I’ve just heard (via the curator at work…and I call myself an Angel fan ) that Andy Hallett, best known for playing Lorne, the empath demon in ‘Angel’ passed away following heart failure on Sunday night.

Having met Andy on a couple of occasions, I can personally attest to his warmth, his generosity and his status as an all round wonderful human being. He was every inch the entertainer, and was always willing to burst into song whenever the situation required it and was always thrilled (and slightly suprised!) to meet all the fans that loved him so much.

He was a fantastic actor, singer and all round nice guy, and I will really miss him.

RIP Andy. Taken too soon xx

This arrived in the post yesterday after writing directly to David Tennant’s agency. It took less than 2 weeks and is personalised and authentic!!

Happy Lou!!

OK, so I’ve got a rather large crush on David Tennant at the moment and have been playing around in GIMP with some images and have managed to do a cool painting type effect. Took my aaages to do it though and I’m not entirely sure I could do it again :S.

These little guys are my most recent discovery in the pet world. I’ve also been doing some research into African Pygmy hedgehogs and stumbled across gliders in the process. As you can see from the pic below, they are rather cute little things. The idea of having a big black eyed cuddly marsupial as a pet would make most people go ‘aww!’ and run out to buy one.

2 things immediately need to be clarified.

• You NEVER buy ONE sugar glider. They must really live in pairs as they are very social and without a friend they are liable to self mutilate.
• The amount of research into the care of these animals means that in order to be a responsible ‘parent’, you can’t just go out and buy one.

I’m hoping to put together a blog of my glider research and will post details here when its up and running.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more, check out;

http://www.sugar-gliders.co.uk/forum

OK, so after much deliberation after seeing these guys on the Gadget Show a while ago, I’ve decided I’d like a Pleo – a robotic dinosaur supposedly capable of evolving the longer you have one. There are also plans to develop different personalities to download onto the little guys, as well as tricks you can teach them etc. I’m thinking after the initial novelty has worn off a bit, Paul and I can set about hacking the little dude to within an inch of his life . I reckon there’s plenty of fun to be had!

Tis just a wee shame he costs £200….however,  Pleo owners in the Staters have made little collars and jumpers for them, so the expense is worth it for the cuteness factor!

I’ve been watching a lot of Frasier again and thought I’d share the billiance of David Hyde Pierce and his ‘Therapy Song’ with you. This is from the ‘Just for Laughs’ Comedy Festival.

This morning, my colleague came to switch on her computer and was greeted with a rather ominous sounding constant beeping. She tired the old ‘turn it off and on again’ trick to no avail. A quick call to IT later, and after swapping out ram and hard drives etc, and moving her hard drive into another pc, a reboot yields the beeping again. The IT guy is getting a bit confused by this point and it’s not until we look on the desk we realise the problem.

There’s a book resting on the escape key.

Cue much hilarity .

(OK, so I found it funny anyway…)

That was pretty much what my boss was saying everyone that met me when I started my new job. The uninitated amongst you might think ‘wow – she must be some sort of technological genius!’. Alas, the initiated will be asking what all the fuss is about – ‘building a pc is pretty commonplace nowadays!’.

When most people comment on me being able to put together a pc, my immediate reaction is ‘its cheaper and I know what I’m getting’; to me thats the key issue with shop bought PC’s – you don’t know what you are getting half the time, and might well end up with a horrendously expensive and high end machine just to send emails to your family. The idea behind this little article is the highlight some of the pitfalls of shopping for a pc and to introduce you to the concept of building your own.

I don’t understand all this jargon!!

I’m often asked to go with friends to choose a new computer as I ‘understand what all the jargon means’. Here’s a brief breakdown of what you are likely to come across when viewing the specs of a computer;

• Processor; This is essentially the ’muscle’ of the computer that does all the work. There are a vast number of different processors around now, although the ones you will come across most frequently in shops are Dual Core, essentially meaning that the processor has twice as much oomph and can deal with two intensive tasks at once. Don’t let this worry you too much – all you really need to know is higher number = faster processor i.e. 1.8ghz < 3.0ghz
•  RAM/Memory; The memory stores regularly used information to facilitate quick movement between applications. The clearest example of this is swapping between windows and how the pc copes with this. Generally, the more windows you have open, the slower the pc can change between them. The more RAM (Random Access Memory) you have, the faster these changes will be. Memory is measured in Megabytes or (more commonly nowadays) Gigabytes. I would recommend a minimum of 2gb of RAM to ensure optimum performance in the most modern machines.
• Hard Drive; This provides the storage for all the usual gubbins that end up on people’s computers (Music, pictures, documents, video etc). This is again measured in Gigabytes and the bigger the better. I’ve always maintained that it doesn’t matter how much space you have, you will use it all, so make sure you get the most you can. A lot of shop bought pc’s today come with upwards of 250gb of storage, with 500gb becoming increasingly common.
• Graphics; If you are looking to play modern games on your new toy, graphics capabilities are arguuably the most important factor when choosing a machine. Graphics come in two flavours if you like; Intergrated and Dedicated (to use laptop specific terminology). Integrated means that the graphics are built into the motherboard of the computer and will use up some of the systems RAM to operate. Dedicated refers to the fact that there is a seperate graphics card in the machine that has its own RAM. This is the better option if you are looking for optimum graphics performance as it will not be using up any of the system RAM, therefore preventing slowdown. As a (very!) general rule of thumb, when looking at the descroption of a graphics cards, the higher the number,. the better it is when looking at cards made by the same manufacturer, eg. an NVidia 8800 is better than an 8600. 

That covers the basic specs that you’re going to come across looking in a shop and should make buying something a little easier! There’s more to come when I’ve got the time covering building a computer from scratch.

Fingers crossed all the above made sense!

I commute into London every day for work, and was sitting on the train this morning when a couple of things occurred to me.

1. London Underground staff are mean and seem to enjoy closing off access to the escalators as soon as you get there.
2. The human race (or at least those who use the tube) seem to have evolved to the point where they don’t have to breathe whilst on the train – they certainly don’t leave room for the standard expansion of the lungs required for breathing… 

Life drives me mad sometimes.

Here’s what a computer desk looks like when you spend the afternoon tinkering with a new website and ripping DVD’s into .avi files…bonkers.