’ (from the ZodTTD repository) and it will be the 2nd or 3rd item down the list.

Step 2.

Install “WhatIP” from Cydia (this app will tell you what IP address your iPhone is using)

Step 3.

Go back to the iPhone home screen, and tap on the WhatIP icon. You should see something like this:-

Step 4.

SFTP into your iPhone – The default username / password is “root” and “alpine”  [As a side note, its a good idea to change this!]

Place the ROM’s into the following folder: /var/mobile/Media/ROMs/MAME/roms

Step 5.

Play !!!!

As you probably know by now, I’m a VB programmer. I’ve spent many year using VB6, and am now (under duress) having to migrate to VB.NET.

The purpose of this article is to show you some cool hint’s, tip’s, trick’s and bug-fixes that I’ve found along the way. I’ll be updating this Blog entry as time moves forward, so stay tuned to this one!

List View Flickers

This is just plain stupid. The standard ListView control (as part of the Common Control Library 6) invalidates the entire control each time a new item is added – e.g. lvInfo.Items.Add(“Hello World”)

This can be fixed using a little bit of Windows ‘SendMessage’ tweaking;

' Place at the top of the Form Class

Declare Auto Function SendMessage Lib "user32.dll" (ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, _
 ByVal msg As Integer, _
 ByVal wParam As IntPtr, _
 ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As IntPtr

 Const LVM_FIRST = &H1000
 Const LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE = (LVM_FIRST + 54)
 Const LVM_GETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE = (LVM_FIRST + 55)
 Const LVS_EX_DOUBLEBUFFER = &H10000
 Const LVS_EX_BORDERSELECT = &H8000

' Place in the Form_Load event

 Dim styles As Long
 styles = SendMessage(lvInfo.Handle, LVM_GETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0, 0&)
 styles = styles Or LVS_EX_DOUBLEBUFFER Or LVS_EX_BORDERSELECT
 Call SendMessage(lvInfo.Handle, LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0, styles)

This fix gives you a nice, smooth update each time.

The next fix is “How to keep the last item entered into a ListView visible…”

lv = myFormName.lvInfo.Items.Add("My Information to Show")
lv.EnsureVisible()

Simple, but effective!

Getting the App.Path in VB.NET

Another simple one (when you know it!) :-

Dim AppPath As String = Application.StartupPath()

Reading and Writing INI Files

Microsoft wants us to abandon INI Files and use XML instead. Whilst this may seem logical, its not always the simplest way of doing something (which sums VB.NET up really….) – This Class will give you a simple way of reading and writing INI Files.

Public Class IniFile
 ' API functions
 Private Declare Ansi Function GetPrivateProfileString _
 Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "GetPrivateProfileStringA" _
 (ByVal lpApplicationName As String, _
 ByVal lpKeyName As String, ByVal lpDefault As String, _
 ByVal lpReturnedString As System.Text.StringBuilder, _
 ByVal nSize As Integer, ByVal lpFileName As String) _
 As Integer
 Private Declare Ansi Function WritePrivateProfileString _
 Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "WritePrivateProfileStringA" _
 (ByVal lpApplicationName As String, _
 ByVal lpKeyName As String, ByVal lpString As String, _
 ByVal lpFileName As String) As Integer
 Private Declare Ansi Function GetPrivateProfileInt _
 Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "GetPrivateProfileIntA" _
 (ByVal lpApplicationName As String, _
 ByVal lpKeyName As String, ByVal nDefault As Integer, _
 ByVal lpFileName As String) As Integer
 Private Declare Ansi Function FlushPrivateProfileString _
 Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "WritePrivateProfileStringA" _
 (ByVal lpApplicationName As Integer, _
 ByVal lpKeyName As Integer, ByVal lpString As Integer, _
 ByVal lpFileName As String) As Integer
 Dim strFilename As String

 ' Constructor, accepting a filename
 Public Sub New(ByVal Filename As String)
 strFilename = Filename
 End Sub

 ' Read-only filename property
 ReadOnly Property FileName() As String
 Get
 Return strFilename
 End Get
 End Property

