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Dave Owen


Member

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 1:23am Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Well I have finally done it. My first twitter session. Please be gentle
What do I say? Hmmmm. Well I suppose I have to start somewhere so here goes.
It's blinking late and I'm sat on my own at home behind 1 of my beloved Macs. Well we are On mister Fry's site after all
I have my Last FM profile up and running and listening to my loved tracks. You can find me as Bad-Boy-Badger, don't ask...... suffice to say that I was called Badger during my University years and still am, so go ahead and call me Badger if you want
By the way, any real ale aficionados out there, then I highly recommend the 'Badger Original Ale' which I just happen to have in front of me.
This credit crunch business is a right pain at the minute. I am currently undertaking a 2 year apprenticeship at the age of 42, yes 42, with an old friend of mine called Keith from Uni. I was fed up of being taken advantage of as a manager running a Learn Direct centre in Manchester all by myself. Underpaid, long hours and a room full of Dell PC running XP Home edition to boot
Thankfully Keith phoned me up one evening as I staggered through the door at 9 in the evening having done a 12 hour day!!!!
"Come and work for me Dave" he cried as I hastily scrabbled together a months notice to my employer who I hasten to say was not Learn Direct but a private conpany.
That was 18 months ago and with 6 months to go to finishing my apprenticeship we find that the customers have head to the hills!!!!!!
Come back I cry, I don't want to go back to the 8-8!!!!
I'll stop whinging in a mo, I'm on a roll now.
So here I am being a doley (A posh one I have to add, it's all done by post) staying up late yet still awake at 6.30 every morning. There is only so much house cleaning I can do, well someone has to do it.
Crickey, even the smilies have given up on me?!?!
Oh well, time to hit the hay as they say, and to talk sweet nothings into the Macs microphone. I really should get out more often


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Nitro


Member

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 2:11am Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Re: It's kind of nice being a virtual new-born of sorts. X-D Good luck with Twitter and bravo for using a Mac to boot.

What I already dislike about Twitter is the daily intrusion of marketing fuckheads suddenly 'following' me.

And if 3 people bug me, I have a difficult time with the idea Mr.Fry says he's following 54 THOUSAND (+/-) people. Really? Really really? X-D His following makes sense. The reverse I find...I don't know..it doesn't matter and none of my biz really and nevermind...

I'd like to be able to either invite specific people OR have some filter such that someone has to be approved by the acct holder to follow first. I haven't discoverd that option yet.

What I DO like is being able to click on the projects I follow and read about progresses/failures ( like the Desert Rats robot projects ).

Hang in there with your apprenticeship and nevermind your age. If you were NOT doing it, Time would pass anyway

Really? Wow.

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TheElephant


Member

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 5:44am Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
You can find me as Bad-Boy-Badger, don't ask......

Any relation to Bubby?

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Dave Owen


Member

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 12:20pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Hi Nitro.
He he. Thanks for the warning, I'll just shoot on sight and not bother asking questions later
I haven't had a chance to look round the site properly yet, and I have to admit that after I posted my moanings last night I became aware that this is the Technology and Gadgets section, oops!
So I shall start mythering about all 7 of my Macs just to make it relevant
To answer a fellow tweeters question "Am I related to Bubby"? Er.. no. Dare I ask who Bubby is?

Seeing as I have spare time on my hands these days I have been listening to my music on Last FM, and if you saw my music tastes you would appreciate the name "Bad Boy Badger
I am also a member of Ishtars Gate which is an enlightening read and I try to contribute as often as I can,

