This web page is in the process of being moved and replaced. Please note that links may or may not work. For the live website please check out Absoblogginlutely.net

This is my first post on the new blogger system - which looks nicer - a lot less cluttered. Shame its too late and I've moved over to MoveableType. For those of you who have www.helsby.net in your blogroll, please change it to absoblogginlutely.net    9:53 AM | comments []

Good job I check my RSS feeds as I found this post at the top of my feed today....
"Unfortunately I can no longer bear the bandwidth cost of running this service so I'm turning it off. There's a mirror at http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/rssify/rssify.php. There may be others.
RSSify is a rather horrible hack that shouldn't be needed any more. Please ask the owner of the site you're reading (http://www.helsby.net/) to change to a system that generates RSS natively such as Blogger Pro or Movable Type. Alternatively consider hosting RSSify yourself rather than using my bandwidth."
Therefore from today onwards, all blog content will now only be updated to absoblogginlutely.net. Non blog content will stay on helsby.net

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I was stupid enough to buy something else from ebuyer last week - a dvd player. When it arrived in the post there was a big dent in the top of the unit. Since then I've been trying to get them to provide me details on how to send it back to them free of charge for a full refund. I was originally told to post it back at my cost, then I was told they would refund up to £5 of postage.... I weighed the box on our stamp scales in the office and the cheapest was £7.84. Another email back to them, this time quoting the good old Sale Of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) and threatened to request a chargeback on the credit card if they didn't arrange arrange return transport by 1pm today. Within an hour I had a response saying they would send a courier to pick it up! Just shows how much rubbish certain companies will try to get away with.    6:58 AM | comments []

The quality of England's beaches has had a couple of conflicting news reports on the BBC's front page this morning. The first is an article about how the number of beaches that have won the coveted blue flag award for cleanliness has doubled. But on the same front page they also run an article about how the beaches may not be as clean as we think with cautionary tales about surfers suffering various illness's due to the sewage pumped into the sea. I can well agree with them as I can remember going to our local "beach" which had an outfall that you could walk to the end of and I remember being amazed at seeing what was being pumped out - including seeing pieces of toilet roll (and other stuff I won't mention) swirling out into the water.....Certainly makes me think twice about swimming in the sea - and definately not at this particular beach!    5:03 AM | comments []

Finally heard back from ICSTIS about my complaint about the spam txt messages that I was getting from various companies including Zed UK. They've basically said they can't do anything but instead I need to contact the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) who can deal with the complaint as long as I've been on the Telephone Preference list at least 28 days (and/or asked to be removed from the spammers phone list). The OIC can be reached on 01625 545700 to register a formal complaint.    12:07 PM | comments []

Following on from my handsonlab day on Windows 2003 where I didn't even get a demonstration copy of Windows2003, I've signed up for a free evaluation kit from Microsoft themselves

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I did a bit of research on the spywareinfo forums this morning which led me to the msgplus.net article that claims that the advertising software is an optional install and can be skipped by not selecting the appropriate box on install. However, they also claim that uninstalling MSNPlus also goes through the uninstall routine for the ad software.. We all know that lop is extremely difficult to get rid of and certainly is not uninstalled by uninstalling it... Therefore mine, and Neils recommendation is not to install MSNPlus.    7:12 AM | comments []

Ages ago Neil recommended a download of Messenger plus which added loads of neat features to MSN Messenger. The latest version has apparently been bundled with some spyware in the form of a LOP client. More details available on the online version of spywareinfo.net. I would therefore strongly recommend against downloading the newest versions of this software, although the old ones are probably still safe.    7:34 PM | comments []

A new search engine hit the headlines a couple of days, Turbo10. It seemed pretty good when I was using it over the weekend, but when I tried to use it today I got a "sorry our site has too many visitors and we can't cope" message. That is not the sort of thing you want to see from a search engine. I don't know about you but I rely on Google and when you get used to search engines you stick with them. Turbo10 doesn't stand a chance.    8:33 PM | comments []

Grrr - comments are broken for the time being - I'll have to take a look at that tonight...weird...
Thanks Will for pointing it out. Update Problem is fixed. When I was fiddling around with the exporting of the entries I had to cut and paste the template codes. Unfortunately blogger in the web frontend decides to change the ampersand character for the letters amp, therefore when I posted the code back in it was getting garbled. Comments are now working again....now to fix Kelly's problem.    12:29 PM | comments []

Congrat's Queeny! 50 years ago today we had a new queen!    6:12 AM | comments []

There's a security hole in b2 which is easily fixed.    7:28 AM | comments []