 Public Function GetString(ByVal Section As String, _
 ByVal Key As String, ByVal [Default] As String) As String
 ' Returns a string from your INI file
 Dim intCharCount As Integer
 Dim objResult As New System.Text.StringBuilder(256)
 intCharCount = GetPrivateProfileString(Section, Key, _
 [Default], objResult, objResult.Capacity, strFilename)
 If intCharCount > 0 Then GetString = _
 Left(objResult.ToString, intCharCount)
 End Function

 Public Function GetInteger(ByVal Section As String, _
 ByVal Key As String, ByVal [Default] As Integer) As Integer
 ' Returns an integer from your INI file
 Return GetPrivateProfileInt(Section, Key, _
 [Default], strFilename)
 End Function

 Public Sub WriteString(ByVal Section As String, _
 ByVal Key As String, ByVal Value As String)
 ' Writes a string to your INI file
 WritePrivateProfileString(Section, Key, Value, strFilename)
 Flush()
 End Sub

 Public Sub WriteInteger(ByVal Section As String, _
 ByVal Key As String, ByVal Value As Integer)
 ' Writes an integer to your INI file
 WriteString(Section, Key, CStr(Value))
 Flush()
 End Sub

 Private Sub Flush()
 ' Stores all the cached changes to your INI file
 FlushPrivateProfileString(0, 0, 0, strFilename)
 End Sub

 End Class

 

This can be used in the following manner:-

 Dim settings As New IniFile(Application.StartupPath & "\My_INI_File.ini")
 gCustName = settings.GetString("General", "CustName", "Not Registered")
 gCustSerial = settings.GetString("General", "CustSerial", "")

Due to a very wet spring followed by a wet July, and a fantastic August, we have an abundant crop of Sloes this year. Sloes are the fruit of the Blackthorn shrubs, and when ready to pick, show a white-ish blush on the otherwise deep purple berries.

These plum-like berries are very bitter, and are only used in Jams and preserves or as a core ingredient in Sloe Gin.

Traditionally you should wait for the first frost, or even place them in the freezer overnight, but after experimentation over the last couple of years I can categorically state that this seems to have no effect whatsoever, and just appears to be folklore!

My ‘Dengie’ recipe is as follows;

• 1 x empty screw-top wine bottle (or bottle with a cork that removes easy… e.g. Port, Sherry or Pineau)
• Fresh Sloes
• 1 x Small Wine Glass of Sugar (normal granulated is fine)

Method:-

• Clean and rinse the target bottle.
• 1/2 fill with Gin (use a half-decent Gin for best results)
• Tip the wine glass of sugar into the bottle
• Wash the Sloes
• Pierce the Sloes with a fork (a ‘Silver’ one is not mandatory – despite folklore!) and place in bottle till the Gin and Sloes reach halfway up the neck of the bottle.

Note: If the Gin reaches the neck before the Sloes, tip some away (into the next bottle obviously!) as the Sloes and Gin should reach the neck of the bottle at the same time.

Ongoing Care:

• Shake the bottles vigorously once a day for the first week (the sugar will settle, so try to get it evenly mixed)
• After Week 1, shake weekly
• Wait for at least 3 months then decant the Gin (minus the berries and any sediment – I use a fine mesh sieve lined with muslin cloth) into fresh bottles

Sloe Gin is best served as a sipping aperitif in shot-glasses, or over ice for a longer drink (or carried in a hip-flask for those cold winter mornings!).

I’m told that the boozy-Sloes can be used to make an interesting Jam/Jelly afterwards, but I haven’t tried this myself yet!

2011 Update

Hello again avid reader, here is a brief update to this post: Try adding a few crushed Damson’s to the mix to make it a bit sweeter and richer, or even replace the Gin with Vodka (again, a ‘good’ one!) to make Sloe Vodka.

After much messing around, I have jailbroken my iPhone 3G that I updated to 3.0 firmware on Friday.

Please note that if you want to copy my instructions and do this to your own phone YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

NOTE: These instructions explain how to JAILBREAK an iPhone 3G NOT an iPhone 3GS.

“Jailbreak” means you can run ‘unauthorised’ applications that are not in the Apple Store – It does NOT mean ‘UNLOCK’  for use on other mobile networks. Please don’t ask me how to do that.

