Zanadu - Winterman’’s View of the World

Some mornings really are worth getting up for!

Walking to work this morning was fresh (if a tad cold at -5C), ambling along the roads towards work. The fog that has engulfed our hilltop village brought an air of mystery and suspense.

Would that evil dog who roams the estate I go through decide my leg looked tasty enough to eat this morning? Would that chav in the Subaru be putting the peddle to the metal on the icy roads and try taking me out again?

None of that this morning though.. The fog seems to have everyone in subdued spirit (not depressingly so though).

As I left the estate and started on the rough bridleway between Drighlington and the Industrial/Commercial complex of J27 I was face to face with one of those views that makes you feel good to be alive. A reminder that surrounding our ever growing village there is still a fantastic rural landscape full of character and beauty.

The photo is only from my camera phone (and I am not the best photographer at the best of times) so it’’s not the best but as I took it there was a sense of peace and tranquility, the M62 could be heard faintly in the distance (amazing how the fog seems to muffle some sounds) but everything else was silent, serene even.

A gentle reminder that you never know what awaits you in the future, the path ahead is often foggy and obscured and even though you have trodden this route so many times before you can”t predict what awaits you.

Posted in Lifestyle, Personal | No Comments »

Addictive Puzzle Game: Mine Link

I am not really into playing flash games, but sometimes you StumbleUpon one that really catches your attention.

Mine Link is an asteroids style puzzle where you select one mine at the start of each level and watch as it explodes or impacts with another gradually attempting to destroy a set number of mines so you can progress.

With each level being exactly the same (no bonuses or extra features in any level) you would think that it is going to be very monotonous, well surprisingly it isn”t as the tactic for choosing that first one is the key.

There are two ways to trigger further mines, by exploding in their proximity and activating any others caught in the blast radius, or by bumping into them.  The problems arise in that whenever you bounce into a mine the current mine explodes and you potentially lose the old mine and the new mine(s) due to the blast.

Give it a try for yourself and see how addictive it can be!!  I am currently struggling away on Level 9.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

The day the router died :(

Well after some 7 years of powering my cyberlife with utmost efficiency and reliability my trusty old US Robotics 966 ADSL Modem Router finally starting to wobble last week and got retired to the geek graveyard in my spare cupboards.

It was a sad day, this router had serviced me well over the last 7 years providing unparalleled performance, security and stability over anything else I had used. However after more than 61320 hours of continuous abuse by my servers and only the bare minimum of downtime due to reboots and updates etc, it had come to point where the built-in switch just couldn”t handle my load anymore.

Swapping out for a NetGear DG834G (v3) (that I have in spares at the moment) on Saturday saw my little black box enter well earned retirement! I will not be throwing this old fella out! No sir! This trusty old friend has earned the right to live on in my collection of historical gadgets for as long as I have the space to keep him.

Thanks USR9106 for a long and happy cyber life, you served me well old friend!

And so, welcome NetGear DG834G, I have heard and seen good stuff about you over the years and hope you will have as exciting a life as USR did!

It was a surprisingly easy switch over and the management console is very simple to use and configure, performance so far is excellent, but I do miss certain features USR had such as being able to Port translation (handy for evading the company firewall to access my email server at home by using a different port allocation and transparently mapping it to the default).

Oh well, we”re back on the road (virtually speaking) and should be more active on here from now on!

2008 - R.I.P. USR9106!

Posted in Computing, Gadgets | No Comments »

Exercise: Walking to work!

Ok, so I did say that in 2008 I was going to get out more, get some exercise and generally get fit again (one of the plans for next year is to maybe get into one of the big marathons or at least half-marathons). However, I wasn”t expecting our local bus company to find out and take action on my behalf!

Read more »

Posted in Lifestyle, Personal | No Comments »

Web Design: Clean-A-Home Concept Design

As I said in my introductory post I am a web designer/software developer by trade and also as a sideline/hobby.

I don”t get much in the way of sideline work doing websites as I am so busy doing other stuff, but this one came in from a cleaning company in Leeds who I have connections with, Clean-A-Home.

The initial brief was to revamp their original site which was done, using one of those god-awful online website generators, way back in 1999 and hardly touched since.  All the content was to stay intact, despite my recommendations to get rid of a lot of useless (and in some cases even harmful) search engine keywords embedded in the text, links to totally unrelated websites and so on.

Read more »

Posted in My Projects, Personal, Web Development | No Comments »

Software: ScribeFire FireFox Extension

ScribeFire is a Mozilla Firefox extension developed by Christopher Finke and provides an extensive blogging environment within your Firefox browser.

I discovered this extension about a year ago when I was playing with a blog for a friend of mine and trying to figure out the best tools for them to use and I have to say, I LOVE IT!

Read more »

Posted in Blogging, Computing, Extensions, Firefox, Gadgets, Uncategorized | No Comments »

First Post

Welcome to Zanadu!

Well this is my first post on this new blog and I have to say I am a little bit nervous. Why? Because I am totally new to this blogging malarkey!

A Quick Introduction

As good a place to start as any I suppose. I am Winterman, in the virtual world anyway, my real name is Mic (short for Michael) and I am a thirty something single male from West Yorkshire in England.

Read more »

Posted in Lifestyle, Personal, Uncategorized | No Comments »