To find out when a server was last rebooted:

• System Event Log, filter for EventID 6009
• on Windows 2008 you can use systeminfo | find “System Boot Time”
• I think this works on other versions of Windows Server as well, but the text might be different so you might have to go looking for it.
• You’re supposed to be able to use net statistics server and examine the first line (Statistics since …) but for me that was 01/01/1980. Would have been impressed if it was true…

Barry Ritholz has produced two amazing Infographics which really bring home quite how amazing the whole thing is. Every 60 seconds…

• 168 million emails are sent
• 695,000+ Facebook statuses are updated
• 70 new domain names are registered

What have YOU done in the last 60 seconds?

I have no idea what alimentation is, or why having two of them in a calculator is a good thing.

The Wikipedia entry for alimentation describes the Human gastrointestinal tract. I’m sure there can’t be two of those in it.

According to Dictionary.com, it means:

noun

Some sort of double nourishment. Tasty.

I guess it probably means that it has both a solar panel and a battery, but it’s a pretty odd way of saying so. I don’t know if it’s a funky overseas translation error, I didn’t see who made it (and I’m not going back to find out).

So, word of the day. Meaning nourishment (or possibly, power source if seen on calculators).

Ever wondered what would happen if 2 ChatBots ended up talking to each other? Well, these people did, and the results are pretty cool, if a bit random. Discussions on robots, unicorns and God…

The results are an amalgamation of many of Google’s different services, such as Trends, YouTube, Maps etc.

26.5 degrees! And it’s only March

If you’re interested, it’s really easy. Arduino make it simple to plug together components and then write C-style code against them. I used this thermometer and this LCD display, both from eBay. The blue casing was from Maplins and the sackboy was an accidental purcahse from Play!

Here’s the code that the Arduino is using (which has it’s roots in this Sheep Dog Guide, for which I am very thankful!)

#include  #include
#define TEMP_PIN  2 //See Note 1, sheepdogguides..ar3ne1tt.htm
void OneWireReset(int Pin);//See Note 2
void OneWireOutByte(int Pin, byte d);
byte OneWireInByte(int Pin);
LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x27,16,2);
double HighTemp;
double LowTemp;
int HighSign;
int LowSign;
void setup() {
digitalWrite(TEMP_PIN, LOW);
pinMode(TEMP_PIN, INPUT);      // sets the digital pin as input (logic 1)
lcd.init();                      // initialize the lcd
lcd.backlight();
HighTemp = 0;
LowTemp = 999999;
}
void loop(){
lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
int HighByte, LowByte, TReading, SignBit, Tc_100, Whole, Fract;
OneWireReset(TEMP_PIN);
OneWireOutByte(TEMP_PIN, 0xcc);
OneWireOutByte(TEMP_PIN, 0x44); // perform temperature conversion, strong pullup for one sec
OneWireReset(TEMP_PIN);
OneWireOutByte(TEMP_PIN, 0xcc);
OneWireOutByte(TEMP_PIN, 0xbe);
LowByte = OneWireInByte(TEMP_PIN);
HighByte = OneWireInByte(TEMP_PIN);
TReading = (HighByte << 8  ) + LowByte;
SignBit = TReading &amp;amp;amp;amp; 0x8000;  // test most sig bit
if (SignBit) // negative
{
TReading = (TReading ^ 0xffff) + 1; // 2's comp
}
Tc_100 = (6 * TReading) + TReading / 4;    // multiply by (100 * 0.0625) or 6.25
if (Tc_100 > HighTemp)
{
HighTemp=Tc_100;
HighSign = SignBit;
}
if (Tc_100 < LowTemp)
{
LowTemp = Tc_100;
LowSign = SignBit;
}
lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
lcd.print("L:");
PrintTemp(LowTemp,LowSign);
lcd.print(" H:");
PrintTemp(HighTemp,HighSign);
lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
lcd.print("Now:");
PrintTemp(Tc_100,SignBit);
if (HighTemp >= 3000)
{
lcd.print("  ");
}
if ((HighTemp >= 2700) &amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp; (HighTemp < 3000))
{
lcd.print("  ");
}
if (HighTemp < 2700)
{
lcd.print("  ");
}
delay(5000);      // 5 second delay.  Adjust as necessary
}
void PrintTemp(int Temp, int SignBit)
{
int Whole, Fract;
Whole = Temp / 100;  // separate off the whole and fractional portions
Fract = Temp % 100;
if (SignBit) // If its negative
{
lcd.print("-");
}
lcd.print(Whole);
lcd.print(".");
if (Fract < 10)   {       lcd.print("0");   }    lcd.print(Fract); } void OneWireReset(int Pin) // reset.  Should improve to act as a presence pulse {      digitalWrite(Pin, LOW);      pinMode(Pin, OUTPUT); // bring low for 500 us      delayMicroseconds(500);      pinMode(Pin, INPUT);      delayMicroseconds(500); } void OneWireOutByte(int Pin, byte d) // output byte d (least sig bit first). {    byte n;    for(n=8; n!=0; n--)    {       if ((d &amp;amp;amp;amp; 0x01) == 1)  // test least sig bit       {          digitalWrite(Pin, LOW);          pinMode(Pin, OUTPUT);          delayMicroseconds(5);          pinMode(Pin, INPUT);          delayMicroseconds(60);       }       else       {          digitalWrite(Pin, LOW);          pinMode(Pin, OUTPUT);          delayMicroseconds(60);          pinMode(Pin, INPUT);       }       d=d>>1; // now the next bit is in the least sig bit position.
}
}
byte OneWireInByte(int Pin) // read byte, least sig byte first
{
byte d, n, b;
for (n=0; n<8; n++)     {         digitalWrite(Pin, LOW);         pinMode(Pin, OUTPUT);         delayMicroseconds(5);         pinMode(Pin, INPUT);         delayMicroseconds(5);         b = digitalRead(Pin);         delayMicroseconds(50);         d = (d >> 1) | (b<<7); // shift d to right and insert b in most sig bit position
}
return(d);
}

