dale lane

I’ve been setting up some open-source software on the computers in the SYA offices tonight: ClamWin, an anti-virus scanner for Windows, and Winpooch, an anti-spyware and anti-trojan scanner (which also hooks into ClamWin to provide real-time anti-virus protection).

As a project with ECS, we had access to their Sophos site-licenses. Since we became independent, I have been looking for a replacement.

It’s still early days, and I’ll have to see how we get on before I can say if I recommend them. But what I’ve read about them has been largely positive, and so far they look like they will fit our needs. And, importantly for a relatively new charity with plenty of other startup costs, they’re free (with no ongoing costs for virus definition updates!)

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Solent Youth Action has grown fast over the last couple of years – even faster than I’d hoped. And now it has meant that we are hitting a problem with one of my early decisions. 🙁

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I’ve pre-ordered my Nintendo Wii through Amazon.co.uk this morning. Fingers crossed, it should wing it’s way to me on launch day, 8th December. I can’t wait. 🙂

I’ve read a lot of comparisons about opinions about the ‘next-gen’ consoles, PS-3, XBox 360 and Wii, in the last week or so. But for me it was an easy choice.

I don’t play games that much nowadays. As a former PlayStation and PS-2 owner, it kinda feels like Sony given up on me. As games get more expensive (and the consoles – how much will the PS-3 be?!), more complicated, harder… it’s like they’re not for me anymore. I’m not able to invest the amount of time needed to learn some of the big new games (or the amount of money to buy them!), and so I’ve been left behind.

And this is where Nintendo feels different. They are welcoming the ‘casual gamer’. I know that a part of marketing is getting consumers to feel a kinship with a brand or product, and to produce a message that resonates with them. And – for me at least – Nintendo have done it, in a way that Microsoft and Sony haven’t.

I was reading a book in bed tonight. My wife was curious about it, and asked questions about what I was reading. We talked about it for a bit, and it got her interest.

As with most of the books that I read at the moment, I read it as an e-book on my phone. So, I was able to go into ‘File Explorer’, select the book file, click on ‘Beam File…’, and choose my wife’s Treo from the list of nearby Bluetooth devices. After a brief pause, a prompt showed up on the Treo screen asking if she wanted to install it. She clicked ‘yes’ and a copy of the book opened on her phone.

I’m impressed – how cool is that? We have different OS’s (I use Windows Mobile 5, and my wife uses Palm OS), no cables, no need for having to get out of bed and connect our phones to a PC to swap files, no need to convert file formats, no setup… nothing. Just choose a file on one phone and send it, then receive it and open it on the other. This is how all our devices should work.

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I visited Hursley tonight.

As I work at Hursley, this might sound a little stupid – but I mean that I visited the Hursley island in Second Life. (Depends on your point of view how stupid that sounds, I suppose! Opinion seems divided about the whole Second Life thing…)

I’m still at the “wandering around trying to figure out what I should be doing” stage. Unlike a more traditional game, there isn’t a particular task or mission – and as I haven’t yet talked anyone else I know into trying it out yet, my previous two brief visits in-world consisted of aimlessly ambling about trying to get the hang of the controls and cursing how slow it runs on the four-year old PC I borrow to play it… (even with all the graphics settings turned all the way down!).

So, when Ian Hughes at work sent me an invite to the private ‘Hursley’ area of Second Life, I jumped at the chance. I’d heard of it before from a few places… even The Register, but this was my first time seeing it for myself.

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My ThinkPad gave up the ghost – I had to format the hard-drive and reinstall Windows. 🙁 As a result, a large chunk of this evening has been spent downloading and reinstalling apps, and generally trying to get Windows set up the way I like it.

The most annoying problem I’ve hit so far is with Microsoft Money. I use MS Money 2001 to manage all our household finances. I’ve been using it (and before it Money 97) since starting University, so my Money file (I never get round to setting up archiving!) has got a record of pretty much everything I’ve bought since 1998! It syncs with my phone so I can record money that I spend when I’m out and about, and it’s how I make sure that we pay all our bills on time.

So it’s fair to say that my Money data file is kinda important. And that I want it to be secure.

Unfortunately, it’s so darn ‘secure’ that I can’t get into it anymore! 🙁 It’s all because of a change to the way that Microsoft handle authentication.

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