OK lets make this tweet relevant and talk about my favourite hobby, Macs, well one of my favourite hobbies.
Now I love my legacy Macs and don't have an Intel jobby. Well not yet, not until Apple pull the plug on 32 bit Macs.
I have 5 G4 towers, 2 of which are going to a good home. 1 as a birthday present for my mates son who has a G3 iMac and the other to my girlfriend who has a G4 400 which I am replacing for a Quicksilver 733.
The other 3 are 2 QS 733 one of which doesn't have a case, so I am putting the whole lot into an ATX case including an ATX PSU, and modifying the hell out of it. Look, I have been a Mac user since 1994 when I bought a brand new Power PC 6100/60 and I have had about 15 Macs since, so Apple have done pretty well out of me. Anyway, I'm just curious and why not?!?
The other G4 is my MDD 1.25 dual of which I have a love hate relationship with. I use this baby for my graphics and movies and so on, the number cruncher, and it does it so well.
I love it for what it is, the look and design to me make it the most gorgeous computer on the planet.
I hate it because it caused an awful lot of trouble for me and my babes.
The other 3 Macs are G3 and they are still going strong.
I have a G3 233 desktop, a 350 iMac and a 366 iBook which I call Artoo. Why?Because it has character, it's faithful, it is mobile, does whatever I ask and it's blue.


Laterzzz

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gjhsu


Moderator

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 4:36pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Nitro, a good way to prevent marketing spam is to protect your posts. Go to the privacy settings, and set it to "Protected" or "Private" or whatever it's called. People/search robots then can't search your posts and auto-follow you. It'll also ask you to confirm any followings that may occur.

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TheElephant


Member

Posted Wed Jul 15th, 2009 7:55pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106341/

^^^ Bad Boy Bubby. It just came to mind when I saw your last.fm username.


I think you might have your terminology a little confused there too.

Tweets are messages on http://twitter.com/
Here, they're more usually called posts (same on any forum I guess).

I've recently joined twitter, and it's good fun. I use tweetdeck, as the site is a bit basic, but there are loads of third party programs that make it easier to follow interesting tweeters.
I particularly enjoy the #tag games.

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Nitro


Member

Posted Fri Jul 17th, 2009 6:12pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Thank you for the tips/guidance. I'm in protected mode. I guess you can't have it all...I'd rather people could make comments willy-nilly without being bothered about allowing them...otoh, i hate that marketing stuff...maybe after a few weeks the bots will have given up and i'll be able to tweet unprotected...

Not that I am advocating having unprotected Tweet

Really? Wow.

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Dave Owen


Member

Posted Sun Jul 19th, 2009 4:58pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Ah, so posts it is.
Thank you for that.

This is a journal I wrote yesterday for my Switchers group on Last FM.
http://www.last.fm/group/The+grass+is+always+rainbow+on+the+other+side
I thought you might like a laugh


Me and my big mouth
I was speaking with the landlady yesterday and she just happen to mention that their computer was popping off after 15 odd minutes or so. ?
I was quite tempted to say "what, off for a ciggy round the back of the bike shed?"
Anyway.....
Would you like me to (kick it round the garden for you?) have a look at it for you, I said.

Next day.
The landlord John brings round this brick.. er laptop. Blimey, it's heavy!!!!
It's a Toshiba P4 2.66ghz with a 30GB drive and 512 MB of RAM. Gawd it's sllloooooooooowwwwwwwwwww...................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
My 10 year old G3 366 mhz iBook runs rings round it!!!!!! I ain't kidding!!!

So the first thing I did was to cut down the all dancing all singing graphics
crap and to reduce the 32 bit to 16 bit colour profile. This relieves the memory on the built in Intel graphics chip and will allow the PC to run quicker (hopefully, but don't hold your breath now).
I restarted the thing and it seemed a lot more spritely. I then shut off all the power management settings so that it would not interfere with the de-fragging tool. I then tried to disable the screen saver, haaaaaa. Could I bugga!!! So I set it for 999 minutes, hopefully it would have finished the de-fragging by then :/
Again I restarted the thing and re-checked that all the settings were as I had left them. I started the de-frag and without bothering to analyze the drive.

Unfortunately the drive requires 15% free disk spacezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz oh brother!
Fortunately I was able to continue with the de-frag (great name innit!?) because I really didn't want to take off any files and so on.
Well so far so good, and it hasn't popped off for a fag and is currently on 12% of the hard drive.

Well it successfully de-fragged the drive apparently but not 100% as I saw 31% and within about 5 minutes later it was finished, hmmm... fishy smells abound.
I had a copy of McAfee QuickClean which I ran on it and that had a bit of trouble with some files, and that doesn't seem to have completed 100% of the things it should have done, although the finish button appeared !?!?

