twitter follower spam

facebook application/group invite and update spam

social network status update spam

blog comment spam

forum spam

MMO chat spam

IM Spam

newsletters, supposedly agreed to mailings

virus and phishing  emails

random blog posts

and of course actual spam mail

oh and the millions of ads on webpages

all spam

Twitter followers, start following, in the hope you’ll follow them in return or just follow all the links that every tweet has to their website, thats probably trying to sell something or just paid for by advertising, do they jut add everyone that shows up on the timeline or are they watching for specific words?

Facebook app spam, “Please invite 2million friends to try this pointless app”, it probably wasn’t even that good, but then after that it posts your score for everyone to see, or everytime a friend does something in one of the game apps, it posts a story for everyone to see, no I’m really not interested that someone planted or taken a photo of some flowers in their virtual farm, I’m really not interested in virtual zombie stuff or mafia recruiting. There now a new trend of facebook pages with some funny picture on it that you have to like and invite everyone to to see whatever it is, just share the picture, I don’t want to tell everyone I wanted to know what the picture was, friend x likes funny picture x50, I don’t care! its spam all spam.

Status updates, sometimes theres just too many and too much info, does everyone you know really need to know you just had a big poo?

All the others are pretty obvious, whats the point? would you really buy something you saw a link to on a website or email without word of mouth verification from people you know to be real? Legitimate adverts are fine for letting you know about things but annoying still, but really a link on a forum post thats not even related why do they bother? is it just to boost page rank by having more links so they look legitimate by being high on google?

and all the adverts they either lead to pages hoping to sell something, or to more pages hoping for you to follow their adverts, can you trust them even if they’re on well known pages? probably but the advert people still let through some, and there’s just so many annoying ones, with rollovers or popups and noises

Chat, forum, comment and im spam all sending links to the advert pages trying to make money, its all about attention seeking and money grabbing.

It doesn’t matter what service you use it can be corrupted and abused for spam, thankfully we have some nice people out there that want rid of it all and provide nice little apps that strip ads and block spam messages, just a smae they’re not 100% effective and some slip through

oh and this is spam too

So do I, set them up RAID 1 and have 1TB of storage with a mirrored backup

or

RAID 0 and have a single 2TB fast drive, but then will need to keep my existing 500GB drive for essential backups

hmm performance and small backup or a full backup so better recovery?

The cause? That’s lost in the mists of time, I think it was probably triggered by helping to lift a heavy sofa, as I probably didn’t have hold of it very well, but it could already have been building up then anyway.

So what’s the cure? It seems to be rest, ibuprofen and some specific exercises, my Dr mentioned surgery too last time I was there.

And what can aggravate the problem? Pretty much everything! Or some days that’s how it feels, if an activity uses my hands there’s a good chance it wont be helping.

Heres a small list of everyday things that either hurt instantly or will after a while

• Typing (if I’m not careful writing this will hurt)
• using a mouse – its uncomfortable as soon as I try to use one, pain wont be far behind
• writing – using my graphics tablet might be better for me than a mouse but its not a cure
• picking things up
• getting dressed
• eating – both with or without cutlery
• using my phone
• using a tv remote
• holding a book
• driving
• holding a wii controller
• lifting a glass to drink
• opening bottles
• opening cans
• Some part of snowboarding, probably ratcheting my bindings and boots, or maybe its just from carrying my board
• fastening laces
• carrying things
• sleeping wrong – s lying wring will do more damage than is healed over night

That’s just a list of things that seem to have caused pains and then only the ones I could think of.

Primarily the problem is in my right wrist but that’s mostly because I’m right handed, my left is actually not fine I can’t just switch to it, partly because it really is an effort to use the wrong hand for some tasks but mostly because it’ll then have the same problems because its both wrists that hurt at times.

In the time I’ve been suffering I’ve discovered a variety of pain, all in my wrists, arms or even back (thanks to the physio!), from the sharp stabbing pains on the under side of my wrist, aches on the top, burning on the inside nearer my elbow, sharp pains shooting the whole length of my forearm.

Pain killers are great, I take them all day so I can work,  but they only hide the problem while they’re effective and they’re not a cure, the damage is still being done I just can’t feel it for a while. Imaging taking pain killers so you can put your hands in a fire, you mightn’t feal it, but your still going to have pretty crispy hands and it’ll hurt like hell later when they wear off.

As for how it works, all the tendons and nerves are packed together in the wrist, if one gets inflamed for whatever reason its swells, putting pressure on the others and causing them to rub more and get inflamed and swell making the problem worse, once the damage is done you do far more damage by continuing because of that.

