An expensive evening

Washing machine

It’s been an expensive evening today.  First the washing machine packed in, and we decided to cut our losses and buy a new one.

With twin boys we definitely need a reliable washing machine. The new one (Indesit WIXE 127) has faster programmes and is more economic than our existing one.  That was £280 spent in just a couple of clicks.

While the purchasing process was relatively pain-free on the Currys website (unlike the Halfords site, which didn’t allow me to even add the products I wanted into my shopping cart) I wasn’t terribly impressed with the Currys website feature that suggested additional/complementary products.

With my new washing machine it suggested that we needed a “4-way surge protector with telephone protection”.

Does the Indest WIXE 127 come with telephone/internet access?

Roof bars

Next up: roof bars. We’re going on holiday early next month, to the environs of Shrewsbury for a friend’s wedding.  This time we are four, and as you know small babies need an inordinate amount of stuff, so we’re borrowing a roof box … but need roof bars for Jane’s Renault.

So I turned to Halfords, and as I said it wouldn’t allow me to add them to the shopping cart. It got stuck in a loop, the warning in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome informed me.  Thicko IE8 just kept trying …

I got the roof bars cheaper (about £80) on eBay in the end, anyway.

Pet Shop Boys

I was always disappointed the Pet Shop Boys never released songs with titles such as “Today we sold another terrapin” or “The rabbits at the back of the shop are getting hungry”.

Ikea car park

I was chatting with a colleague at work this afternoon about the weekend. He’s off to Ikea in Edinburgh tomorrow to buy furniture.

He was complaining about the car parks.  How can it be, he said, that inside the store is so ordered and organised and yet outside in the car park is just a chaotic free-for-all?

I agreed.

In fact what I said was: the way that the Ikea car park is laid out is completely wrong. There should be two car parks.

So first of all you drive around the first car park looking for a parking space and then when you get there there’s a little card that tells you the location of the parking space in the second car park, like Car Park 2, Aisle 23, Row 4.

I’m going to write to Ikea and suggest it. It’s my Ikea idea.

(Did you see what I did there?)

Are you sure you want to delete WINDOWS?!

Last night I tried to empty my Recycle Bin in Windows XP, which in itself was a little odd given that the icon said it had items in it, but opening it revealed … nothing.

I decided to try to empty it anyway. Imagine my surprise when I got this confirmation dialog box (below):

Are you sure you want to delete 'WINDOWS'?

While I’ve been tempted in the past … I clicked No.

My own personalised television thing

I got a fantastic comment from a friend of mine to whom I had sent an invitation to online music streaming site Spotify:

If, as a child, I had been told by my future self that one day I could play any LP I wanted on my own personalised television thing, I would’ve hit myself for being a liar. Truly remarkable.

I remember in the early 1980s my dad telling me that one day there would be television sets thin enough to hang on your wall.  I thought it was science fiction … and now I’m staring at one on my “own personalised television thing” as I type this.

Baby flip-flops

Flip-flops for babies would be so cute … just not very practical.

Conversation #6

Conversation while feeding Reuben and Joshua the other night.

Gareth: You know, in many ways having children is like having a dishwasher.

Jane: Really?! How?

Gareth: Well, you know … you don’t actually need one but life feels somehow … better … with one.

Jane: Yeah, but the main difference is that a dishwasher makes your life easier.

Gareth: I suppose so. And you don’t fill your children with tablets and salt.

Jane: … or dishes!

Gareth: So … erm, in conclusion children aren’t like dishwashers, are they?

Jane: No, not really.

Conversation

Gareth: Once your health has recovered, and my health has recovered, I’d like to take you out for a meal just to say “Well done!”

Jane: Aw! That’s lovely!

Reuben (one of our 15 day old twins): AARRRRGGGHHH!!!!

What perfect comedy timing!  It was like he was saying: NOOOO!!! DON’T LEAVE US!

Winamp Global Hotkeys and Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard

I’ve just spent, on and off, about 2 hours trying to work out why the media keys on my Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard weren’t working properly with Winamp 5.541 Pro.  I’ve finally managed to solve the problem by rolling back to older keyboard drivers.

It appears that the Intellitype 6.3 drivers aren’t compatible with Winamp 5.541 Pro.

Intellitype 6.3

When I reinstalled Windows XP Professional a couple of weeks ago I did as I was supposed to: I installed the latest keyboard drivers (Intellitype Pro 6.3). But when it came to setting up Winamp I discovered that it didn’t work as expected.

Winamp has a Global Hotkeys setting within its preferences. As the explanatory text says:

Global Hotkeys are keyboard shortcuts that you can use from within any running application.

And here you can “enable default multimedia key support”. My keyboard (the Microsoft Digital Media Pro) has multimedia keys, so what could be more simple?

Global Hotkeys enabled

I ticked the option, both options in fact, and closed the preferences dialog box.

Pressing the Play/Pause button once started the MP3 track.  Pressing it again paused it.  Success!

But then I minimized Winamp, pressed Play/Pause again and Windows Media Player started.  Eh?!

Troubleshooting

I tried a variety of solutions on the Winamp forums. Tick one, close, stop itype.exe, restart Winamp, reselect the option, close Winamp, start itype.exe … all that jazz.  Nothing worked properly.

How frustrating!

Rollback to Intellitype 6.1

I know that it worked with the last Windows installation, and I knew that I’d used the Intellitype 6.1 drivers, so I uninstalled Intellitype 6.3, rebooted my PC and reinstalled version 6.1.

And do you know what?  It worked.

What I’ve had to do in the Intellitype options is disable the Play/Pause button (because enabled it was still opening Windows Media Player) but it didn’t have any effect on Winamp’s ability to recognise or use the key.

Now when I press Play/Pause, no matter whether Winamp is minimized or maximized it toggles play and pause.

What’s missing

Intellitype 6.3 appears to offer a few new features not present in 6.1, such as the ability to save keyboard profiles, but to be honest I don’t need such a facility.  So long as my keyboard shortcuts work and my multimedia keys control Winamp I’m a happy user.

More on AVG and Symantec

Interesting article on the Lockergnone blogs: AVG Announces Free One-Year License For Faulty Code.

It would appear that AVG was showing false positive results for genuine Windows files.  I experienced that too with both Windows files and WinAmp Pro, which after one AVG update told me was a virus or trojan.

Worryingly, after I moved to Symantec Norton Anti Virus 2009 it identified a couple of files as containing trojans, that I know I scanned with AVG after downloading and AVG falsely informed me were clean.

So far, I’m having a good experience with Norton Anti Virus 2009.  Good work Team Symantec!