I have cleared 260 MB of disk space by trashing caches and temporary files and De-frag moving files about. The disk was 21% fragmented by the way.
I tried to burn some files onto a CD, yeah right.
Wrong CD, wrong format, there was an error!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Always a blinking ERROR!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
gibber.... gibber........
Where's my medicine?

Fortunately I have found out why it was popping off. It overheats after half an hour and self preservation sets in and it just goes off, no shutdown nothing just 'pop'.
So I have had it sat on bits of wood on all 4 corners with plenty of ventilation below and along the sides. Seems to be working.
It is still slooooooowwwwwwwwwww though. The drive is so full of stuff and I'm not talking about John's documents and photos though, I'm talking about the patches, upgrades, and the invisible files you can't see which is a daily event with Windows, in my case anyway.
Can't be doing with it.

Doing another de-frag on it as it still states that 21% of the hard drive needs de-fragging.............zzzzzzzzzzz
It's a lot quicker though, already on 12%.
I let it trawl through it thang and decided that I could use the USB port to transfer the Document and music folder to my external drive so that I could at least make more room on the bleedin thing.
Hey! USB 2, well that's something.
Right, we have 28% free disk space, ok rocking

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. No such luckI still find 21% of the files are fragmented......
I decide to install QuickClean to see if there are any duplicated files, damaged registry, removal of temp internet files, cookies and so on.
I'm still half expecting this thing to 'pop' off any minute.
Loaded QuickClean and did the bis.
Another 500 MB's of useless data gone!!!
Another De-frag and still the same old story.

I think it's time to back up the data and do a clean install, don't you?

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tito


Member *

Posted Wed Jul 22nd, 2009 8:51pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Ah, so posts it is.
Thank you for that.

This is a journal I wrote yesterday for my Switchers group on Last FM.
http://www.last.fm/group/The+grass+is+always+rainbow+on+the+other+side
I thought you might like a laugh


Me and my big mouth
I was speaking with the landlady yesterday and she just happen to mention that their computer was popping off after 15 odd minutes or so. ?
I was quite tempted to say "what, off for a ciggy round the back of the bike shed?"
Anyway.....
Would you like me to (kick it round the garden for you?) have a look at it for you, I said.

Next day.
The landlord John brings round this brick.. er laptop. Blimey, it's heavy!!!!
It's a Toshiba P4 2.66ghz with a 30GB drive and 512 MB of RAM. Gawd it's sllloooooooooowwwwwwwwwww...................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
My 10 year old G3 366 mhz iBook runs rings round it!!!!!! I ain't kidding!!!

So the first thing I did was to cut down the all dancing all singing graphics
crap and to reduce the 32 bit to 16 bit colour profile. This relieves the memory on the built in Intel graphics chip and will allow the PC to run quicker (hopefully, but don't hold your breath now).
I restarted the thing and it seemed a lot more spritely. I then shut off all the power management settings so that it would not interfere with the de-fragging tool. I then tried to disable the screen saver, haaaaaa. Could I bugga!!! So I set it for 999 minutes, hopefully it would have finished the de-fragging by then :/
Again I restarted the thing and re-checked that all the settings were as I had left them. I started the de-frag and without bothering to analyze the drive.

Unfortunately the drive requires 15% free disk spacezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz oh brother!
Fortunately I was able to continue with the de-frag (great name innit!?) because I really didn't want to take off any files and so on.
Well so far so good, and it hasn't popped off for a sweetie and is currently on 12% of the hard drive.

Well it successfully de-fragged the drive apparently but not 100% as I saw 31% and within about 5 minutes later it was finished, hmmm... fishy smells abound.
I had a copy of McAfee QuickClean which I ran on it and that had a bit of trouble with some files, and that doesn't seem to have completed 100% of the things it should have done, although the finish button appeared !?!?

I have cleared 260 MB of disk space by trashing caches and temporary files and De-frag moving files about. The disk was 21% fragmented by the way.
I tried to burn some files onto a CD, yeah right.
Wrong CD, wrong format, there was an error!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Always a blinking ERROR!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
gibber.... gibber........
Where's my medicine?

