Another VIA EPIA CL10000 review. (read mine at epiacenter.com if you want) :)

Mr Bean, depressed because his film didn't make much money in the US and was laughed at by critics. He continues to recover in his mansions in Chelsea and Oxfordshire.

digital cameras. (yes again!) another potentially good camera is the Minolta Dimage E223 from £117 2mp, 3xopt and Video with sound makes it tempting (more info and links), but is it worth the extra £17 (bad reviews of e223) over getting a Fuji A203, A204, a205 which don't have sound and can be bought for £99? Or would it be better to just get an Olympus C-350 (3mp, 3xopt) for the extra money at £139 from amazon.co.uk?

another camera is the Che-ez D'Zign, £79.99 Jacobs, just like a Casio EX-S2 / AGFA / Oregan Scientific (£99 jacobs/gadget shop), 2mp, but the Che-ex apparently does 20cm macro according to the jacobs catalogue.

grrr windows xp is craptastic!. click start, because you want to get to your programs, you have to go to "all programs", ok that's minor, go to control panel, it's got all the different things in different sections, click "switch to classic view" to get the usual view - why not just have this as the default anyway? want to find a file? click start and then search, a stupid dog comes up and says "what do you want to search for? pictures, music or video, documents, etc etc" when I actually just want to search! I don't want a stupid dog coming up and asking me what I want to search for, I just want to search - if I wanted to search for a specific thing such as images, I'd put the .jpg extension! Another thing, they don't have the "My Computer" icon on the desktop as a default - why not?! Grrr - everything they've added to WinXP is just another step in slowing you down when you're trying to use the computer - and yes I know you can customise it so it's just like Win2000 - but I shouldn't have to - I just don't get what Microsoft were thinking when they made Windows XP - they've made it slower and more difficult to use! They even removed the "quicklaunch" thing from the toolbar (yes i know you can turn it on) - but why remove it from being there as default? It makes using the computer easier! //end rant...

no wait - Windows XP and the stupid Activation! Yes I've just changed the motherboard on the computer - what you want me to re-activate windows!!! WHY!?!? Ok, lets try this then, yes I'd like to do it over the internet - oh but wait, windows doesn't let you get to the desktop to configure you network card and internet connection settings - so you can't activate it over the internet, you have to phone up microsoft and tell them or type in a 50-digit long number, and then they'll tell you another 50-digit number you have to type into the computer...! and then if you change some other stuff in the computer again (like the motherboard, because it might have been faulty) you have to go through ALL this again and this time you manage to try and get onto the internet to activate windows, and it pretends to be working, you think great, this'll be easy, but then after it's checked on the internet it says you have to ring someone up!! GRRR Windows XP I hate you!!

thank yous to all those who've sent happy christmas cards, or presents etc.

in the word's of a great philosopher "i am a material girl, living in a material world" Fuji M603 3mp (super ccd), 2x optical (also does VGA (640x480) 30fps movie recording with sound) £199 seems like a very good deal (review), as another camera (Minolta Digame Z1) that does that is £299 (link) - other good deals i've seen: a203 2mp, 3x opt £99 Jessops, a204 2mp, 3x opt £99 dixons - and the A405 2mp, 3xopt which was £99 before christmas from pcworld, is now £149! haven't really seen any other great deals / sales etc. have you? update amazon have the c-350, 3mp, 3x opt for £139 inc vat now the a205 (2mp, 3x opt) is also £99 (review) according to dealtime.co.uk (eg internetcamerasdirect.co.uk) another deal seems to be the Casio QV-R40 4mp, 3x opt £169 dixons. also saw the AGFA S2 2.0MP rrp £99, for £69 in dixons - also on dixons.co.uk (basically the same as a Casio EX-S2 I think - which was £169, and then it vanished, they don't have macro though),

Merry Christmas chaps, and a Happy New Year!

B3TA : FEATURES : BEST OF B3TA 2003 hooray. long live b3ta. obvisouly avoid the "man milk vs moo milk" one, and others that may be offensive / wrong etc

Love Actually what other people said "that was light hearted" - "it was a bit corny" - "they were all so perfect" (the people). my thoughts, yes it was a fairly lighthearted film, with some deeper issues they just sort of skimmed over. it was a bit political too (a fake english prime minister and a fake american president were in it) in a pretty naff way, some bits were funny, some were just a bit too stupid. it was quite predictable. heather thought it was good but a bit rude. there were 2 people in it pretending to be porn stars but it wasn't really that funny. could have been funnier i think.

InfoWorld: Open-source group issues Microsoft patch: December 19, 2003: "An open-source software development group posted a file on its Web site this week it claims will patch a recently disclosed security hole in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser that allows online scam artists to fake Web page addresses."

snake but in 3d, pretty good. remember those sony mavica digital cameras that took a disk!? brilliant but flawed, excellent idea, but the disks didn't fit enough images and the cameras were too big :) expensive at the time, but still available on ebay, and still too expensive, yep, especially compared to a fuji 2600 buy now £86 s/h 2mp,3x opt or a Fuji A405 for £99 new from dixons/pcworld (2mp,3x opt). although an old 1.5mp fuji may be the cheapest way of getting a "proper" digital camera (with CCD rather than CMOS) - currently £21 with 5 hours left, or perhaps an old 2.1mp fuji currently £31 with 12 hours left. or perhaps an MX-1700, 1.5mp, 3x optical currently £37 with 3hrs left... or perhaps a 1.3mp, 3x opt olympus?

