In case you haven’t seen it this is a clip from a Uruguaian home-made Sci-Fi movie which cost just US $300 to make.   Hollywood producers liked it so much they are reported to have  offered the movie’s producer Fede Alvarez a US $30,000,000  deal to make a full-length sci-fi thriller.   Looks great in full screen mode…

Just in case you missed the news Eoin Colfer’s sequel to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series airs at 10:45 this evening as BBC Radio 4′s Book at bedtime …

We all know about the BBC’s iPlayer and ITV’s Player but were you aware you can now watch most BBC and ITV channels LIVE over the web these days?

A few examples….

BBC news – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7459669.stm
BBC 1 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive/
BBC 2 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/watchlive/
BBC 3 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/livearena/
BBC 4 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/watchlive/
ITV 1 – http://www.itv.com/Channels/ITV1/default.html?vodcrid=sim1
ITV 2  – http://www.itv.com/Channels/ITV2/default.html?vodcrid=sim2
ITV 3 – http://www.itv.com/Channels/ITV3/default.html?vodcrid=sim3
ITV 4 – http://www.itv.com/Channels/ITV4/default.html?vodcrid=sim4

And to compliment the above if you don’t mind downloading an app there’s always Zattoo for Windows and OS X which serves up many of the Freeview channels over the web.  Presumably buried somewhere in the T&Cs it says you are suppose to have a TV licence but I don’t recall any of these sites asking to tick EULA before continuing..

At least once a week I get a phone call from a friend or work college who has accidentally downloaded Antivirus 2009, Antivirus 2008 or Doctor Antivirus.  These are really nasty spyware programs that embed themselves deep in the Windows registry  trying to dupe innocent folks out of their hard earned cash and capturing their credit card details etc.

There’s a really quick way to remove them using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware which even it’s free version will purge your Windows PC of this trash, click here to download and run it.  Once loaded all you’ll need to do is run a quick scan and then reboot. I would then recommend you then choose the update option and run a full scan Scan (some Spyware tries to disable the update process hence why I suggest you do the scan first before updating).

Moe detailed instructions are here if you need them.

A nitty gizmo for the kids to play with on a rainy day perhaps during the school holidays…..

Upload just about any image url to The Squirrelizer and it’ll add that pesky squirrel we’ve heard so much about recently..

Of late I’ve been using various APIs for one reason or another, and as most are irrevocably linked to your email address it doesn’t take long before you see a message informing you that the email address you’ve entered is already registered to another account.

Gmail to the rescue with it’s username+ feature.  For example – if I’m fredbloggs@gmail.com I can also be fredbloggs+tesco@gmail.com, those messages will still land in my inbox, anything after the + is ignored by Gmail’s incoming severs but still delivered to your account, usually enough to fool those API engines.

But wait. there’s more: I could also use f.r.e.d.b.l.o.g.g.s.@gmail.com and any combination of dots ‘cos Gmail ignores dots before the @ symbol.

So …fredbloggs@gmail.com and fr.edb.log.gs@gmail.com will all be delivered to my inbox.

I’m guessing our chums at Mountain View did this so you could identify which vendor you deal with flogs email lists enabling you to work out where all those blue pill emails emanate from.  If truth be know chances are most spam is probably a result of your friends & colleagues who cc’d (rather than blind cc’d) you in on some inter-office gag but hey..

I popped round my Mum & Dad’s this eve, Pop’s 77 and very much an eBay fanatic.  He’d lost his web connection with the Netgear router I’d given him so decided to use the router his ISP had sent to him some time ago but never used.   Make sense, if you central heating pump packs up you fit a new pump and bish bash bosh you have hot water and heating again, a no brainer as they say.  So surely, swapping out a router should be the same process?

Nope… the new router needed a username and password ( both of these  were recorded in something resembling  Klingon grammar) to be keyed in and a bit WiFi config for good measure.    So there are set-up programs that 8 times out of 10 will do most of the set-up but those 2 times out of 10 mean that tech-savvy old farts like me could easily ditch the day job and do this sort of stuff for a respectable living.

Where’s all this dribble leading to? I overheard Deborah Meaden being interviewed on the Steve Wright radio show recently saying that despite the current economic climate there are still opportunities out there to make the big time without neessarily having to be be ‘inventive‘,   so find a product that’s being serviced poorly and offer the same thing but do it a whole lot better for example.

I see silver surfers like my Dad and home broadband in general as such an opportunity, there are folks out there who’d be prepared to pay a  premium for a system that ‘just works’ .   At the moment most needs can only be serviced economically by cheap overseas call centres but those unlikely to inspire loyalty meaning it’ll always be price driven rather service level driven, it’s a vicious circle.

Kind of wish I was 34 rather than 54 ‘cos I’d be banging on the Dragon’s door (lets’ face it the banks have no idea what they are doing) and perhaps most of this looks great on paper but is easier said than done … but the bottom line is we aren’t even close on the broadband service-wise, Sky broadband is about the closest I’ve seen as they use UK call centres and pre-program routers.

Alan Sugar was right on the money with his Amstrad emailer phone (or whatever it was called) with what looked to be near zero support costs, trouble is…Sir Al launched it 10 years too soon.

(End of rant….)

Well if you are ever unfortunate enough to be involved in Automobile accident you’ll be well looked after here in  Hampshire!  The dearest and I came across  a car just outside Romsey that had managed to land on it’s roof and trap the driver.  I was very grateful to the fact that I’d recently renewed my H&S Workplace First Aid ticket so all the stuff I’d learnt kicked in automatically,  although most of what I did was just reassuring the chap, keeping him talking  and preventing a barrage of well wishers  saying ‘are you all right mate‘ even though he was clearly trapped and upside down.

Blue lights started to arrive within about 10 minutes, by the bucket load.  First there was a regular ambulance, then another, then a ‘Trauma team‘ then an emergency doctor vehicle (with 2 Doctors), then TWO full size fire engines, then a Fire chief, and I just lost count of the Police cars (see above).  To cap it all the Air Ambulance hovered above though didn’t land (I’m guessing there were too many emergency vehicles in the way?)

Meantime the dearest had great fun donning a Dayglow jacket and directing the traffic until the traffic plod turned arrived!

Sorry Geeks, not a tech post, just a DIY post the google bots to pick up on.  We’ve just moved house and managed (somehow) to break the silver button on the the top of the khazi you press to make it flush.  I trapsed around numerous supposed Plumbing supply ‘experts‘ in and around the Southampton area who didn’t even have a clue what I needed and asked iratating questions like ‘is it a 1.5″ or 2″ inlet mate even though I’d taken the cistern in for them to look at (err.. folks, I’m just a punter, aren’t you supposed to be the experts here?)

In desperation I visited the various Homebase\B&Q\Wicks type stores and discovered my cistern was originally sourced from Wicks – bingo… or so I thought.   I asked the people in Wicks where the spares were kept bearing in mind this is the exact same model they currently had on the shelf, alas Wicks could only sell me a complete new cistern at £48, they don’t keep any spares, not even the siphon which I’d have been happy to buy to solve this.

After all of  two minute google I found a company up t’ut North called Kirbys who had exactly what I needed available online (for the record I needed a Siamp Storm CF2498 AKA 33A  Single Flush Button).

£9.99 and 24 hours later we were back in the land of flush thanks to Kirbys.

(P.S. Don’t worry if your button doesn’t have the wide collar section as per the photo, this unscrews and must be for another model, you just leave it off for the 33A)