Google pulled a funny

Blow on the cartridge to fix bugs. I laughed so hard because that is so true. Good times!

Am I now a Mac and not a PC?

So I bought a computer the other day and after putting together the components I had to install an operating system. The obvious choice was Windows 7 since we already own a copy of it and the installation went quite smoothly. I then started loading the usual utilities you need for everyday use and what annoyed me first was the number of updates you have to download after the initial installation. I was in the middle of downloading my digital copy of MS Office and while I was out of the room Windows decided that it needed to reboot and I had to start the download again.

The next challenge was to install new games NJLA bought which are in Chinese. By default Windows is able to display Chinese characters in file names and in text files. But when I opened an application in Chinese it displayed all the text in funny characters. After spending some quality time on the Internet I finally worked out how to run Chinese programs properly.

I'm now happily typing on my Mac Pro where things just works. Why can't things just work in Windows? Why does it have to be so hard?

Google 2-Step Verification

Nothing is too secure nowadays on the Internet so Google has introduced 2-step verification on your Google account. The link will basically tell you what you need to do to set it up and to be honest it is pretty simple. It is a bit more troublesome initially because any device/program you have setup to access your Gmail or anything that uses your Google account will have to have its password changed (once only) but it's probably worth the hassle in the long run for the extra protection.

There is a phone app that generates a random access key when you login from a new/unknown location which works pretty much like the one you get from some of the banks. I used it today when I login to my account from work and I think unless you clear your browser cookies or authenticated sessions you can have the authentication stored for 30 days (I chose not to do this at work though since it's not really my laptop).

Blogger Gets New Look

Looks like Google is making everything look like Google+. It looks like it has even integrated it with Analytics, now you can get all kind of stats for your blog. Interestingly it looks like Google has been keeping tabs on your blog traffic from the start even though you may not have ready access to them (or at least I wasn't aware that you could gain access to it). I'll play with it some more when I have some spare time!

Google instant search goodness

It's pretty awesome with stuff coming up as you type without hitting enter. Good to see it is still recognising  DD as we type it.

Oh yes you are correct, I'm now a Mac, but still a PC at heart. I was looking for my print screen button but had to look up Google to find out how to do it. 

Useless Tech

Now why would anyone need one of these?

16GB SDHC

Bought a new SDHC card from Amazon last week and it finally arrived today. Was getting a bit worried but at least it got here. Tried it out and it worked fine on the camera, but when I tried to plug it into the laptop's SD Card reader, the fricken card reader broke! Tried to update the driver and reinstalled it and it still stuffed. Luckily I can plug the camera directly into the computer.

What I found strange though was hen I first opened the box of my package I found the usual things... SDHC Card (my product), invoice type document... then I found a third item, a piece of paper with an ad for guess what? Nothing electronic related, not the company's specials, but an ad for Scottish beef? WTF is that about? I understand times are tough and you should diversify to minimise your risk... but memory card and fillet steak? That is a strange combination. The pictures looked pretty good though and they are individually packaged. Perhaps that is the only way to get decent meat in this country?