JayWakefield.co.uk - Blog

Exams Are Over!!

2008-05-30T09:46:00.002Z

The Exams are over! I'm very glad. How do I think I've done? Well in a nutshell, I think that I was okay with the Database Techniques module. Who knows how Ive done in the Software Engineering module? Advanced Programming may have been a pass but I was too late on discovering a fantastic book from SAMS Publishing called Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days which was loaned to me by a friend. The Networking and Enterprise architecture module might just be a big fat fail. I have had a hard year this year, and I hope I've passed the Quantitative Methods module because I would actually have to leave University if I had to do another seven module year because I struggle with a normal workload. To keep up with everyone is a big challenge, and then they attached a failed first year module onto my work load so this year I have been bodging everything, and after Easter I just cracked and stopped doing anything useful..

On a ligher note I have been thinking a lot about cars. It's funny but in Bradford, you won't ever see a Rover. In fact the closest thing you'll see to a Rover in Bradford is an MG - you won't even see a dog named Rover. If I had a dog, I wouldn't call him Rover, I would call him Leyland, so then he would own Rover. Now where did I know that cat called Austin from? Oh never mind, I digress. Noiw you're probably wondring "Where have all these old British cars gone?" I can tell you they all turned up in Hull. If you go round the University campus, Salmon Grove or Hallgate Road in Cottingham, you'll find then all there. You'll even find the old Austin Metro, but mainly it will be Rover 25's of the 2002-2004 era. This had me thinking. When I look back on my childhood, say from when I was three years old to when I was about seven or eight, all the cars that I remember apart a few were all British, or more to the point, they were mainly all Austins. I remember being at Firecliffe nursery in Bradford (which is now just a family centre) and being taken home in an Austin Metro, being taken to school in an Austin Maestro, and when I was seven, my taxi driver swapped his Peugeot for an Austin Montego in British Racing Green. Personally, I think that was a very very wise switch, as the Peugeot is French, and I'm not the biggest fan of French cars. It's a shame our mass-production of cars has ceased, because it would be nice to look at cars on the road and to say "Yes, that's one of ours". OK I know we still have Vauxhall but they are all just rebadged Opels, which are built in Germany, so that REALLY doesn't count. I get a good feeling when I stop and think for a minute that the Mercedes McLaren SLR was engineered in, yes you guessed it, England's Green and Pleasant Land! So we CAN still build cars! That's probably why why the McLaren SLR isn't a boring Bovarian faceless slug like the rest of Mercedes. I know they aren't engineered in Britain either but given the choice between a Porsche 911 and an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, I would go for the Aston every time, just like Jeremy Clarkson did in the Top Gear Christmas Special in 2005. That was probably the cleverest thing we'll ever see Clarkson do, so if you want to see the episode in question, it is Series 07 Episode 06/

Outcasted by the version of Windows I run

2008-05-23T10:40:00.002Z

I have just realised that in Chez Student, I am the only person who still runs Windows XP on any of my machines. I have just reinstalled WIndows XP Professional on my Ergo Ensis removing the Windows Media Center/Ubuntu 7.10 setup I had before. My MacBook also runs Windows XP Pro under Parallels and also as a stand-alone OS. Everyone else in this house runs Windows Vista on their laptops, apart from one very sensible housemate that runs Mac OS 10.4.11 on her G4 PowerBook. I like being the only one who runs XP. Personally however, I do like Mac OS 10.5.2, which is the primary OS on my MacBook. I like how you can plug in anything and it will work. I was at my friend's yesterday. I plugged in my Nokia N95 and it worked straightaway as a modem. All I had to do was to enter the phone number to dial onto the 3G/GPRS network, and the APN for the network - an option that Windows doesn't have by default, and then I was online thanks to my new unlimited data plan courtesy of Vodafone. Very impressed

Dual-Monitor Setup

2008-04-27T22:14:00.001Z

Yesterday, I bought myself a new 19" Widescreen monitor yesterday. I have made a dual-screen setup with my old monitor. It works quite well

Ironically Enough however

2008-04-19T15:53:00.002Z

If I drove (which I unfortunately can't because of my vision) I would probably have a Golf GTI. I would like to know however why did VW not let Top Gear take the Veyron round their track. I would love to see a lap time for that. Oh and I'm glad to see the Bora has gone! In my opinion it IS Maserati and it should stay that way. OK OK It's really a Citroen but let's just gloss over that. Close your eyes for one moment and just imagine if Ferrari had made the Bora – ah yes that's much better. On the flip-side however VW do make some very nice and affordeable family cars, so keep up the good work.

I am very interested in the Mercedes S-Class with it's radar assisted brakes. This will enable the car to drive itself at the speed of the car in front. It goes faster, you go faster, it goes slower, you go slower. If Mercedes advance much further, then I may be able to drive one day. Please do it, Mercedes. Driving has been my dream since my parents (ironically) bought a Volvo 240 Estate (Wagon if you're American) and I fell in love with the car (I wouldn't drive one today). Please Mercedes, make me a car that I can drive. I have a rating of 6 in my left eye and 3 in my right. If anybody can get me legally driving on the roads, the Germans can. I'm counting on you!

.......... after I Bitched about Volkswagen :-s

Unanswered (And probably unasked) questions about Volkswagen

2008-04-19T15:46:00.001Z

Why the heck won't you let the Stig take a Veyron round the Top Gear track and grab a time – I mean come on!!!! When the Bugatti Veyron was created in 2005 it was the fastest road car available – it's not like it's going to be a crap time or anything!! Come on VW Please don't annoy me!
Why is the Lupo so girly?
A mid-engine van? Give me a break!
Why do your 2001 minibuses sound like they are going to blow up every time you reverse?
Whilst on the subject of minibuses – what the flip is with that ANNOYING park assist – A more subtle sound please????
Is the Veyron pregnant? Why so bulbous?
The Bora is a 1970's mid-engine Italian Supercar from Maserati which looks very nice – I'd buy one any day – not your rebadged Skoda Octavia!
Why is the Golf so expensive? What do you think makes it so special?
The Beetle was crap the first time around so what makes you think it won't be this time?
I'm sorry but why do you make the older Passats look like Audi's. BE ORIGINAL PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fixing Computers

2008-04-15T18:46:00.001Z

On Sunday I was out fixing Denise's computer. I needed to make Lego Star Wars work on Windows Vista and then install an Epson C60 printer. I made Lego Star Wars work by setting the compatibility mode to XP and running the game as Administrator. This works – but if you want to quit mid-game and restart the computer blue-screens and restarts. The printer installed easily enough. I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and the printer installed itself the minute it was plugged in. It even can detect ink levels. It was nice to be on the job again fixing computers. I've not done this since I fixed My Mum's Friend's Daughter's PC last summer. At least here Denise has Broadband Internet so it was done very quickly.

A follow-up on ZoomText

2008-04-14T12:31:00.002Z

I rung up Ai Squared in America a few days ago and asked if I could install ZoomText on Windows x64. Unfortunately they said that they don't support Windows x64. I asked if they had any plans to support it and they said no.
I'm very disappointed with Windows!

64-bit Windows discriminates

2008-04-08T13:31:00.003Z

After a stress-free Easter vacation with only my MacBook to use as my main computer, I am now back in Hull where my Vista workstation is. Coming back and installing The Sims 2 I found that the graphics were unsatisfactory. The card crashed on Need for Speed Carbon, and Zoomtext is being er, well, Zoomtext really. Unlike Zoom on the Mac, Zoomtext offers very jerky screen magnification. NOT what I needed really. I decided the time was ripe for a new graphics card. I decided on the purchase of an nVidia GeForce 8500GT. This card (apart from the uber-noisy fan) is a good card. I can now see every single strand of hair on my Sims' heads (well I can if I zoom right in on their hair), and the graphics in NFS Carbon are as smooth as the engine of the Alfa Romeo Brera that I drive on the game. There was still one problem however. Windows Media Center decided to struggle with videos, causing Jeremy Clarkson to pause for a long time in his Merc SLR, and then suddenly go at about 1,000MPH - out of sync with the sound of the car's engine. Also, ZoomText's performance was very very poor. I decided then to throw another sexty quid at my computer on upgrading it from 2 to 4GB of RAM. The reason it cost so much is because i bought 3 1GB modules to match the original 1GB module I installed when I built the machine. Also, I could not lay my hands on a single 2GB stick for love nor money. I decided to buy three 1GB modules and install them in a dual-channel configuration so that I would recieve a performance hit. Unfortunately as I am running 32-bit Windows, it will acknowlledge my full 4GB of RAM but it won't address it. System Information tells me that I have 4GB installed but I only have 3GB available. I was looking at upgrading to 64-bit Windows because of this, and that's where the problems started. ZoomText 9.1 will not work with 64-bit Windows, and neither will Dolphoin's Lunar magnifier. I'm sorry but just because I'm visually impaired doesn;t mean that I shouldn't be able to use 64-bit Windows. PC is completely garbage if you are disabled. Mac OS X 10.5 is completely 64-bit but I have absolutely no problems either running 32-bit software or even magnifying the screen. I am sorry dear readers but once again I'm outraged.

On the flip-side however now I can do something about it. Hopefully I will start third year in September and my third year project is a screen reader/magnifier, and I want to try and haveit run on Windows x64. I feel I have my work cut out for me. the fact that I am visually impaired means that as long as I choose to use Windows, I can only ever utilize 3GB of my RAM. Thanks Micro$oft. I don't suppose you'll give me a £20 refund for that 1GB module that will never be used :-(

What happenned to useful software bundles for new PCs

2008-03-20T14:29:00.002Z

While I've been at home I've had to use the recovery programs to restore both my mum's Medion Titanium PC that she bought from Aldi in April 2002 and my old Advent 7083 laptop which I passed on to my mum. The Medion PC, which originally cost £699 for just the base unit, and which was specified with a Pentium 4 2.0GHz CPU, 256MB DDR RAM, a Seagate 80GB HDD, a Sony 24x10x32 CD-Writer, DVD-ROM drive and an nVidia GeForce MX 460 graphics card with Dual VGA, came preinstalled with a healthy software bundle, of which none was bloatware. The PC came preinstalled with Microsoft Works Suite 2002, which at the time was an impressive software package, because the UK release included:
- Microsoft Works 6.0 - a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office, which included a word processor, spreadsheet application, a database program, a calendar and Works Portfolio which kept your files together in a Microsoft Binder-esque sort of way.
- Microsoft Word 2002 - The full version of Microsoft Word from Office XP. This came with a plug-in so that Word would be integrated into the Microsoft Works Task Launcher
- Microsoft Encarta 2002 Standard - the 2002 version of the world's best selling encyclopaedia.
- Microsoft Money 2002 - a very good money management program that can import statements from online banks and help you keep track of your chequebook, and your income and expenditure.
- Microsoft Picture-It! Photo 2002 - a simple photo editing package which let you enhance photos and make them into calendars, greeting cards, postcards or other publications.
- Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 - A program that enabled you to look at maps of The UK and Western Europe. You can use AutoRoute to plan jouneys, using either the quickest or shortest route, and it would give you information about the journey, such as a schedule, the cost (including the cost of petrol, etc) and points of interest along the way. Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 comes with Pocket Streets 2002 which you can install on to your Microsoft Windows CE based PDA. You could then import maps into Pocket Streets from AutoRoute.

Also included on the Medion PC was a full version of Nero Burning ROM 5.5 and Cyberlink PowerCinema. Apart from AntiVirus software, this PC came with everything you need right out of the box to start being productive. You could buy the base-unit, but if you bought the monitor, printer, scanner and digital camera, you had a complete set up for under £1,000 which is very useful to anybody looking for a computer bundle.

The Advent laptop on the other hand came with very little useful software preinstalled. On booting up for the first time, the Advent laptop comes with Microsoft Works 8.5, Napster (now fully legal), NTI CD and DVD Maker 3, Intervideo WinDVD, an AOL demo and Windows Media Player 10. When I used the Advent, my first time with NTI CD and DVD Maker resulted in a coster (a corrupt CD), so that had to go. I replaced it with Nero 7.0 Premium, and Microsoft Works was replaced by Microsoft Office 2003 Professional.

Nowadays if you buy a new PC, you will have a lot of trialware that will not work after thirty days unless you pay for it. It has become common practice for new machines to come preinstalled with Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - a sixty day trial. It would be nice to see computers come with fully featured productivity software that won't run out, and that isn't bloatware - and why do AOL insist on installing their demos onto every new PC. Most of us don't use AOL, and we're not going to start just because there's an icon on the desktop saying AOL 9.0 trial. I live in Hull were AOL demos are completely redundant because we can only use KC Broadband in Hull.

Apple know how to equip their computers with good software. Every new Mac comes preinstalled with the latest version of their iLife suite, which includes iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and .Mac Photo Gallery. iLife '08 can be bought on it's own or it will come preinstalled on new Macs. Mac OS X Leopard comes preinstalled with a DVD player and decoder and Disk Utility, which will work with hard disks as well as burning data CDs and DVDs. iTunes will let you burn audo CDs, and iDVD will let you burn movie DVDs, and as i've found out, it does so very well. I was able to burn two one-hour long DivX Videos to DVD using iDVD's Professional Quality encoder, and they played back flawlessly in my parents' set-top Toshiba DVD/Video Recorder. The only thing that lets Macs down when it comes to preinstalled software is the fact that a full Office suite isn't included. There are thirty-day trial versions of iWork '08 and Microsoft Office 2004 included but none-of these are full versions.

On retrospect, I think that the reason you have such a poor and bloaty selection of software included with PCs is that people don't seem to want software bundles anymore. They complain about how sluggish new PCs are because of this software. I do think Aldi/Medion had the right idea though because all of the bundled software can have uses in modern home-life, from writing letters and e-mails to homework assignments and coursework, to editing photos and making multimedia presentations and slideshows, the 2002 Medion PC had it all. Even the new Medion machines don't come with half as good a software bundle. Come on PC manufacturers, give us something we'll like! or we'll all make like I did and buy Macs! oh yes and please please please, don't bundle Windows Vista with machines that are specified any less than Dual-Core 2.4GHz with 4GB of DDR-3 RAM because it just won't work fast enough because it is so sluggish!