Ok, first of all, go to http://redsn0w.com, follow the link and then download the 0.7.2 redsnow jailbreak app and unzip to a folder on your desktop.

Plug in your iPhone to the PC and ensure that you switch it OFF after you connect the USB cable.

Next run the redsn0w.exe file.

Browse to find your ipsw firmware file. This will be located in:-

 c:\Document and Settings\<your login name>\applications data\
     Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Update. 

I suggest you back up the ipsw file before you begin.

Click “Next” and ensure that you ONLY INSTALL CYDIA – If you install ICY, most of the dependencies get screwed up and you can’t download anything in Cydia.

Next follow the on-screen instructions carefully, which are:-

1. Hold down the power button till the Apple logo appears
2. Immediately hold down the Home button (whilst still holding down the power button) for about another 8 secs.
3. Release the power button, but keep the home held down for another 20 secs

During this process, the PC may install a new USB driver. If things seem to fail because of this, just start the process from the beginning.

Once the Jailbreak process starts DO NOT DISCONNECT THE CABLE OR INTERRUPT IT!

The whole thing takes about 5 mins.

On completion, go into Cydia and search for OpenSSH and install that, then install WhatIP – Once both are installed, run WhatIP to get the IP address of your iPhone and then use something like PuTTY to SSH into your phone to test it.

The username is “root” and the password is “alpine” (these are the default), if you have been successful, you should see something like this:-

Now you may ask yourself “What are the advantages” of this?

Well, some of the ‘cute’ things that Apple have now released in their 3.0 update were previously available via Cydia.

Along with these things (like Cut’n'paste, video recording etc), there are a lot of apps that Apple simply did not want users to have access to.

Fundimentally the iPhone is a Linux phone based on a Debian distribution, and because of this there are a whole raft of applets and tools that are being ported to work on this phone.

Here are some examples of the Cydia app’s that I’ve installed and use:-

“Make it Mine” - This overrides the carrier name to anything you want.

“WhatIP” (mentioned above) – Shows the IP address of your iPhone

“CompactTV” – Watch or Download South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons and American Dad

Nokia 6680

Having just upgraded to the iPhone, I then had the task of disposing of my old phone(s) – The problem is that the kids always want to steal my previous devices, but are on a different network to me.

One of the phones (a Nokia 6680) was SIM-Locked to Orange. This phone is of the type ‘BB5′, this means that the only way to unlock this till recently has been to take it to a shop. Well not any more!

This is the step by step guide to unlocking Nokia’s of the type: 6630, 6681, 6680, N70, N71, N90, N91

• Get a DKU-5 (or equivalent F-Bus) cable. The normal USB cable that comes with the phone is not suitable, it must be an F-Bus cable.
• Install Nokia PC Suite (any recent version)
• Plug the cable into the phone and then into your USB port and let your phone get detected.
• Close down any Nokia Applications that might start up.
• Right-Click on My Computer, and then on ‘Manage’
• Click on ‘Hardware Manager’ in the left-hand pane
• Expand the ‘Ports’ section and check which port the Nokia phone is on – NOTE THIS DOWN!

Ok – Next stage is to get the software.

You need to get the BB5 Calculator from here: http://users.net.yu/~dejan – [Direct Download LINK]

• Unzip the file to C:\bb5_unlocker
• Edit the “bb5_unlocker.cfg” file and change the COM Port to the one you noted above
• Double-click on install.bat
• Click on “READ PHONE”
• When it says ‘Done’, click on “MAKE LOG”
• Copy the xxx.log file (e.g. 317617303633274_BB5.log) from the /logs subfolder into the /psw folder
• Click on Exit
• Double-Click on BB5_calc.exe – it should say “Done”
• In the /psw subfolder, there will now be an xxx.psw file. Open this is in Notepad, and you will have all the unlock codes. You can either enter these manually, or :-
• double-click on BB5logunlocker.exe
• click on SP Unlock

Following these instructions, I managed to unlock two 6680′s in 2 mins flat!