I tell myself that the reason I haven’t is because of an irrational fear of loosing the books in some sort of formatting accident, that somehow they’re not as safe. But deep down, it’s because I can’t justify the price to myself: I’m just not rich enough to purchase one to supplement an activity I’m already doing perfectly well.

Which makes a rumour that the Kindle might possibly, one day, be free very interesting. Given away! Actually, it makes a lot of sense. Production costs have probably dropped by now, and if Amazon reckon that they can make enough money from people in book sales (possibly on some sort of contract basis) then it would put a sizable dent in the eBook/iPad market.

John Walkenbach noticed a while ago that the price of Kindles appeared to be falling at a linear rate that almost looks pre-ordained. If this holds, the line would fall through the £0 axis right about… November 2011! This graph (from http://j-walkblog.com) illustrates this well:

Kindle Price Forcast

It’ll be really interesting to keep an eye on prices during the second half of this year, to see if Amazon really can pull this off. If they can then I think it would change not only the eBook market, but spill over and effect the tablet market too. For a lot of people iPhone + Kindle == iPad.

Michael Arrington at TechCruch has another idea: make it free to Amazon Prime customers. For $79 annually Prime customers get free 2-day shipping. This is a good subset of the market to test out any type of contract-driven freebie, or just give all Prime customers a free one, no strings attached. Arrington notes that in Jan 2010 Amazon offered Prime customers who bought a Kindle a full refund if they didn’t like it…but they could keep it (free by any other means). Arrington has a “reliable source” who says that Amazon wants to give every Prime customer a Kindle, as soon as they can work out how.

So, for now, I’ll be holding off buying any sort of reader, just in case Amazon really can come up with the goods. Gadgets are good, but free gadgets are something much cooler.

So, for Google’s sake, here’s a very wordy explanation of the exact problem I was having:

On Windows Vista, I was unable to open or save attachments, using either Windows Live, Windows Live Mail or Thunderbird. I could receive email fine from any of them, but they all acted in the same way: double clicking on the attachment to open it did nothing, saving did nothing. When the Save As dialog box showed, the file type was always “All files *.*”, never the file type of the actual file.

It seems lots of other people have had this in the past. Lots of people have attributed it to anti-virus software, IE8, Windows Updates, especially Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB969897).

I tried lots of things, including uninstalling that particular update, and even considered whether or not to revert to IE7.

The thing I kept coming back to though, was that it wasn’t tied to any particular email client – they were all acting exactly the same. Normally I’d look to the anti-virus software (in this case NOD32) but that had been the first thing on the computer when it was bought 3 years ago, and this was a recent problem.

Now – what follows is what I eventually did to fix MY problem. It might fix your problem, but I hope it does.

I noticed that Windows Defender was running. I’d noticed it mentioned a couple of times in the posts I’d read, and early on I’d stopped it performing on-demand scanning, but now I went back and turned it off completely (under options, right now the bottom, in the Admin section).

I restarted, and still no joy. So then, more out of desperation than anything else, I downloaded and ran CCleaner. I cleaned up and tidied the registry, then pulled up the list of programs that run on Startup. I was going through, disabling some of the more rubbish ones when I noticed that WindowsDefender.exe was still there. Huh, I disabled you – why are you still running? So I disabled it, and restarted.

Restarting your Mum’s machine 200 miles away after messing with the registry, and then waiting for it come back doesn’t do your heart any good. But it did eventually come back, and with it, all attachments now open, in all email clients.

Utter madness. So, if you’re having the problem I’ve described above, with attachments not opening, and not saving, in Windows Vista, using Windows Live or Thunderbird – give this a go*. Let me know how it goes.

*Disclaimer: I disabled Defender because I already had good spy/malware protection. You need to do what’s right for you.

If you’ve just got, or are just about to, land a new job – well, Congratulations. Go read the blog post, and relax.

Merry Christmas to all!

You can go really simple, just pasting in a list of words, or make up your own clouds, passing in word weights, colours etc.

For instance, here’s a representation of The Holy Bible, King James Edition. Interesting analysis: