That’s right folks, were talking HTCPCP 1.0!

For those of you who don’t know, HTCPCP stands for Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. Let me explain…

Back in September when I started University, one of our first lab sessions for “Web and Media Development”, was looking up protocols on various given websites. One of the sites was http://ietf.org, which was when I remembered HTCPCP! I just HAD to look it up.

Low and behold, there was an article on HTCPCP, and its conception. The memo is 5 pages long, so I’ll talk about some of the best bits, and provide a link at the end of this post.

READ MORE »

Cant remember how I found this, but it’s been on my reading list for a while. There are always questions about wikipedia’s reliability, and now this, raises even more questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

Just encase you didn’t understand what its trying to say, you can even listen to this wiki policy! There is actually a wiki page which attempts to explain exactly what the rule IAR means. In effect, its also known as common sense!

In fact there are no longer any "rules" on wiki, just a set of policies, and in essence, shouldn’t it be called "Ignore All Policies"? It itself, it is called a policy.

Maybe I’m just being picky, but I like wiki, and maybe this just proves the fact that wiki is user generated. Rather than making policies that mean you never need to ignore them to do what you need.

READ MORE »

There is nothing that annoys me more than people who demand special attention and special care for the most retarded of reasons.  There are those who cannot read black letters on a white background, yet they can read black characters on a yellow background.  How does that work?  Surely there’s a higher contrast between white and black than there is against black and yellow (I’ve since been informed that its not contrast but forms of colour blindness and side effects of dyslexia that causes this. No offence intended). The one that annoys me most is those who claim to be allergic to wifi or other radiowaves this condition is called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (check out the link to read more about it (mostly biased)).  Now i believe there are many flaws with this, before i go into the flaws i shall first explain what WiFi is.

Wifi is a radio signal, on the Electromagnetic scale it is on the the long wavelength, low frequency, low energy side of the spectrum.  On the other side you get high energy, very short wavelength, high frequency gamma rays which can cause damage to cells and penetrate thick layers of lead.   The visible light part is in the middle of this spectrum. Now i can understand if one “allergic” to gamma rays seeing as it has the potential to kill anything that’s exposed to it.

READ MORE »

The new must have tech in education: the interactive smartboard. These cost at around £1500 each (excluding projector) so they are an expensive investment.  But are they really necessary?

What I don’t understand is why they are needed in every classroom for every single  subject.  Though they make a school look high tech and for the right subjects they are a benefit for subjects such as physics where there are interactive demonstrations (like bloody oscillations of a spring). For subjects such as Mathematics or English they are absolutely pointless. In my maths class there is a smartboard installed, and its only purpose is a projector screen, nothing else which is a huge waste.  Surely a whiteboard would make a cheaper projector screen.

READ MORE »

Ok, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve just started at Bournemouth University. Lovely place. Went to use good ol portable apps, when I get a report of a trojan on my usb. Needless to say, the university foolishly chose Macafee, when they could of chosen Kaspersky! Anyway, so the exe it flagged was the ultra handy usb ejector app I reviewed a while ago. Clearly this isn’t a trojan!

Not only did it detect, but it also AUTO DELETED THE FREAKIN EXE! SERIOUSLY! One not so happy guy. So I marched over to the IT tech support desk, and told them how crap Macafee was, and how I’d hack the system to show how crap it was and then replace it with Kaspersky and then… ARG! (or rather told them it reported a false positive). They said there was nothing they could do. So naturally one would assume reporting the false positive to Macafee would be easy, right? WRONG! Now Lets find out why it should be spelt MaCRAPe

READ MORE »

There is a pretty high chance that there is intelligent life out there.  Our galaxy the milky way is about 100,000 lightyears in diameter (a lightyear is the distance that light travels in a period of a year, that’s exactly 9,460,730,472,580 kM).  No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space…  Uhh yeah, even if we were being watched I doubt any ET life will be interested in us and our failure as a race.   To add insult to injury, the online social networking site Bebo has decided it will spam the galaxy (even though it fills your inbox with crap)!

READ MORE »

Many people just go down to PCWorld, Target or whatever and buy a PC. Spending millions of their pounds or dollars on computers. For those without a clue what these contraptions are, they are the things that go beep and usually screw up (my case as it happens).

There are other ways that are quite alot cheaper, A. Build one yourself, best way to learn is do it yourself. or B. Get someone else to build it; sometimes a mate will help out, As Mr Appaholic knows all too well. I personally helped him build his monster computer, and all it gave me in the end was a cut finger and frustration.

But it works and thats the main thing. As you can guess by now, I am the tech guy. OK so i may not be as experienced as some, but I do like computers and can adapt pretty damn quick if the going gets tough. Enough about me, i bet all of 2 of you are wondering when im acctually going to get on with anything. Well it is there I must say, maybe.

I have a sum total of three computers on my desk at this second, one being a laptop and 2 being desktops. Thats one hell of a desk I hear you say, well yes. Acctually it is.

Tobe

The ‘Hardware’