Paul Smith's Blog

This guy just doesn't know when to quit. I saw his claims resurface on PC World: Vista Prevents Users Playing High-Def Content Vista's complicated, overzealous copy protection system is degrading even premium content's that's not copy protected, such as high-definition home movies, says researcher Peter Gutmann. Nice to see PC World have heard of a thing called balanced reporting. How about the counter views being published too, huh? Like the fact is Gutmann is factually wrong on many of his claims....

The Perseid meteor peaks tonight (evening of the 12th, morning of the 13th of August). This year is favourable, like 2005 there is no Moon to wash out the sky. Observers will need to look in an easterly direction, the radiant is within the constellation of Perseus. However it's best to view as much of the sky as possible rather than focus on the small area around Perseus. If you stay out for an hour or two you should see perhaps a dozen or two meteors under good conditions....

Now this makes a change from my other photos of the Space Station and Space Shuttle. I hooked my Toucam Pro II webcam to my 6 inch TAL 2M reflector (at prime focus) to take these. By my reckoning the middle two pictures here are at a distance of around 400km, the first and last probably closer to 700-800km. You can see the Shuttle quite well on the first three images you can make out the black engine area towards one side of the station....

As a few of you know, I've been getting increasingly annoyed with having to move my Outlook .PST file around between computers when I was on the move. The last straw was a couple of weeks ago when I lost a few days worth of e-mail because I had thought the changes had synced back to my desktop, when in fact they hadn't. So I decided I was going to look at running Exchange....

Looks like the Space Shuttle had already docked a few hours before it was possible to image them together directly (annoying) this evening (10th). However I've taken last nights images (9th of August), and merged the two together. You'll notice how much the Shuttle's orbit was slightly off compared to that of the ISS. These two photos are seperated by about 5 minutes, and as such the stars are all doubled up....

For those in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and France, etc. The ISS and the Space Shuttle are currently visible in the evening. The ISS will pass over the UK and Ireland tonight at around 22:30 (BST), the Shuttle a few minutes earlier at around 22:20, in both cases they'll take 3 or 4 minutes to cross the sky. They'll be moving west to east. If you miss it tonight they'll (assuming the Shuttle hasn't landed) be visible for the next couple of weeks....

Well we're starting to get some good gadgets for the Windows Vista Sidebar, which may force my hand and get me to actually use the Sidebar. I just found this gadget which hooks into Windows Live Messenger, and lets you see your contact list, without the wasted screen real estate of having the full client open. You can download it from the gadget website. It's still pretty early, needs a bit more polish but other than that its a very functional gadget with a wide range of customizable options....

So I've been tackling some issues with one of my machines over the last couple of weeks. It hasn't been going to sleep after ten minutes of inactivity, like it's told too. I hate troubleshooting these sorts of issues as there are so many things that can cause it and it is difficult to track down what's making the machine think it's still in use. A few months ago it was some junkware that Amelia wanted installed that added extra silly faces and the like to Windows Live Messenger, this thing started a process under every user regardless of if Messenger was even running, or setup on their account....

After a number of weeks working with comrade Lee Skevington, the Yeovil Labour Party website is now online in some early form. Feedback is welcome, feel free to leave them on this entry. Update April 2010: The CLP website has been replaced by the website for the parliamentary candidate Lee Skevington. I'm tempted to pad out the main page a bit with the history of the founding of the party, and the party's greatest moment, at least in my opinion, the defeat of Churchill in a landslide election leading to the creation of the National Health Service....

Well I stumbled across my old friend, TheDailyCreationism. On a new website, again claiming to do daily updates but failing to do regular posts. Quite disappointing I have to say as I'd love to read a creationist blog that is well, up to date with fresh arguments not those stale things from a hundred years ago. Anyway one of the posts on this blog featured Mr Kent Hovind's $250,000 offer. He presents it like James Randi presents the $1 million paranormal challenge, prove evolution and you get $250,000....