So if you’re wondering why I’m lacking motivation, avoiding driving, trying to avoid the computer, or any activity that might possibly hurt, its all because I know it will hurt and being in pain isn’t fun, it really is quite hard to find the motivation to do something you know will leave you in pain with no gain from it. Hurting myself falling over snowboarding is just part of it, the snowboarding is fun and enjoyable and well worth a little suffering afterwards, but to spend time doing something that really hurts and is limiting my ability to continue and also limiting my entertainment options due to the pain levels, that’s really not fun.

If you haven’t worked it out, it really does suck, reading and tv are fine pass-times, but they’re not interactive and I want to shoot aliens not watch someone else do it, but if I spend too much time playing then I can’t work and then I still can’t (shouldn’t) play, or if I drive too far, or do too much work at work, you get the picture…

Oh on the plus there’s been a study that showed playing video games distracts from painful things, which explains how I can actually play games and not be in pain, but will be in pain within minutes of starting work, just a shame I’ll suffer for it anyway.

As this is the internet I’m starting with computer stuff

• A new 1TB+ HDD, I have 3 drives at the min its a bit silly, I’m tempted to get 2 or 3 and RAID them but cant decide if I should stripe or mirror, might need a RAID card to do RAID5
• Keyboard and mouse, my current ones are a little worn and faded
• A ram cooler, my custom balanced fan’s working but a bit unstable
• 5.1 surround speaker, I really want  a centre speaker

Snowboard stuff

• A helmet with built in speakers
• New Goggles
• New Gloves
• Would like a new board too, as mines getting a little old and is probably time to become a wall decoration

I guess I need a new source of income to pay for all this too!

Ever been sat doing something then suddenly a song you’ve not heard for ages starts playing in your head?

Its THEM, THEY’re testing mind control devices and beaming music into your head, the internet makes the results of these test easy to track, they don’t even have to monitor their subjects, just monitor blogs, tweets, chat and other forms of communication.

THEY watch for people saying they can’t get a song out their head, and if its the right one its put  down as a successful test.

Next time you get a song stuck in your head, look around for anyone acting strangely, they may well be one of THEM triggering the music in your mind.

Whatever you do, do not tell the world about the music, or THEY will find out, and know the machine is working, the next step is controlling actions and behaviour, then THEY have won.

Do not let THEM win, make them think the machine isn’t working and tell the wrong tune, or don’t tell it at all.

A week in Tignes, France, thats left me with a small shopping list of “upgrades” to my current snowbaord gear, more on that in another post As I didn’t mention in a previous post, I managed to get there no problem, dropped off at Newcastle airport, checked my bags and hung around for a little while till my flight was ready. For some reason this was delayed by 25 minutes when I checked in but was only 5 minutes by the time they announced the gate. A quick flight up, over priced snack and a drink, and I’m in Geneva. Collected my bags and headed out, looking out for my pickup, didn’t see it but that didn’t matter they spotted me. Good job I was wearing my SCUK hoody to travel Out we go to the bus and load up, I’m sure they managed to find the only French person that doesn’t speak English, anyway off we go about 3 and a half hours and a break later we arrive in Tinges, the driver got directions to the Loop Bar to meet everyone and then took us up to Dragon Lodge.

We were greeted and assigned rooms, then up to the room, home for a week. The room itself was actually a small apartment, with fully functioning kitchen and 2 bedrooms, one with a triple-bunk-bed and a normal bed, and one with 2 normal beds that were just mattresses on the floor. In an (failed) attempt to avoid snorers I went for one of the singles in the twin room, thinking that I had a good chance of a decent nights sleep, unfortunately my room mate turned out to be the loudest snorer I’ve ever heard, more on that later maybe.

So we get our stuff into our rooms, we’ve picked out beds so its back downstairs to mingle and have our first meal. Having only had airplane food and a Mars, I was ready for something to eat. And once the room had been converted from a lounge to a dining room, out comes 3 courses of the best food anyone could ask for on a holiday, its been such a full week its hard to remember every meal, but they were all good, we had a few soups, cheese, pate, and pasta for starters, beef stew, chicken casserole, chilli, lasagne and bangers and mash for main, chocolate mouse, orange cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, fruit crumble, crepe and banana. I’m sure I’ve missed something from that but nevermind they were all good and well presented too. At some point before dinner it had started snowing, and I don’t think it stopped until some time on Sunday, which meant we had lots of good snow just waiting to be played in. Anyway after that first meal, and some minor unpacking it was time for bed.