Yes… It’s true… I have succumbed to the coolest gadget of them all; The Apple iPhone.

I resisted for a while (mainly due to it only being available on O2 in the UK), but in the end managed to get O2 to take over our 12 phone contract from Orange, give us 3 iPhone’s and 5 Nokia E71′s (plus a couple of spare phones), and even pay our termination clause on the Orange contract. It just shows how desperate the carriers are to get you tied into a 2 year contract nowadays!

Anyway….

First impressions; As with all Apple packaging, you feel a little disappointed as it is always very minimalist, but once you start playing with the iPhone, you realise why it is so much better than the other touch enabled devices out there. I’ve had the LG Prada, HTC Touch, HTC Touch Pro, and even the Samsungs with touch sensative buttons. I can honestly say that they are not even in the same ball-park as the iPhone.

Ok, onto the top free Apps (and as always, please feel free to comment with your fav’s as well!)

1. Free RSS Reader – forget the others, this does exactly what it say’s on the tin. Add all your favourite feeds, or browse to a site and it automatically detects any feeds that are available.  Supports Landscape
2. Google Earth – Just because it is sooooo cool to zoom in on your own house. Supports ’tilt’ view.
3. eBay – Yes… I do need to know what I am bidding on or selling 24/7 !!!!
4. iTranslate – this does need a data connection, but allows you to save phrases so that you can prepare for your encounter at the patisserie in advance! – Also has the ability to play the phrase (a little scratchy,  but still useful!) out of the speaker/headphones.
5. last.fm – Ideal for all those Audioscrobblers out there… plays your fave’s and lets you listen to the usual last.fm radio selections.
6. MMS – because the iPhone can’t do this yet!
7. VNC Lite – Allows me to manage a server remotely. It’s a bit fiddly, but it does let you do everything you need to in an emergency (e.g. Reboot the server or reload your software)
8. midomi – Remember “Shazam!”… well that cost’s £1.00 per go!… Midomi is *free* (and surprisingly recognised me humming the Godfather theme!)
9. Stanza – good intuitive eBook reader
10. GuitarChords – handy pocket aide-memoir for all your Guitar Chord needs
11. Ok, this one is a ‘Paid for’ (£2.99) application called TV Plus, but what a fantastic applet… this program allows you to view the TV listings for your region, and then instruct your Sky+ or SkyHD box to record it no matter where you are! It uses a pre-registered “My Sky” account name / password to log into Sky and then remotely instruct your Sky box to record!

Silly Stuff!

1. Pac Man Lite – Namco’s original, now ported to the iPhone
2. Jellycar – I can’t even begin to explain this… just download it and laugh!
3. Labyrinth LE – great use of the inertia sensors for marble madness fun.
4. Darts -yep… it’s Darts!
5. FS5 Hockey – Remember those happy days at the seaside playing Air Hockey with your sister!

Tips;

1. Removing an App or rearranging the ‘Desktops’

If you hold down your finger on any icon for more than a few seconds and all the icons wobble. Once they are wobbling, you can drag them from one ‘desktop’ screen to another. You can also delete them by clicking on the (X) icon in the top-left of the icon.

2. Drag an App to the far right-screen to create a new ‘desktop’ area.

Thunderbird Syncing

Ok, this is a problem at the moment, only solved by using 3rd party app’s.

Here is a solution for contacts only (calendar to follow shortly apparantly)

1. Install Funambol Mozilla Plugin into your copy of Thunderbird [link]

2. Install the Funambol iPhone app (just search for it in the Apple App store)

3. Create a free account at Funambol [link]

4. Enter the account details into the options page of Funambol on both the iPhone and Thunderbird

5. Click on Tools, Funambol Plugin on Thunderbird and click on ‘Click to Syncronize’ and wait to finish

6. Click on the Funambol icon on your iPhone and do the same

You can set Thunderbird to sync both the contacts and calendar, but only the contacts arrive on the iPhone at present. The Thunderbird client can also be set to sync automatically (but not the iPhone end)

Hi all,

As a developer I tend to install an awful lot of freeware, shareware and paid-for applications on my PC in order to assist me with the day-to-day development of applications.

