• up to 20mbps braodband
• their full (non-HD) TV package and
• Unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines.

20 mbps, No way!

Ok it says up to, but what would you say is fair? 18 mbps? 15 mbps? At least over the 10 mbps on the next package down, right? Well I am certain I don’t get more than 5 mbps!

So I am going to test this an post my speed test results here for prosperity!

The setup form my test is my standard home setup for my desktop, but removing all other network traffic:

• Computer: Windows Vista Ultimate, Intel Core2Duo 6600 (2×2.40GHz) processor, 4 GB of RAM (32bit Windows only uses and recognises 3.5 the rest is utilised by the hardware!).
• Router: Netgear 54 Mbps Wirelss Router – WGR614 v6 with fully up to date firmware.
• Cable Modem: Motorola – S85100 Surfboard Cable Modem

As many Windows processes as possible have been killed without killing Windows iteself, including for this test the Firewall and Virus Protection. The wireless has been switched off and the only connections are wired and between the computer and the router and the router and the modem (which is obviously plugged into the outside world!).

Day 1 results (21:45):

www.speedtest.net – download: 4508 kbps (4.5 mbps); upload: 678 kbps.

http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ – download: 4912 kbps (4.9 mbps); upload: 577 kbps

This isn’t very scientific but I will continue to post my results as and when I test the broadband speed. Let me know your thoughts.

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Firstly why Firefox?! It is my browser of choice, it is more standards compliant at the moment, offers a great tabbed browsing environments and an extremely good view of most of the web sites out there. OK, Firefox 2.0 is not exactly resource friendly, using an amount of memory that it shouldn't. The biggest effect is the open add-on and extension model. None of the other browsers offer the same level of support for third party extensions that Firefox offers. When I am staring at my web browser for much of the day, I need some of these tools to help me get on with things.

Here are my top Firefox extensions:

1. All-In-One Gestures – It is extremely difficult to browse the web these days without the mouse. In fact, try it on something like the BBC site, to see what I mean. Often, no amount of pressing "tab" will get me to the right place and even with Shift+"tab" taking me backwards it doesn't work. Some keyboard commands help but simplest of all is the use of this plug in. Right click and a flick of the mouse opens new windows or tabs, views the source (funny how often this is used just to be nosy!), refresh or close the current tab. Everything could be done but my top commands all use this mouse gesture command line.
2. Google Reader Notifier -I subscribe to maybe fifty RSS feeds and keeping up to date can be a problem. But Google reader notifier highlights how many articles I have to read. I don;t usually take time out to read unless I have 20 which I can comfortably process in less than 30 minutes.
3. IETab – for those sites (named and shamed to be mainly Microsoft sites including Windows update!) that simply refuse to work in Firefox, this opens up and IE 7 tab in my Firefox. A button in the status bar lets you toggle between FF and IE7, great for a quick check of rendering when changing any CSS. It also has a built in store of URL's to always open initially in IE7 – windows update then works when my default browser isn't IE7!!
4. Tab Mix Plus – gives an additional functionality to the tabbed browsing experience!
5. URL Link – Don't you just hate it when you see a web address that isn't a link! By selecting it and right clicking I can open the link as if it were a hyper link!
6. Web Developer tool bar – this is definitely one for the web developers out there – priceless in the various browser check you need to do.
7. Firebug – debugging Javascript is a real pain, this at least takes some of that pain away, as well as giving you DOM based analysis and CSS handling and live editing!
8. Del.icio.us sidebar extension – this is brilliant as I manage all my bookmarks here. I get them all, nicely tagged anywhere.
9. Live PR – displays the current Google Page rank for the page you are on! Nothing but information but something interesting none the less.
10. Fireshot – want to capture the image of a web page and annotate it? This makes it really easy, however doesn't quite support Flash!
11. Colorzilla – an eyedropper for the we, to select color information.
12. Measure IT – a pixel ruler for measuring across web components. Useful in my line of work.

I use others but this I guess is my top 12, those I couldn't do without. Although one not on the list that maybe should be is GMail Notifier, letting me see an outlook style notification when I receive new email (as my Emails are powered by Google Mail) in the Office.

I am sure there are those who will have a different list to this and if any one can suggest others feel free to do so!

