The Olympus 790 SW Scuba diving

The front of my Olympus 790sw says that it is waterproof to 3 metres. Today I took it to 12 metres whilst scuba diving and it was still functional.

Check out the photos at http://garrys-travels.blogspot.com/

I suspected that it could in fact go much further than they said and they were choosing a very conservative depth as the maximum. I futher reasoned that it would not implode but the buttons would just end up constantly depressed rendering the camera unusable. As it turns out the camera was fine. The screen discoloured whilst at the deepest parts giving the viewfinder a kind of maroon tint to all the photos. However, when I returned to the surface the camera returned to normal. One problem I found was that the directional pad did become completely depressed and that made changing the cameras mode impossible - it was now simply a point and click device which suited me.

Knock and Don't Run

Neg Dupree

Neg Dupree

Neg is a comedian from London most famous for his Urban Sports on Channel 4's Balls of Steel. I have recently been asked to redesign the negdupree.com. The idea is to replace the current static home page with animated flash ..... add a forum, a Neg Urban Sports flash game - or two. WE wil improve all the social networking sites and expand his site to include his own you tube channel and blog.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Negdupree - is his youtube channel. Everybody including the Queen has one of these. Neg has some unseen material we intend to put up here - and dependent upon its success there may be more. You can also find all the best bits from Balls of Steel there. Neg will also be issuing youtube challenges as soon as he has some spare time to film them. It is our aim to get Neg involved in the youtube partners program - any suggestions from existing UK members would be welcome.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Neg-Dupree/21492796384 - here is his facebook fan page. Because everybody is on facebook. Except my friend Matt - but its ok no one misses him. Its only 1 day old - but already we have 23 members - yesterday there was only 1. This represents an astounding 2200% daily growth rate - if this rate of growth continues we expect to be friends with every member of facebook by early next week.

http://www.myspace.com.negdupree/ - here is his myspace. Neg without my help has already grown his fan base to 1500 myspace members. We hope to develop this further - and intend to redesign the graphics to be more in keeping with the Urban Sports theme.

http://negdupree.blogspot.com - Neg's blogs on myspace creased me up - especially his recounts of being stalked by Bobby Davro. We have decided to develop this theme further - keep an eye out here for more from Neg.

Suggestions are welcome whilst we work on it. Have we missed anything? A working site should be up and running prior to the broadcast of Balls of Steel Series 3 in March.

Monetization

Whilst Neg and myself are quite happy to develop all these wonderful sites for his loving fans, we are at the same time constrained by the financial worries of every day life. The parts of the sites that will develop and prosper will be the ones that we can earn an income from. Google ads have always been a good source of income - and we are hopeful that acceptance into the youtube partners program will mean we are able to produce exclusive web content. An overhaul of the merchandice section of the site - and ringtones will help us develop more website content. If anybody has any suggestions we would love to hear from you.

Pixmania and my passport

It seems that once again I am writing in my blog about some sort of online transaction gone wrong. This time it is with Pixmania. Yesterday I placed an order for two computers for my office - using their 24 hour next day delivery service (as long as you order before 1pm). Again I found them using google product search.

The next day as I sat in anticipation of my new machines iminent arrival I grew increasingly inpatient. After re-reading my order confirmation I noticed that they required a passport and utility bill from myself before processing the order.I phoned up as surely this was not the case - I have never had to provide my passport details to an online retailer before. The less than helpful lady on the end of the phone explained that they were a french based company and worked a little differently. I decided to cancel.

After being on hold for around 10 minutes the lady got back to me and explained that my computer had already been dispatched. "Oh" I said, "So you don't need my passport then?" I then thought, Where is my computer if it has been dispatched then? The lady said it could take upto 48 hours from dispatch to get to me. But I paid for 24 hour delivery and now I am being made to wait an additional 48 hours. I then asked what is my shipping number - I will call UPS and find out where my machine is. They could not provide me with this - and said I could keep checking their website to see when the information was available.

I will not be dealing with Pixmania again.

Robin Hood - the death of Maid Marian

I just watched the series 2 finale of Robin Hood on BBC1 and have to say I'm really disappointed.

Leaving aside the unusually poor scripting. How could they kill of Marian? I've never seen a version of Robin Hood where this happens. It's an absolute mess - and if by some miracle she does come back - its going to make the whole story even more ridiculous. What good is a Robin Hood without a Marian?

They have said that there will be a series 3 I can only assume for some reason actress Lucy Griffiths didn't want to continue with the project. I must be honest she was the main reason I tuned in.

Does anyone know if Lucy is part of series 3? Maybe appearing as a ghost or being brought back to life by some mysterious eastern magic? It happened before.

Djaq and Will don't return from the holy land either instead starting a new life together there. It's going to be a strange series 3.

Dell, Vista and DHCP

I recently became the proud owner of a Dell Dimension 9200 with Vista Home Premium. I started it up plugged it in and discovered I couldn't access the internet. Being computer literate I decided to investigate the problem. Starting with the comand prompt.

IPONFIG

This showed me my IP address was in the 169.x.x.x range. I immediatley knew that was an APIPA address and for some reason DHCP wasnt working. The connection said local only. Baffled I plugged an old XP workstation into the same cable and I immediatley had full access to the net.

After some investigating and installing a wireless card to see if that connected any better (It connected fine - still no DHCP though!) I was getting very frustrated. I found this potential solution on the net:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233/en-us

I followed the instructions but still had no luck.

I phoned Microsoft who told me that as I had bought an OEM product it was Dells problem or they could charge me for support. I phoned Dell. Dell told me that as I can ping computers when i set a static IP address that it was a software problem and they could refer me to a local engineer who would charge me to repair it. I am a local engineer - and none of the solutions on the web work.

Has anyone else had this problem - how did you get arround it?

www.computerwebstore.co.uk

As the IT manager at my firm I am often ordering components online - 95% this process runs smoothly the goods are delivered online and cheaply. I have often used companies like Misco, Ebuyer and Dell - and most of the time when there is a problem it is easy to resolve.

However, recently I have been using Google Product Search to find the cheapest deals. I have been placing orders with companies I have never heard of - who have an online store.

Twice in the last year I have come unstuck and have had great difficulty getting my order - or money back. The first experience was with exciteit - who have now ceased trading. You can read about them here.

The latest trouble I am having is with computerwebstore.

There are some similarities between these two operations. The companies have done their best to hide any form of meaningful contact details. They don't have a telephone number. The address given is a PO Box. Also the problems seem to have arrisen through the fact that they don't actually appear to keep any stock of their own.

The original order for two external hard disk drives was placed on the 19th of July. I was emailed an order confirmation which stated there was an expected delivery time of 3 days.

I emailed them on the 25th when it hadn't arrived. I had no response. The next day I wrote again - this time via the website. They finally replied on the 1st of August.

They advised me the order would be shipped that day or the day after. I waited - and sure enough on the 3rd a parcel arrived for me - upon opening it I was aware that I had only got one of the two drives I had requested. I checked my statement - to see if they had charged me for one or two - and they had charged me for both items.

I wrote to them again - explaining their error - and asking them to immediately dispatch another one.

I had no reply. Finally on the 6th - getting frustrated that I was unable to call Computerwebstore i decided to threaten them with cancelling my order. As of today they have said they will dispatch a second drive ASAP - as their warehouse only had one in stock.

If they only had one in stock why did their website quote me a delivery time of 3 days!

I am inclined to contact my card issuer - and request that they do not honour the payment - and then make Computerwebstore collect it at their own cost.

I will not be making the mistake of using a small company like this again - just to save a few pennies.