Sisyphus: (\")-O
Tantalus: (\")-----{ º
Trojan Horse: (----:}=(, :] :] :] ,)-
Icarus: *~~~ > <


If you haven’t seen me around in a while, read this.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

The scopeblog receives hundreds of comments per month. As a rule, all of them are spam, but today I found some real comments in there from real people! Thank you wherever you are

Some of the spam seems to be generated from the blog posts themselves. It is eerily realistic at a casual glance, but still doesn’t quite pass the Turing test. I guess the Internet still has a way to go before it becomes conscious.

Most of the comments were attracted by my rant on Pay More, Get Less. It’s good to know that there are others out there who feel the same as I do about the inhuman rampage of computer technology over our souls.

Although a cynic might say that this is the Internet, where you can always find someone who feels the same as you do, even if you’re a Plushophile.

While trying to explain to my mum (or “mom”) what social networking sites and forums are actually for, I was unable to come up with an answer. After a lot of confusion, this led me to the conclusion that the Internet is fundamentally useless, and I decided to stop using it so much for leisure purposes.

If you want to get hold of me badly enough, you can e-mail me! Com at scopeboy dot steve, the address is.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write how-tos for Instructables.

I discovered this fascinating command when trying to fix Kat’s computer.

Originally it showed a completely empty desktop with no icons or taskbar, just the wallpaper, even in so-called “Safe Mode”. A rollback to the last known good configuration solved this, but the networking still wouldn’t work. The DNS resolved domain names as garbage, some even containing bell characters that made the machine beep.

I tried uninstalling the driver for the network card and rebooting, at which point the DNS just stopped working altogether. The “ipconfig /renew all” command failed saying that “No adapter is in the state permissible for this operation”.

A quick Google search for this error message (using my handy palmtop that happened to work with Kat’s wi-fi) turned up a MSDN article that basically said: “Shit happens, type ‘netsh winsock reset’ and reboot”

And what do you know, it worked

Did you ever get that feeling of finally quitting a mammoth IRC session only to discover that it’s 2 in the morning, you haven’t eaten, and you can’t because there’s no food left because you were surfing the net instead of shopping and now all the shops are closed? And you left your washing out to dry, but it started to pour with rain and you never even noticed, and now it’s a huge sodden mess? And you have to be at work (in front of another computer) at 9 in the morning?

At least your girl/boyfriend hasn’t dumped you for being such a sad nerd… because he/she NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE! Ahahaaa! Well, I’ve been there- in fact I may actually still be there- and I propose a 12-step program.

1. If in doubt, turn off your instant messaging. How can you possibly get any work done when… Ping! “hi d00d ^___^”

2. Check your e-mail less often. This is important if you’re using Gmail. If you’re not running the Gmail client, you won’t be tempted to use Google Talk either

3. How many f***ing so-called “social networking tools” and forums do you need to be signed up to?

4. Don’t leave your computer running all the time at home. (OK, I’m guilty, linosaur runs all the time, but he’s headless.)

5. Did I mention about turning your IRC off?

6. Do you spend more time tinkering with streaming media applications than actually listening to the media they’re meant to deliver?

7. TV rots your brain. But YouTube rots the parts that even TV can’t reach. Looking at YouTube comments will turn any remaining unrotted parts of brain to cheese. And then there’s Myspace video.

8. Stop hacking at least an hour before bed time. Srsly.

9. No blogging at work. Whoops :-X

10. Do you really need more than one or two computers at home?

11. Try to do something totally unrelated to computers… like this… but without the Livejournal thing of course.

12. Acknowledge that your addiction is greater than you and you have no control over it. And whatever you do, don’t use IRC