Norfolk Nerd Ramblings   The mad ramblings of an aging nerd.

Check out this dodgy geezer inspecting the rear of my property, not behaving suspiciously at all!  As he’s having such a good look it’s a shame he missed the CCTV camera pointing straight at him!!

The police now have a copy of this, if anyone knows who he is I’d be grateful to know!

Today is Darwin Day, and in honour of this memorable event the Open University have a ‘Devolve me’ page on their website.  If you present it with a photograph of yourself it will project you back in time.

The page can be found here.

This, apparently is what I looked like 1.8 million years ago (seems like only yesterday!)  It’s good to see Specsavers were already going strong then.

I received this email today:

Dear Manager,

We received a formal application from a person who is called John Alldis is applying to register "idaa" as their domain names and Internet brand in Hong Kong and also in Asia on 2009-02-11. During our auditing procedure we find out that the alleged John Alldis has no trade mark,brand nor patent even similar to that word.As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect the alleged John Alldis to be a domain or trademark grabber.Hence we need you confirmation for two things.First of all,whether this alleged John Alldis is your business partner or distributor in Asia.Secondly,whether you are interested in registering these domains and Internet brand instead of that alleged person.(The alleged John Alldis will be entitled to obtain a domain not needed by original trademark owner.)

If you are not in charge of this please forward this email to appropriate dept.

This is a letter for confirmation.If the mentioned third party is your business partner or distributor in Asia,please DO NOT reply.We will automatically confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure.

Best Regards,

Judy Lau
Registration Commissioner
Sponsoring Registrar:Asia Network
Tel: +852 3118 1808

      +852 3065 8284
Fax:+852 3065 8189

Email:judy@asianetwork.mobi

Website: www.asianetwork.mobi

Being a cynical so-and-so I smelled a scam and did some research, and it seems my instincts were right, it is a scam.

Basically if you’re foolish enough to respond they will get back to you offering to register the domain names for you for a few hundred dollars.

If you really do want to register some domain names, get in touch with me, and I’ll do it a lot cheaper.  Or I can charge you hundreds of dollars if you really do want to be ripped off!

It seems the new version of Windows, known as Windows 7 will not be able to upgrade from Windows XP.

Microsoft……. THIS IS STUPID……. Many people have missed out Windows Vista and will probably be going straight from XP to W7, and you’re going to force them to wipe their PC’s and reinstall!

Those of us of the nerdy persuasion will know that to wipe and reinstall is always the best option, however, less technical users will want to insert the CD and upgrade.

I predict a lot of users will be sticking with XP until they upgrade then will buy a PC with W7 pre-installed.

My wife is tracing her family tree and managed to contact a distant cousin.  When the cousin heard my wife’s married name she asked if she knew of a Robert Afford.

Cutting a long story short it transpires that my wife’s distant cousin is married to my uncle’s former business partner.

Small world or what?

Well I’m going to have another go at keeping a blog, as everybody now seems to be ‘doing it’.  My biggest problem is having the conviction that anyone is remotely interested in reading my waffle!

This time I am attempting to do it using Windows Live Writer, not out of any fanatical support for Microsoft’s products, but rather the fact that it seems generally simple and easy to use, have a built in  spell checker to correct my lousy spelling, and might be easy enough that I manage to keep it going!

I’m really not sure at the moment what I’m going to put in it, I shall consult other blogs, see what other people are doing with them and it will ‘evolve’.

It may be that it will just become a blog on blogging, but there is value in that I suppose.  I’m happy to receive any suggestions as to what you would like to see here.