It's been a quiet week, News wise.

You know it's been a quiet week for the news people when you get 3 consecutive days of the same ruddy story, advancing it only insignificantly each day.

On the way to school, after I've dropped the girls off at their school with a cheery, "I'm going to kiss and drop today, MUAH!"*, I like to turn on the radio and listen to Chris Moyles. This usually guarantees that by the time I get to work I'm either grinning like a loon, or actively cackling - a mood which can only be ruined by the activities of the children on their worst days.

This morning was no exception. The team have been fund-raising on behalf of Sport Relief, and this week they've been devising ways to torture a fellow DJ, Scott Mills by making him travel a mile each day in a novel way. The fact that I find Scott Mills a spectacularly awful DJ has only enhanced my enjoyment of this particular item. On Monday he was to be sponsored walking a mile through the sewers of East London, a task which must have been as fascinating for the old, Victorian sewers as it was disgusting for the stench - obviously this prompted many poonami and turdalwave jokes. I can't remember what Tuesday's challenge was, but yesterday, Wednesday, was a corker. They had the poor man walking a mile up and down stairs - ouch! The joke, however, was that he'd have an iPod of inspirational music for the task, but there'd be only one track, repeated for the whole day. The chosen track was Crazy Frog does the theme from Beverley Hills Cop.

However, this is a radio show and as such must entertain the listeners for as long as possible, and one trick employed is the, "We'll tell you what your task is... After the news!" Which is what is prompting this morning's rant. Not, you understand, that I think this a scurvy trick, unworthy of such a radio station. No, it's the content of the news this week which is bothering me.

Anyone with any kind of decent World News feed (the BBC, maybe. Al Jazeera English, perchance) will know that a couple of weeks ago, a young lad by the name of Sahil Saeed was kidnapped while in Pakistan. Now this is a story with a happy ending, as young Sahil was returned (on payment of a not insignificant ransom, I gather) and has been reunited with his father. Yay!

The problem is that the BBC radio news has been reporting this for 3 days - oh, they've been reporting the story from the moment it was discovered that he'd been kidnapped, they're not that slow on the uptake. No, the point is that earlier this week he was returned. That was their headline news story.

The next day his dad was flying out to Pakistan to be reunited with him - headline news.

Today - Sahil's dad has arrived in Pakistan, and has been reunited with him. And that's the top story!

Now this is just silly. News would have been if his 'plane had been blown out of the sky by the very kidnappers while he was en route. Today's headline story was not news, it was the inevitable outcome of the previous days barely-news story. News would have been if the dad had arrived in Pakistan to find that the kid who was returned was a ringer, and poor little Sahil was still missing.

Honestly, I'm sure the BBC has more to report than this, and I always had a whole lot more respect for them than I've got right at this moment.

I am awaiting, with anticipation, tomorrow's headline news on Radio 1.

* Kiss and Drop: This is where you don't walk them to their classrooms, you eject them from the (hopefully stationary) car with a kiss and a promise to see them later.

Some days any solution will do.

I know it's not a long time, but for the last couple of days I've been actively trying to sort out a problem I've been having with one of our pieces of software. I've actually been trying to solve it since we moved to our new file server, about 3 weeks ago, but there have been other, slightly more pressing problems for me to focus on, all of which have served to deflect my interest in this particular issue.

The software in question is a rather good maths program called RM Maths, provided by Research Machines. Unlike some of the software, which will be replaced as soon as my ability to get it all done using Group Policies matures, I have no trouble recommending RM Maths. The teachers like it, because it allows for a nice 20 minute session where the kids log on, and are presented with maths problems, all the while actually being taught. The teachers like it because the kids like it, and actually spend those 20 minutes quietly trying to get a 100% score. I don't know that it's the most exciting piece of software, but I don't get many complaints - and when you've been in the education sector for any length of time (I know, it's only 6 years), sometimes NOT getting complaints is as good as effusive compliments.

The problem is that on migration to the new server, the new program doesn't work. Now, I've gone through the registry (I know, "Just how badass can this girl get?" I hear you cry) and changed the keys pointing to the old server and share, making them point to the new server. And, just for a moment, I can get the software to work. And then I reboot my machine, and the keys are back to pointing at the old server again. What? WHAT?

So I did an experiment. I completely removed the software from my machine. I trawled through the registry, removing every instance of the software in there. EVERYTHING! All of it. Nothing left - Nada. You're getting the picture here. And I rebooted.

