A ragbag of things.

In order to consign yourself to an endless linky hell of exploring what other people think is interesting, and let's face it they're often going to be right, have a look at http://populair.eu/ - more linky than you can shake a mouse at.

In Second Life I now patrol the waterways in an elven pirogue, and I don't care who knows it. Recommended. I am doing my SLing on the desktop box, and it is s-l-o-w compared to the laptop beast. The laptop beast, though, is in my bedroom and I am increasingly not. So I draw masochistic delight from creaking about on the desktop thing. Two pieces of software help a bit: Second Life First Look, which right now has beefed up rendering compared to the default release client, and on my machines is pretty stable. Secondly (boom boom) I have upgraded to the latest drivers for my graphics card. It's easy to forget to do this periodically. If you have an ATI, as I do, additional frustration can be experienced by a download site which makes it impossible for me to officially download the latest drivers using Opera, Firefox or Internet Explorer despite messing about with the security settings on each in accordance with the instructions unhelpfully displayed on the page which appears every time the download fails. Try it. What a crock...

I mean, what planet are AMD / ATI on? I've seen mythical dragons guard their treasure less jealously than these jokers guard their drivers. You'd think it was in their interest to show their hardware in the best light, by making it easy for we punters to upgrade our drivers. Why the hell is it so difficult? What am I going to do with them? Run them on hardware I bought and paid for. Somewhere a little troll is saying to the webmaster "don't make it too easy to get the drivers - they'll all make their own ATI cards from string and glitter glue and run them". Or not. In the end I simply downloaded the whole lot from a third party site, checked carefully for viruses, and ran them without issue. So WTF? No more ATI hardware for me in future, I'll be an nVidia boy on the one remaining box I have that isn't already so. Well done ATI, job done.

I now have so many USB devices that things have become silly. I used to scorn anything that couldn't be USB'd to my computers. Now I rather admire standalone stuff. This is partly because I cannot for the life of me see why I have to use three kinds of small USB connector, and partly because I have become frustrated by the various photo-organizing softwares I use fighting amongst themselves. One cannot help thinking, again, that there might be one package out there to rule them all. But I know there's not.

You all follow the goings on at Uboat.net, don't you?

Of course! Because those U-boats are so snub, so sexy, so - well, sunk. Apart from a few that is. Look at the new map they've got of the losses. Dearie me is this good. You need a special viewer, but if all special viewers were as good as this special viewer I'd not be up in the middle of the night thinking improper things about submarines. Or maybe I would. That's not the point. Just look at the map and thank me for the heads-up. Really.

Wasn't the Lewis good?

According to blood tests I am not dead. Beyond that medical science flounders.

If you're a Morsologist,

or a Morsist, or whatever the correct term is for someone fanatically keen on Inspector Morse, and by extension Oxford, then take a look here. My mother has earned great karmic benefits by buying me this guy's book. If you're a fellow enthusiast you may want a copy yourself. There are other, web-based, Morse resources (remorses?) out there which I shall let you find. And in fact other books, though none quite so obsessive in their detail. I can also point you to Jan Morris's seminal book "Oxford", which is wonderfully readable and a great source of general background.

And as a heads-up, don't miss the commencement of three episodes of Morse spin off "Lewis" starting next Sunday at 9pm on ITV1. If you're in the UK. The pilot last year was excellent. As of March 12th, according to current intelligence, you can buy the pilot and the three new episodes on DVD. I will be doing this once I have invested - and it's investment-type money - in the complete Morse DVD set. All 33 episodes, at around an hour and a half and change each. A younger man would be tempted to be the first to watch the whole lot continuously back to back. I know from experience with Farscape that this sort of thing is in my past, sadly. And anyway, I'd have to stay off Second Life for too long.

I am becoming geekier by the minute, and I don't care. I shall Asberg into the future at full bore from now on in.

After a few weeks of frantic inactivity,

which could be seen as a loss of interest, I am countering the cold and the snow by returning to Second Life with a vengeance. I have even gone so far as to enter the economy there, which has allowed me to buy a bit of land on a hillside, in a nice area with a good view. On this land I have installed some fires, a yurt and a large black cat (thanks for that Nika). My social life there is lively, even though I consequently never sleep. How much I continue to be committed to the sim is a matter for conjecture at this point, but I do enjoy it when I log on. So that's the purpose of it really. In real life I am ill and busy, which is a bad combination really. But one soldiers on, given the alternatives.

Hassles with online mail services.

I see from this article that the mound of evidence for not trusting anything too vital to online services continues to grow. Anyone who reads my stuff knows that I have a deep-seated suspicion of such things, and of course the irony of me writing this on an online service is not lost on me. I'll just take the opportunity to restate a few guidelines here. Don't use free online email for things that really matter, but use your ISP email account via POP so that you have a full local copy of your stuff. And if you use Blogger implement the facility which sends copies of your entries back to you. That way you only stand to lose the comments. This would not be a calamity in my case, hint hint.

I only do computer-based communication from home. Otherwise, I have my mobile phone. This is probably a charmingly retro way to carry on, but so far it has been pretty reliable. Those who can't live without using email from a variety of locations might find Blackberry worth checking out, or even whatever facility your mobile phone provider has for this. Or of course you could carry a thundering great laptop about and pay loads of money to use hot spots. At least you'd get mugged a bit.

Actually, at least two of the pubs and cafes within a block of where I live have free wifi now. Clearly I live in a good place to become even more of a net spod.