Testing Blog Posting From My Mobile

Having my new fancy HTC Desire has made me think of blogging again. This has meant searching for an Android app which will upload to Blogspot. After searching around, I found  Blogaway .

As with many apps, this one is in fairly early development. What drew me to Blogaway is a combination of three things:

1. The app upload to Blogspot - kind of essential what with me having a blog there!
2. It saves drafts - this is essential for when one is out and about.
3. Pictures and video upload - not tested this yet, but was the deal maker for a photoblogger and pub Blogger such as myself.
4. It is free - useful for me to get back onto blogging.

So I guess watch this space...again.

A Possible Fix if Your Homepage Keeps Resetting

I was recently presented with a problem by my in-laws. Their browser's homepage kept on resetting to MSN every time they restarted. Although a reasonable homepage to have, they prefer to just have the google.co.uk front page.
The specific page that the browser would reset to was - http://uk.msn.com/?ocid=iehp. I thought the same as you, just go into options -> properties and reset the homepage. Nope. Every time the browser restarted, back to good 'ole MSN.
So what is the solution? Well, after much googling for various things, I found an obscure reference to my dilemma on a forum (can't remember which, sorry). It turns out that some spyware and antivirus programs (in this case Norton) have 'homepage protection'. This setting locks anything from hijacking your browser homepage for their own nefarious purposes. It also means that once a homepage is set, it will continue to default back to that upon a browser reload.
So there you have it. Turn off your homepage protection, and return it to the correct homepage. I don't know what happens if you switch the homepage protection back on and I don't intend to find out.

Back Into the Saddle

Ok. Four months without any updates to any of my blogs is a bit pants. Last year I wanted to average one blog update per week…on all of my blogs. If you do a quick tour around, you will see that this didn’t happen. In fact, I barely made it past averaging one blog update per week on all my blogs put together.

So this year, I want to try for the full 52 on this blog. It’s going to be tough, especially since we’re nearly two months in already, but hopefully I will be able to do it.

You will have seen me say this before, but watch this space!

Statistically Speaking...

One of the things I put on my blogs more or less from the start was a stats tracker from StatCounter.com. This is not to track demographics for targeted advertisements, or anything like that. I have a stats tracker on my blogs so I can see if anyone comes to visit. I have had this particular blog (Mouse's Musings) running for nearly 18 months now.
Of the three blogs that I keep up to date post articles to, this has had the least amount of visitors. This is probably because I don't post any photos on here, that's for my Photo Blog, nor do I talk about a singular topic, that's for my Pub Run. Therefore, I am always interested how someone has come to be viewing my blog.
There seem to be only three reasons to visit my blog:

1. You have seen my blogger profile - I post comments on many of the blogs I read, either to add some other little titbit or to just tell them what I enjoyed about the article I've just read.
2.  You want to know the key board shortcut for the Euro sign - This is my most popular article by far.
3. You want to know why your Micra won't start - I hope this article has saved people money. It certainly has for me.

So, no matter how you got here. Welcome. Please feel free to rummage around. And please feel free to visit my other blogs.

Games, Heroin, and Teenage Pregnancies - What's the Difference?

I have just read an article by Giles Whittell of The Times entitled Video Games: I'll never buy one. The reporter/contributor/"notebooker" describes why he will never be buying his children any games consoles. Apparently the answer is because games "suck real people into fake worlds and hold on to them for decades at a time." What a wonderfully broad and sweeping statement. And if that is his main reason, then maybe he should stop his children from watching TV, going to the cinema, surfing the internet, or reading.
Now, I am old enough to remember getting my first games console in the mid 80's, and have had many games machines since. I do not believe I ever wasted my life. I enjoyed playing games, because of the adventures they took me on. Just like reading, and going to the cinema. I enjoyed the social aspect of them; my mother and I used to sit up late into the night playing the latest adventure game.
I do agree in a small way with Mr. Whittell in that many children seem to be so intent on finishing the next level that they barely look around sometimes. For that, I do not blame games, I blame the parents. Surely, it is the parents who should tell little Farquar and Portia to put down their Nintendo DS until after dinner, or whenever. I know it's easy to blame the parents, but in this case I truly believe I am right. My parents used to make sure I stopped playing on my games console and went outside, or stopped playing my Gameboy at the table, and so on. Don't deny your children, but educate them enough to make their own choices and govern themselves.

And equating games with heroin and teenage pregnancies ("It's because, compared with everything else on offer in a kid's life, video games and heroin and teenage pregnancy are a colossal waste of time.") is just irresponsible. Well done for inciting people to read your article Giles, but it is a low blow, and a tenuous analogy at its best. 

Happy New Year

Doing the rounds on my blogs.