Fortunately I have found out why it was popping off. It overheats after half an hour and self preservation sets in and it just goes off, no shutdown nothing just 'pop'.
So I have had it sat on bits of wood on all 4 corners with plenty of ventilation below and along the sides. Seems to be working.
It is still slooooooowwwwwwwwwww though. The drive is so full of stuff and I'm not talking about John's documents and photos though, I'm talking about the patches, upgrades, and the invisible files you can't see which is a daily event with Windows, in my case anyway.
Can't be doing with it.

Doing another de-frag on it as it still states that 21% of the hard drive needs de-fragging.............zzzzzzzzzzz
It's a lot quicker though, already on 12%.
I let it trawl through it thang and decided that I could use the USB port to transfer the Document and music folder to my external drive so that I could at least make more room on the bleedin thing.
Hey! USB 2, well that's something.
Right, we have 28% free disk space, ok rocking

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. No such luckI still find 21% of the files are fragmented......
I decide to install QuickClean to see if there are any duplicated files, damaged registry, removal of temp internet files, cookies and so on.
I'm still half expecting this thing to 'pop' off any minute.
Loaded QuickClean and did the bis.
Another 500 MB's of useless data gone!!!
Another De-frag and still the same old story.

I think it's time to back up the data and do a clean install, don't you?

I tweet. I haven't got hundreds of followers and nor do I want them I'd rather stick with the few tweetie friends I've got, just enough to comfortably keep up with, and quite often communicate and laugh with and that's it.

The only tweeters I wonder about are the ones who are desperate to gain more and more followers. Like it's a popularity contest. What's the point in being on it if you have so many followers and consequently follow so many people that you cannot possibly have any worthwhile interaction with any of them.

As for spammers, blocking them is irritating but it only takes a minute really.

One of my twit friends and I decided to have a competition at one point to type in key words to see who could get the most bizarre followers.

We were both disappointed in our efforts to gain Peruvian funeral homes but had some success with concrete suppliers.

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Nitro


Member

Posted Wed Jul 22nd, 2009 9:06pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!

We were both disappointed in our efforts to gain Peruvian funeral homes but had some success with concrete suppliers.

ROFLMAO!! Great idea!

I unprotected my tweet page and find it easy enough to 'block' the [insert foul words].

I still think the interface needs work and should be more intuitive than it is. I say that knowing I am impatient.

Those I know with facebook, linkin, myspace, blogs, and twitter accts ( using both laptops and cellphones btw ), claim all of this saves them time. I know better because the evidence of their attentions are plain. I have a blog and a twitter acct. Both those, and any other time I spend on the www, have consumed far more time than I'm willing to give up so I'm nowhere near the digital doggedness they are. And I'm not willing to spend as much time staring at a monitor, ( thank god I can type around 75wpm!! ), when I'm surrounded by so much natural beauty every day I'd rather knock around in.

(Nitro turns and buries head in sand...happily, and while smoking a cigarette )

Really? Wow.

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tito


Member *

Posted Wed Jul 22nd, 2009 9:15pm Post subject: Oh boy, my first tweet!!!
Those I know with facebook, linkin, myspace, blogs, and twitter accts ( using both laptops and cellphones btw ), claim all of this saves them time. I know better because the evidence of their attentions are plain. I have a blog and a twitter acct. Both those, and any other time I spend on the www, have consumed far more time than I'm willing to give up so I'm nowhere near the digital doggedness they are. And I'm not willing to spend as much time staring at a monitor, ( thank god I can type around 75wpm!! ), when I'm surrounded by so much natural beauty every day I'd rather knock around in.

(Nitro turns and buries head in sand...happily, and while smoking a cigarette )[/quote]

Recently I was about to sign a virtual cast of someone's broken leg on www and my daughter stopped me. She said 'Mom, don't do it. We're all in danger of staying in the virtual world.'

She has also cut down her own usage as the danger of addiction is all too real. (!)

(But it is really good isn't it? The www Shucks! Maybe I'm hooked after all)

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