However… over the years I have noticed a trend where Microsoft themselves release a lot of ”applets’ under the guise of “Microsoft Research”, “Technet” or “SysInternals” (www.SysInternals.com is now part of Microsoft Technet)

I have compiled a (not exhaustive, so please contribute) list of my favourite utilities and applications which are mainly from Microsoft (with a couple from other sources) that enhance Windows XP and Windows 2003. I haven’t tested them on Vista (as I still don’t use it!), but I suspect most of them will still work.

SysInternals Applets

• Process Explorer – A proper replacement for Windows Task Manager. This improved applet allows you to explore each process properly (instead of just showing 20 copies of RunDll32.exe like Windows Task Manager does!)

Process Explorer in Action

• FileMon – This shows all real-time file activity (with the ability to filter). Without this application I never would have fixed the album artwork issue I had on my Media PC (everything showed up as ‘The Searchers’ !!!)
• TCPView – This displays a list of all open TCP sockets, their destinations and the application that opened them. Essential for tracking trojan or malware infections.
• ADExplorer – Ideal lightweight tool for exploring Active Directory or LDAP servers. Fast, portable and free!
• BGInfo – Great applet for Server Installations. You can use this tool to display the configuration (machine name, IP address, MAC address + much more) as the desktop background. Great when you are using a KVM to access multiple machines.

BGInfo in action

Powertoys / Control Panel Tweaks

• Sequoia View – An excellent tool for visualising the contents of your hard disk (and where all the space went!)
• ClearType Tuning Control Panel – ‘Tunes’ the ClearType fonts to make them work with your LCD Display
• Command Prompt Here – Add’s an ‘Open Command Prompt Here’ option to Explorer’s right-click menu
• TweakUI – this is the ultimate Windows XP powertool, letting you change *lots* of system settings…

Fun Stuff & Utilities

• Webcam Timershot – Takes a picture of from your Webcam and saves it to your hard disk at preset intervals
• Virtual PC – Lets you run Windows, Linux or even Windows Server on your PC as a ‘Virtual Machine’
• Zune Desktop Theme – Get a nice tidy ‘Black’ look to your Windows XP desktop
• Mount ISO’s – This applet works like Daemon Tools, allowing you to mount an ISO as a virtual CD Rom drive

System Application/Applet Replacements

• Notepad2 – Everything that Notepad should have been! Line numbers, syntax highlighting, plus much more…
• 7Zip – Everything that PKZip used to be…. the ultimate Zip/unzipper, and even supports all those nasty .gz and .tar unix formats as well!
• PuTTY – Forget Hyperterminal, PuTTY is a *tiny* Telnet application that also supports SSH, Serial and just about every terminal type you will need. Ideal to put on your USB key.
• UltraVNC – This is a cross-platform remote control application that works in the same manner as PCAnywhere or GoToMyPC, except it’s ‘Free’, fast and works with all the VNC protocols. This means you can effectively control a Linux box from Windows (and visa-versa) or even your server from a mobile phone!

I will be updating this list periodically, but please feel free to comment with some more suggestions!

Paul.

Dear Avid Reader,

Here we are once again with one of my ‘real world’ hack’s… This one gets used almost every day!

In my modest home in Latchingdon, Essex – England, I have a ‘Bar in the Garden’. This ‘Bar’ is approx 25′ x 18′ and has an indoor BBQ, Gas Heating and a Bar Counter with cupboards, fridges and glass shelves.

Clearly I needed to think carefully about the entertainment system!

My key requirements were:-

• Music, TV & Internet

Now the Music would obviously come from my huge MP3 collection (and even bigger CD collection), TV would come from Satellite TV via a dish on the side of the bar.

After messing about with Windows Media Edition, I decided on using Media Portal (www.team-mediaportal.com)  which is a fantastic open-source Media Center application. Not only does it provide the usual DVD/MP3/Pictures interface, but also supports TV Cards, EPG and even a TiVO-style recording facility.

All the sound hardware was derived from old HiFi amplifiers and surround-sound systems, and the TV was a £150 HD Ready no-name from Comets.

