One of the things that I hadn’t been quite prepared for with working from home was the number of phone calls that I would get from random individuals. It’s actually quite ridiculous the number that feel I need help with my energy supply, PPI reclaim and so on.

However, until today, I hadn’t had one of those fabled calls from abroad telling me that I had an issue with my Windows PC and offering to remotely fix it for me.

Whenever the phone rings and the display says “International” my heart sinks but when this caller said that she was … Read the rest

I was casually looking through the database (as you do) for my side project The Chubby Challenge yesterday when I noticed something odd. The latest challenge to be created had a blank end date, something that you are not supposed to be able to do.

I immediately went to my test site to see if I could reproduce the issue and what I found was that even though you are supposed to select a date using a date picker you can still type something, anything, into the associated edit control. I guess that this is precisely what the user had … Read the rest

John Rentoul in the Independent produced an A-Z list of sites Google Chrome takes you to if you just press the first letter and press enter. If you are logged in to Google then these results will be tailored to your usage.

I thought that it would be interesting to do the same and my results are below. What was interesting was that it was quite narcissistic in that several of my own sites appear on the list, although not this one. I was also surprised by what was missing. For example I would have expected to see Autosport under … Read the rest

Fascinating new report from OFCOM which shows the the UK is still a world leader in one thing and that is consuming online content.

According to the report the UK is top dog when it comes to:

• watching TV from catch-up services, such as the BBC’s iPlayer
• online shopping. We spend an average of £1,083 per person per year online
• accessing social networks on our mobiles

Watch a slightly surprised Yank go through the numbers in the video below or see the data courtesy of the Guardian here.

Go Team GB!… Read the rest

Something struck me recently about the difference between OSX and Windows. What is the first thing that happens when you start-up a Mac?  You hear the “Wall-e” sound (if you don’t know what that sounds like take a look at the video below). Only then does the start-up begin. When you start up a Windows PC you see the BIOS checks and then Windows logo and eventually the Windows tinkle.

In order to do this Apple must be prioritising loading the sound drivers first in order to do so. Something that they can do because they have control over both … Read the rest