And there it all is again. No sign of the software on the PC, all evidence of it erased from the registry, but it's all back on reboot. In fact, I bet if I simply logged off and back on again, it'd be there again. I think that sometime, somewhere, someone has made up a little script/Group Policy/whatever to add those bits of information to the registry on logon. The only problem is that I can't find the offending piece of policy/code/whatever.

OK - while I'm not going to give up completely, let's take a step back, and see if we can have some kind of success, just to encourage us along, shall we? There's something that's been bugging me for the last two years. Well, about that long. For quite some time now, the students in the school have been able to see the System Tray (or Notification Area, as it's now called), and the staff haven't. It's not a really big deal - it's not as if they really need to see this. It's just annoying, because it means they have to search for an icon on the desktop to adjust the volume, and they can't see if the machine has the Sophos blue shield. I'd even logged a call to my technical support (yes, I have an extra layer of technical support behind me - I can't do it ALL!), who were unable to help.

Well, since I completed my Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment course just after Christmas, I've felt ever so much more confident in messing with such things as Group Policies - and not just for the local machine. I'm up for tinkering with ALL the group policies available on the whole network! Despite having Googled for "hide system tray" for ages and coming up with nothing, I'd never put in "group policy hide system tray", because I wasn't sure that was it. Well, after a very short search, this popped up, giving me exactly the information I needed.

A quick change, a quick "gpupdate /force", a quick test logon as a member of staff - Eureka! You'd think, by now, the children in school would be used to my somewhat ungainly Victory Dance!

Still no solution to the old RM Maths problem, but sometimes just getting a solution to any problem will make the search seem worthwhile. I'd better get back to it...

The constant grind of upgrading

I know I'm all fired up when it comes to computer stuff, as I'm pretty sure you all know, too, since I will keep harping on about it on these very pages.

However, last year I downloaded the Release Candidate of Windows 7 (supposed to allow me a year of free Windows 7 - wow!) and finally got round to installing it in September/October time. It was quite exciting, after only 10 months of working with Vista (which didn't bug me nearly as much as it's obviously bugged a lot of other people), to upgrade to a fresh, new OS. And I always feel it's generally a Good Thing to refine ones programs, and get rid of anything one just doesn't use, but has forgotten to uninstall.

So I spent 5 months working with Windows 7, and thoroughly enjoyed it - there are so many things to recommend it, although I'm not going into them here, because there are many other blogs/reviews/articles in which they are far more completely covered. So, five months, and much time (really, much time) spent getting the system to do exactly what I wanted. Five months of saving bookmarks on Chrome. Five months of downloading and installing the useful little utilities without which any system is but a pale imitation of a computer. The system was singing like a Nightingale!

Until a couple of weeks into February when I get a message from Microsoft telling me that it's now time to upgrade my RC version of Windows to a "real" version. Which is all very well, you may think. I've got until June before it'll stop working, haven't I? Well, not exactly, no. Apparently, from 1st March the system will start shutting down every 2 hours. What? Two hours? WHAT?!

OK, it's no trouble. Surely I can just upgrade. Again.

It actually becomes a fag, after a while. Especially since I've also just upgraded my phone, and have to get that doing what I want it (and there's a year and a half of installs going on there!)

So, anyway, I thought, at least I can go back to my Vista partition (I did set up the RC as a dual boot with the originally installed Vista), but to my sincere annoyance, it wouldn't let me upgrade. Oh poop - but this is a Very Good Thing! It will force me to refine my programs all over again. If I'd realised that I wasn't going to be able to upgrade, I'd have got the 64-bit version of the software, though!

So I'm feeling massively grumpy because I've got SO much work to do during evenings and weekends for a while, and with all the working out I'm doing on my nordic ski machine, I really don't have that much time to spend on the computer at the moment. What with my newly discovered social life, movies on a Saturday night and all, you'd almost think I'd stopped being a sad, lonely git!

I may not have my Jet Pack yet...

But Google have finally come up with something I've been expecting for the last, what, 10 years? I've been an avid Palm user since the end of the last century.

How cool is that? Talking about what I did last century!! I mean, I've been a gadget fan forever, but last century my dad gave me an old Palm Pilot, onto which I installed an ebook reader and some ebooks. I used the calendar on the device until my brother introduced me to a better one, but my problem was that I never had the device with me when the annoying little, reedy squeaking that was the alarm went off. It wasn't my "everything" device. I expended much effort and money over the years searching for this device.