A nearly concise review about my MacBook – oh and yet another hard drive

2008-02-29T14:38:00.001Z

As of Yesterday I have had my Apple MacBook for a week. I say a week, but it's more like a week tomorrow. The reason for this is that I had to take my MacBook in last Saturday to change it as the number 6 key was playing up. They changed the machine without a hitch, and just put my hard drive into the new machine so that I could keep my data. All very well and good but I think that upset OSX a little bit, so yesterday I reformatted my MacBook's HDD and reinstalled Leopard. It is very simple to do. All you need to do is back up all your important data, insert 'MacBook install Disk 1', and select Install OSX and Applications. The MacBook will reboot and you will be brought into the installer, where you select your language, and the disk you want to install Leopard to. You witll be then prompted to select 'Erase and Insta'' for a clean install. Once you've done that, OSX checks the installation media before it does anything so that it is sure the media is clean. Once the installation CD is deemed okay, it goes onto install Mac OS X. Your MacBook will reboot and you will be asked for Disk 2i once it's rebooted. Insert the disk and click OK and setup will continue. Once it's finished, you will see the Leopard Welcome movie (You only ever see this when you start up your MacBook for the first time, or when you clean-install Leopard). You will be then taken through the initial setting up phase that you will have seen when you first bought your MacBook. If there is a wireless network connection available, your MacBook will prompt you to log on to it. If you are authorized to do so, log on to the wireless network, and enter your Apple ID (this will be the same as your iTunes account information). You should then see a screen with your contact details, check this is correct and click next. Next you will be asked to setup a user account. This will entail you typing in a username and a password, and either selecting a user icon, or taking a photo of yourself using the inbuilt iSight camera. Once you've done this, you will be asked to subscribe to .Mac, or to activate your current subscription. If you have a .Mac subscription, activate this now. If you don't, and would like to set one up, you can do this for one year for £70, or you can do as I did and hit Skip. You will then be asked if you would like a free trial of .Mac. Make your choice and click Next. Set up will now tell you that your Mac is ready to use. Click Done and you will be taken to Leopard's desktop. Just to clarify if you bought your MacBook with iLife '08 on it, it will be reinstalled. Ass will the iWork free trial, and the Microsoft Office 2004 free trial.

Now for my review of the MacBook and OSX leopard:

As a Windows user I found it surprisingly easy to move over to OSX. However, I did find the dock confusing at first as some programs live on it if they're open or not. The way to tell if a program oin the dock is open is to check if it has a white dot underneath it (or a black shortcut like arrow on Tiger). On OSX, things seem more logical than Windows, and it all just works. Program installation is easy on OSX. Most programs come on a .DMG file, which when opened, mounts a virtual disk image on the desktop. You open it and it brings up a picture of the program, and the Applications folder, and you just need to drag it onto that image, and it will install itself. For those programs that don't have shortcut to the Applications folder on their disk image however, just open the Applications folder and drag it into there manually. If a program is going to do anything to the system settings, it will ask you for your sudo password.

I bought Parallels Desktop 3.0 and installed Windows XP so that I can run Visual Studio 2008. I hate having to run Windows on a Mac, but then again I do need it for the course. Its better running on Parallels though as Zoom will work with Windows and as it's built into OSX, it doesn't slow the system down like ZoomText 9.1. I am getting to grips with Voice Over because I want blind people to start using Macs as they're cheaper to buy than JAWS itself, let alone a laptop to run it on. I think that Macs are more a people's machine. You can tell all over that Mac OSX was built by humans, for humans. I like it very much and I'm starting to prefer it over my Windows machine.

In other news I bought a Western Digital Elements Go 500GB External hard disk today. The reason being is that I want to take my entire music collections and some videos with me when I travel. I am going home next week as its Easter, and I quite fancy having my music collection and all my Top Gear videos there with me. It works on Windows and OS X 10.3 and above, so I will be able to enjoy all my digital content on my MacBook.

It's been too long

2008-02-25T17:39:00.004Z

Hello everybody. First of all, I would like to apologize for my posting on the 7th/8th of February.
It's been a while since I blogged on here but I'm back now. It's been a bit of an eventful month. On the first of this month, Vodafone renewed my contract and I now own a shiny new Sony Ericsson K850i. What do I think of this handset? Well what can I say.
On opening the box, I was greeted by the sight of my new phone. I carefully took that out of the box, and lifted the cardboard back to reveal the battery, charger headphones, instruction manuals and the installation CD. I followed the instructions to insert the battery and my Vodafone SIM card. The reason I followed the instructions is because instead of using a slide-off back cover to access the battery, this phone uses a flap on the bottom of the phone, similar to that of Sony CyberShot digital cameras. Pushing the flap up and then pulling it out reveals a slot for the battery, a 512MB M2 Micro Memory card which has already been installed, and a SIM card slot. To insert the battery, i had to lift up an orange catch, which was fiddly. Inserting the SIM card was easy; you just push it into the slot until it clicks into place. I removed the 512MB memory card and inserted the 2GB card that I had in my K800. I must admit that I do rather like the fact that the phone will take both M2 and SDHC memory cards, which means I can use my current memory card now and upgrade at a later date to a 4GB or 8GB card that will be cheap.

Powering up the phone went without a hitch, with the setup wizard helping me to set the date and time, and copy contacts I may have on my SIM card. In no time, I was at the main screen. Making calls is a pleasure with clear call quality. The screen is also a pleasure to look at as it is bright and has a high contrast which can be seen in just about lighting. The screen will alter it's brightness to suit the lighting conditions, so if you are using the phone in bright daylight, the screen will be very bright, whereas if you are using it in the dark, it will be slightly dimmer so as not dazzle you.

I do have one minor qualm with the phone however. When you are on the phone,, if you press it to your cheek then you are likely to invoke the touch sensitive buttons which can be a bit annoying at times. On the Vodafone branded version, the right soft key is set to Vodafone Live and that cannot be changed. this means that quite often I'm finding myself connecting to Vodafone Live when I don't necessarily want to. Also, for some people the keypad can be confusing as the D-pad is set around 2 and 5. This can take some getting used to but most should adapt pretty quickly to this arrangement.

This phone's Piece De Resistance is it's CyberShot 5 megapixel camera with a Xenon flash. I took it out to an ISA party that was happenning that night and took several pictures with it. This produces crystal-clear sharp shots - as long as you do not touch the back of the phone while you are taking the photo. Doing so produces very dark results.

For me, it is important that I can synchronize my phone with my computer. This is made easy by Sony Ericsson PC Suite. The new version of the software sports an intuitive interface which makes it easy to do such tasks as browse the phone's memory and (if one is installed) the phone's memory card. Synchronising was just a case of hitting Synchronize on the left hand side, selecting what I wanted to sync, and then hitting the Synchronize button in the right pane. I'm not too keen on the installer for Sony Ericsson PC Suite 3.x because it installs the drivers for every SE phone at install-time and this on Window Vista machines like my desktop can take a long time.

Bettery life on this phone is good if you don't plan to overly use any of the more power-hungry features like Bluetooth, GPRS and the Xenon flash. I get about two days charge from this phone, which is generally left switched on (apart from when I lose my charger).

Overall this is a good phone, and now that most of the bugs have been fixed, I can make a recommendation on this phone. To this end, I will give it a 4/5 rating.

In other news, I have been hard at work with my computer equipment. This month has seen my Ergo Ensis laptop have it's RAM doubled from 1GB to 2GB. This was done in a futile attempt to make Windows run faster when Office 2007 or Visual Studio 2008 is running, especially with ZoomText 9.1 in use. I had wanted to use Windows Vista with my laptop as it is a good operating system with lots of good features. However, the laptop had other ideas, so I recycled my Windows XP Media Center Edition license and installed XP MCE 2005 on my laptop, and dual-booted it with Ubuntu 7,10, an OS which I like more and more as I use it. Not two weeks later, my desktop computer also recieved an upgrade in the form of a Samsung 500GB S-ATA drive. This was because my 320GB HDD is starting to become full, as is my 160GB HDD. I need more space for all those episodes of Top Gear, The Simpsons and Family Guy, er I mean all that work and all the development environments I need to do that work (Visual Studio 2008 in't exactly lightweight). Because S-ATA is a serial interface, much like USB, Windows Vista thinks now that I would like to eject the hard disk on which it is installed! Duh!!!!! Well don there Microsoft! At least it won't let me actually eject it because when I try to do so (just out of curiosity, honest) it tells me that it can't stop it right now as it's in use.

In other news, I have finally bought a Macbook! The reason is because even with the RAM upgrade, my poor Ensis cannot keep up with my computing requirements with ZoomText being a RAM hog. I made the purchase at KRCS, an authorized Mac seller, which is just opposite Princes Quay in Hull. The person behind the counter was very friendly and he helped me choose a Macbook and even doubled the memory in it. The specs of my new Macbook are as follows:

2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2GB DDR-RAM 667MHz
120GB HDD
13" Widescreen (1280x800 resolution)
Duperdrive (8x DVD burner)
Bluetooth
AirPort Extreme (802.11b/g/n wireless)
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I love my Mac because things just work. I love the screen magnification that comes as part of Universal Access. I take my hat off to Apple for including assisting technologies as part of their operating system which in itself is a fantastic system. If you want to learn more about how Apple helps disabled users use their software then please click here. I am going to use this Macbok for a while and see how I like it, and if I am pleased with it, then I will make a recommendation to the university to have the YorLinc who deals with assessments of needs for disabled students to recommend Macbooks and iMacs.

How to stop a Microsoft employee in their tracks

2008-01-24T02:02:00.001Z

I have been to a few Microsoft talks now where they show off shiny new things like Silverlight and Surface and suchlike. Each time I have seen this new technology I have asked "So how would a blind person use this technology? I usually receive some sort of reply which is a mutter about how they don't deal with accessibility issues in the UK. They don't very much deal with it in the US either!! I'm sorry I know I sound miserable but if Microsoft Surface had made it, a tactile version would have been the best thing for a blind person because they would finally be able to experience the full advantage of a graphical user interface, and not an audio version of it, which takes a long while to work your way around. They would be able to point and click on things, draw vector-based images (and even Bitmap images) and this would help blind people to appreciate the full potential of a PC. Braille displays are here but at the moment, they are expensive one-line text-based devices. Come on people! Instead of wasting time ripping us off with stubborn product activations and DRM that stops us putting our favourite tracks onto any MP3 player of our choice, why don't we move the development of tactile displays on because this would be something that could really take off in the Blind community!

I demand more RAM ..... or Vista gets it

2008-01-24T01:40:00.001Z

Recently, Windows Vista has been running shockingly slow on my Ensis laptop, and I think I need to give it the boot because it has started getting into the habit of flicking the screen off at will. It has done this the last couple of times I have used the laptop. I am thinking of recycling my old Windows Media Center Edition license and installing it on my laptop, then I'm going to dual-boot XP with Ubuntu. If I can acquire more RAM, let's say 2GB, I will consider going back to Vista but for now, I can't actually use it. It's a shame really as I am going to miss Spotlight –er, I meant the search box on the Start menu.

I am thinking that I would like to find part time employment and buy a Macbook because they have impressed me no end. Every Macbook comes set up ready for a visually impaired person to use, thanks to Universal Access, which has been around for twenty four years. All you need to do is hit Apple+Alt+8 on your Macbook and suddenly everything becomes larger, and hopefully clearer. To turn up the magnification level, press Apple, Alt and the '+' key, and to turn the magnification level down, press Apple, Alt and the '-' key. I think Apple have done a very good job with accessibility and I take my hat off to them.

I would like to see the RNIB start to recommend Apple iMacs and MacBooks as well as Windows based Screen reader/magnifier software because it is a much cheaper and in a lot of ways superior alternative to having to buy a new Windows machine, and pay the same amount that you paid for the PC in accessibility software. You can buy a half-decent Windows Vista based PC today for around about £300-400, yet Jaws 9.1 costs around £600 for a full license! Why?

Revising Amongst Friends

2008-01-13T16:31:00.001Z

I feel that I am slightly more confident about my exams because I've been at my friend's house since eleven this morning revising. I hope I do well because I really want to make a good go of this degree – I have realised how much it means to me

Windows AnyTime Upgrade – Not such a great idea

2008-01-12T20:40:00.001Z

You may remember me telling you about when I upgraded my Windows Vista Business installation on my desktop PC to Windows Vista Ultimate. I did this using Windows AnyTime Upgrade to save money. The problem is that if I want to reinstall Windows Vista, I can't do a clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate because the Windows AnyTime Upgrade license will not let you do that. If I had a BitLocker™ ready PC, I would not be able to use BitLocker™ because it requires you clean install Windows Vista Ultimate with two clean hard disk partitions. Also, I have found that Windows Movie Maker will not let me import video, and that that I can't save projects from within Windows DVD maker. I wonder if it's because these were added on (or upgraded in the case of Windows Movie Maker) during the Windows Vista AnyTime Upgrade. Also, because I have to install over the top of Windows Vista Business edition, this will make the total recovery process about ninety minutes to two hours longer. Using up time which I can ill afford. I really hope that Microsoft will sort this problem out because if not I will probably just go ahead and waste the bank's money on a boxed OEM copy of Vista Ultimate using my eight-month old PC as an OEM container.

Don't get me wrong there is no problem with the actual operating system. It's just Microsoft's licenses are too restrictive, I mean we could clean install any upgrade OS. I remember doing it with a version of Windows 98 RTM. I just started setup from the bootdisk and when asked to validate my upgrade, I just inserted my Windows 95 OSR2 disk, and the upgrade took place. It was the same with Microsoft Office for Windows 95, in fact it was even easier because all I had to do was insert Disk 1 from the Microsoft Office 4.2 installation floppy disk set to validate the upgrade, whilst leaving the Office 95 Professional CD in the drive! Why can't we have that in Vista? Please sort it out Microsoft!!!

And that concludes my ranting for this week. Please tune in next week where I will be probably ranting about exams, Bill Gates again or something similar. Just kidding!

The Switch-over to Vista, Part 2

2008-01-07T04:08:00.001Z

Ash Technologies have released a Beta Windows Vista driver for their Opti Verso. This and the fact that I can now run Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City under Windows Vista has prompted me to switch over to Vista on my laptop. I started at 9.50 this evening and it is now coming up to five past four in the morning. It has taken me a while to work out how to get the volume keys working on Vista but I managed to download some drivers for the Asus A3F, on which my Ergo Ensis 211 is based. I installed the ATK utility and Power4 Gear Extreme for Windows Vista and Hey Presto it worked.

As for my Opti Verso, I tested that and for a thirty second glance at the software I do believe it is as responsive as the XP version (version 1.12) was. I am glad that Ash Technologies have given us a chance to sample a Vista beta driver, because I was losing hope of ever being able to install Windows Vista on my laptop.

If you have an Ergo Ensis 211 laptop that you are thinking of upgrading to Vista, please be aware that Ergo still do not officially support Windows Vista on this particular notebook for some stupid reason. If you run Windows Update when you have installed Vista and connected to the Internet it should work automatically though.

I do have a couple more programs to reinstall on this machine but apart from that it is good to go with me as I start in earnest, my revision for my exams.

