Gemstone Bay, New Zealand

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Lake Matheson, New Zealand

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Skipper's Canyon Jetboat, New Zealand

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Flags flying over the Ville Close

Concarneau, France

Swan taking off

Newtown, Wales

Street performer,Vienna

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Model and real cranes

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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

CISAS survey fail.

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I received an envelope with a yellow form to fill in. Along with the following letter:

CISAS Customer Satisfaction Survey 2009
As part of our promise to constantly review and improve the CISAS service, we undertake regular surveys of customers.
We invite you to take part in this survey by completing the enclosed electronic questionnaire, which takes around ten minutes to complete.
When you have completed the questionnaire you can return it to the independent company
who will analyse the results, by emailing it to [hidden] or by post using the pre-paid envelope enclosed. The results will be published in our annual report for 2009 together
with the results from surveys earlier that year.
We thank you for taking the time to read this message and for completing the questionnaire.
Your views will help us to shape the future service delivery and will provide feedback to  consumer groups, the industry regulator, and to the member companies.
This is from the COMMUNICATIONS and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme.

TV Chef James Martin delights in endangering cyclists

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8258247.stm

TV chef James Martin has apologised for causing a group of cyclists “sheer terror” as he test drove a sports car.
Martin, presenter of BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, wrote in the Mail on Sunday that he had intentionally forced them into a hedge as he turned a corner.
It was the best thing he had “ever seen in my rear-view mirror”, he said.

Join the 2,500 strong (and growing rapidly) Facebook group Why Does James Martin Hate Cyclists?Cock

Not much I can say on this really, other than what a total cock! He should read this blog: Bianchista writes:

To James Martin….
As per your remarks in your now infamous column, i should just like you to look at the below picture of me. Look at it and tell me you still find your comments were appropriate and funny.
A driver pulled out on me recklessly, and as a result i pretty much lost all of my top row of teeth, I had a broken nose, and badly bruised legs and arms.
You see… whilst it may be funny for you to ’scare us’ by beeping your horn or driving at a close vicinity, it wasnt so funny for me to hit the tarmac, it wasnt so funny to be unable to touch solid food and be in considerable pain, and it actually wasnt that funny when i had to see my mum and watch her cry.
So Mr Martin, I should honestly hope that no-one would ever purposefully endanger your children, as a driver did to me. They, and yourself….. might just fail to see the funny side then.

Bianchista

Red Nose day – meet the recession. Good luck!

Friday, March 13th, 2009

I’ll be interested to see how Red Nose Day does today. What made me think was the following tweet from nunocasters

Red Nose Day, meet the Recession; Recession, meet Red Nose Day. Good luck with that.

I’ve always been a little bit uneasy with the idea that we get taxed to buggery, then get heart-wrenched for charitable donations to cancer research, while Labour are busy bailing out banking chums (oh, and an £800 MILLION gift to India for some Rolls Royces or something).

UPDATE: Well, I’m always happy to admit when wrong, and it looks like I was!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7939425.stm

Comic Relief has raised a record £57m on the night, smashing the previous best of £40.5m the last time the charity TV event was held in 2007.

How They Squander Our Billions

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

For anyone in any doubt about the grotesque squandering of our money, have a watch of  ”How They Squander Our Billions” on 4OD (if you’re in the UK)

More links - and you might want to read the Taxpayers Alliance blog as well as Burning Our Money.

I’m just going to paste in some observations from someone on the Burning Our Money blog who was watching it last night (hope they don’t mind)

 

nhs computer system: £13 billion.

may rise to £20 BILLION…

 

Bowman radio system. found to be too heavy for Landrovers. speed down to 40mph.

cost: £2.4 billion

 

Eight Chinooks: £422 million. still not in the air.

Eurofighter: £20 BILLION

 

£3 million on oak doors on MOD building

30 big plasma tvs for the MOD building

£250,000 on eight paintings for MOD building.

3,000 Herman Miller office chairs – “the most comfortable office chairs in the world”

£50 million in bonuses for MOD chiefs in the past year

 

TA concludes that gov wastes £101 billion a year.

£1 billion tax credits overpaid in the last year.

£830 million : benefit fraud

£4 million in benefit ends up being paid to prisoners who dont tell the gov that they are in prison.

£2.7 billion for lawyers – miners compensation scheme.

head of law firm ended up with private plan and millions in the bank.

millenium dome: £780 million 

Earth Centre , doncaster: £60 million – now closed.

West Bromwich : “cultural centre” : £60 million

‘The Public’ is a icon for the public sector – a proper cluster f**

250k for pot plants in government offices.

Millenium dome – sold off for nothing to the private sector.

now the most successful concert venue in Europe.

“bossy” adverts: government is biggest spender on ads in the country

£188 million

up 25 per cent in the past 4 years.

road building: 

A14 : £950 million up from £500 million

M1 widening: £600 million up from £300 million

on average a road project comes in at above 40 per cent of the initial estimate.

 

PFI

Frank Field: Birkenhead PFI is charged at 16.5 per cent interest per year for 20 years.

gov signed up 600 PFI schemes:

£63 billion

paying back: £240 billion , over 40 years.