As a WordPress user, I use Askimet as my main anti spam techinque, however I wanted to augment this with a CAPTCHA for a bit more security. I heard about re-Captcha in an article or blog post somewhere and think it is great. It uses the same principles of a CAPTCHA and puts it to good use helping to digitise books. The digitalisation of books (particularly those from before the digital age) uses Optical Character Recognition to parse a scanned image of a book into its constituent letters and words. However OCR is not perfect particularly when the scanned characters are distorted or not uniform. This is why a CAPTCHA is a good anti spam technique (at least for now!).

The digitalisation has many many unknown words and re-Captcha helps solve this. This special CAPTCHA gives you two distorted words, 1 known word and 1 unknown word. The likelihood of a person entering both words correctly increases dramatically if you enter the known word correctly making this an ideal way to help in the digitalisation of books. Add a comment to see the CAPTCHA in action and visit re-captch for your own plugin at http://recaptcha.net.

Now for those who don't know Carlisle United, Olga (acronym of Goal!), the fox, is the club's mascot.  It used to be the stuffed fox, placed on the centre spot before every home game, usually accompanied by a man in a funny suit. However in more modern times Olga the Fox is a much "cuddlier" mascot
and can be seen parading around Brunton Park before home games.  Carlisle United play in blue and there we have it the origins of the blog name.

As I am based in Edinburgh, and do not make many a game, Olga's Blues is looking for some loyal Blue's fans and volunteers to provide match reports and opinions on the goings on at Brunton Park.  If you know of anyone or want to volunteer your writing skills drop me an email. It is unpaid obviously but if the Google Ads cover more then the cost of the hosting, then I am more than wiling to share it out.

On the technical side, just like this blog, Olga's Blues is powered by WordPress. I found a good design that matched the blue from N.Design Studio which I was able to edit and make into what you see on the page.

Listening to internet radio for at least an hour occurs at least 5 days out of 7 for me.  I enjoy an eclectic mix of music, most of it through Pandora or my iTunes catalogue and IPod, as I can easily match my mood and get a full playlist to match what I want.

Pandora,  as an internet radio, has taken part in the "Day of Silence" for internet radio stations, highlighting what it may be like in the near future.  The case seems to be that in the US, where most of these stations are based, the costs of playing a track over the internet will be so great (due to extra royalties and alike) that it will put them out of business.  

I am not against the artists getting a fair amount of royalties but I know for a fact there are more than a few albums I have bought having heard some tracks on Pandora.  A degree of fairness and compromise should be agreed. 

As I am not in the US there is little I can do about supporting the save net radio campaign except spread the word…

I do really enjoy the work despite some frustration at times. It is sometimes a really interesting project to work on particularly when I implementing new features that are innovative and exciting. It is great to see the application moving forward and improving, ensuring good quality on which to base their business.

SK Chase [the clients!] have also been making a bit of a splash in the press recently. You can find articles in The Scotsman here and The Sunday Herald here. They have also managed to get themselves on a business promotion reel on STV (Scottish ITV) running for the next few weeks between the regional and national news programs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happens is that the spammers send out loads of emails having modified the  "FROM" address to appear as if it came from an email on my domain.  They then obfuscate the email headers to hide their actual location making it very difficult to trace them.  Imagine someone handwriting hundred of letters and signing someone else's name and address and sending them out.  It would almost be impossible to prevent that, and domain spoofing is a similar concept but with emails.

A decent spam filter will more than likely prevent the spam getting through.  My apologies if you have received spam from this domain, I am doing what I can to prevent it.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

**Readers of the blog feed who cannot see this: You can view this here. Enjoy! 

There are maybe two streams of what I call Web Entertainment: Audio and Video.  I guess a third is my reading materials which is a collection of articles, blogs and other stuff that kind of fit into this category.

Audio resources are freely available across the web.  Not only are many radio channels streamed across the web but a service I particularly like and use frequently is available at Pandora.com.  This is a custom radio station generator.  Enter a song or artist and Pandora creates a radio station based on songs and artists that are similar in style and characteristics to your original selection.  You can also train Pandora to cut out those that do not quite match what you want, and best of all no ads and no annoying Disc Jockey's.  Podcasts are fun to listen to too, while I am not so keen on them through my Ipod,  I am more likely to listen through my desktop and iTunes still works great for that!