Grand Theft Auto III, GTA Vice City and Windows Vista

2008-01-06T19:49:00.001Z

So far, I have been enjoying my upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate. Indeed, you have the nice shiny new Aero Flip 3D, a whole host of new security features and program indexing that actually works and really can speed up your PC if you leave it running unattended for an afternoon. I had all these features in Windows Vista Business. The one thing that I didn't have however is the Windows Media Center, which was sorely missed because Hauppauge's WinTV software is, shall we say, a bit performance shy. If I was going to stick with Vista I needed Media Center for the watching of TV. For Christmas I did just that. I upgraded my Windows Vista to Ultimate so that I could take advantage of Windows Media Center, and when I get a device compatible with it, BitLocker. I used the Anytime Upgrade feature from Windows Vista Business, which after taking all of my money guided me through the effortless installation of Vista Ultimate. Once everything was set up, I set about setting up Windows Media Center, which has been improved Windows XP Media Center 2005, which was also very good. One thing I have noticed is that when on freeview, you can switch channels very quickly like you can on a normal freeview set-top box. Also in Media Center, you can pause live TV (I think you could do that in XP but I never tried it). You can even rewind it as far as half an hour. I like this feature as I can pause Top Gear when I want another cuppa. What I like most, specifically about Vista Ultimate is that it comes with it's own DVD decoder. This is good news as my once faithful PowerDVD 6.0 will not work with Windows Vista, and I can't afford to go out buying PowerDVD 7.

Up until about thirty minutes ago, this came with, in my opinion anyway, a substantial price tag. The thing is that I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto a lot. The logical thing to do would be to install Grand Theft Auto under Windows Vista, go to Start > Games and launch GTA. That IS the idea but like most things in life it isn't as simple as it would first appear. As part of windows Vista's new security system they have included something called User Account Control. This prompts you to confirm you want to do anything slightly administrative on the computer. This is quite good for blocking out those little nasties we all seem to pick up. Unfortunately, in reality it's more of a pain for an avid computer user than traction control is to The Stig (another Top Gear reference). Because of this Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City will not run as they are not recognised by Windows UAC as safe programs, and because they are in Program Files, Windows will not let either of them run. Thanks to my friend Tim, we have been able to make both GTAIII and GTA Vice City run on my Vista box.

Firstly, you need to go to the directory where the game is installed. Usually this will be something like "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games". There you will see either a folder for GTAIII or Grand Theft Auto Vice City, or both, depending on which games you have installed. Right-click on the folder and go to Share...
Click on Advanced Sharing, and when asked, click Continue
Tick the box labelled Share This Folder, then click on Permissions
Give everyone Full Access to this folder by checking the box labelled Allow under Full Control
Click OK on all the boxes, and close the Windows Explorer window
Next go to Start > All Programs > Rockstar Games >Whichever GTA you installed
Right click on Grand Theft Auto and select Properties
Go to the Compatability tab and check the box labelled "Run This Program in Compatability mode for:" and select Windows 98 / Windows Me from the drop down list box.
Click OK, and run the game

Hopefully, all should be well but if not, check for updates for the games by going to www.rockstargames.com and selecting the version of GTA you wish to update. If you are running GTAIII you will need to patch it to version 1.1. You can patch it by clicking here and downloading the patch from Rockstar's Web-site.

Please note that if you are on a network you must ensure that you are not running the game with No CD patches enabled as this will enable other people to play the game. Be careful when sharing files and folders as you can cause your system to be exposed to viruses. Make sure your firewall is turned on and updated, and that you have up-to-date antivirus software.

Merry Christmas from JayWakefield.co.uk

2007-12-24T23:22:00.001Z

Merry Christmas everybody! Hope you have a good one.

Reflections on the past Year

2007-12-18T21:23:00.001Z

Hello everybody. Sorry it's been a long time since I blogged. I've just recovered from this very stressful semester I have had and didn't want to upset you all. While I've been away however JayWakefield.co.uk turned one year old at around Midnight on December 15^th.This has got me thinking about the past year. 2007 has, in my opinion been a great year to be a blogger interested in PCs. In January, Microsoft finally brought out their long-awaited successor to Windows XP. Windows Vista has done quite a bit to boost sales in the PC market with people buying new PCs just so they can have a piece of Vista. Unfortunately, in my opinion, at the start of the year a lot of consumers (including myself) were angry not only about the fact that Windows Vista needs a beefy system to run the basics! We were also angry that we bought systems UNDER a year ago and they won't even run Windows Aero! There were a few people who were angry because they knew of people who had Windows Aero running with 64MB shared graphics cards whereas they had 128MB dedicated graphics cards and their systems just threw the ugly Windows Vista Basic look at them. This reminds me of my personal system which at the time was my AMD Athlon64 3200+ based PC which I built in May 2006, equipped with 1.25GB of DDR RAM and Radeon 9250 AGP graphics (which at the time was the best budget card money could buy). This system not only would not let me use Windows Aero (probably because of the fact that I was stingy on the graphics card) but Abit refused to support my M1689 UL8 motherboard any longer. I was able to install the sound drivers by running the installer in XP compatibility mode. I was very shocked by both ATI and Abit by their refusal to support nothing but the latest and greatest products that they sold. I had a bit of a hefty shopping list to bring that system up to spec. If you look back on my blog posts for January and February this year, you will probably remember that I had to buy a new TV Tuner as my once faithful Pinnacle PCTV 100 Analogue TV Tuner would not go undr Vista. I also upgraded the graphics to an nVidia GeForce FX5200 which let me have Windows Aero but only with a Vista system rating of 2.6. This meant Aero was very jerky but Hey! It still worked!. Eventually I had to upgrade the system from 1.25 to 1.75GB of RAM by adding an extra 512MB stick. After adding all of this junk, the system decided to pack up one week short of a year after it was built. This left me with no alternative but to build a new PC, which I did, and the system is still chugging along very happily.

I don't procrastinate much really.

I am trying (and failing) to make the point that because of Vista's fancy new features and the sheer size of the OS, a lot of people do not like Windows Vista. If this were not enough, let's say that you wanted to buy an upgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic when it originally came out. If you lived in the US, this would cost you $100, whereas in the UK, it would set you back a whopping £100. At the value of the US dollar was two to the pound, or to put it simply, we had to pay twice as much for a Vista Home Basic Upgrade in the UK than our cousins over the pond would. There was a lot of angry consumers.

While the public were tucking into Vista, Microsoft were peddling Microsoft Office 2007, the perfect companion to Windows Vista. This confuses a lot of people because of it's new ribbon but I have become used to this. I really do enjoy using the latest version of Microsoft Office.

If Windows and Office isn't enough for you, and you are a web designer have you had a chance to tuck into Microsoft Expression Studio? I have! IT is fantastic. Microsoft Expression Studio comes as a suite of four programs. Expression Web is the replacement to Microsoft Office FrontPage I would believe. You can create the actual web pages using Expression Web. Expression Blend lets you design graphics, and you can use them in Microsoft Silverlight applications. Microsoft Silverlight, by the way is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash. Expression Design lets you design elements to web pages and any other user Interface. Finally Expression Media keeps all your pictures and other media together so yhat you can easily find the media you need.

As I write this post I am currently downloading Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. I will let you know how I get on with it soon.

Very Difficult Semester

2007-11-17T00:14:00.001Z

Sorry i've not written in such a long time. I have had a right old time here at University. With all my second year modules and my Maths resit I'm in 21 hours a week. On top of that I have all of my coursework and THEN there's all the extra reading I neglected. I am running out of time and patience. I find this very difficult at the moment but hope to pull through. I have come home for the weekend though so I'll at least have a change of surroundings here.

After unlocking my Nokia 6280 so I can use my Vodafone Contract SIM with it, I have been having problems with the phone's POP-port connection, which when I want a fast GPRS connection in lectures to download notes, can be inconvenient. I found Infra-red and Bluetooth too slow or tricky for my satisfaction so I decided to trade in my N73 for a new phone. I went down to Central Entertainment Exchange (CEX) in the Prospect Centre in town in the first week of November and presented my Nokia N73, together with the charger, data cable and headphones and they tested it for me. Apart from the charger being bent and my having to replace it, I sold the phone without too much of a hitch. I told them I wanted something with at least a 2.0MP camera and 3G connectivity. They presented me with a Nokia 6288, a Sony Ericsson K800i and a Samsung U600. I tried out the Sony Ericsson and Samsung U600 to see how they performed, then decided to go with the Sony Ericsson. My Nokia N73 gave me £97 towards the trade-in which means when you add the cost of a charger, only cost me £22. I wanted a memory card for it though, so I bought a 2GB one. I was annoyed because CEX sold me a 2^nd hand M2 memory card at retail price. I should have bought it at the Carphone Warehouse instead and it would have been new. However I did bump into a couple of friends in CEX so that was a plus.

Apart from the Pop-port issues, my 6280 was working perfectly so I gave it to Laura, who wouldn't use the Pop-port I wouldn't think. She came down last week and we have had a fantastic time together. We didn't quite make it to Bridlington or Withernsea but I did go and pick her up in York and we rode down together on the train back to Hull. We went out to Asylum together on Wednesday night for the Best Tower Night In The World. On Thursday, we headed out into town where she bought some things in Primark to leave at Chez Student for when she comes down to stay with me. We then had a Pizza at Pizza Hut. We had meat feast with the Three Cheeses Cheezy bites. We loved it. Afterwards, I took her to Waterstones to buy her a copy of Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome by Luke Jackson. This is a very good read written by a lad who would now by nineteen (although he was thirteen when he wrote the book). This book gives a first-hand view into what it is like living with Asperger Syndrome, and I thought it would be a good idea for Laura to have a copy, just so she knows how to understand me. On the Friday, we went to the Aroma Chinese Restaurant on Beverly Road for a meal. We went there on our two month anniversary so we thought we'd go for the four month anniversary. On the Saturday, we went to the Now That's What I Call Asylum headphone disco. It is really quite something to be in Asylum with no loud music playing, yet with the whole club singing along to a song. Laura and I both enjoyed ourselves and we miss each other already.

Microsoft comes to Hull

2007-10-25T11:34:00.001Z

On Tuesday, Ed Dunhill from Microsoft came to give a talk on the Microsoft .NET Framework, which is fast becoming my favourite platform for program (not that I program on any other platform). The idea that you can use your preferred language to program anything from a desktop or laptop computer running Windows XP or Vista to Windows-based smartphones to Automated Teller Machines to washing machines or even cookers sounds appealing. He covered Microsoft Silverlight, which is Microsoft's 'version' of Adobe Flash player. He also did some things on XNA. I really enjoyed the presentation. We were all given Microsoft T-Shirts that were originally cubes that we could put in water and they turned into T-shirts.

I write this post as I am on the train coming back to Hull. Yesterday I was in Bradford being presented with a care leavers' award for what I've achieved in university so far. It was a good ceremony but I came away early and went to my sister's house.

T-Mobile finally gave me the subsidy pin to unlock my Nokia 6280 yesterday before I set off home so I have put my contract Vodafone SIM in that phone now and I'm very happy with it.

Makeover for JayWakefield.co.uk

2007-10-18T17:51:00.001Z

I have decided to make a few changes to my web-site. Firstly I have changed the theme on my home page and download section. I have also decided to change the look of my blog. This is to try to make my site and blog bear more consistency. I haven't been able to fully integrate that yet however. You'll also notice that this blog is no longer called Jay Wakefield's World. It is now called JayWakefield.co.uk blog. This is again to try and make the blog more a part of the JayWakefield.co.uk web-site. I am hoping in the future that the blog will have the same theme as my site, but for now these are the only changes I am planning to make. Please tell me what you think of these by posting onto the guestbook on the homepage, or clicking on "0 Comments" below this post and following the instructions to make a comment.

Also, did you notice the introduction animation that comes up as you access my homepage? What do you think? Dial-up users please tell me if this has a significant impact on your experience on my site.

Also if my blog is difficult for any visually impaired people to see then please let me know so I can do something about it.

Having problems with the sidebar in Windows Vista

2007-10-18T00:00:00.001Z

Click Here

First Year Textbook for Sale

2007-10-13T00:01:00.001Z

Seeing as I passed my Computer Systems module in first year. I am selling my copy of Operating Systems by William Stallings. If you are interested in buying this book then please click here to go to my eBay listing.

My Smartphone’s better than yours – I wish

2007-10-12T12:20:00.001Z

Take a look at this tasty item. I would love this hand set. It features Quad Band, Windows Mobile 6, a 2.0 megapixel camera, Microsoft pocket Word and Excel, a full Qwerty keyboard and you can buy it on Vodafone so no more messing about with getting the darn thing unlocked and trying to teach it that it should NOT connect via T-Mobile GPRS or O2 Mobile Web. The only thing that lets device down is the lack of a 3G connection, which is rather shocking in this day and age considering some of the newer HSDPA enabled devices are able to connect to the Internet at around 8Mb, which is the speed of my home connection. Apart from this I love this device and would be quite happy to trade in my N73 Music Edition for it.

Talk To Me!

2007-10-10T16:22:00.001Z

I went into town today to collect my Nokia N73. Vodafone offered me the service for free seeing as I got the phone on contract directly from them. They have performed a software upgrade on the handset and have put Talks 3.10 on it for me. I have been given the standard UK Eloquence voice. I was hoping for Zooms but it wasn't to be. I am happy with Talks however as I can still use the phone's camera while Talks is enabled. For those of you who do not know what Talks is and what it does I'll explain: Talks is a screen reader that is available on Nokia Smartphones. It reads aloud whatever is displayed on screen so that visually impaired users can access the phone. I had it installed because I find it difficult to see the font that is used in text messages. If you have a Nokia N-series or E-series phone or any other Nokia S60 phone, you can find out more about talks, and download a demo for your handset here.

Vodafone have also upgraded me from 250 to 500 texts, which I like. They have really looked after me.

Teachers’ TV Programme

2007-10-04T19:20:00.001Z

I am going to be on the TV. I am going to be on a program about Looked after Children at Hanson School. It is being shown on the Teachers' TV channel on Tuesday October the 16^th at 11:15am and 7:15pm and at 1:15 in the morning on Wednesday the 17^th October. I only get a short part at the beginning and the end but I'm still there. Teachers TV is available on Freeview and Sky. If you haven't got access to Freeview, you can register with Teachers' TV and download the program here.

Please comment once you have watched it.

Romance and 8-meg broadband

2007-10-03T22:44:00.001Z

I have just spent two fantastic days with my beautiful girlfriend. She came down on Monday night at 9:45PM and went home today. I had to go to lectures yesterday so she was in on her own for a while but this gave her time to do some studying. After the lectures we went into the city centre so I could purchase a wireless router so that I could share the connection with everyone else at Chez Student. We then went for a meal at Pizza Hut, after which we went to check out the new St Stephen's shopping centre. It kind of reminds me of the Triangle in Manchester, albeit much smaller. Hull now has three shopping centres in the centre of town; Princes Quay, Prospect Centre and St Stephen's Centre. Also new to Hull is Paragon Interchange. This is basically an extension to Hull Railway Station so that all busses terminate there now. I like it because it brings busses and trains together. A few months ago if you had wanted to be near the railway station and you were on Cottingham Road, you would have had to catch the Number 15 bus which would drop you off outside Argos, which you would then have to navigate your way across the road and walk around the Victoria Hotel to the train station. Now if you are on Cott. Road and need to be at the train station, you can catch pretty much any bus that is heading towards the city centre and it will wind up at Paragon Interchange. I like that a lot. The East Riding of Yorkshire know that people still do use public transport.