I thought I had it a year and a half ago when I got the N78, which, if you've read my previous posts, came pretty damn close. It would, at least, give me my calendar functions in a device I always carry with me. Obviously I always carry it with me because it's a phone, and I hope that some one will actually call me. The fact that I receive relatively few calls is a source of constant disappointment.

I do have a new phone now, which is coming equally close to that "everything" device to which I aspire. It's a Nokia (of course, I wouldn't want to face the wrath of my brother!!) 5800, and to make it even more desirable, it's got a nifty red stripe round the side - I'm sure that helps make it go faster... I like the full screen, although one needs to use a certain amount of caution with some apps which tell you they're not compatible with the phone - Mobipocket, for example, the first app I always install on my devices. If you put it into full screen mode (very useful on the somewhat small screen of the N78) you can't actually get it out of this mode, because there's nothing on the screen to press, there are no buttons which will bring up a menu. All you can do is read your book (the volume control knob will allow you to scroll up and down through the document) and exit the app. In the end I uninstalled and re-installed, because the default is NOT full screen. One thing the phone's really great for is browsing. I mean it's nothing on a full monitor, but it's pretty damn good for something that spends most of it's life in my pocket/handbag. And I keep a pretty small handbag - I'm just saying. I like it more than the N810 for browsing, although the screen is smaller, because I can choose which orientation I like.

It's got to be said, though, the reason I went for this phone was because it has a great application from the Ovi shop called Banner. Oh, and I managed to get the handset for free, and reduce by £10 my monthly contract. While getting the full on web-browsing bolt-on too. Let's hope my delight lasts me the 24 months for which I've signed up this time!

However, and you know I'm going to say this, I'm digressing. Allow me, if you will, to get to the point.

Google have, without fanfare (that I noticed, anyway), produced what they call Google Mobile App. This little app on your phone allows you to search by just saying what you want to search for. Yep, that's right, just speak into the phone. Now I don't know about you, but I've been expecting much of voice recognition since I bought, at huge expense, I might add, a copy of Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking last century (oh, and there I go again!) While it's really not a very prominent thing, I sort of expected more voice recognition because I watch a lot of Sci-Fi, and assumed that by now I'd be talking to my computer, not having to type it all in. And I always thought it'd be such a brilliant thing to have on a mobile device. It'll save all that pairing with keyboards, or trying to type stuff on a T9 keyboard. Or even trying to type stuff on the onscreen qwerty of the new phone (or the slide out of the N810). Just hold down one of the (admittedly very few) buttons on the phone, and speak. Phone does the rest.

I will say this - voice recognition requires a lot of thought and training. And I don't mean on the part of the computer. You have to be fairly concise about what you want to say, otherwise the programs I've used will attempt to translate background sounds, which come out a bit silly. However, if you've got a pretty good idea of what you want to type in it seems to be good. I've not used it since I lost that somewhat expensive copy of Dragon Dictate. Oh well. I think that was installed on the Laptop I got last century!

OK, the Google search application is fairly limited - it'll only search the entire web for me. This has a lot to do, I believe, with the fact that the application said it wasn't compatible with my phone, and possibly the fact that I don't have many actual buttons on my phone - it wants me to press C to search. However, within the application, it searches pretty well on the matches it finds, and it seems to understand what I say fairly well. It wasn't 100%, by any means, the search for "The X Factor" turning up searches for "PX", which seemed somewhat random. My search for "Windows Server 2003" was spot on!

I will admit that the phone comes with a rudimentary voice search option - sadly it doesn't seem to understand my overly cultured tones, and when searching for my mum, came up with the suggestion of Jeannie, a lady in my contacts list. Since when did the word MUM sound anything like Jeannie? Trying to find Google (it is an application, after all), the phone can't even find a match.

In conclusion, Google has come up with a pretty good tool here, one that I truly wish was compatible with my current phone. I wonder if having that banner application will make up for the slew of incompatible programs which will half-work over the next two years? I also believe that while Nokia are clearly the greatest phone manufacturers in the universe, they need to spend a bit more time on their voice recognition tool. And the Morph - they need to get that realised, too. I bet when they do, though, I'll find that none of the apps I want is compatible again.