The app plays nice with Hauppauge TV / Remote combination cards, and has a very configurable interface (with skinning capabilities).

At the other end of my bar, I have the Guitar stuff – As you can see below, I’ve set up a 2nd LCD panel (using a TV Interface board I purchased off eBay), add a £20 DVD player from Tesco and you have a play-along-with-the-music system!

Click on the Pic to see a bigger version

Hi All,

Well I went and got myself an Asus Eee PC the other day. What a fantastic piece of kit… but I have to say I didn’t like the OS much. You either have a ‘fisher price’ Xandros Linux desktop, or a Xandros KDE based one… Personally (and I am new to linux) I prefer Ubuntu’s Gnome-based layout.

Now in theory, this shouldn’t be too hard, but in order to make sure that this all works properly, I spent a great deal of time researching the process at EeeUser.com and various other sites.

This is my ‘How to’

1. Reboot your Eee PC and ensure that the boot sequence is set to ATAPI CD Rom as the first choice.
2. Plug in a USB CD Caddy and insert your Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Live CD (Download Here)
3. Once booted, click on Applications, Terminal and type gconf-editor
4. Browse to apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options and uncheck constrain_y (Full details Here) – This allows you to move any window up beyond the height of the screen, which is very much needed during this install.
5. Double Click on the “Install” Icon on the Desktop. Any time a window doesn’t fit, hold down the Alt key and drag the window off the top of the screen so you can see the buttons.
6. Go through all the normal bits until you get to the Partitioning. Select manual and delete all the existing partitions. Create one partition of 4001Mb that is EXT2 and has a mount point of “/” – Ignore any “swap partition” warnings.
7. Complete Install (answering any obvious questions accordingly)
8. Reboot (after removing the CD)
9. Redo Step 4 again (it gets lost in the install)
10. Acknowledge the Athos “Restricted Driver” message
11. Minimise Disk Writes (All obtained from Eeeuser.com) by doing the following:-
    1. Adding the following to /etc/fstab tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
    2. Repeat for /tmp, /var/lock, /var/run and /var/tmp
    3. Set defaults,noatime 0 2 on the main ext2 partition (See HERE for more details) to prevent excessive wear and tear on your SSD
    4. If you ignored me and added a swap partition as well, then edit the /etc/sysctl.conf and add a line at the end that says vm.swappiness=0 this will tell the OS to use RAM in preference to Swap files.
    5. Go into Add/Remove, and remove the pointless applications that are taking up room on your little 4Gb SSD… I removed the following:-
12. 1. Most of the games (Really…How often are you actually going to play these?)
    2. F-spot Photo Manager (I user Flikr, so not needed)
    3. OnBoard (on-screen keyboard… not needed as we have one!)
    4. Orca (I can see just fine thank you…)
    5. Xsane (Nope… no scanners or faxes plugged into my Eee)
13. Get your GMAIL all set up (Samsung tips here apply equally well… http://www.internet-tools.co.uk/blog/index.php?s=gmail)

Ok. So we have a working Eee PC running Ubuntu, but there are a few things ‘Broken’…. Battery Indicator, Wireless Lan, Webcam, Power Buttons, Lid sensor, Skype…..

Go the the Eeeuser.com site HERE to fix these issues (far to long to cut’n'paste here) and pn Samiux’s Blog HERE

But things I did fix from the Eeeuser site were:-

• Wireless network (via ndiswrapper method)
• Suspend/Resume/Power Down issues
• Webcam support (you have to enable it in the BIOS for Ubuntu to see it – it will reboot twice once enabled)

Click on the Pic to see a bigger version

The next thing was to make sure that everything took up as little space as possible. These were the steps I took:-

• Installed the ‘Littlefox’ theme into FireFox (takes up much less screen real-estate)
• Went into Appearance Preferences and set:-
  • All the fonts to 8pt
  • Icons to “Icon Only” (no text)
• Adjusted mouse sensitivity (wasn’t detecting my touchpad-taps very well)
• Set both status bars to 19 pixels in height
• Added my networked HP printer (I use a wireless gateway adapter connected to the Ethernet port on the OfficeJet)

Then I added some goodies…

• Enabled all the repositories in System, Administration, Software Sources
• Updated everything by going into System, Administration, Update Manager
• Installed all the BlueTooth stuff (so I can beam from my Samsung to the Eee PC)
• Installed Camorama (Web Cam Capture and Test App)
• Installed v2 of Skype (it has webcam support under linux)

And thats it…. all working, and I am in fact completing this blog entry on my Eee PC with Ubuntu!

