The US Embassy
The first problem we faced was finding it. Using Google Maps gives different results depending on whether you use the address or the postcode. I figured the address was right since it at least showed a road with the right name.
Speaking of the road, it's blocked off. The whole road in front of the embassy is completely blocked to traffic and has armed police patrolling it. For various reasons we needed to find a bank so Julia asked one of the police officers. Somehow feels like misusing resource - asking someone with a gun that big for directions.
Then once Julia was in (I couldn't get in without an appointment) there was a three hour wait. But they said yes. Even the page full of Arabic in her passport (following a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates) didn't worry them.
Cheap International Calls
mini themes it occurred to me that it could a reasonable possibility for advertising. Reasonable in theory only since my limited traffic would be a problem. But that doesn’t mean I could affiliate stuff up 
So here’s the first one: a fairly unobtrusive advert for a website of mine offering cheap international calls. I say unobtrusive simply because the layout of the content of the page is identical to before. And if you browse at a low resolution you don’t see the advert at all.
One quick note, you have to view the post specifically to see the theme. I intentionally stopped them from showing on the homepage.
Lloyd’s TSB interest not as good as it sounds
Lloyd’s
If you get an ISA or high interest savings account with an AER of 4%, 4 days interest is more than 150 days interest at 0.1%. Bottom line, don’t change to Lloyd’s TSB for this reason alone.
PS – Banking isn’t exactly common on this blog but I walk past the damn advert every day
When is Boxing Day?
To all you non British people, this post may make little sense.
When is Boxing Day? The popular answer is December 26th. Which is usually true. What most people don't realise is that Boxing Day is a mobile holiday. Technically it occurs on the first weekday after Christmas Day. Boxing Day could conceivably fall on December 27th or 28th then.
It gets better though. If a bank holiday falls on a non-working day (another holiday or a weekend) the next day becomes a bank holiday. This is why most people don’t realise Boxing Day moves, they think it’s just the bank holiday status that moves. But it also leads to a peculiar situation. If Christmas is on a Saturday or Sunday, the Monday afterwards is Boxing Day and therefore a bank holiday. The Tuesday is then also a bank holiday because of the lost holiday of Christmas Day – after Boxing Day.
How strange.
Video card woes
my new computer. Unfortunately all is not well…
After waiting two weeks for my video card, I cancelled the order and ordered a different one from someone else. Both arrived today. Other than the loss of postage to return the first one, it’s not a major problem though. But slightly agravating.
It does mean I should be able to post comments on Windows MCE tomorrow.
No computer – no internet
Not having a computer also means that I don’t have internet access outside of work…
I say this just to make it look like I’m still updating the blog.
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Life, Macs, Personal, Technology
The first two versions of MCE were rather lacking but after reading a lot I've decided 2005 is actually quite cool.
What is Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005?
Good question. One I didn’t know the answer to until recently. It’s Windows XP a with range of new utilities for working with video, music and images (as well as bits of hardware associated with them) all wrapped inside one interface. The idea is to have your computer as the hub for your whole home entertainment system.
Digital Video Recording (DVR)
The most useful component is the built in
Disk space
The lowest quality recording takes up between 1Gb and 1.5Gb per hour. Reasonable hard drives these days are about 200Gb which gives you about 100 hours of video (leaving space for other stuff). Not really suitable for storage but it does allow you to burn things to DVD. Most of the time. The software apparently supports any content restriction specified in incoming media and won’t let you copy such content of the computer that made it.
But it’s still a computer, right?
MCE is actually Windows XP Professional underneath. It took a while to confirm (most references are vague about whether it’s XP Home or XP Pro) but I did find a page on Microsoft’s website saying it’s XP Pro. This means you can do everything with it that you can normally do with a PC.
One final note… you could always install MCE on a Mac.
Comment spam
I just got 200 spammy comments in 12 hours. Luckily most of them are coming from the same IP address so they were easy to deal with.
Putting dating in context
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Google, Life, Personal, Technology
The first thing I have to point out about Google is be very careful around April 1st. They have launched a number of genuine services on April 1st (including Gmail) that turned out to be real. None the less I'm fairly sure Google Romance is less than sincere…
And another thing, GameFAQs have decided it’s bad to cheat.
More Michel Thomas
My opinion of learning a language with the Michel Thomas CDs has improved - as well as the "Complete Course" 8 hour sets you can get the "Advanced Course", an additional 5 hours designed for people who have done the first 8. Although I think he only does it for French and German...
13 hours of material. Considering the density this begins to rival Pimsleur's 50 hours (only available for Spanish and German).
He also seems to have lead an amazing life, albeit slightly less amazing than he claimed. But still. Go read about him on Wikipedia.