Now I don’t sleep that heavy at the best of times and sharing a room makes it harder to get to sleep due to the extra noise of someone else being there, so I came prepared with headphones, but within seconds of the light going out, it sounded like well I really don’t know how to describe it, it was loud, snorty and at times sounded snotty too, with only small breaks to exhale, then the snoring ended and the loud Darth Vader breathing started, I swear I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d randomly say he was my father, then more snoring, in a perpetual loop. It was also really hot in the room, considering the heating was off, this could only be blamed on the fact I was sleeping next to the hot water tank for the room. Later in the week, we discovered that -10 outside just meant the room cooled down a bit with the window open and it was still quite comfortable to sleep, once the snoring stopped anyway. The first few nights were rather poor, but with the window open and the threat of sleeping outside or maybe being hit by something, the snoring was less bad and I managed to sleep. Leading up to the better nights sleep I experimented with listening to music to drown out the thundering snores, this didn’t quite work out that well when I left my music on shuffle and after playing something a bit slow and peaceful that I was just dozing off to it switched to playing Metallica, giving me a bit of a shock and waking me up, I think I ended up falling to sleep with Muse playing one night, and Dragonforce (very effective at blocking noise as its almost solid noise itself) another, no surprises with them and I just set it to play albums.

Back to important stuff, the snowboarding The lodge was only a couple of minutes walk from the slopes, up the hill then a gentle ride down to a lift, or down the hill to the main area with easy access to 3 lifts, one easy, one still pretty easy but longer and the gondola up to a few more slopes, one route coming out in Val desire, its quite a large area and I’m sure there’s loads I didn’t visit.

After the constant snow of the first night it was still snowing the first day, visibility wasn’t great and the gondola was closed, but hitting lots of fresh untouched (until we fell in it) powder was awesome, if a little hard work when it was two feet deep and I’d just fell over, due to lack of practise, yeah lack of practise on powder was why I fell over not total lack of ability After a short break up by the closed gondola station, and not knowing the easy way back, took part of a black run back down into Tignes for food

Most days involved get out on the snow between 9 and 10, stop for lunch, then back out till tired, and back to the lodge for cake, chill then dinner.

A couple of days guiding was included and meant we got taken to places we probably wouldn’t have chosen to go normally and a klittle bit of technique improvement, this included a couple of gullies that are basically natural half pipes, and great fun to ride through, and a couple of runs that looked like there was a big cliff down the side, not my favourite, but some were huge wide and open, and hardly seemed to have other people on.

About half way through more snow was forcast and it arrived late afternoon, unfortunately we decided to get another run in while the clouds were coming in and the light turned a bit flat, by the time we reached the bottom it was imposible to pick out anything no shadows, up and down looked the same, and I only knew I’d gown down a dip when I felt myself drop, and then came back up the other side, no idea how fast I was going and no idea what the snow was like up ahead, made things interesting.

On the last day we had a small race, I say small, there was supposed to be about 40 of us, I’m sure it was only 20 all waiting to strap our boards on after the last lift. A short run to our boards, strap in and race down to the bottom as fast as possible, I figured I wouldn’t stand a chance of winning so set off after the biggest group, dodging all the people that managed to fall after the first corner and going as fast as I was comfortable, dodging skiers who’d also fell over, I do wonder if they fell because some fast snowboarder passed them. It was probably the fastest I’d gone down that piste but as expected I was nearer the back rather than anywhere near the front but it was fun

A good week, even with the bad sleep at the beginning, I’d almost certainly do it again, and hopefully I’ve managed to improve my snowboarding a little

so its off to bed, then off to Tignes for a week of snowboarding and fun.

On top of the noise I’ve been having a few crashes in games for a while, always just put it down to either the cpu or gpu getting too hot.

So off I went to quieten my cpu fan, decided to buy a Zalman CNPS9900-led Cpu Cooler, and all I can say is wow its huge! Maybe I should have realised that it’d be a little on the large side when I saw it had a 12cm fan built in. And just to make sure I had the sound sound levels sorted I got myself a Fractal Design Define R2 Computer Case in black, a case with acoustic dampening material already in, and it comes with 2 12cm fans too, all made to run pretty quiet.

With these changes the high pitched fan whine has gone to be replaced with the noise of air flow and a very quiet low hum, and its really noticeable how loud my hard drives are when they’re accessed, next on the cards is a 1TB drive to pull them all together and hopefully be quiet too.

As for my crashes, well the cpu cooler can hold my cpu at about 42 degrees at idle, and the temperature never passes 60 even under load so far, they say the thermal grease works best after a week and its not had that long so I guess there may be improvements to come. My gpu seems to like running hot, it tends to idle around about 50- 60 degrees and under load can reach about 80, seems hot to me but I’m not sure this is a problem, and the automatic fan isn’t running at full speed so it can’t be that bad.