Click on the Pic to see a bigger version

27th November – NOTE: When installing the ndiswrapper, make sure you place the ndis folder that you downloaded from the cd/website somewhere sensible! I deleted the folder (thinking that ndiswrapper would copy the relevant files somewhere) and spent 2 hours trying to get my wireless lan working again

29th November – Added some screenshots of it in action.

30th November – Firstly… sorry if you haven’t been able to view this blog… Fasthosts cobbled my MySQL server Secondly… I have had a minor problem (irritating, more than an issue) where the Eee PC will randomly reboot during the initial boot sequence. Essentially it gets ‘stuck’ about 20% through the first Ubuntu progress bar, and then reboots just fine. Haven’t sussed what it is yet, but it only happened after I enabled the Webcam in the BIOS…

You can find it at: http://xkcd.com

 Very funny (especially if you are a bit of a propeller-head like me…)

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Life, so they say, is a terminal disease… I know it’s going to kill me one of these days!

Why does everything seem to be so stress-related. Why do we spend an inordinate amount of time running around trying to complete pointless tasks in order to somehow complete our consumer-driven existentialist lifestyle.

I am an atheist, but there is a passage in the Bible (Saint Peter’s letter to the Corinthians 13:11) that says;

“ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things”

Now, lets consider this for a moment. When I was a child (and by child I mean prior to teenage angst and peer pressures) I had no problems, no (real) fears, no worries and happily traversed each waking day with the relative ease of the innocent and naive. When I look back on my lifestyle with adult eyes, it is clear that we lived in a ‘sink estate’ (high-rise flats), with little or no money, poor diet, no parental control, and the threat of eviction due to unpaid bills constantly looming – a recipe for disaster you might think… but pretty much normal working-class then.

The time-frame to which I refer is the 1970′s, so let us consider the social-economic model of that period as it applied to me (as best as I can remember it anyway);

• TV consisted of 2½ channels (BBC2 was only on for about 6 hours a day), with frequent “Test Cards” and “Interludes”, and in any case, we were only allowed to watch children’s TV on a Saturday morning, or briefly after school.
• Pocket Money didn’t happen. I might have had 5p change from being sent to the shops for milk and bread (this is at the age of 6… would you send your 6-year-old to the shops?).
• Holidays occurred once a year, but were always a caravan in Caister (Norfolk) or a bungalow overlooking a sea wall in Jaywick (I don’t even think it had running water…)
• We played in the streets till it was dark or 5pm (whichever came first) every day…
• We made up our own games.
• We lived off sausage and chips, crisps and Corona fizzy-pop
• We NEVER had a ‘new’ car (or one even close to being reliable…)
• We only got our hair cut when we couldn’t see where we were walking

Now during this same period, the nation saw frequent electricity cuts caused by the general strikes, and violence in Northern Ireland and the rest of the world escalating on a weekly basis.

But…. and this is the significant point… We were generally quite happy kids. No-one had Asthma, no-one had eating disorders (basically because no-one was fat to start with…), no-one had even heard of anyone they knew seeing a “Counselor” or “Shrink”, blokes could always “get it up” (not that we knew about such things then…). We all had friends, we all played together and we were all blissfully unaware of problems, be they within the family unit, or on a more global scale.

What does that tell us?

Well, before any conclusion is reached, we need to look at society in an even bigger way, and lets pick a memorable year – 1977

OK, some key events and memories from my childhood from 1977;

• The Queens Silver Jubilee – This was England’s patriotism at its best; Street parties, banners across roads – the entire country basically stopped on the 7th June.
• Concorde started flying between London and New York (actually, it began in 1976, but became ‘regular’ in 1977)
• Jimmy Carter becomes the 39th President of the USA
• Punk and Ska music were filling the charts with bands like The Sex Pistols whose “God Save the Queen” was timed to coincide with the Jubilee
• We saw the Space Shuttle sitting on top of a Boeing 747 being tested before its first flight in 1981
• Star Wars appears in the cinema (followed at Christmas by every toy you can imagine!) – of course… it was episode 1 then!
• You needed to buy a 49pence license from the Post Office if you wanted to have a dog!