Shop for Fuji FinePix A204. at Argos.co.uk £99 on sale, 2mp, 3x optical. so equivelant to the newer A405 from dixons for the same price.

The world's gone mad! postman SUES lecturer for posting TOO MANY letters in a mailbox!. Now what do you think, is this the fault of:

a) the lecturer for putting too many letters in a letterbox
b) the postman for picking up a bag that was too heavy
c) the postal service for having bags that are too large, and expecting post men to pick them up

? hmmm I think it's pretty obvious it's the postal service that's at fault, they shouldn't have such big mailboxes if they don't want their postmen to injure themselves! there's NO rules on a letterbox saying "please don't put too much in me" !!

Fotopic.Net :: Cameras & Equipment Fuji Finepix A405 is still only £99 at pcworld.co.uk, for 2mp, 3x optical camera. There's sample photos in the link.

Play.com: Precision Mini Digital Camera on Gadgets £14.99 for a mini digital camera. (keyring size). Play also sell a lot of other digital cameras too but the prices don't seem very competitive really.

JillaJang Photos - Life Photos - Joshua Waller - All Ages Have a look at this new page I've done.

Hidden Costs of Mac Ownership: "Still, while many of the applications are cost equivalent, Apple users who want to stay current with the latest Mac operating system release have needed to pay $129 on a regular basis. When Apple released version 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3, each one of the releases cost $129. If Mac software can be expensive, or if tech help is costly, Mac users do not seem swayed from their affection"

Brown Knose: "VIA VP Richard Brown's insights on the IT industry" - good info on DDR2

some more bad pr for apple's ipod's and the faulty batteries.

good stuff about 2003

1. nelsoncolne, josh for spending so much time finding things to put on it :-)
   
2. josh's webserver, /flashcom, webcams, text messages, blogging
   
3. flash / shockwave (and beta), simcity is abandonware,
   
4. those pictures by that guy : http://www.toothpastefordinner.com | rathergood.com | one word, 60 seconds
   
5. computers keep getting bigger (hard drives) faster and cheaper (special mention to toshiba (small hard drives (and even smaller next year)) epia / via (small motherboards)) and quieter and better at using less power.
   
6. processors get even more confusing: p4m? amd opteron/athlon 64? ibm g5/970? itanium? All have speeds ranging from 1ghz to just over 2 and perform very well.
   
7. anyone just using computers for interesting reasons

Exciting new stuff coming soon:

• that sony playstation that records to dvd is a good thing. and the other people that make a dvd recorder for quite cheap in a shops like wh smiths, or was it woolworths or superdrug. ok, so far I've found : Philips DVDR70 for under £250 Panasonic DMRE50 for about the same price
  
• 3d screens

not so good stuff that happened in 2003 in no particular order
1 microsoft are still one big company with too much power despite losing lots of court cases.
1.1 the virus that created tonnes of work for tech support people and alot of annoyance for average computer users.
1.5 lots of other court cases and patents that restrict the use of really obvious technology, like plugins and erm..
2. Tube crashes, tube strikes, royal mail strike, uk rail travel, power failures.
3. computers don't get any more reliable (your hard drive still dies) (although win xp does have some nice features) (but re-starting and recovering from an unbootable machine seems more difficult) : who are currently the hdd manufactures you rate most? samsung?
4. apple: mac os 10.3 (hello, now no one knows how to use your operating system) mac os X (10.2) (hello, you completely changed how everything works and we can't customise screen fonts or the apple menu) why is the Close button right next to the Maximize button / why is apple w (close window) next to apple q (quit), apple designed laptops (just plain do not last), apple lies (the fastest what for maybe a day, when for the last 2-3 years you've just been telling us that mhz don't matter)
5. mobile phones (inconsistent / illogical user interfaces, poor software, unreliable stuff 'given' to me, really poor support contracts)
5.5 what, it's over? my birthday was just the other day. scary.
just missed out: ebay (fees high, buyers/bidders poor, no customer support)

B3TA : NEWSLETTER : ISSUE 116: "SOD WORK. READ OUR CHRISTMAS SPECIAL" hooray - featured in the b3ta newsletter. my life is complete :) - and in the same day - i get a "frontpage" where my picture is put on the frontpage of b3ta!!

Top 5 Websites (or things) of 2003.
(please make your own post with your own list(s))

1. StrongBad (this guy rocks!)
2. b3ta
3. Cheap Digital cameras, eg Fuji A405, 2mp,3xopt, only £99!
4. Simpsons still going strong (And available on DVD)
5. no hands (rate my kitten)

other cool things of 2003: those robotic vacuum cleaners that vacuum your house while you're out.

Top 5 worst things of 2003:

1. Pop Idol
2. Fame Academy
3. The fact that it's already over, it was only like yesturday that it was january.
4. SCO suing the world for making Linux
5. RIAA suing people for downloading music off kazaa etc. (and walking all over human rights / and privacy) this was a step in the right direction though.

This site rocks! Check out the other stuff to. Fun for ALL the family, ALL OF THE FAMILY! Gossip...What people were overheard saying on the London Underground: "4. If someone falls into a bath, you fish them out... you don't suffocate their friend."

powerbook 15 inch lemon
white spots:
PowerBook's white spots have owners seeing red
in depth article on white spots .. "not due to technology specific to this generation of Powerbooks, but must be inherent in the LCD screen assembly itself."
[design features: 25-27% faster processor, shorter battery life, weighs more than a 1ghz 15.2inch powerbook]