Random thoughts on life
Another day, another online tool.
This time a quick and simple one – an MD5 hash generator. It doesn’t generate them from a file, but rather from a text string. Simply type in your text and it will return the MD5 hashed equivalent.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably don’t need it 😉
And I have no idea why I feel like this.
Last night I got home to find one the headlight bulbs in my car had blown. To make sure I got the right one, I thought I’d take the blown one out. Then I thought that maybe I should test it was the bulb (as it looked okay), so should swap it with the other one. That proved it was the bulk. All fine so far. So I now go to put the good bulb back… will it go. No.
45 minutes later and I’m still trying. The bulb is battered to death (but still working) and I’m shouting and ranting at this point. It’s dark and it’s cold and neither of my headlights are now working.
At 5:40pm I drive my car up to Kam Servicing. They’re closing but as a favour help me out and replace both bulbs and fit them in for me. They charge me just for the bulbs (although they’d cashed-up and closed the PC down, so I’ve got to nip back tonight to pay) but ask me not to come back again just for a bulb replacement. This makes me wonder what I’ll do in future if a bulb blows (apart from doing it in the light).
By this time it was 6. I hadn’t had any tea and I was due to leave an hour later for rehearsals. I decided to stay in and have a long bath instead.
But why I’m feeling so tetchy and emotional right now, I don’t know.
I need a holiday!
Nottingham City Councils insistence on bringing in a Workplace Parking Levy shows no signs of abating. Even the recent decision by Manchester to not bring in a congestion charge after huge opposition has done nothing to dent their intentions.
On the councils website they’ve said..
Nottingham City Council believes it will not suffer a similar fate to Manchester as its proposals for a workplace parking levy (WPL) are fairer and cheaper than a congestion charge.
So, they think its better because it’s fairer and cheaper. Let’s just analyse this for a moment. A congestion charge would charge anyone driving into the city whereas a parking levy only hits those in large businesses. Shoppers, school runs, etc, are exempt, as are small businesses. So WPL is blatantly unfair.
What about the price? Well it sounds that if you have to use the WPL then it will be cheaper than a proposed congestion charged would be. However, as someone who doesn’t drive into Nottingham, and hence wouldn’t have to pay a congestion charge, but would have to pay for WPL then, no, it’s not cheaper.
With a congestion charge they will charge you for entering the city itself, whereas the WPL is for anyone parking within the city boundaries. You see, the car park on my companies site is within the city boundaries. However, at no other point do I enter the city – so I drive in on public roads outside the city, then enter a private business park, still outside the city, but then drive into a private car park which is. The WPL therefore charges us. However, unless they intend to put congestion charge cameras on private roads, I assume such a charge wouldn’t apply to me.
And that comes back to the fairness again.
Of course I can always show my disapproval during the local electio…. oh no. That’s right. I don’t live in the city so have no voting rights against them.
WPLs appear to be a Labour initiative, so I could show my annoyance at general and my local elections. Except my local MP, Liz Blackman, is against the WPL in Nottingham. And she’s Labour.
Today was the today my broadband was changed from the excellent, but expensive, Zen to the incredibly cheap O2.
And so far, it’s worked like a dream.
As I mentioned previously, they supply their own router but I intended to use my own. As soon as I was swapped over (and they emailed and texted me to make sure I knew!) I rang them up – on a freephone number – for technical support. They couldn’t have been more helpful (you’d think they’d be less impressed with the fact that I was only ringing them because I was using my own router rather than the ones they went to great expense to send me!).
For the record, for a Netgear DG834G, here are the changes…
Basic Settings
Does Your Internet Connection Require A Login? No
Account Name: (leave blank)
Domain Name: (leave blank)
Internet IP Address: Get Dynamically From ISP
Domain Name Server (DNS) Address: Get Automatically From ISP
NAT (Network Address Translation): Enable
Router MAC Address: Use Default Address
ADSL Settings
Multiplexing Method: LLC-BASED
VPI: 0
VCI: 101
DSL Mode: Auto (Multi-mode)
In preparation I’ve been running some timing tests using a combination of 8 different online speed test sites (Broadbandmax, ZDNet, InternetFrog, thinkbroadband, Alkin and Zen). I picked these as they all appeared to be using different timing methods (many sites use the same code so will product similar, if not identical, results).
Whilst at Zen my average download speed was 1982Kbps and upload was 374Kbps. The lowest speed was around 4:20pm a few days ago (when you’d expect it be quite busy) which averaged a download of 1517Kbps.
At the same time today (4:20pm) I tested my new O2 broadband. This averaged at 3386Kbps download and 929Kbps upload – that’s an impressive 70% quicker download and 148% faster upload, the latter of which is fabulous. However, as I’m sure we’re all well aware, the first 10 days (is it 10?) is when the line gets tested and stabilised, so all this may change. Naturally, I’ll let you know how it goes.
FeedBurner is no more (to be perfectly honest, it was being just a touch flaky since Google took over. Not only that but it kept complaining that my feeds were too big). Long live raw, in the flesh, naked feeds.
In other words, if you previously subscribed via FeedBurner, please re-subscribe. I promise to make it worth your while 😉