Video resources are available across the web – whether it be You Tube or Google Video or any others.  I tend to use the Democracy Internet video player that downloads videos automatically within channels.  Video Podcasts and general Internet videos are a growing field.  The democracy player list hundreds of channels that are series of videos.  It also allows me to add specific You Tube searches and feeds.  This enables me to get my favourite videos when I want them without having to find them.

For reading material I tend to subscribe to RSS feeds of the sites I visit most recently.  I am a Firefox (web browser) user and use the Sage extension for subscribing to feeds.  This is a lightweight RSS reader – there are many better ones out there, but I like that it plugs directly into Firefox, and I can choose to read it on the site or in the feed.

As a blogger, I tend to read a lot of other peoples blogs and have as yet been unable to find one in particular

Carlisle United: the games, the stories, the truth from the terraces.

While I follow a lot of media content including alternative Carlisle United sites, the Blues aren't a big enough club [in the eyes of the media] to warrant huge attention. Blogs like Black & White & Read All Over for Newcastle United don't exist for Carlisle United.

I would in some way like to rectify this. To that end I would like to see what the reaction would be for one or two literate, religious followers (home and away game attendees) to start one of these blogs. I would be willing to begin setting it up and managing the issues around the site, but I simply do not have the resources or the ability to even attend the games, so am not the person to begin writing the content.

If anyone is interested in this please leave a comment with an email address and I will be in touch!

To try and move this forward, I have now implemented a "Blogroll" [see my original post http://www.richardlennox.net/2007/04/09/goodbye-virgin-media-dns-hello-open-dns/ I have said goodbye to Virgin Media and its DNS service and welcomed Open DNS. DNS [Domain Name System] is used every time you browse the Internet.  You enter the human readable (well understandable anyway!) address of a website into your browser and the DNS, translates the into the IP address (4 group numbers) that is the physical location of the websites server.  Take this site for example: you have likely reached it by typing "www.richardlennox.net" into your browser address bar, DNS translates this into the server's IP address, 85.13.219.74, to which you are then directed. This makes the Internet much more usable for you and I, as we can simply type in the human readable name and the DNS does the work of locating its address.

Normally and properly your Internet Service Provider (in my case Virgin Media) does all this for you in the background and the service is generally great but Open DNS offers a much better service (and its still free!).  Open DNS claims "to make your Internet blazing fast, block phishing sites and correct your typos on the fly".  While DNS does add a slight overhead to your Internet connection, the claim of making it faster I cannot prove and am a bit skeptical about, but the other two are the reasons I switched.

Blocking known phishing sites (you know those sites that try and get you to enter things like account details by pretending to be your bank so the site owners can steal all of your money!) is an extremely great feature.  It simply shows you a warning page saying the site you are trying to visit is a known fishing site, or that the site has been blacklisted for whatever reason and you should take care if you are wanting to continue to it. Great, especially for those who are not too savvy about these things.

Correcting typos on the fly is another great feature.  Ever typed .cm instead of .com or .nt instead of .net? Open DNS will try and correct it for you.  Or if you include a complete typo within the address it won;t show you a default browser error but show you what you typed and asks if it was what you were looking for. Pretty neat, hats off to Open DNS! 

I have also taken the opportunity to upgrade some of the underlying CSS and HTML of the theme.  This won't mean any visible changes, it simply cleans things up a little in the code.  Let me know if you come across any issues…Thanks!

1. Format the HDD.
2. Clean reinstall of Windows.
3. RE-install all my applications and data.

Luckily I have my Netgear Storage Central (little box connected to my home network that adds hdd storage to the network!) that still has a backup of the majority of my important data.  I didn't have too much to lose just my time.

I was impressed with the support I got over the phone from the supplier of my machine, pcoption.co.uk.  We had a chat and decided that while it may have been the hardware, there was no reason not to try a clean install of Windows (steps 1 + 2 above).  If that goes ok, then maybe it was a corrupt Windows installation.  Luckily this seems to [touch wood or forehead here!] have been the case as over the last couple of days the Windows installation has appeared stable.  I am still a little nervous about it but am assured that any problems will be covered by the warranty!!

