The Galaxy is Mine

In a weak moment today I got hold of a copy of Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. And it's lovely. I'm having to exert my famous iron will to avoid losing time playing with it when I should be reviewing book chapters.

Ah well. Perhaps tomorrow....

Selling at the speed of eBay

I think I've finally figured out how to sell things on eBay. Previously I've had real problems, with items hanging around for ever and then being bought by people from far away places with no Paypal. Not good.

Last night I put a couple of things up for sale and I tried a different technique. I just checked to see how much the last couple of identical items had gone for and then placed my items with "Buy it Now" prices five pounds or so less than these figures. Both items were sold by the morning, so it seems to work. Furthermore, because I've used Buy It Now it seems that buyers "Pay for it Now" which means that you aren't hanging around waiting for the money before you can ship the items.

My Apologies

"I've just started up my computer, and it has challenged me to pistols at dawn"

"Oh, you must have set it to duel boot"

Vista Time Travel

I love it when systems are designed to accommodate my own stupidity. Like when I half remove a bunch of camera drivers, fully install the new ones and then find that, not surprisingly, things don't work any more.

Previously there would have been a lot of cursing and muttering and attempts to get the system back to a "known good state" (i.e. before I started fiddling with it).

But with Vista I just fire up the recovery menu and step back in time to the good old days, when things worked, and try again. And I made an interesting discovery, which is that if I don't do stupid things it works a lot better....

An Appeal

Does anybody out there in Internet land have an old BBC monitor that they don't need? The one in the Galaxians machine in the open area has failed and some of our students are suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

If you've got such a beast in your loft or garage we'd love to take it off your hands and give it new home.