Today I had to wait in for my broadband, and what a day it was. It started off with a few power outages that, after a lot of troubleshooting, were found to be caused by the cooker in the room designed for disabled inhabitants. Next came the engineers who were going to 'install the ADSL socket'. Trouble is – I had already rigged up the router and had a broadband modem to hand if anything went wrong. All I needed was for Kingston Communications to switch on ADSL on my phone line. After a few phone calls, they did so, and the modem, which was connected to the computer, sprang into life. I connected to the Internet through the modem to find that it worked well. When I connected the router, however the DSL light was on but the Internet light refused to flash. I was on the verge of taking the router back to Currys Digital where I had bought it. I decided instead to just go there and find out what was wrong once I had dropped my girlfriend off at the train station. Once at Currys they gave me some 08 number to ring, which I did once I was home. They gave me the number for Tech Guys, who could help me. However, instead of ringing them, I decided to restore the router to factory settings. I followed the wizard and found that I had incorrectly entered the username the first time round. I entered in the correct one, set up the rest of the router and I am now online through my router, although my laptop won't connect to it at the moment but I will troubleshoot that later, I think.

Settled in and Ready for the new semester

2007-09-24T13:53:00.001Z

Sorry it's been a long time again people. I have had the maddest month ever. I have passed all my exam resits with the exception of Quantitative Methods which I am doing this year. My girlfriend of two months has been down. She is called Laura and she has been really supportive of me over the last two months and has helped to turn my life around. I told Rob Miles about her and his reaction was "Wow, a computer scientist with a girlfriend". He was joking about it.

I have been helping out at International Week as a volunteer. I have been helping to move people into University Accommodation and while doing so have met a few friendly faces. I also have new housemates. I am living with two American girls who are really friendly and a lad from London who is equally as friendly. I love the atmosphere that my new housemates have helped me to create. We all pin our doors back and just hang around in each others' rooms.

I should be getting broadband shortly although it is taking its time. The thing that gets to me the most is the library now has "new" opening hours. They are only open till seven on Monday and Tuesday, till five on Wednesday and Thursday and till four on Friday. The library is no longer open on a weekend so I now NEED a broadband connection because I can't use the 24 hour center because they use 14" CRT screens which are very old and flicker and they have set the resolution to 1,024x768 and I need it at 800x600 on a 14" screen. They don't have ZoomText although that should be coming shortly. If I don't get my broadband, I fear that I cannot continue my studies at this university and will have to drop out and re-apply to a different university next year.

In other news, Vodafone have agreed to install Talks for free on my Nokia N73 which would help me although I am STILL waiting for my Nokia 6280 unlocking code, which has annoyed me as I have paid £15 for it, which I can ill afford.

I do however want to make it a good year, for it to be better than last year.

ZoomText Scripting

2007-09-01T11:17:00.001Z

If you have read my blog, you will noticed that my entry about finally getting ZoomText 9.1 has had a comment made about it. This comment was from somebody who works at AI Squared about a blog called ZoomText Scripting which gives us, the users a chance to comment on the making of ZoomText and submit ideas and code. I like the fact that I have been read by AI Squared as one day I hope to write programs like ZoomText that magnify and read the screen.

Back at Chez Student

2007-09-01T11:14:00.001Z

Fellow blog readers, I am back at Chez Student. I am in the big room with the bay window and it is absolutely fantastic I am on dial-up internet for the moment but I will be getting broadband in shortly. I moved in on Friday August 31^st and the day went something like this

9am – Wake up

10am do some studying

11am continue studying for a bit

12 noon take big wheelie bag, OPTi Verso camera and smaller Head Sports bag up to the accommodation office to collect the key to the room, then take the bags to my room

12:30 set off to Computer Systems exam

13:30 Do exam

14:50 finish exam, collect empty bags and head back down to my friend's house, stopping along the way to get shopping

15:00 re-pack big bag, and bring computer, VCR and cases of CDs down

17:00 take things back to Chez Student in taxi

18:30 walk back down to friend's place

19:33 Take big black back and head sports bag back to Chez Student on the number 115 bus

19:50 unpack everything in my room

20:10 walk to bus stop with empty bags

20:15 head out to my friend's house on the number 15 bus

20:40 pack remaining things that will fit in black bag and bring large boxes and Printer/Scanner downstairs.

21:00 head back to Ferens Avenue and unpack.

I finally got finished unpacking at about 1am this morning, briefly stopping to chat to my girlfriend. The funny thing is, I've still got to collect my musical keyboard and a few other items from my friend's house. Yesterday was very tiring.

ZoomText 9.1

2007-08-26T08:53:00.001Z

I have got a full copy of ZoomText 9.1. I got it on Friday when I went to see my worker at the University's Disability Office. They had decided that it was necessary for me to have a copy of ZoomText 9.1 after all because I am using Office 2007, and that is what the University will be using from September. I am actually quite happy with it. I did not initially like the way it turned off the Aero user interface, but I have just reset the colour scheme to Windows Classic and ZoomText 9.1 works fantastically.

I’m Back in Hull

2007-08-25T11:41:00.001Z

I am back in Hull now. I arrived on Thursday and my parents brought my things over on Friday. I am staying with a couple of friends who do computer science to revise with them for my exam resits. At the moment it is fantastic. My friends are renting a Club Easy house this year and I'm staying with them until I get temporary accommodation or until Chez Student becomes available. At my friends' place, they have decided to live communally. I want that to happen in Chez Student although I don't think that it will happen that way. It feels nice though to get up, walk out of my bedroom and have somebody say "Good Morning" to you. The doors aren't on springs like ours at Chez Student which means you can leave them open while you are in the room without breaking Fire Safety regulations. The house has a living room with a free TV license whereas at Chez Student, you have to pay for your TV license and it MUST have the right room number on or else you are treat as someone who doesn't have a TV license. I found out the hard way. Last year, I lived in Room 2 but my license said Room 1 on it, and I was sent a letter stating that if I didn't pay my TV License fee, I would be threatened with Court. I had to ring the TV Licensing authorities to sort it out.

I am hoping this year is better than last year as I really do want to do well at University because my degree is very important to me.

Long Time No Squeak

2007-08-15T11:24:00.001Z

Sorry dear reader(s) that I haven't blogged in a while. It's been very busy here. I have been studying for resits in exams and preparing to go back to Hull to do the resifts. I should be back on Thursday, 23^rd. I am staying at a friend's to study, then when I do the resits, I will get temporary accommodation, and should be then able to move back to Chez Student for the start of the semester.

Last weekend I was in Malvern with my parents at the motorhome show. This was a Country & Western weekend which featured performances by country singers every night in the Malvern Showground's two stables. There was also line dancing classes that ran every night from 6 to 7, and they were very enjoyable. It was good to dance again. During the day there were cowboy shoot-outs, and plenty of motorhomes for sale. Caravanning was something that always interested me, and I always enjoyed looking round caravans. I know it's weird but hey. Some of the vehicles I saw really caught my eye and these included the Gulfstream Crescendo RV, the Auto Trail Frontier Scout and the Hymer range of motorhomes.

After the weekend in Malvern, I would like to go back to line dancing when I get back to University. I will have to find a dance class.

In the lakes again

2007-07-21T19:16:00.001Z

Yesterday I went to the Lake District with The Outlook Trust. Today we have been up at Tower Wood Outdoor education center where the trust keeps the Gig and canoes. We split up into two groups to kayak and sail. It was nice to sail in the Gig again. It seems so strange but six years ago I hated every moment I spent sailing because the boat leaned. I always feared it would throw me in. After overcoming my fear of sailing, I now find that sailing in the Gig, which is actually quite a small boat, is second nature.

Appreciated by Microsoft

2007-07-17T18:16:00.001Z

Last week, I received an e-mail from Ed Gibson at Microsoft Corporation. Turns out he likes my blog, my ability not just to say what's good about something but also the ability to be critical of something. It's good to know that I have been noticed by Microsoft and I hope I can continue to put up materiall that pleases everyone (that is if I do so).

This time Offcom went too far

2007-07-17T11:40:00.001Z

Telecommunications regulator Offcom has made a decision that is affecting blind cellphone users around the UK. At one time, if a blind and partially sighted person was registered with the Free Directory Enquiries service and they needed a number, all they had to do was to pick up their trusty handset, dial 195, give the person at the other end a unique ID code and then request the number. The person on the end would then dutifully look up the number and give it to the caller. The best part was that this was free to blind and partially sighted users – not any more. If you dial 195 from, let's say my Vodafone Pay Monthly handset, it will go through to 118 888, and I will receive the number without having to tell the operative my PIN code. However, it will appear on my bill as a chargeable call. The reason for this is that Offcom want the mobile networks in the UK to use 118 888 and not 195, because apparently 192 and 197 directory enquiries is no longer. I knew that but come on – blind users can't suddenly use a telephone directory easily, so why has free directories been discontinued so suddenly? This sure beats me.

............ and that concludes our rant for today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

I-Doser Application

2007-07-16T18:33:00.001Z

Today I was reading the latest edition of The Official Windows Vista magazine when I came across an article for a program called I-Doser. Basically what it does is to play sounds to the user through headphones which it is claimed the sound waves will alter the waves in the brain thereby altering the mood of the person who is listening to the sounds through headphones. I was curious so I decided to download the program and give it a go. Two free doses are provided. The first one is Content, which wipes negative thoughts from your head and leaves you feeling happy and contented. The second dose, alcohol gives you that feeling when you've just had a couple of jars. I tried the Content dose (I didn't fancy feeling drunk in the middle of the afternoon at Chez Wakefield). The sound played for twenty minutes, and it did seem a little annoying at first having an annoying ringing sound playing for twenty minutes, but when it finished it did fade out rather than just stop dead, which meant your ears have time to recover. It seemed okay I guess but that could just be a placebo effect.

I'm a little sceptical of these things. I don't know how much research has been done into this, but I have a feeling that prolonged tampering with brain waves could have negative side effects, so just exercise caution.

Outlook Trust

2007-07-14T09:44:00.001Z

I have now become the administrator for the web-site of The Outlook Trust. The site has already been made up but if you want to know more about the trust, or to see the changes that I will be making to the site (once I can get the log-in credentials to work) then please click here. I have also asked about becoming a helper and one of the trustees is going to look into it for us.

My trip to Scotland

2007-07-13T12:16:00.001Z

Last week I went to Scotland with the Outlook Trust, the organisation that takes young visually impaired people on residential where they do outdoor activities. This week we did activities such as kayaking, sailing, gorge walking and white water rafting. We set off on Sunday 1^st of July from the co-op car park to travel for about eight hours on the magic bus to Strontian, which is a village on Loch Sunart, which is a sea loch on the west of Scotland near Fort William. We stayed in a self-catering bunkhouse which was actually quite modern, however most of us didn't get any signal on our mobiles. The only phones which got a signal were one of the leaders' phones which was on Orange, and ironically enough, my Samsung D600 picked up enough signal in a certain spot of the room for me to have a decent phone conversation.

Anyhoo, we went kayaking on the Monday morning. We kayaked to a channel in the loch where porpoises are found. It was quite scary in a way that I had a feeling that a porpoise may come up around the boat. We then paddled back for Lunch. Afterwards, some of us were given the opportunity to have a go at driving the Rib (Rubber Inflatable Boat), dubbed "Orange One" while some of us went sailing on one of the leaders' Yacht, which was called Moya. We then swapped over and some more people sailed while the others had a go at driving the Rib. Tuesday was a bit more strenuous, with gorge walking on the agenda for the morning. This gorge (I forget the name) was a tricky one, with certain parts where you had to swim in it. I have been in this gorge before; We did part of it in 2003 the last time we were in Strontian. This time it was slightly tricky with my having to wear sandals. The right sandal kept coming loose and on the way back, I had to just take them off and walk barefoot back to the bus, which was bad news for the leader who loaned me the dry suit in an attempt to keep my toe dry. After gorge walking, we went for lunch, and afterwards it was time to learn how to capsize in a double kayak, which was fun and also very wet. Some of us got to have a go at wind surfing but because the rest of us were sitting in the rib cold and wet, we had to retire for the day. On the next day, we white-water rafting with two professional instructors from Vertical Descents, an organisation that takes people white-water rafting, canyonning and Fun Yaking which is like white-weater rafting but in two man inflatable boats which are as stable and safe as rafts but as manoeuvrable as kayaks. We did some white-water rafting on the river Gary which is a class 3-4 river. Rivers are classed in how tricky they are and the classing system goes from 1 to 6, so our river was quite fast, in fact we were stuck in the first rapid, and I will have to admit to being absolutely petrified now because if I don't somebody else will. Once we had finished the rapids we headed back to the bunkhouse for a quick rest and then we had a barbecue on the Wednesday evening. On the Thursday, we headed out on a kayaking expedition. The weather was quite cool, and it rained occasionally but we paddled for about four hours from Loch Sunart through Loch Teacus to some ground by small estate. We set up tents and had tea which was cooked on stoves that use mentholated spirits. We had tomato pasta and freshly caught mackerel which tasted fantastic. After tea we all turned in for the night. The next day we packed up and set off back. The original idea was to sail through Loch Teacus into Loch Drambuie, into the open sea, then back to Loch Sunart, but because we were all tired, we canoed in Loch Drambuie just for a little while and then back through Loch Sunart. The journey was quite long and in places very tricky because of the wind, so we all rafted up and made a makeshift sail from paddles and tarpaulin, which worked very well as we made some speed. We used the rudders on the back of the double kayaks to steer, and we made quite a distance before we headed for Lunch. After lunch, we only had an hour to go, but we put our backs into it and we got back okay. After helping to shift the kayaks back to the bus we headed off back to the bunkhouse for a quick hower before we went to a restaurant for tea. The lasagne we had was really tasty as was the lemon meringue we had for dessert. After tea, it was time to pack up for the long journey back home.

We all enjoyed the trip to Scotland and thanks to the Outlook Trust for putting it on for us.

Happi Birthday Eli

2007-06-27T11:46:00.001Z

I would like to wish a Happy Birthday to my niece Eli who turned four today.

This weekend

2007-06-24T22:44:00.000Z

I came back to Bradford this weekend. Last night I went to Yeadon Tarn with my Parents. This is a walk we all enjoy doing. Last night we went there because all the rain we have had has made everywhere else all boggy and because I am wearing sandals because of my toenail., I can't really go there. Anyhoo, I took my newest digital camera out (a 6.0 megapixel Traveller unit with a 3X optical zoom from Aldi) and got some snaps.