Next on my list will be an upgrade of this WordPress installation, scheduled for Monday! 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Linking and mutual linking has great benefits in the page rankings [Disclaimer: This is a sweeping statement as while it helps is not the be all and end all of S.E.O., a topic on which I know only slightly more than your average Joe!] which will get you somewhere near the top of relevant search terms in Google. But now am starting to think differently, maybe I was wrong….

Recently I am moving away from the TV as a source of entertainment. I have already mentioned my democracy (soon to be Miro) video podcast / rss feed player, that gives me video content, and am starting to read many more blogs as a source of entertainment.  I am getting to thinking that if I like reading someone's blog maybe people who read my blog may want to read similar stuff.  

I am plumping towards an RSS reader on my desktop, which one yet am not sure.  But I need to get them in one place.  I will then be able to read many blog entries and determine the quality before anyone appears on my blog roll! We will see how this goes. 

Telewest started off being relatively economic.  £30 a month for all 3, but that was limited to the basic packages but that simply didn't;t meet my needs, and only lasted 6 months anyway.  Now I am paying anything between £50 and £60 a month for a service that we both think is less than what we started with.  TV channels have disappeared from our package, not just the Sky channels but other channels too.  The broadband quality is just shot with download speeds of 17-35kBs when 400kB/s is more realistic for a 4mB/s service!!  To be fair, Virgin are refunding the cost of the broadband for two months but I need a decent service.  The phone is OK with only weekend UK land line calls free.

The loss of the Sky channels on Virgin prompted me to look at what other packages I could get for my money.  It seems Sky are offering a better quality of service for £26 per month with an extra £11 for a BT line rental.  This is some £20 cheaper than my current monthly costs.  While there are downsides such as download limits on the broadband and the requirement for a communal dish (on the block of flats) for the TV, £20 is a lot of money.  Virgin take note.

Great Golden Eye Recreation – Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

I simply registered and got my hosting company to change my MX records, and that was it.  One of the great things I like about it is the GMail interface for my webmail now.  The things it allows me to do is much more intuitive than any of the mail programs I have used and currently use.  Thins like labels as opposed to flags or sorting into categories.  The conversation tracking is great too.  It took a bit of getting used to but I really like it!  I like the integration and simple management of it! Great!

To that end and with the long term future in mind, I have spoken to Ezone with regard to doing a bit of freelance work on the side. This is not a career move as such but a way for me to look at different ways of working and trying new things. I am not going to be actively pursuing freelance work but I wouldn't turn it down out of hand. I want to keep my workload manageable and not spend all my spare time on it. I am big on quality as opposed to quantity.

I have the technical skills to provide technology for both the web or if necessary a custom Windows application, even a custom Linux or Unix application, using a variety of technical skills. One area where I could provide a great service is as a web presence consultant. I have strong skills in the technical side of this, in accessibility and usability and analysing web standards. I have also great business analyst skills that would guide someone into getting what they need from their web presence. With a raft of contacts in design, web technology and a variety of other areas, I can introduce the right services to get the best out of any budget.

While not actively looking for this work it will be interesting to see where it goes.  If anyone needs some help in these matters please contact me and I will get in touch.

The widgetized sidebar basically lets you drag and drop the required sidebar components into the sidebar and saving this means the sidebar is created on the fly as the sum of its parts.  It took a while to work it all out but I have managed to get it exactly as the PHP hard-coded version! Which I never expected.  This is a great bit of functionality for those people without the skills to update the template.

 The Web is the first place where the mass populations can publish their own thoughts and opinions without recourse.  While many societies are not democratic, we must look very carefully at how the large service providers, such as Google have put profits before the human rights of certain cultures.  The irrepressible campaign has begun a petition aiming to stop the censorship and attempts to control access to the world wide web of information.  Sign up at irrepressible.info to support the campaign to give the same freedom of expression that we take for granted to these repressed countries.

I am not usually one for jumping on a bad wagon like this, but I believe that if starts to move forward, the free nature of the web will change for us all.  I want to continue as we are.  The debate on the quality of the web content and its dangers will continue but if we give control to big business we will all be worse off.