1970′s… Mortgage rates were 8% (which jumped to 17% by 1980) and inflation was at a staggering 15.8%, but very few people had mortgages anyway. Oil was high, but still only 78 pence per gallon, but most people owned a car out of necessity, not for pleasure or convenience. The average wage was around £10,000

The cold-war was still raging and there was a general sense of poverty about the entire nation, but no-one seemed too bothered about it, and seemed to just get on with their lives.

Police Officers were actually visible on the street (or on a bicycle!) and were armed with only a trunction and a whistle. However…. if you got up to mischief, they would clip you round the ear, drag you by the scruff of your neck back home, and stand there whilst your Mum and Dad bollocked you.

Working-mans clubs and pubs were always full. Sunday dinner always appeared by magic. There was always bread in the cupboard and milk in the fridge, but the kids were all a bit scruffy, wearing jeans with holes in them (before that become fashionable) and T-shirts that looked a bit too small in criminally bright colours…

So where exactly am I getting to with all this nostalgia?

It’s simple really… Why is life so stressful now that we have more money, more devices to make our lives easier? Everything is disposable and cheap, and the ‘quality’ of life has increased significantly (for most people I might add, but not all…)

I’m not entirely sure, but I think that the entire planet is stressed out due to the following reasons;

1. Media
2. Work

Let’s take some of my previous comments and expand on them;

• Eating Disorders:
  • Caused by Size-zero poster / magazine / tv perceptions of the ‘perfect’ woman.
  • Poor Diet – Convenience foods
  • No exercise - Kids are all driven to school, we drive to the shops (only 1 car in the 1970′s!, and ‘Supermarkets’ didn’t exist yet in suburbia)
• Erectile Issues:
  • Men feeling inadequate compared to muscle-clad tv celeb’s
  • Poor diet – Convenience foods
  • No exercise – Long hours at work, 180 channels to choose from when you get home
• Asthma in Children:
  • Poor diet
  • Overuse of antibiotics
  • Man-made chemicals in everyday objects
  • Artificial additives in everything
• Stress:

Where do we begin!!

• �
  • Fast, fast, fast society; Everything is needed ‘yesterday’
  • Money; Banks all want to lend us more money that we can affordably pay back. Mortgages are up to 10 x Earnings. We used to call that practice “Loan Sharking” in the 1970′s….
  • Nuclear Family; 10% of all people currently married in the UK will end up getting divorced. This causes a huge amount of stress for the children, parents and new partners. The reality is that 3 of every 4 new marriages will fail.
  • Class Wars; We all feel to need to have a new car, a conservatory, a time-share in the Algarve. Why?
  • Work; We all work too many hours for unforgiving bosses and have to deal with the infernal politic systems within the workplace. Place on top of that all the ‘elf n safety nonsense that everyone has to adhere to… Work was never ‘fun’, but now it’s downright depressing! Every day is spent dealing with 500 emails, of which 400 are spam, 50 are stupid ‘funnies’, 30 are nonense politics, 10 are arse-covering exercises, which leaves 10 actual emails of any use, but it takes an hour to go through all the other dross.
  • Marriage; Well… What can you say… Men’s ideals are still set in 1970, and Women’s have moved into the 21st century. Obviously this causes friction. This is typified by the Woman demanding that the man goes to Ikea on Saturday morning because “It’s fun to go shopping” – Need I say more?

So what does this tell us… Life is Sh*t, then you die. Well… maybe… or you could take the view (as I have) that you need to work hard, pile up your money, and run out of this country as fast as your legs will carry you, and move to somewhere sunny with a prohibitive (i.e. you’ve got to be rich and self-sufficient) immigration policy…

I’ll let you know if it works out!

PMcG – August 2007

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