When I get round to it, I will post all the digital photos up on the blog. In the mean time, you can look at them by clicking on my Flickr photostream

It’s good to touch the green green grass of Home

2007-06-22T22:51:00.001Z

Yes, I am a Country & Western fanatic. Today I came home. It was difficult though as I seemed to have acquired a lot of stuff. We dropped a load off at Withernsea on Wednesday, then we came back to Chez Student for the rest off the stuff that was coming back to Chez Wakefield with me. Mum and Dad took an Estate car's worth of things home and I took a bag with wheels and a sports bag (both full) on the train and came back home. Useful things Young Person's Railcards; I was able to travel from Hull to Leeds for £9.50. Anyhoo I'm home now. It's strange using my new PC on a fast Internet connection. Mum's 8MB broadband is up and running and working like a drea.

Microsoft T-Shirt

2007-06-20T00:15:00.001Z

Something I forgot to mention Yesterday, because I had blogged previously about Slide 7, I was given a free Microsoft T-shirt. I am in the middle of packing because I am going home. I have packed most of my things but have still got quite a bit to do. The next challenge then is fitting it all into the back of a Volvo V70 estate.

Microsoft Slide 7 Conference

2007-06-19T00:01:00.001Z

Today I was down in Reading for Slide 7, which I have been looking forward to since I booked my place on it in May. We went down on Rob's magic bus last night, and stayed the night at Travelodge Reading M4 Eastbound. I had booked this for £15 for the night as they had a special offer. The room I got was fantastic. It was very large with a double bed and a bathroom. I made a mistake this morning however as I went down to the Moto service station which adjoined the Travelodge and spend £7.49 on a full English and about £3.12 on a cup of tea! I don't know how service stations can charge so much for breakfast. I realise prices are higher because of the long hours people have to work in Services, plus travelling for employees is more difficult than for most, plus the fact that it is a mere convenience, so I suppose I realise why they can charge so much.

Anyhoo, I went back to Travelodge's main reception to meet the others, and it was back on the Magic Bus for the conference. We arrived and had complementary tea, coffee and biscuits before starting the conference. The first talk was by Mark Quirk. This was an introduction to the day. His keynote contained information about Web 2.0, its applications, and a bit on the future of Web, such as going beyond the browser and Web 3.0. He showed us some samples of Web 2.0 in action. These included Windows Live! Maps and HMV's media player. After this talk, we took a comfort break, where there were more refreshments. I then went to the Introduction to ASP .NET by Ed Dunhill. This talk was good with demonstrations using Microsoft Expressions Blend. It was then time for Lunch, after which I went to Rob's talk. As usual Rob delivered the talk while cracking a joke on average every two minutes. He demonstrated how to create a web service using Visual Studio 2005 and created two small programs, one which would send a message and the other which would receive the message and display it on-screen. When this program worked, we all applauded wildly, apparently for no real reason other than so the noise would spill into the next theatre. Rob was demonstrating how web services could be used in mobile development (or not). When his talk had finished,Martin Parry came and talked about Windows Live! Services including Virtual Maps, Hotmail and Live Spaces, Microsoft's blogging and social networking service, similar to MySpace. After another comfort break, we all came together for the last talk which was on Microsoft Silverlight by Mark Johnston. This talk was one of the most interesting as we were given the chance to win a graphics tablet, plus Silverlight seems to me to be a cause for excitement in itself because it looks to be directly competing with Adobe Macromedia Flash. One of the things that Silverlight can do is to stream High-Definition Full-screen videos, something that Flash seems to be lacking in at the moment. One of the people there asked whether buttons in Silverlight applications would be able to get the focus using the tab key. This is something I am interested in as I want Silverlight to be accessible to the blind and partially sighted because from past experience, Flash is almost totally inaccessible to those people. At the moment, however Silverlight, cannot create applications whose buttons can get focus, although it should be implemented by the time Silverlight 1.0 comes out. If not, it will be available in Silverlight 1.1 which should follow shortly afterwards. While you can only write Silverlight 1.0 applications in JavaScript, Silverlight 1.1 will utilize the .NET Framework for development, so you can write Silverlight solutions in any .NET programming language, including Visual Basic, C# or C++, and more.

After the final talk, it was time for a barbecue tea, and after a quick competition to win some last minute goodies, completing the evaluation forms, and receiving a goodie bag in return, and the winning of the Microsoft T-shirts, it was time to board the Magic Bus and head back home.

A good day was had by all who attended, and I was able to talk to one of the Microsoft staff about going into access to computers for the Visually Impaired. It seems that I need to contact Redmond as Microsoft UK do not deal with that. I will make contact with Redmond over the summer.

I must say that the staff at Slide 7 were most helpful. When I pointed out that I was Visually Impaired and could I have a seat on the front rowm they were more than happy to oblige. I was also helped to the food and was given help to find a lunch bag. Just to say thank you to everyone at Microsoft UK Campus for the help I recieved today. If the conference is held next year I am definitely going down.

Windows 98 is potentially more advanced than Vista

2007-06-13T16:03:00.001Z

Well I wouldn't go as far as that, however some aspects of handling of CD and DVD-ROMs seem to be better in 98, Me, 2000 and XP than they do in Vista, for example, if you are browsing the contents of a disc in Explorer in Win 98/Me/XP/2000 and you decide to eject the CD without first closing the Explorer window, Windows does that for you. In Vista, however the window stays open when the CD is ejected, making things potentially messy when you try to recommence browsing. I know it's silly to try and browse a CD which isn't there but wasn't it so much easier that when you ejected a CD, Windows took care of the rest? Apart from that, Windows Vista is a fantastic operating system.

An update on The Old Waiting Game

2007-06-13T14:57:00.001Z

Today, I finally had my toenail delt with, about three months after my ringing up for an appointment. I was in a BitTorrent of pain this morning after the anaesthetic wore off but I took a couple of painkillers and they did the trick (well that could have been the couple of Belgian Chocolates that my housemate left me, eaten well after the painkillers).

I am really looking forward to hobbling to Slide 7 on Monday at Microsoft UK HQ in Reading. It should be a good day. I never did consider getting into Web development but it could help me with disabled access to computers, talking of which, Disability Services at Hull have realised that they need ZoomText 9.1 as the university is planning on deploying Office 2007 on it's student network, and ZoomText 9.0 does not follow the cursor in Word, meaning you have to manually move the mouse pointer to where the cursor is. This said, and the fact that I am using the copy of Office 2007 Ultimate that I acquired for Microsoft when they gave a talk at Hull University, the Disability services have ordered me a copy of ZoomText 9.1 from Sight and Sound. Hopefully Jacobs Well will give us the funding for it.

Day on Windermere

2007-06-09T18:29:00.000Z

Today, I was woken up by staff member Jeff singing "Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day" at some unearthly hour. After a bit of mumbling and generally waking up, I went down for Breakfast. I have never had panneau chocolat, bacvon and eggs on something which is akin to a large saucer before, but hey - at least the food was good. We then went to Tower Wood, where our boats are, and I spent the mo0ning kayaking. I need to regain a bit of confidence that may have been lost in the last year. After a morniong of kayaking from one side of the lake to the other, we breaked and had lunch, after which I went in a raft of three canadian canoes, which had been tied together by string and to a wooden pole. Once we had reached Tower Wood, we all decided to jump in the lake for a swim. It was very cold at first but we warmed up. Once we had showered at Tower Wood, we headed back to the hostel. I think tonight we are going to the pub. What a good end to the day.

Going to the lakes

2007-06-08T20:32:00.000Z

Today I decided to go with the Outlook Trust (the charity that used to be a subsiduary of Temple Bank www.theoutlooktrust.co.uk)
to the lake district. I go0t up bright and early to head to Hull to buy some sandals for going on the lake with. After the sandals were bought, I headed for Hull Station to catch a pink train to Leeds. With my Young Person's railcard this cost me £11 for an Open Return ticket, which means I can head back to Hull anytime until July 7th. I was supposed to meet someone in Leeds but unfortunaqely they had a chain of disasters (déjà vu?), so I waited round Leeds station for a while. Leeds Station is fantastic as everyone is very friendly there. Once I met the person, about four hours later, we caught a train to Bingley station where the Outlook Trust picked us up on the magic bus. They took us to Windermere Youth Hostel and that's where I am now, writing up my blog on a pay-per use Internet PC.

It is very nice to catch up with all my old friends from Temple Bank School, and meet a few new faces too.

Rip-Off Britain hits the Blind

2007-06-07T11:50:00.001Z

Today I decided to go about obtaining a quote of how much an upgrade to ZoomText 9.1 would cost. I went to AI Squared's web-site to find that an upgrade would cost me $99 (around £50). Great – if I lived in the USA. I followed the advice on AI Squared's page to obtain a quotation from my local ZoomText dealer – i.e. Sight and Sound, a dealer who specializes in equipment for the visually impaired – also where my laptop, Opti Verso, All-In-One printer/scanner/copier, Office software and ZoomText 9.0 came from. They gave me a quote of £90. I asked why it was so high (almost double the price of the American version), and they said it was because of customs and excise and the shipping and all the other bureaucracy and taxes it hikes up the price. I feel SO tempted to use my favourite P2P or Torrent service to get ZoomText 9.1 but I can't as I'm not the keenest on Pirated software anymore

Finishing Touches

2007-06-05T13:41:00.001Z

All through last week, I added the finishing touches to my new PC. I upgraded the RAM from 1.5GB to 2GB, making it run a lot quicker. I have also upgraded the hard disk configuration. I have removed my 120GB IDE hard disk and installed it in a USB 2.0 enclosure so I can use it as an external hard disk. I originally added a 400GB S-ATA drive but it used to make clicking noises when shutting down and it used to freeze the PC for about thirty seconds during the POST sequence (Power On Self Test, a procedure all PCs undertake to check everything is working okay. Most modern PCs usually display a manufacturer's logo when doing this). It was also extremely noisy. I went back to PC World to replace this with another hard disk of the same model, only to find that I was having the same problem. I ended up this disk back and opted instead for a 320GB IDE hard disk. I know I really should start using S-ATA now but I have had a bad experience with it so it will take me a while to go back to it. I seem to have cracked it now though. I have installed my 320GB IDE hard disk as the master and have set my 160GB hard disk to slave. I have more space than I used to so that is okay, and it is good to know that my PC will support SATA II if I need it to. I also had to send the original ASUS PCI-Express graphics card back to PC World because the bearings were going in the fan and it was making a buzzing sound, which was not very attractive and, in fact, very distracting. I replaced it with a PNY card from PC World which has exactly the same nVidia chipset (7300 GS) and it has VGA and DVI outputs, as well as S-Video. The important thing is that it doesn't use a fan. It uses some sort of heat diffuser instead, so it makes my PC whisper quiet again. I seem to have got my PC running much faster now though. Everyone was right – 1GB of RAM will just about let Windows Vista run with Aero, but if you want the best results, you are best going for 2GB.

Adding the Final Touches

2007-05-28T01:11:00.001Z

This week I have been juggling Maths revision with adding the final touches to my new PC. Before going home last weekend I had upped the RAM in my new desktop PC to 1.5GB. I have since added another 512MB of RAM to make it a round 2GB of RAM and the difference is, well, just unbelievable. I finally have a system that is very responsive, can load Word and Excel up without having to display the splash screens for any more than half a second at the most, that can rip a CD in around three minutes flat, and that can multitask to the extent that I can watch TV while burning a CD, installing software such as Visual Studio or running Virtual PC or something. I had to replace the graphics card because the fan's bearings started to go on the one I originally installed when I built the PC. I replaced it with one from PC World with exactly the same chipset (nVidia GeForce 7300GS) but this card was made by PNY as opposed to Asus, and it didn't have a fan, which has helped to cut down on noise. Once everything was sorted, well that's when I realised I was really running low on disk space, so on Saturday I went to PC World to buy a 400GB SATA hard disk. I got it home and it was very noisy, which worried me a bit. I took it back to PC World this morning and exchanged it for another which I brought home which is quieter, but it still makes a strange clicking noise when it's shutting down. I enabled S.M.A.R.T in my PC#s BIOS but it didn't bring up any warnings when I booted up so I reckon it's just something on Hitachi drives. Luckily I have kept my Seagata 160GB IDE hard disk in my PC which I am using to hold my documents and music on so if anything should happen to my 400GB disk, I can just replace it and my data should be fine. Apart from that my PC is now completed and should, according to a university lecturer, last for a good few years now. Here's my specs, just if you're wondering.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz, 1066MHz Bus, 2MB Cache, EM64T
2,048GB PC2-6400 DDR-2 800MHz RAM (1 x 1GB OCZ SLi Ready, 2 x 512MB PC World)
PNY nVidia 7300GS PCI-E x 16 Graphics Card
560GB Hard Disk Space (1 x 400GB Hitachi S-ATA 7200RPM 16MB buffer, 1 x 160GB IDE Seagate, 7,200RPM)
MSI P6N SLi Mainboard, 1 x PCI-E x16, 1 x PCI-E x8, 1 x PCI-E x1, 3 x PCI Slots, 8 Channel Realtek HD Audio, 2 x IDE, 4 x S-ATA II, Support for Quad Core, FSB upto 1333MHz
1 x 16X LiteOn DVD-ROM, 1 x 18X Sony DVD±RW
550-watt Neon Power Supply
Jeantech PHONG-II Case with Thermometer display and front and rear fans
I/O Ports
- Back:
  - 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
  - 4 x USB 2.0
  - 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
  - 8 Channel Audio ports
  - 10/100/1000 Ethernet
  - 1 x LPT Parallel port
  - 1 x VGA Port, 1 x DVI-I, 1 x S-Video Out
- Front
  - 4 x USB 2.0
  - 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
  - 1 x Headphone in, 1 x Mic in

I built a machine of this spec so that I could run Windows Vista now and into the future and have enough horsepower to run any program that will be needed for future ACW coursework assignments at a reasonable speed with a comfortable amount of RAM and graphics power.

The Best of Stewie Griffin

2007-05-21T14:33:00.001Z

Like Family guy? Like Stewie? Check out these YouTube videos, they are absolutely fantastic. Please note that these are excerpts of Family Guy which have a DVD rating of 15 in the UK.

Click here to watch

Playing the old Waiting game

2007-05-16T15:45:00.001Z

Today I went to have an assessment for nail surgery – I thought I was having the procedure done today. Unfortunately I have to wait till June 13^th to have the procedure done. I have no Idea how I'm going to be at the end of year ball with a dodgy toenail and the inability to wear smart shoes with my tux.

Using Flickr with Word 2007

2007-05-15T23:31:00.001Z

I have been using Microsoft Office Word 2007 as a blog client now for some time. The only8 problem is – as you may have guessed from that last post – is that I can't actually post images on my blog using Word 2007. I use Flickr as my image provider and would like to know the settings I need to feed Word 2007 to make it go away and upload my images to my flickr account and then upload a link to the image on my page. So far if I've wanted to use images, I've uploaded them manually to flickr, gone and manually checked the location, and then used Blogger's site to create my blog post. I find it much easier to work in Word.