That doesn’t really show what’s causing the crashes and after working from home due to the snow and a few crashes that really looked like they were thermal, and at the time my gpu was idle as I wasn’t doing anything that needed it and my cpu was running pretty cool, my system doesn’t really find my work hard to keep up with  I’d gone the whole day on Wednesday with maybe 1 or 2 crashes but as soon as I tried playing BioShock it crashed within 10 minutes, restart and crash each time. Then Thursday it crashed while I was working then an hour later again while I was working, effectively ruling out the cpu and gpu being the cause of the problem.

Opening the case and probing with my fingers (nice and safe from static there…oops) my memory felt a bit hot, this is 4 1gb sticks with heat spreaders, they’re right next to each other so not really any room for the air to pass between them. My temporary solution has been to take one of the silent 8cm fans from my old case and balance it on my graphics card so it blows into the memory allowing the heat spreaders to cool and bring the temperature of the ram down.

Since this cooling “hack” I’ve had my PC on all Thursday evening, with 4 hours of Bioshock, and all of yesterday, including a gaming session after work, and in this time I’ve had no crashes, I’ve installed Boinc and set up Seti@home and afew other projects and had that run at full power on all 4 cores and my gpu, no problems at all

As balancing a fan on my graphics card doesn’t seem a good idea, next on my shopping list is a Zalman Ultra Quiet Ram Cooler which should stay quiet and do the job properly.

Hopefully it being so much quieter now no one can complain about it and once I’ve finished upgrading I’m just going to leave it alone, putting your hands in side a pc case is like putting them in a box of hedgehogs, my hands are covered in small cuts and scratches from the move over. And really why does my PC have so many wires?

It only arrived on monday so I’ve not really spent too long on it, the delivery went well the Wii Fit was dispatched from Amazon 2 days before my new black Wii was even released then sat on a shelf at the Home Delivery Network’s depot, thne after a failed delivery to work on Saturday of just the Wii they brought both on Monday, yay

So onto ease of set up, everything was in the box, even batteries and theres pretty much nothing to worry about to connect it up to your tv, as all the plugs are shaped so no chance of getting that wrong, then its pretty much press the power n you’re good to go. Never tried the other consoles but can only assume they’re as easy.

Connecting to the internet was just as easy but I’d definitely prefer using a keyboard to enter details rather than the controller. The Wii shop’s pretty disappointing in terms of freebies but being able to buy old Nintendo games is good for building a collection of old games as its fully backward compatible with the previous consoles.

Graphics wise, its not really the most impressive on the market, but that’s expected and its not made for good graphics, if I want that I have my PC

The games that ccame with it Wii Sport, Wii Spot Resort, and Wii Fit Plus, all the games in the lot are really simple fun games made to make the most of the motion detection in the controllers and balance board.

The wii fit games, are pretty much all shifting your balance and waving the controllers in the right way to complete a task and get points the idea being to get you active and using most your body to get into the games, a few examples are the juggling, you have to balance on a ball and juggle the balls thrown at you, you move the ball by shifting your weight n juggle the smaller balls  by flicking the controllers at the right time.
Generally they’re all similar in principal but different enough that theres variation. The Rhythm Boxing you step punch and dodge, theres ones its just shifting your balance, others you walk/run on the spot, jump(without leaving the board) or just swing the controller for the golf game.
The games are broken down into Aerobic where you’re most active, Balance which focus on using your balance, and training plus which is just a collection of new games they added for the Plus version.
The other parts are the yoga and muscle training sections, both are to rain up the strength of specific muscles, the yoga being the more gentle as its all stretches and balance.

Could you get fit from just a wii fit, maybe if you spend long enough on it, but its really not going to compare to a trip to the gym or going out and doing the exercises for real, but for someone that isn’t very active a game that gets you active is a good start n better than nothing.

The games in the wii sport resort aren’t made with fitness in mind, but the few I’ve tried you can get into fully, the Sword play you get to swing a sword, its a two hander on screen so its just natural to make full swings standing and step into them for balance, be even better with a sword addition (or lightsaber, think there’s a star wars duel available isn’t there?) . Archery you aim the bow, draw back and release, its just seems right to stand and do it like you would for real, only without the strain of holding a bow string at its full draw weight.

My view is that the Wii and its games that come with it adnd the Wii Fit are good fun, they get you active which for someone that sits at a computer all day then plays games on one too is a good thing as the games get you up on your feet moving about, its definitely good for a group or party game as you can all get together compete or just take turns, and some of the games you do look pretty stupid so everyone can have a laugh. But playing on your own the games are still fun and any exercise is better than none.

I’m not sure what the whole game selections like, but I’m sure there are plenty to play aimed at single player rather than competing, but really the play station or x-box have that covered and they have excellent graphics too, or there’s all the games on my pc if I just want to sit still n kill stuff.

Cheaper than a gym membership and still a chance of getting fit depending on what you do and how much time and effort you put in.