Mandys office: £2,000 per month on flowers.

Asus EEE PC – how to update via USB memory stick

Monday, March 9th, 2009

I had this Asus EEE 701 for about a year, and although the XEPC project was OK, it was quite fiddly and slow.

Since I last looked, a whole load of netbook-compatible Linux distributions have been launched. I chose a netbook distro of Ubuntu 8.10 

Download the big .iso file from easypeasy; you will want to boot from your thumb drive, so download this 

Then follow these instructions: (copied below in case the forum is down)

Plug in your USB.
Go to My Computer-Right click-Format.(Remember to take backup of files you might want later)
When done, open Unetbootin.
Locate your Ubuntu Eee (easypeasy) file.
Locate your USB. 
Start the “transformation”. 

How to disable booting in OS and enable booting from USB(usb must be in usb-port):
Start your EEEPC, with USB in.
Press F2 until you get into BIOS.
Find the Boot Sequence list/tab.
Enable booting from USB stick and put it as #1. 
Disable all other booting options. 
Press F10, “Ok” and your EEEPC will boot from the usb stick. 

After install:
Shutdown your EEEPC. 
Start.
F2 until you get into BIOS.
Boot Sequence list/tab.
Enable booting from SSD. 
Put booting from SSD as #1.
Disable booting from USB.
F10, “Ok” and you will start into Ubuntu Eee. 

With the current version, it will keep asking where you want to install, even though you’ve installed it. Simple fix:

In short:
Disable something called Ubiquity from starting in Preferences >Sessions (startup items)

Skittles + twitter + youtube + wikipedia + flickr + facebook = clever!

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

In the last couple of days, I’ve seen one the of best and worst adverts for a long while (excluding Cillit Bang/toilet tissue/stool firming stuff, which goes without saying).

In the worst category lives the Peugeot Drivesexy campaign, which is just awful. Everything about it is just naff – the “so last year” affluenza-inducing consumerism of the style, the poor lipsynch – it’s just cringe-worthy.

And then Skittles comes up with an idea so fiendishly clever, so simple that it’s straight in the best camp: just have the Skittles homepages as a twitter search of the term skittles. Pop a widget in the corner and have your vid page as youtube, your photos on flickr, your product page on wikipedia etc. Not just the stunning simplicity of having other sites do your work, but it will also make a sort of self-propogating google-bomb. And, it’s good for social media sites, some of whom people may not have heard of.

Everyone’s a winner, and there are probably hundreds of ad agency execs scratching their heads thinking “bugger, why didn’t I think of that!”.

Other blogs discussing this:  Hitsearch  , Mashable , Mindjumpers and probably more…

phpbb.com down or hacked?

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

I noticed my phpbb forum dashboard has being saying “connection refused” (when checking updates) for 24 hours now, and phpbb.com has been unreachable.

Google’s most recent cache  at 1 Feb 2009 04:43:49 GMT says:

SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]  

Table ‘phpbb.community_users’ doesn’t exist [1146]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.

But no other blogs seem to be mentioning this. Is it just me?!
UPDATE: The site is now at least back online – this would seem to explain it.

Maintenance

We are sorry to report that we have been attacked through a vulnerability in an outdated PHPList installation. phpBB.com and related sites will remain unavailable while we work to recover. No vulnerabilities have been found in the phpBB software itself.

You can download phpBB here: http://www.ohloh.net/p/phpbb

You can get support at the temporary support forums or on IRC: chat.freenode.net #phpbb

– the phpBB team

phpbb-down

Fake tech support call scam – supportonclick, systemrecure and logmein123.com

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Rabbids Go Home (wii) - over 50% off at Amazon

Are you on a call with “tech support” from supportonclick, systemrecure and logmein123.com while reading this?

PLEASE TRY AND RECORD THE CALL, then contact me. Tell them you need to go to another phone if you need a moment to set up a mic.

DO NOT let them take control of your computer, but please try and get as much info as you can.

HUGE thanks and respec to youtube user striderzer0 for his great work in recording the call. See the four youtube videos below.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ACD9A8922BBBFE4C

UPDATE: 13/01/2009 – Donal Macintyre covered this on ITV’s This Morning show. Watch it here.

Update: 04/12/2009 Made it into the news! Thanks to Malc for this one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/8392303.stm and via Google News Alerts: http://www.buteman.co.uk/news/Rothesay-businessman-warns-of-computer.5883193.jp

Update: 26/11/2009

Since I first reported on this on Jan 18th 2009, this one page has had over 24,000 views and 261 comments, and recently there’s been a huge surge in the amount of calls received. I’m getting two or 3 people leaving comments every day now, and over the last week, the page views have surged to close to 400 PER DAY and easily accounts for the most viewed page on my blog by far.
Which suggests that Comantra or Supportonclick or Logmein123 or whoever they are calling themselves this week, are increasing their activity.

YOU CAN HELP!

Please, contact the media and/or help spread the word. It’ll only take 5 minutes.

If you are in the UK:

Tell a consumer programme about it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/gotastory/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/liz_barclay_consumer_series.shtml
or perhaps your local or national paper. Oddly, in the April the BBC said there “wasn’t any interest” in this story. Take a moment to prove there is!

Also, report it to: https://secure.consumerdirect.gov.uk/reportascam.aspx

There are also threads on http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1613667 and
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/502631/call-from-microsoft-maintenance-dep

The Register have an article about it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/supportonclick_scareware_scam/

Note: The Staffordshire Police have also issued a warning about this:
http://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/3ECA6489-52AC-4A64-A48E-4E44743CB9CB/90090/TelephoneComputerSupportWarning.pdf

In the US:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22222049-Scam-Supportonclickcom-scareware-scam

In Australia:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1057308.html

Worldwide

Anywhere in the world:
You can help people find news about the scam by stumbling or digging:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.digitaltoast.co.uk/fake-tech-support-call-scam-prefetch-virus-logmein123com
http://digg.com/security/Fake_tech_support_call_scam_prefetch_virus_logmein123_com
Or log the info at http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/01274900834

Even if you just post a link to my site on your blog, or in your favourite forum, it will help ensure that people looking for help, find it.

Other blogs referencing this:

http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/12/techonsupportcom-click4rescuecom.html – has some more info, as well as other ways of reporting the scam.

http://ctaspley.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/update-on-support-on-click-police-alert-to-scam/

From the comments below, it appears that logmein123.com is not the scam itself, but is being used by the scammers. Thanks to Michael in the comments section below for that info. If you have found this post useful, please use the “share this” link below if you have a social networking account such as digg, delicious, facebook, stumbleupon etc. It will help others to find this.

Update: We have a new caller! Many many thanks to Sherri for sending in a recording from her answering machine. I think this is a difference outfit, but it sounds scammy:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And McCaffee Siteadvisor has many aggrieved reviewers of the Support OnClick scammers too!

So, possibly post there too – anything to warn people.

See also threads here and here on MoneySavingExpert and a post on the JamiesRants blog

I got a call on the 16th of January with an “out of area” (ie: overseas, not “uk withheld”) caller ID.

He had a thick strong accent and started off by saying:
“Hello Mr Marshall, this is the Windows XP service provider – we have had a report from your computer that it is infected”. Well, that’s not my name, but one I use on forms where I think spam might result.

At this point, I started recording the call – the only problem is that the recording is illegible! I’m trying to clean it up so will post as soon as I do – check back later!

HELP! Does anyone know how to “clean up” bad recordings? Here’s a snippet of what I recorded – I still have the “original” file in audacity, and have tried changing sample rates. Is this recording lost forever?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I was also noting it down, and here’s what he told me to do:

Go to the start>run menu and type in

“p as in peter, r as in romeo, e as in echo, f as in foxtrot” – etc etc, to cut a long story short, he wanted me to type in

“prefetch virus” in the run prompt. As it happens, I know exactly what that would do – it simply opens the windows prefetch folder. The word “virus” is ignored

(For a bit more info on what this normal windows folder is, click here. As a rule, however, unless you know exactly what the result is going to be do not start following instructions random strangers tell you to do!)

“OK sir, can you please tell me how many files there are?”
I told him 30.
“Oh my gosh, this is a sign of very heavy infection. You must not touch these files. [about the only truthful part of the call]. Please now clear this box and type ‘temp’ and press enter”.

Again, “your computer has very heavy infection with so many files”. He then babbled some crap about how these file were your f-a-t32 system files and that “at any time these files could scratch your hard drive”. Riiiighhhht…..

Then came the money shot. “We will connect you now with an agent, please go to www.logmein123.com”
As I had full armoury on (google toolbar, avg, running Chrome etc), so I decided to check it out. It redirected to https://secure.logmeinrescue.com/Customer/Code.aspx

After some chitchat in which he confirmed my (incorrect, spamtrap) home address, he then said “I will now connect you to an agent – for this there is just a small one-time charge of £12″.
Before I let him take my details, I said I wanted to check what company it was. Again, he said it was “your Windows XP service provider” (whatever the hell that means).
To the answer “where are you based and what is your name”, bear in mind this man had a VERY thick/strong Indian accent and was calling from a scratchy overseas number.
“My name is Kevin Watts and we are based in Bradford”. Gold-dust! You couldn’t make it up! (Well, he obviously had).

I asked him to hold while I got my card. I put it on speakerphone and went down to make a cup of tea. I brewed up a nice cup of Yorkshire Tea, found a biscuit, did a bit of washing up, and went back upstairs. FIVE MINUTES later he was still going “Mr Marshall? Can you hear me?”. Nothing if not persistant! I then just decided to have a bit of fun and pretended he’d been put through to the UK police! Immediately, a supervisor (another strong Indian accent) came on the line sounding very surprised, and claimed that “Mr Marshall contacted us”!

So there you go – be warned. If I can get the audio up, I will.  Please post a comment below if you’ve had this call.

PS – it didn’t sound much different to this!

YouTube Preview Image

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