Just testing Word 2007’s ability to upload photos

2007-05-15T23:10:00.001Z

If you can see the image of my homepage running in Firefox on a virtual Windows 98 box then I have successfully set up Word 2007 to throw images at my Flickr account.

Windows 95 vs. Dual-Core

2007-05-15T22:21:00.000Z

Today, I decided to make good use of my time by messing about in a Windows 95 virtual PC. I duly started up Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - my PC virtualization environment of choice, started up my virtual Windows 95 box, and Windows got as far as successfully loading DOS, and was just about to go into Windows until I recieved the message "General Protection Fault". Considering my personal files reside in a seperate partition to Vista and all my programs, they had not been hurt when I had upgraded my PC. Virtual PC only emulates the CMOS, the hard disk and the memory. It natively uses the host's processor, and as the last time I had used that particular Virtual PC, I had been using my AMD Athlon64 processor I had a sneaking suspicion I may net to reinstall Windows 95 so that it would work with my Intel Core 2 processor. I duly started re-formatting the virtual hard disk drive and setting about installing Windows 95. The first phase os Setup completed without any problems. It was only when I restarted the computer to complete the second phase of Setup it happenned again - another General PRotection fault. It would seem that Windows 95 doesn't seem to like my shiny new processor.

It was lucky that I have been Beta testing VMWare Workstation 6.0. I had downloaded the Release Candidate over the last weekend of the Easter Vacation, and it has been waiting on my Flash disk for me to install it, so I did. I then set about making a virtual Windows 95 box, and was given the option to only emulate one processor. I gave it a 1GB hard disk and 64MB of RAM, and started installing it. Once Windows was installed I installed VMWare tools, which makes up the driver set needed to run Windows 95 in VMWare Workstation. Once that was set up, I gave setting Internet Explorer 3 up to access the Internet through the Hull University Proxy server, and it worked.

I don't know whether they will follow this through to the RTM release of VMWare Workstation 6.0 but I like the fact that the product still supports Windows 95, even with full networked Internet access. It's funny but I could not get NAT working in VMWare Workstation 5.5 for Windows 95. It's also interesting to note that VMWare Tools is still fully compatible with Windows 95, whereas the Virtual PC 2007 version of Virtual Machine Additions is no longer Windows 95 compatible. Keep up the good work VMWare.

I can see why you still have to pay for VMWare Workstation while Virtual PC has become freeware. VMware is more advanced and features support for multiple monitors, better dual-core support, USB 2.0 support, multiple optical drives, and the ability to omit drives from a virtual machine's configuration, and most importantly, full support for the most popular Linux distributions. You can run 32- and 64-bit operating systems as guest regardless of your host OS.

Ah the memory of exam time

2007-05-14T22:42:00.001Z

Yesterday I decided to upgrade my new PC from 1.0 to 1.5GB of RAM. I know I should have bought it from eBuyer but I fancied a speed boost there and then so off to the Clough Road PC world I went. £94 for 1GB of RAM!!! I thought not so I decided on the 512MB stick. I got home and fit it with no hitch - although I found that my original stick of SLi-Ready RAM that had a clock speed of 1066MHz – had a clock speed of 800MHz. Hmmmm. I think that's down to me getting the wrong memory and not being able to see the sticker properly. Anyhoo, I am very happy with the results. It's amazing just what an extra 512MB of RAM can do for you. WinTV2000 has become friendly again, which is kind of nice because I haven't got Media Center anymore (It doesn't seem to come with Windows Vista business. It plays games nicely. Before I turned in for the night I I installed demos of Sam and Max, some sort of detective game not too dissimilar to Broken Sword - but a heck of a sight more funny, and Wild Earth – Africa, a game where I'm playing a trainee photographer and have to photograph things for a magazine, and both played very sweetly.

This morning I went across to Larkin building to meet my learning mentor for tea, toast, and a bit of a pep-talk about this afternoon's exam, a reflection on this semester and discussion on what I was to do in regards to revision on Thursday's exam. It did turn into more of a general chat but we covered the basics. I then had to ring Nuance to have Omnipage 15 activated on my new desktop PC as that is what my Epson DX40000 Printer/Scanner is connected to. I had tried to activate it manually but it kept saying "Invalid Serial Key"; nuance said the same thing. They asked me to scan in and send the serial, number over the Internet to them, at which point I realised that what I had previously thought to be a number 2 turned out to be the letter Z. I can't understand why I was able to install Omnipage using that serial number if it was THAT invalid. I attempted to activate again, this time changing my serial number, and it worked! Once I had Omnipage up and running, Nuance e-mailed me back the correct serial number. Hmmm – a bit late. Had I have scanned in the CD sleeve and zoomed in first, I could have saved myself topping my T-Mobile phone up with a fiver and I could have saved mine and Nuance Technical Support's time. I do think however they ought to use a different typeface for serial numbers as I struggle being Visually impaired. Interestingly enough, Nuance are the brains behind Talks, the screen-reading program available for smartphones. Talking about screen readers, I went to the Disability office to hand them a statement in writing as to why I should have ZoomText 9.1, after which it was off to Continental Café to have dinner, and then go to my exam. This afternoon it was Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction. It went okay I think but I can't say until the 4^th of July when America celebrate the declaration of independence, and we (hopefully) celebrate the declaration of good exam results. After the exam, however I did go and see one of the lecturers about my Algorithm coursework, which I did for the same module; I got an A- for this work. I think I'm going to put it down to the fact that one of my colleagues and I worked it out together, and the fact that my housemate gave me my birthday present – a meal cooked by her, which was absolutely fantastic to say the least. Chinese food is always good for a good night's work.

In support of Madeline McCann on her 4th Birthday

2007-05-12T16:28:00.000Z

Sorry it isn't a lot but I decided to support the search for Madeline McCann the only way I seem to be able to at the moment. I changed my blog to sort of green. Green is the Portuguese colour of hope, and I am still hoping and praying for Madeline's safe return and I urge you all to do the same.
Thanks

Slide 7 Student Conference Registration Open

2007-05-10T15:53:00.001Z

On June 17-18 I will be going down to Reading for the Microsoft Slide 7 Student conference, as organised by my lecturer Rob Miles. The conference is about web development. There are two tracks running, an introductory one, and an advanced one. I will be going to the introductory one as I know very little about web development. It seems like it will be a really good day out, so I'm really looking forward to it. If you would like to sign up for the conference, please click here.

If you would like to find out more from Rob Miles, click here

Happy 50th Helvetica

2007-05-09T16:12:00.001Z

I just wanted to say

Happy 50^th Birthday, Helvetica

I didn't realise just how old the concept of typefaces was. I wrote "Happy 50^th Birthday, Helvetica" in Verdana because I am too much of a cheapskate to buy a font. I may do so one day however, and use it in my JayWakefield.co.uk logo. Unfortunately you can't download the Swiss font anywhere legally for free.

Offerings of Support

2007-05-08T19:35:00.001Z

I would like to support the parents of three-year old Madeline McCann who went missing on Thursday, May 3^rd. I hope that the police find her alive. If we keep hoping and praying then maybe she will be found, alive and safe.

In the name of Rebecca Love

2007-05-08T14:10:00.001Z

Over the weekend, a student, studying for a foundation year in Marine Biology was found deceased at The Lawns halls of residence. Although I never knew Rebecca, I just felt saddened when I heard the news about what had happened. My sincere condolences go to her family, friends and fellow students.

Vista Users getting Royal Screw Job - Again

2007-05-08T09:35:00.001Z

Ai Squared has brought out Zoom Text 9.1, with support for Dual Monitors and, of course, Windows Vista. Anyone getting a new Vista PC need not worry – you will be able to install Zoom Text 9.1 and access your new investment – that is if you have been able to buy the Extended Support Plan – or you have got around $600 to spare. Now I have just got myself well into the red buying my new PC so I cannot afford ZT 9.1. Why does Ai Squared think they can charge users just to be able to use Vista? That is like saying "You're blind – therefore you cannot use Vista!" Is it any wonder people want to download pirate software and circumvent product activation when companies play tricks like that?

Please note that I do not condone the circumvention of copyright protection technologies. Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted software is illegal and can incur civil and criminal penalties to the maximum extent possible under US and International law.

I'm sure however there's something about a Disability Discrimination act in there, too though.

New PC

2007-05-07T19:23:00.001Z

I got my new PC on Friday. I built it myself. Finally, (hopefully) I can run Windows Vista at the same speed I could run Windows XP a year ago. It is absolutely fantastic. It features a dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor and SLI-Ready RAM that has a 1GHz Front-Side Bus. It's nice to see Windows Flip-3D run without jerking. More importantly, I will be able to complete my Programming 2 Friendly Bank assignment now.

I treat myself to a new speaker system to go with my new PC, and it sounds absolutely fantastic.

The Hungry Snake

2007-05-01T16:01:00.001Z

My Hungry Snake game is now available from download. You can download it from my downloads page. I wrote this game in C# for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 as part of my Programming 1 module at University. Click here to go to JayWakefield.co.uk Downloads.

Cast Ne’er clout ‘till May be out

2007-05-01T13:07:00.001Z

We have only one lecture today at 4.15 which follows a group meeting our group have got at 3.15 to work on the group coursework for Software Engineering and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) which was launched last Friday. In the run up to the meeting I thought I'd do something constructive, so I looked for a Nokia 6280 on eBay and found one for £62 including postage and packaging that is locked to T-Mobile. I am writing this blog post on the sun terrace in Sanctuary, the Student Union bar at Hull. Hull University are rolling out a new wireless network called EuroRoam or Eduroam, the computer centre can't decide exactly what it is called. Anyhoo, I took my faithful Ergo Ensis 211 in to have it setup to access the network, whatever it's called, and I can pick it up in Sanctuary while I'm enjoying a beer and a burger. (No, Olga, I will not turn up to Rob's lecture drunk – I promise!!!).

I think it's a good idea because sometimes it's hard do motivate myself to revise or study if I'm sat inside on a nice day like today, so to be able to come down to Sanctuary and sit on the sun terrace is absolutely fantastic, especially if I have the Internet at my disposal. I remember a time when the Internet was on one PC which was tied to a phone line. I even remember when there was just the one computer at my old school, Temple Bank, that had Internet access. Interestingly enough, at one time it was the only PC that ran Microsoft Windows® 95. It just boggles the mind now to think that you can sit in a bar and access the 'net on your laptop or PDA.

Seeing old Friends

2007-04-30T21:16:00.001Z

I was watching Young Blind Things on Channel 4 tonight. It is a documentary about blind students at the RNIB College RNC. My old schoolmate Daniel was attending and he starred in the show. I had seen adverts of it and when I saw the program It felt fantastic to see Dan on TV, getting up to student activities such as lectures, socialising and not least, getting drunk with all his friends. When drunk, he seems to apolagize as much as me! I'll have to contact everyone again because it's just under a year since I saw all my friends who used to attend Temple Bank School for the Visually Impaired with me. As I write this blog entry (in Word 2007 I hasten to add) Windows Media Center (yes I went back to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 – again) is burning the show onto a DVD. It should have completed by the time we all graduate.

A Microsoft Presentation vs. A crap presentation

2007-04-30T17:01:00.001Z

Today Ed Gibson from Microsoft came to lecture us on Computer Security. I was able to meet him. We also had someone called Alan come in from a firm in Bradford called Marble. I sat in the presentation for a while and it was very interesting, talking about responsibilities of IT administrators and software developers about security. This was all organised by rob Miles™. I had to leave early though because I had to present our presentation for the group coursework in ICT and professional skills, but not before I was able to take a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate™. I'd like to formally thank Microsoft for my gift. I like Microsoft Office Word 2007's blog feature.

I sold my T-Mobile SDA on eBay. It went in under two hours of me putting it up. I'm going to try and find a Nokia 6280 for around £50 Buy It Now™.

eBay Auctions

2007-04-29T16:46:00.001Z

I have decided to sell my Windows phone. Trouble is when I've put it up, you have to be James Bond or Sherlock Holmes to be able to find it as it doesn't come up in any searches I do. If you use the search tool to search for T-Mobile/MDA smartphones locked to T-Mobile you might just find it. If you are interested in the auction please click here to be taken to the listing. As with all my auctions, 20% of the price goes to Cancer Research UK which is kind of nice.

I am going to try and get hold of a Nokia 6280 or something similar. I want a Nokia 3G phone so I can take advantage of the increased Internet speeds on Web & Walk, when I travel, and when the University Internet Connection goes down, although I don't think I can actually get a 3G T-Mobile signal at Chez Student come to think of it.

This Week on ISA Hull – Part 2

2007-04-28T12:49:00.001Z

The elections for the committee for the International Students Association for the 2007/2008 session took place last night. Unfortunately I didn't get voted in, but I've never felt so much support. The current committee were voting me in apparently! They told me to try again in September. I'm also going to app[ly to be a volunteer for International Students week, which is a week before Freshers' week. Being there to welcome the new International Students is something I'd like to be a part of.

Ball Tickets

2007-04-23T15:25:00.001Z

I got 'em. I was sat in the library in front of an Internet Exploder Window pressing F5 repeatedly at 3:59PM. It finally came to 4PM and I was able to actually click the link that took me to the page where I punched in my plastic details and I have now got tickets to the end-of-year ball with the buffet option (coz I'm a fat boy that ought to slim). I hope it's a lot better than Asylum was on Saturday. I'm sort of hoping all the International students come to the ball because then it will be a ticket worth buying. I am wishing it was ISA Hull presents End Of Year ball though ……

Ball Tickets and Rob Miles' Friendly Bank

2007-04-23T14:53:00.000Z

At the moment, I'm sat in the library waiting to buy ball tickets online. So far my timnetable had not been in my favour for such frivolities, but I have a free at 3:15 so I'm sat in the library with a (switches to other window to refresh page) (not ready to click yet) fast internet connection waiting to try and buy a ball ticket. £42 I won't get one? anyone?

I will go home after Quantitative Methods and finally try and make head or tail of this program that we lovingly know as Friendly Bank as i've not done anything on it y8et because it's very difficult. My desktop PC at home should be installing Visual Studio Service Pack 1 so that I can install the Windows Vista fix.

My Sincere Condolences

2007-04-21T17:27:00.000Z

I would like to offer my condolences to those people who died in the Virginia Tech Massacre which took place on Monday. This tragedy has affected us all, which ever part of the world we come from. May God bless the families of the victims.

This Week on ISA Hull

2007-04-21T17:13:00.000Z

I have sent the International Students' Association an e-mail through my faithful Gmail account stating that I would like to stand in the Elections for the position of General Comittee Member. The elections take place on Friday, 27th April. I will keep you posted on what happens!

I didn't let on did I?