Since this is a blog of musings and suchlike, I give you the video below which makes Mrs-Mouse-To-Be giggle every time.

Enjoy!

From The Register: eBayer punts Wii for £1m

eBayer punts Wii for £1m | Reg Hardware

For Christmas I really want to get a Wii. The problem is, everyone else does! Some enterprising sod has put  his/her Wii up for sale on ebay with a starting price of £1 million.

I'm not that desperate! If you do buy this, please give it to me. If you are stupid enough to buy a Wii for £1,000,000 maybe you'll just give it away to someone deserving... like me!

 

P.S. This is also testing the Windows Live Writer "Blog This" plugin for Firefox. Get it here.

World or Warcraft - part 2

It is now 10:45 in the morning, a little while after my last blog.

I'm now downloading another patch! This one is small, just 219MB.

You would think that the patch would have been incorporated onto my disk vastly reducing the time I have to wait to play this game, and therefore increasing my chances of becoming addicted.

Right now I just feel frustrated, and can't really be bothered with the game.

I'm going out.

World or Warcraft

I sit before you ready to embark on what my gamer mates call "crack for geeks".

This is World of Warcraft.

The Times a couple of weeks ago was giving away a free two week trial of this game. I have now installed the game and am waiting for a small patch (697MB!) to install and update.
A quick sideline on patches. I started off my career as a tester at a games publisher in London. One of the games released, Fallout Tactics, had to be patched almost immediately (not my testing, our sister company). I say "almost immediately". What I actually mean is "on the day of release" (no wonder the company is no longer around). This patch was 80MB, and made industry people nearly pass out when they heard this needed to be downloaded, or requested from customer support.
"80MB on a 56k modem, that could take days!"
If you were paying per minute for your connection, you could end up paying almost as much as the original game. Ludicrous! This wasn't that long ago either, only in 2000.

So now I am sitting here blogging waiting for 697MB of patching goodness to download in "About 2 hours". I'm going to wait for it and play the game because I am curious to see what all the craik is about (see what I did there?).
10% downloaded...
World of Warcraft stormed onto the world stage in 2004 and has since continued to grow into a community of gamers 8 million strong. That's 8 million people paying approximately £8.00 per month subscription! For more information, I recommend you read the Times article. If you choose to give the game a go like I am, you can either request a disk from The Times, or you can download it from the World of Warcraft official site.

You see, I haven't even played the game yet and I am dealing it like an addict!

24% downloaded, still "About 2 hours" to wait...
It's only a game. Plus, it's only a 2 week trial, then I can give it all up.

30% downloaded, "About 75 minutes" to wait...
Tell my mum I love her.

40% downloaded, "About 65 minutes" to wait...
Tell the future Mrs. Mouse that I will see her at the wedding.

50% downloaded, "About 51 minutes" to wait...
Why am I sitting here watching a download?

60% downloaded, "About 42 minutes" to wait...
Bored, hungry, going for breakfast.

. . .

. .

.

Customising One's Blog Template on Blogger

One of the features of blogger is that I can view/edit the HTML of my blog template. I have been trying to work out how to do this. I think I have finally done it. If you visit here and see everything messed up, I have pressed 'Save' rather and 'Preview' and am probably weeping in a corner.

It's not fun unless I am pulling it apart and figuring how it works.

I Need a Wii

The trend nowadays is to drink water like there's going to be a drought tomorrow. However, water drinking was taken to extreme in the U.S. when a woman died from drinking too much water while competing in a competition to win a Nintendo Wii:

BBC News: Why is too much water dangerous?

This is an unfortunate accident where someone who dropped out of science class as soon as possible to study media studies didn't know that cells swell when given water. If given too much water, these cells will eventually burst.

So there you have it. Too much water is bad for you. Limit your intake to about 2 litres per day (including tea, fruit juice, etc.), and you should be fine.

Next they will be telling you breathing is dangerous!

iPhone Revealed

As often as possible I'm going to comment on a news story I've read in the papers or online. Today's pick isn't really a revelation, but I've go to start somewhere!

So, yesterday Steve Jobs of Apple unvailed the new iPhone. Everybody is swooning over it. Jobs said in his presentation "The iPod changed everything in 2001. We're going to do it again with the iPhone in 2007." I have no doubt about this. Apple is such a strong brand that you would have to be six feet under to miss it.
Like iPods, I feel that the first generation will be good, but wait for the 2nd generation as they will have got most of the bugs out. The best thing about the iPhone, I feel, is that everyone else will be forced to raise their standards. Be on the look out for smart phones that do what the iPhone does, but cheaper and in some cases better. iPod did that for music, so why can't iPhone do that for mobile telephony?

PvP has a great little comic strip about it today. Brent is a Mac yuppy in case you are slightly confused.