IT Crowd Menus

I've been watching the excellent The IT Crowd (season 1) on DVD and I think it might be a contender for best DVD menus ever. Not because they do anything particularly new but because of the animation on them.

Anyone who grew up in a world of 8-bit home computers will feel instantly at home, from the "loading screen" onwards. There are loveingly crafted pastiches of Head Over Heels and Jet Set Willy that last for ages. You can just sit there watching for ages. I could anyway. And did.

They're probably worth buying the DVD for alone. Think of it as some great animation with six bonus episodes of a geek sitcom thrown in.

Rerouting

I spent more time than I expected installing a new router (or router as I normally pronounce it). I'd expected a quick plug and play but forgot I'd have to add ISP and internet settings. And it's always the little one that you'd expect to make no difference that makes the difference. In this case it seemed to be the setting dictating time before disconnecting. Strange.

Anyway, it's working now.

Next thing is to work out whether the old one was actually broken or not. It was definitely a bit intermittent and would often just stop working for a few seconds. And so far (touchwood) the new one isn't doing that. I think it was probably on its last legs. And worse case is that I now have a spare emergency router. For emegencies.

Memory Upgrade

I got an extra gigabyte of memory installed in my PC at work which increased the capacity by 400% at a single stroke. The effect was noticeable and very pleasing. I can now switch between applications without having to wait several seconds for the change to happen. This will help me because previously I used to get impatient and try and switch to something else whilst waiting for the first switch. I'd normally end up then getting distracted and forgetting what it was I had wanted to do in the first place. Often whole hours could pass in this way. Switch. Switch. Switch....

But it should be better now. Oh frabjous day.

I wish I could have extra memory put in my actual head. That would be cool.

More Notworking Problems

I managed to waste another hour of my life today trying to network some computers together - this time it was my Mac and my friend's Windows laptop. It should be easy, but there always seem to settings that aren't quite right, things not turned on or security software that's too tight. I'm pretty sure we managed to wirelessly network the two machines, but it was proving too hard to see one machine's files on the other, whichever way we tried it.

In the end we gave up and resorted to burning a CD.

But then, after he'd gone, I noticed that now I could see his machine in Finder... it was too late then though. His laptop was turned off, he was not in the flat, we had achieved our goals through other means.

Accursed machines.