2007-04-18T22:48:00.000Z

Remember that post I left nearly a month back saying that I was spending the Easter Hols with my folks? Well I've actually been back at Chez Student for a week now. I forgot to let on to my none-university readers.

I did a psychology test as part of a third year psychology prject and the person conducting the experiment was really interesting. She wanted to know about my Asperger Syndrome and we got chatting. For those of you who wish to know about Asperger Syndrome, navigate back to my homepage at www.jaywakefield.co.uk and there are links to official pages about both conditions

Windows Vista Media Center

2007-04-18T21:46:00.000Z

I have applied to Beta test, wait for it, Windows Vista Media Center! Yes, Microsoft, it would seem, want to release a Media Center-specific version of Vista, even though Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate already have it built-in. In my personal opinion, but stop me if I am wrong, is that Microsoft want to make some sort release of Windows Vista which is a superset of Home Premium with some features of Ultimate, but without the Business-related features that come as part of Vista Business. Another theory is that Microsoft may be releasing an updated version of Media Center that will feature either as an update or as part of Fiji, which is release of updates for Vista that Microsoft hope will include WinFS (Windows Future Storage) that has a feature called Virtual Folders, which in some way should enable quicker searching of data. Please don't take any of this that I'm saying as Gospel as I don't know Microsoft's future plans for Vista.

It's interesting to note however now that Microsoft has just released Windows Vista and that the wait begins for hardened XP users to make the switch, computer enthusiasts are tucking into the speculation of Windows codename "Vienna". Microsoft, once again, are saying that they are hoping to break the 12-year old mould of the Start Menu and Taskbar. Some are saying that Microsoft are hoping to use a "Pie Menu" which is a circular menu that is drawn around the mouse pointer. This reduces the effort needed to select menu options that are at the extremes of a menu. In my opinion this would also make it for disabled users who have limited movement to use computers, but there is the big problem on what to do with large menus. Microsoft eliminated the trademark huge menus in World and some other Office applications by replacing them with the new Ribbon but this still requires a lot of mouse movement. I eagerly await news of Vienna but at the same time, am slightly disappointed as I'm still trying to place my mitts on a shiny new box that has a dual-core processor and that exceeds the requires to run Vista by (hopefully) quite a way.

2007-04-16T18:00:00.000Z

Jay Wakefield's World has a new home today. Unfortunately, I seem to be having a few teething troubles, but hopefully soon, this blog will officially become part of jaywakefield.co.uk. If you are reading this then the blog is online and the teething problems are hopefully sorted.

Bradford Council

2007-03-29T15:24:00.001Z

Bradford Council
Originally uploaded by Jay Wakefield.

This defines Bradford Council very well!

2007-03-29T13:20:00.001Z

I've heard some talk on my usual grapevine, www.robmiles.com about a site called Twitter. Apparently it is like blogging, but you leave short, sharp messages at regular intervals. I honestly wonder whether it will take off because people today have such little time anyway. I suppose for fans of Big Brother who like compulsive viewing, this would be great. Rob Miles™ reckons this will take off with Students.

click here to go to my Twitter account

Mediocrity and Nanny-Stateism

2007-03-26T14:48:00.001Z

It's amazing how much the world is declining into mediocrity and nanny-stateism (some word I made up). Today my friend Lauren and I tried visiting my old school but we couldn't attain a visitor's pass because we have to book in advance. I understand that we shouldn't interrupt teachers while they are teaching but the school have to protect themselves. Security issues and all that. Welcome to the 2000's. Please keep your possessions with you at all times as you are now entering unchartered territory.

Going Back to Bradford for Easter Holiday

2007-03-25T00:23:00.001Z

Yesterday, I went back to Chez Wakefield (My Parents' Place) in Shipley by train. Compared to when I had taken the X62 bus back to Shipley for the night in November, which took me four hours, and which was stressful from getting off at Leeds to getting back to Saltaire Train Station, the train journey was a breeze, even relaxing, and I was in Leeds in no time. I took a taxi from Chez Student to Hull Station where I successfully missed a train. To kill time, I decided to get mildly frustrated and mutter something about not being able to drive, but I soon got tired of this so I decided to drag my bags into Hull Station's B&B's Coffee Cafe and grab a cappuccino, and by the time I had finished, they were letting us on the Manchester Piccadilly train, where I picked a seat near a table, and decided to break out my laptop to use MSN for a bit through my T-Mobile phone, just because I could. I wanted to know what it felt like to access the Internet on a moving train. I would also like one day to not be a complete retard, and to maybe purchase a working brain, instead of this one I have which obviously came fresh from Maplin Electronics and was made by AMD. Anyhoo, after a while I decided on breaking out my Simpsons Season 3 DVD Box Set and watching some. I only had time to watch a couple before I was getting near Leeds station, and had to pack my laptop away. Once in Leeds I had to catch a connecting train to Saltaire and because I kept going the wrong way at Leeds, by the time I had purchased my ticket the train was waiting on the platform. I jumped on and in no time I was at Saltaire where Dad picked me up.

It feels sooooooooo good to be back at Chez Wakefield. I decided to set about setting up wireless Internet access with the new router I bought from eBuyer. It's by a firm called ZyXEL, whom I had never heard of but the router had gotten, lots of good reviews I decided to go ahead and make the purchase, and I hope I'm glad I did. Setting up the router was easy enough by hard-wiring my laptop to it using the provided Ethernet cable. I did have to nick the RJ11 cable from the ADSL modem we had been given as the provided one wasn't long enough. I had a couple of minor hitches with enabling the security because I didn't realise that networks like ours needed WPA-FSK rather than just standard WPA. I also thought that I had locked myself out of the router's settings page but I just switched it off and back on again and was back in business. We now have a secure wireless network running. It is really nice being able to have access to a fast Internet connection in my bedroom

I will try and upload some pictures to this blog now that I can do it without too much hassle.

Refund for Office 2007

2007-03-23T05:25:00.001Z

I got my refund for the dodgy copy of Microsoft Office 2007 I ended up buying from eBay today. The seller was very cooperative. I am happy and can now put the money towards attempting to get an OEM upgrade for my Microsoft Office 2003. I will probably try and get it with my new Evsham box if/when I receive it. If not, I'll use my laptop as an OEM container.

International Students’ Association (ISA Hull)

2007-03-23T05:14:00.001Z

No, this is not some sort of international high interest bank account. I was at the I.S.A Hull party tonight talking to someone on the committee and I've been told that I ought to sign up to be on the committee. Unlike a lot of the societies, ISA has not had their elections. I have been told that if I sign up, I should receive the support of the ISA committee, so I think I will.

The ISA have given me a lot of good nights because I find that international students are a lot more friendly than local/national ones because they are in a completely different country and have left all their friends behind. Because the ISA have given me so much, I feel it's time to give them something back.

If you don’t like me, don’t bother about me

2007-03-19T19:42:00.001Z

I'm amazed at the number of mental retards who concentrate so hard on not liking me. If you don't like me, that's fine. Just don't keep going on about it. I know I'm not the world's most likeable person, but nobody is perfect. Let's stop hating people just because they're different, and get along. Most people who are "not normal" can turn out to be the best friends that you could have. The sorts of people who put effort into making life a misery for people who are not 'normal' generally become so wrapped up in that that they lose control of their own life, and before they know it, they are the ones who nobody likes.

Fire will teach you to learn!

2007-03-17T04:13:00.001Z

On Wednesday I ordered what I thought was a bargain on eBay. Some idiot had apparently paid £100 for about 40-50 fire-damaged copies of Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, and he had apparently tested them all and was selling the working ones (just the DVDs with the serial numbers on them) for £40 each. Something in the back of my mind was nagging when I read this listing but the seller reassured me that his feedback was 100% positive, and lo and behold, it was. He also reassured me that if there was anything wrong with the product, he would refund me the money. I decided to take a chance as £40 for, what I thought to be a genuine copy of the latest version of Microsoft Office didn't seem bad, as I'm only using a trial at the moment. With this in mind, I decided to order a copy, and received an e-mail that he had posted it that evening. On Thursday, I received an e-mail from eBay saying that the listing had been removed, but that they weren't allowed to tell me why. I DEFINITELY smelled a rat, as genuine software generally does not breech eBay's selling terms and conditions, just so long as you uninstall all the copies from any equipment you own before you sell it. Anyhoo, it arrived this morning, and you can imagine my horror when a bootlegged copy fell out of the padded envelope. I was straight on the Internet e-mailing the seller, who had previously assured me that it was a genuine Microsoft copy that he was selling me. I asked him politely if I could send the software back and even offered to pay the return postage because it's only about 75p tops to send a CD through the mail in a padded envelope. I also sent a few pointers (that I should have really followed) to check whether the software is genuine without actually having to load it on your computer. He still hasn't e-mailed me back.

Here are the tips that you should follow to be able to tell whether a Windows or Office CD is genuine.

It really should be in a case with a genuine Certificate of Authenticity (COA). The COA should be partly shiny and there should at least be a line should partly change colour as you hold it up to the light in a different way..
The CD should be holographic with the word 'Genuine' appearing as you hold it up to the light in a certain way.
The serial number will almost never be on the disk. It will always be printed on the Certificate of Authenticity.

If you suspect that the copy of Windows installed on your PC isn't genuine, visit the Windows Genuine Advantage site to run a check on your PC. If it isn't genuine, then you will be given the option of buying a low-cost upgrade to a genuine version of Windows. Here you can also check whether your copy of Microsoft Office is genuine, if you have Office installed on your PC.

If any of my former AVCE ICT teachers are reading this then yes, I am now running genuine software as it is part of the Computer Science faculty's policy that they will like to nag at the wrongs of counterfeit software, plus it doesn't pay to have counterfeit software anymore as Microsoft just turns it into a piece of Nag ware.

My birthday, essays, Windows Vista and Office 2007

2007-03-17T03:37:00.001Z

First of all I would like to apologize to my reader(s). I haven't posted up here for a while because I've been busy with my birthday, getting drunk, and a coursework essay. It is currently half past two in the morning, and I'm sat here making this post.

First of all, I'd like to thanks everyone for coming to my birthday party on Saturday, March 3^rd. It was a fantastically fantastic success, with everyone going home either drunk or happy (or both), and to those of us who live here at "Chez Student " (my place) we just fell into bed just a tad bit tipsy. As it was my birthday celebrations however it didn't stop there. On Friday, March 9^th my old school friend Kathryn came up to see her boyfriend and we went out to a very nice place on Friday night for a meal. I don't have a clue what it's called but it's about 2-5 minutes' walk from The Lawns halls of residence and it was really nice.

On Saturday it was into town and Yates' bar to have a few bevies before a quick stumble round town (in my case anyway. I have never been able to hold drink very well).then it was back to my place. I had planned to cook dinner but I was extremely tired from the night before so I almost fell asleep while Kathryn sat with my computer trying to figure out whether we had got onto the birthday guest list from Asylum or not. We eventually fled into the kitchen where she attempted to dye my hair with a temporary blue hair dye I bought from Sally's in Princes Quay. When it says Wash-in Wash-out, I didn't actually realise it would do one or the other. In my case it washed out, so Kathryn, who was doing her hair with permanent red dye asked if I wanted to do mine, so I decided what the hey. She did my hair red, and I proceeded then to hit the shower (I really don't know why as the shower hadn't done anything wrong). Anyhoo, I washed my hair with shampoo, and hay presto, the red stayed in, so I got changed to go out to Asylum and Kathryn proceeded to wrestle my hair into a Mohican hairdo. It actually looked good, and when Kathryn and her boyfriend were ready, we went out to Asylum with two of my housemates. It was a very good night with Jimmy from 911 coming on stage and trying to sing (he wasn't actually bad considering 911 WERE from the '90s). We did actually make the Asylum guest list, which meant that Kathryn and I gained a queue jump and free entry to Asylum, and a free bottle of Champagne from the DJ. All in all, Saturday was a very good night. Sunday was also good as I was able to make a good start with my Précis report. I then started making Sweet and Sour chicken as Kathryn and her boyfriend were coming round to Chez Student before Kathryn went back home. After the meal we decided to go back to Yates to give the quiz machine it's second caning in two days.

My birthday turned out well. We all ordered takeaway to be delivered. Two of us ordered Indian and two ordered Chinese. Once my birthday celebrations were over with, it was time to settle down to my essay. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Why did the rubric have to have so much ambiguity!? (And how exactly do you insert an interurban in Word 2007 under Windows Vista!?). It is so difficult, especially for those of us with Asperger Syndrome (Word doesn't recognize the word Asperger natively, who made the dictionary on this thing?).

Tonight I decided to give Windows Vista another go on my current PC. I decided to do some troubleshooting as to what was causing the errors when I instructed Vista to restart the computer. I installed programs one at a time, and restarted the PC twice after each, and I traced the error back to the modem. A quick Google search revealed a blog that someone had made (I forget which it is but I will try and find it and post a link on my blog). They, like me had an Intel 536EP modem, and they said that theirs would cause the system to abort. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but what he went on to say is that he updated his driver through Windows Update. Intel doesn't have the driver on their web-site but I clicked the Start button, and right clicked on Computer, and selected Properties. From there, I went to the device manager and clicked on the + sign next to Modems and selected my modem from the list. I right-clicked it and selected Properties. I clicked on the drivers tab, then on Update Driver. I instructed Windows to search online for the driver. I use the modem to connect to the Internet so it took about ten minutes for Windows to download and install the driver, but when it was done, I clicked on OK on the Modem properties dialogue box, and then exited Device Manager and the 'basic information about your computer' dialogue box. The problem, I believe is now solved.

I have started using Microsoft Office 2007 and so far I think it's great. The new Ribbon makes it, in my opinion anyway, easy to find things that you would otherwise have to trawl through about six feet of menu to find. For people like me who are visually impaired, we don't want to have to look through lots of menus to find things, as looking closely at writing can strain our eyes. I also like the fact that I can write and post bog entries directly from Microsoft Word. So far I'm thinking Nice Work, guys. I love it!!!

Very Abused PC

2007-03-06T01:18:00.001Z

Very Abused PC
Originally uploaded by Jay Wakefield.

This was a little project of mine - to see how much I could abuse a Windows installation by installing multiple versions of Windows on top of each other. Don't worry - I didn't do this on my actual PC. I used Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Beta 32-bit and Virtual PC 2004 to do this. I started out with a virtual PC with a very humble spec running Windows for WorkGroups 3.11. This PC had 8MB of RAM and a 4GB hard disk with a 2GB FAT16 partition. I upgraded the RAM to 32MB and tried installing Windows 95 OSR2. Unfortunately VPC 2007 wouldn't let me upgrade to Windows 95 OSR2 so I had to clean install it - shame really but I eventually decided to chuck VPC2007 Beta in favour of Virtual PC 2004 SP1. Once I did this, Windows 95 installed without any problems. I then proceeded to install Microsoft Office Standard 4.2 on it. (Yes, that's right - the 16-bit version that came on 25 floppy disks. I had previously burned them onto a CD image beforehand.) Once installed, I then installed Microsoft Office Professional for Windows 95 over it, after which I installed Windows 98 SE over Windows 95B. It was a full version so I had to drop down to DOS, delete WIN.COM and WINVER.EXE, install some Real-mode CD-ROM drivers and install Windows 98 from there. Once started, I had to reinstall a few drivers as I had changed the PC's architecture from VPC 2007 to VPC 2004. While I was at it, I installed the Virtual PC Additions so that I could move my cursor between the host and guest operating systems. Once I had done enough messing about trying and failing to get the Internet to work (yes I had set the network card to use NAT Shared Networking and yes I had configured the browser to use the Hull University Proxy server) I proceeded to install Microsoft Office 97 over the top of Office 95, and immediately afterwards, I installed Microsoft Office 2000 Professional with FrontPage over Microsoft Office 97 professional. I also installed Microsoft PhotoDraw 1.0. I then upgraded the PC to Windows ME. On the second reboot during Setup, I powered the PC down and upgraded the RAM to 128MB. Once Windows ME was installed, I just messed about with Microsoft Word for a bit, then I proceeded to install Microsoft Windows XP Professional RTM. This took a very long time, and when it was finally installed, because Windows 95 likes to install the Novell NetWare network client by default, as well as the Microsoft Networking client, Windows XP wouldn't use the Welcome Screen-based login, in fact on the first bootup, it asked me to specify the NwtWare server that it should use. I went into the Networking options and uninstalled the Novell NetWare client. I then had to uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Virtual PC Additions so that they would work with Windows XP. I found that when I double-clicked on Internet Explorer, it worked straight away.

So why have I done all this?

In the name of Science!
Computer Science that is

Or the fact that I was just trying to detract my attention from working - oh and the fact that I love experimenting with these things.

I wonder if I should up the RAM to 512MB and install Windows Vista ..........

2007-03-04T20:56:00.000Z

Didn't Like the Vista

Today I've decided to dump my XP Pro/Vista Dual-boot setup and go back to Windows XP Media Center Edition. I found Windows Vista stressful to use as it is extremely slow on my PC and I experienced difficulties doing simple tasks such as playing DVDs, creating playlists in Windows Media Player, using Visual Studio 2005 (yes I did install all the necessary updates for Visual Studio for Windows Vista), and even using Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Access 2007. I just couldn't handle all the hang-ups of Windows Vista.

Windows Vista does, however have some good features. In Windows Vista Business, they have enhanced the networking options so it is now easy to connect to lots of different types of network. I also like the more advanced file-sharing options available in Vista,, which I found useful for sharing files over our student house wireless network.

The Access Center is also very good offering a lot more options than in previous versions of Windows. Whereas the Accessability Wizard, which shipped with Windows 98, 2000, Me and XP used to ask "Do you want to enable StickyKeys" and "Do you wish to enable SoundsEntry" for example, the Access Center asks you questions about yourself and how you do certain things on the computer and sets Windows Vista up so it is easy for you to use.

Once Windows Vista has been out for a few months, and more hardware manufacturers are supporting it, and computers are made that exceed the system requirements by quite a way, then Windows Vista will be a good buy. For now, however, just stick with Windows XP, unless you actually need to buy a new PC.

If you need Windows Vista for work, or you are actually buying a new PC, then look for one with a dual-core processor that runs at 2.0GHz at least, with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB PCI-Express Graphics card. Opt for Windows Vista Premium as Windows Vista Basic, in my opinion doesn't have any good features worth upgrading to.

2007-03-01T20:32:00.000Z

I tried the PS3 today

One of the staff in Computer Science bought a PS3 today and Rob gave me the first go. The big TV in the open area didn't actually have a HDMI port, which the PS3 uses for High Definition picture, so we were reduced to using the composite (Red, White and Yellow plugs). We switched it on and I went on Ridge Racer 7. Despite the numerous designes for the controller, they opted to keep it the same as the PS2 controller. The controller is extremely light, and I only have one qualm with it. The L2 and R2 buttons stick out too much and they don't feel right when you press them. Ridge Racer 7's graphics are okay but the PS3 was crying out to be connected to an HDMI-ready TV, which most of us cannot afford. Unfortunately, Ridge Racer 7's graphics are not that great. It looks a lot like the graphics on the PS2. I was playing Driver 3 on my PC under XP and the graphics were much better than Ridge Racer 7. The sky looks great, with realistic clouds, which is funny because this game and my graphics card are two years old. Computer Science are going to try the PS3 on a HDMI-ready TV, hopefully with a better game tomorrow.

2007-02-27T13:02:00.000Z

World Record last night

I am taking part in the Microsoft Imagine Cup in the Software Design challenge, and I had to install Visual studio 2005 on Windows Vista. I started the install at about 7:55PM last night. The initial install finally finished at 10PM, and I started to install Service Pack 1, whcih took me to about 2AM in the morning, after which I installed the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Hotfix Beta, which should probably have only took me an hour but it was about 5:30AM this morning by the time it finished as I left the PC unattended.

I was able to start my report on my laptop as I set up an Adhoc wireless network so I could access files and the Internet from my desktop PC ...... oh wait, maybe THAT's why it took so long. If my desktop PC's got to think about being an access point for the Internet, access Simpsons episodes from my hard drive and install Visual Studio 2005 SP1 at the same time, that COULD be an inclination as to why it took so long. Hmm.........

Spanish Printer Driver

2007-02-23T20:47:00.001Z

Spanish Printer Driver
Originally uploaded by Jay Wakefield.

Can anybody tell me why Windows Vista decided to install the Spanish driver for my printer?

2007-02-22T19:19:00.000Z

This week I've finally taken the plunge and installed Vista on my desktop PC as the primary OS. Firstly however I bought an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 graphics card from the computer shop down Newland Avenue, near to the University. Once this was installed, I installed the drives for it under XP to check it was all okay. Once I was sure it was working, (and three lectures, and one episode of The Simpsons later) I set about butchering my pride and joy with the Windows Vista installation disk. I formatted the C drive (forgetting to transferr my ZoomText 9.0 license from my desktop PC, WHOOPS!). Afterwards, told Vista to go ahead and install itself to drive C.

A few short minutes later, it had almost installed; all I had to do was to set myself a user account up, after which it started displaying the usual bragging advertisements that are no stranger to Microsoft Windows Setup routines. After Windows had finished setting up, I was asked to log in, and when I did so, I was greeted by the new Windows desktop, complete with Aero Glass which looks really nice. That made a nice change from the Basic theme that I used to have thrown at me when I had used Vista with my ATI Radeon 9250 Graphics card.

I have had to do some work though to get Vista to work. I went to the 24 hour centre next to Larkin Building to download a fix for PowerDVD 6 so that I could watch Lee Evans at midnight. I have also had to replace my TV tuner to one that will work on Vista because my once faithful Pinnacle PCTV Stereo PCI card will not play with Vista. tt installs and tunes, and I get Sound, but no picture.

I went yesterday to buy a KWorld DVB-T 310-U USB2 Analogue/Digital TV tuner from Maplin Electronics in Hull Yesterday. I had bought one during the exams in January and had to take it back to maplins as it was faulty. The replacement I recieved worked at first but then developed the same fault as the first device had had, so I took it back and recieved a refund. Anyhoo I decided to be stupid and buy another one. I brought it home, and you'll never guess. Same Fault

"EMP Audio Device Cannot Start"

I took it back today and got a refund. I was going to go to PC World but didn't fancy paying for a taxi to Cluff Road (I don't really know the buses round here) so I decided to lookin Currys, as it was on the way to another shop I had to visit. There, I made the purchase of a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 900 USB Analog/Digital tuner. When I came home I unpacked it, plugged in and installed the software, and it worked straight away with Vista. I also installed it to my laptop, and I can now get Freeview but I haven't found Teachers' TV yet.

So far, I'm actually satisfied with Vista, especially as ZoomText 9.1 is in it's Beta stages.

2007-02-19T16:02:00.000Z

Jay on TV, and why not?

On Friday, two women came from the BBC to interview me about how being in Foster Care has affected my education. They are doing a documentary for Teachers' TV, which you can get through Sky and Freeview (The free Digital Terrestrial TV Service in the UK). They interviewed me because I made it to university even though I am in care and have a visual impairment and Aspergers' Syndrome (See earlier post somewhere down the page). Anyhoo*, these women brought their cameras in case I wanted to be filmed that day, so I complied, and they interviewed me about being in care and my education. They then had me walk to Ferens building as if I were going to a lecture, and they filmed me doing that. I had to cross the road about three times while the camera angles were perfected, and I was aware that it was trying to rain. Afterwards, the camera woman had to go, and the woman who interviewed me stayed for a coffee and biscuits (My hosting duties were clear) and she washed up everyones pots (I didn't ask her to, she just did it) and dropped me off at Withernsea where I went to see my parents. It was a good morning. The program will be aired sometime in September. I will keep you posted, and will drop a link on this blog where you can see it online.

* (c) 2007 many people including Rob Miles™

2007-02-07T23:39:00.000Z

Trip to Oxford

On Saturday, I went to Oxford with the International Students Association (ISA). I am not an international student myself but I am a member of their society.

We had to be up extremely early to be outside the Venn building at 6.30 on Saturday Morning for two coaches to take us to there. It was freezing cold but it was a very clear morning. The journey there was five hours with a service stop at about 9:45. We arrived at Oxford at about dinnertime. I set out with three French girls I had met the day before. We headed for Broad Street, with a little help from a Map that we were issued with, and my new Garmin Nuvi 300 Satellite Navigation System. It took us to Broad Street without any problems but after that the battery conked out. Great! I knew I should have charged it. Once on Broad Street we headed straight for the Tourist Information Centre, after which we headed for Trinity College, which makes up part of Oxford University. Walking around the gardens was magnificent. I thought that on one hand, I'd love to study there but on the other, I like the fun you can have and the relaxed atmosphere at Hull University. We then went to the Oxford University Museum where they had a hall full of dinosaur bones and fossils. The Hall's roof was magnificent, it was arched high above the hall and made of little glass squares. I was the stupid idiot who photographed it. After the museum we went for a look round Oxford's High Street. I was surprised to find that It was actually called High Street. We stopped off for coffee and went to the river. I didn't know that Oxford was set on the River Thames but we saw it. It was dusk at this point, and the girls agreed that it was romantic, and it was. Picture the scene, the sun setting on a very calm river bank with a barge bobbing up and down,a nd the air being calm. It was then time to go back to meet the bus for the long journey home. A good time was had by all who went. Thanks to ISA Hull

The River Thames in Oxford

2007-02-04T23:42:00.001Z

03022007249
Originally uploaded by Jay Wakefield.

2007-01-29T15:38:00.000Z

Semester 2 starts today

Semester 2 started today. How good is Monday. I start at 9.15 with an 08120 lecture with Rob Miles, have an hour's rest, then another 08120 (Programming 2) lecture. I then have an hour's free time before I go to a Programming 2 tutorial followed by an 08119 (Information Technology and Professional Skills) lecture. I then have an hour before I have my final 08125 (Quantitative Methods or Maths) lecture at 4:15. I literally am working 9 to 5, or 9:15 to 5:15. Phew. I then go home and watch the simpsons, and tonight. I will go into the kitchen to plan a coursework essay, olga! :-P

2007-01-23T17:22:00.000Z

Take a look at this article from Magnifiers.org

It talks about the accessibility, or lack of it, natively in Windows Vista. I am, in actual fact, running Windows Vista Business to write this blog. Unfortunately, my brand new shiny copy of ZoomText 9.0 will not work under Vista. Instead, I have to wait for ZoomText 9.1 to come out. I agree with this article in that why doesn't Vista come with a full-screen magnifier proper screen reader with lots of different languages and clear voices, and, oh yes, the ability to work in Microsoft Word, unlike Microsoft Narrator.

It seems to me that Microsoft have paid more attention to anti-piracy measures than they have to making Windows Vista accessible. I'm going to stop now and take a cocktail of headache tablets because my eyes are straining on this. Thanks, Bill, you really did well there. Now does anyone have a Mac that they would sell cheap because Vista just locks me out :(

2007-01-21T14:20:00.000Z

Windows Vista, Wireless Networking and Revision

A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Windows Vista Business through the Academic Alliance. Apart from the fact that my desktop is jam-packed with geriatric hardware (even though it is powered by an AMD Athlon64 3200+ Venice chip) and won't run the shiny new Aero interface, I quite like it. I have had to wrestle with some drivers to make them work, mainly for my ABit UL8 M1689 motherboard, but my new Epson DX4000 All-In-One Printer/Scanner/Copier installed without too much hassle. I just installed the drivers using the Windows Found New Hardware Wizard, and then installed everything else using Epson's own installer utility.

I bought a USB Belkin Wi-fi adapter for my desktop computer so that I could set up a wireless network in the student accommodation so that we can all share files easily and so that I can access files from my desktop computer from my laptop in the kitchen, where I seem to work better. For £24.99 I thought it was a good price for what it can do. OK, so it won't do 802.11n, but neither will anything else (I don't think, anyway) in this house. It will, however support the a, b and g standards, which is good enough. It was really easy to set up, with the Belkin utility taking care of everything. Within minutes I had a wireless network running. Unfortunately, twenty-four hours later, everything died. It didn't really matter until about three o' clock on Saturday Morning when everybody fancied some music. Picture this, here I am, a bit worse for wear, at three in the morning with a broken wireless. I decided to try and set the thing up under Vista, which surprisingly I did well. Once I had made the driver installation utility think it was running under Windows XP SP2, it installed without any problem. I then went to Start > Connect To, and Windows Vista then made a secure Ad Hoc Wireless network for me in seconds, after a few mishaps, I was running a wireless network again. Windows Vista takes out all the unnecessary complications out of setting up a wireless network, so that even drunk people can do it. I had internet connection sharing enabled as well so that I could surf the web in the kitchen. In fact, I am writing this post on my laptop while listening to music stored on my desktop computer.

Oh yes and the revision. Well, I have limited desk space so I don't have room to swing a textbook that's too large for my Daylight Double Flexi-Clamp, so I have to come and work in the kitchen, and I like to have my laptop for things such as writing notes down or accessing materials on the Internet, so there IS an academic reason I have wireless. Also, sometimes I have to use my OPTi Verso Camera to enlarge text onto my laptop's screen, and there is no room for that in my bedroom, so again I have to use the kitchen table, and yes, it is useful for me to be able to access wireless.

Data Structures and Algorithms: Table of Contents

2007-01-13T15:17:00.000Z

Thanks to a course mate, I am posting this link up on my blog. This will be useful as a last minute revision aid to those studying for module 08101 Programming 1 at the University of Hull. Sorry about the delay in putting this link up.

Data Structures and Algorithms: Table of Contents