artiss.blog

Category: Life

Random thoughts on life

  • Nothing to see here

    A while ago, work provided me with a mobile phone holder for my car. It’s chunky, clunky and naff looking but it works a treat – it holds both my fat N95 (including, at a push, in landscape mode) and thin MP3 player.

    Anyway, I was on the look out for something a bit, erm, better looking. And maybe even better to use. As it’s a Friday I therefore popped out to a nearby mobile phone shop.

    Like most mobile phone shops these days, it was trying to be “trendy”. Lots of blank space, with a smattering of phones and accessories around the walls. This reduced their range of stock and, in a lot of case, accessories were hanging behind the counter. Both of the shop workers were busy and there was a long queue waiting to speak to them, so I decided to just peruse.

    But, as hard as I tried, I could not find a single car holder. Not, for that matter, any other car accessory, other than in-car chargers. Lots of trendy phone “socks”, laptops and even broadband routers, but no holders or Bluetooth accessories intended for the car. Both of which is weird considering recent laws about mobile phone use in the car – you’d have thought such items were even more essential.

    And where was I? The Carphone Warehouse.

    Oh.

  • Windows Hibernate Button

    If you’re using the Hibernate function (and I’m talking XP here, not sure if this applies to Vista as well) one of the things desperately missing is a matching button in the “Turn Off Computer” menu. You click on it and get options for everything else, but not to hibernate.

    Well, not very well known, is that if you press the Shift key whilst on this menu the Standby option will magically change to Hibernate (this is assuming you have the hibernate option activated!).

    OR you can add the missing button to the menu. Here’s the code to do this…

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsSystem]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsSystemShutdown]
"ShowHibernateButton"=dword:00000001

    And to turn it off again…

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsSystem]

    Both should be saved as .reg extensions and executed – they need to be run only once. The first script adds a new entry into the registry and the second script removes it again.

    Alternatively, download the scripts here from.

  • Where did the BMTG site go?

    Nearly 3 months ago I made mention of a fallout between myself and the theatre group with which I’ve been associated with for about 9 years. Part of this was my decision to no longer look after their website – something I’d put a lot of work into but had very little feedback or general help with.

    I gave the committee a list of the skills required to run the site and, to my surprise, it was handed over to a new committee member within days. I don’t know her background but events have now unfolded which has possibly damaged the site forever.

    Last week it was reported to the sites host, Memset, that a phishing site was present on the BMTG site. It was residing in one of the sub-directories of a third-party application. I believe this application must have had a security flaw which allowed someone to deposit a fake banking site in place. Memset immediately disabled the hosting account and the website went down. The new website manager was informed and, unfortunately, responded by suggesting that it was maybe something I did.

    I took a sharp intake of breath, I have to admit, when I read this. This site is also hosted by Memset and so the suggestion (probably not intended) that I created a phishing site could have had a serious repercussion on me. Thankfully it hasn’t. But I don’t think she understood what the problem was.

    The upside of all of this is that Memset have now informed them that they will NOT re-enable the account unless they move to an expensive server host account (at the moment it’s on a shared server, and they’re concerned that future issues could impact other users). Bear in mind that the society is a non-profit making charity and their current hosting is provided for free – basically, they wouldn’t be able to afford such a move.

    I’m guessing that the current website manager not understanding the issue is why Memset are rightly worried about future occurrences. Oh dear. If asked, I could do what I can to resolve the issue, but I suspect I won’t be.

    Long-standing members appear to be leaving the Society in their droves and one such ex-member (who’s been involved far longer than myself) believes that this may be the death-knell. No website, performing on a stage in a school-hall, no publicity, poorly produced and expensive show programmes… it’s not looking good. The ex-Chairman has recently been caught wondering aloud why so many people are leaving. Maybe they should ask?

  • Lucie Artiss – Update #4

    As the songs goes, “what a difference a day makes”, and it’s been a day of ups and downs.

    After going back into hospital, Lucie was fitted with a feeding tube – this is a tube that goes down into the stomach via the nose. After a good feed, she was “topped up” via this tube. Yesterday, this tube was removed after she started happily feeding from a cup.

    Anyway, after a Doctors visit this morning the Hospital seemed quite determined that Lucie would leave that day. However, when she was weighted later it was found that she had LOST weight again (they decided to weigh her AFTER they’d taken a lot of blood from her for various tests). Never-the-less, they were still talking about sending her home.

    Thankfully, there’s a very nice midwife who’s been dealing with us and after a chat with her, we decided upon a new tactic.

    My wife has been quite determined to breast feed. Unfortunately, that’s also been the problem – because there’s no way to determine how much Lucie has been getting from that, it’s impossible to know how much more she needs to be “topped up” with via the cup. Yesterday, for instance, she had a breast feed for 10 minutes and then was cup fed 40ml (she’s supposed to have at least 47ml) – although a lot of this ends up going down here.

    So, we made a joint decision. Lucie is now being bottle fed. And for her first feed, she gulped down 60ml within 15 minutes (the best feed she’s probably ever had). Before her next feed was due she wanted more and happily took another 50ml. All extremely positive. But that’s not to say we’ve given up on breast milk, as we’re adding as much to the bottle as she can – in fact we’ve hired tonight the same “industrial strength” pump that the Hospital uses!!

    The plan is for both to return home tomorrow.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for possibly my last good nights sleep for some time ;o)

  • Lucie Artiss – Update #3

    Another update.

    A midwife visit yesterday showed that Lucie has lost weight, which is obviously not good. She’s feeding but seems very drowsy and isn’t as awake as she should be. The jaundice is still present, which may be a factor.

    We therefore made the decision to swap to bottle feeding yesterday so we could measure out feeds and ensure she was getting exactly what she needed. Unfortunately, after a couple of gulps, she simply feel asleep. We called out the on-call midwife who tried and got the same result. She then sent us to A&E and they’ve been moved to the Children’s Short Stay Unit, where they’re being monitored.

    As soon as I know anything else, I’ll let you know.