Category: Life

When you have young children it’s important to monitor their online activity. As my daughter has got older, however, I have reduced the amount of such monitoring I do, giving her more privacy.

At first I used CyberPatrol, which is a paid-for product that will do everything from barring particular websites to time restricting program and internet usage. In time I moved to the free Windows Live Family Safety – this would monitor and restrict internet usage. I also had my daughters email settings send me emails that she received. Now both of these have gone (the latter longer than the former).

Now I no longer restrict what sites she can view but instead rely on being able to check her viewing history. She uses IE as a browser and I can check her viewing history at any point. I also know her email password – and she knows she’s not allowed to change it. In both cases it’s down to spot checks (assuming I make them) which makes it more of a threat of being caught than anything else. None-the-less she’s mature enough now to know what’s wrong and what’s right and that I can give her the level of trust that allows me to do this.

Before you wonder why she doesn’t just clear her viewing history, well, apart from it being obvious that she has, I’ve taken steps in that I’ve created two scripts. These (and they work up to and including IE8) will switch off and on the “General” tab in the Options, which is where the option to clear history exists. This isn’t fool-proof but will certainly do for my needs.

Here’s the code to turn the tab OFF.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet Explorer Control Panel]
"ProgramsTab"=dword:00000000
"ContentTab"=dword:00000000
"GeneralTab"=dword:00000001
"ConnectionsTab"=dword:00000000
"AdvancedTab"=dword:00000000
"SecurityTab"=dword:00000000
"PrivacyTab"=dword:00000000

And here’s the code to turn the tab back ON.

REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerControl Panel]

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 allows you to turn specific tabs off – in this case the General tab, but you can turn off others simply by changing their corresponding dword to 00000001.
The second script removes this new entry and, hence, restores any hidden tabs.

Alternatively, download the scripts here from.

Now I won’t mention which blog I found this on, but doesn’t this look a little, erm, odd…

Surely he’s not advertising for friends? Is he?

I’ve been off work this week – hence the lack of blogs. And I’ve been building the Ikea furniture that was delivered. Oh, it’s been fun. My hands and knees are raw, but it’s done.

The dresser took me 4 hours yesterday. 4 long, frustrating hours. Whoever designed the system of putting the feet on that dressers needs shooting.

But not everything was their fault. I built it in the living room as the dining room was already pretty full – the intention was to move it into the dining room once done. What could go wrong? Well, maybe the opening between the two rooms isn’t as tall as the dresser. Doh!

Anyway, it’s all done now. My computer is now in a corner of the dining room. All I’m lacking is a sturdy shelf – I bought one from Ikea but I don’t think it will take enough weight.

Now I’m off to buy some telephone cables… at the moment my broadband connection is relying on an extension reel run casually through the middle of the living room 😉

Apologies if you the previous post appeared to appear and disappear like a broken Tardis, but I suddenly have problems with WordPress.

In particular, after finely crafting that last piece, I kept getting the error “Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_substr()” when trying to edit the post. No others, just that one.

As much as I’d loved to have spent all night trying to find the exact byte that was the cause, I didn’t. But, weirdly, I think it was to do with the original title – “Updating the BIOS on an Acer Aspire One”. A little bit of title changing and it appeared to be accepted. Of course, I could be way off the mark.

But it took a lot of editing and chopping about to get it all to work.

I have come across one item on Google Search that appears related to Search Unleashed. Coincidence?

Update: I should have followed that link a little further – it’s a known bug in Search Unleashed.

With a lot of room changes to make (you know, moving the computer to the dining room, starting a nursery, etc) we visited our local Ikea last night. In total we spent… erm, quite a bit, and it’s seriously drained our savings.

We’d visited a few weeks ago and planned what we would buy to make last nights trip as quick and easy as possible.

It was always our intention to arrange a home delivery as many of the items were bulky and over-sized for my small car. However, after looking in their catalogue and on their website we weren’t much the wiser as to how you were supposed to arrange it. About the only thing we found out was that you pay for the items at the usual checkout and then take it to a special home delivery area. Ok. But do we pay for delivery at the checkout? We weren’t sure. I asked his particular question at the checkout and I was told we paid for it separately, when arranging the delivery. I was obviously not sure and by this time I had 3 unwieldy trolleys.

Eventually we get to the home delivery area. They ask for our postcode. Then they tell us it will be delivered next day. Oh, ok, that’s not possible as no-one will be at home. Can we have it next week (I’m off work)? It’s at THIS point that we’re told that it costs £10 a night to store it. Excuse me? Yep, with no choice but to pay it, I stump up – delivery is on Saturday. We’d paid for the items so we could either pay up, take them home then (which wasn’t an option) or get them all refunded and come and do the whole thing again another day. I felt like I’d been mugged.

Anyway, I contacted Ikea. I was very friendly and explained what happened and suggested that they should have better explanations of how the process works. Today I received a prompt reply.

Hej Mr Artiss,

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry.

First let me offer my sincere apologies for your recent experience. It would appear that you have not received the level of service that both yourself and IKEA would expect.

I can assure you that IKEA takes customer service very seriously and will continue to employ all possible methods to ensure that the highest standards are achieved and exceeded in the future.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to IKEA and give us your comments. Objective feedback can only help us improve our customer service and your shopping experience.

I sincerely hope that any future contact with IKEA better reflects our commitment to Customer Service.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

Sue on behalf of the IKEA Customer Services Team.

How automated a response does that sound? I’m not impressed.