Craig Hamnett
Social Media Layabout
General
Photo A Day
Apr 27th
I find it hard to keep a blog sometimes (microblogging via Twitter is far less painful!) , but there’s a little project I want to do that should hopefully give me something interesting to write about. I want to take a photo a day for a year. I know that it’s nothing new (jeez, hardly anything is new nowadays,) but it is something which I think will be good for me to aim towards. I think the ideal time to start this will be on April 13th*, which will give me enough time to get the site prepared for it, and it coincides with Abbie having endured 6 years of being with me (poor girl!)
Good news about University. I have two more assignments (each 2,000 words) and then I am officially finished, done, and through with education. Don’t get me wrong, I love learning, we learn new things everyday, that’s our nature. I’d just rather learn things in a less artificial environment, and start learning practically.
I feel this year will be a challenging year, entering the real world where you don’t get financially bailed out 3 times a year with a nice student loan. Getting on the housing market seems damn near impossible with the current conditions, I just hope that things start to calm down and even out sooner rather than later!
*Edit – How can this be in the past? I meant to write May 13th, stay tuned.
eeePC Cancelled
Mar 31st
Unfortunately I have cancelled my order for the eeePC I previously wrote about! There are 2 main reasons which I cancelled:
- The eeePC is so hugely in demand that ASUS aren’t able to meet the demand of them. Currently only 30% of the people that want one actually get one delivered. I have been waiting now 4 weeks for one since I ordered, and there are still no guarantees about when they will be delivered.
- The eeePC 900 is coming out in a few months time. The main difference being the 9 inch screen, and higher resolution which will make the eeePC easier to work with and more productive. Also at very similar size and weight it will be better for on the go entertainment such as watching movies when travelling.
Hopefully I’ll get over the disappointment of not getting the initial eeePC, but maybe it will be a blessing in disguise; as they say: patience is a virtue, and the newer eeePC will hopefully be a far better purchase!
Vista System Icon Problem
Mar 24th
Having been using Vista for around a year now, I have very rarely experienced any glitches which weren’t easily solved. However, I have come across a problem with the system tray icons (the Volume, Network and Power icons in the bottom right) not appearing after Vista has been started up from being completely switched off.
Normally you can just turn these on by going to the Task Bar and Start Menu properties, then selecting them in the Notification area. When I have tried this these options have been grey and I’m unable to change them. After digging around I have found a solution for this bug. If you have also experienced this problem I will explain how to remedy this with a few screenshots.
The problem as highlighted above is that the System icons do not load up. We first start by opening the Task Manager, either by CTRL + ALT + DEL, or by searching for “taskmgr” in the Windows search bar.
Once we’ve loaded this, we want to kill the process, “explorer.exe”. As shown below, right click on that process and choose to end it.
As this process is critical to the operating system, we need to run the process again, simply by clicking “File” in the top left, and choosing New Task (Run…).
We then simply create the new process “explorer.exe” and click OK.
Then, as if by magic, your icons will be restored in their rightful place and you can then check them and uncheck them as you would normally in the Task Bar and Start Menu properties.
Unfortunately this bug hasn’t been squashed by the Vista dev team in the new release of SP1, but hopefully there will be a permanent fix in the future for this.
Threadless Newsletters
Mar 17th
I absolutely hate Threadless Newsletters because I love Threadless! Damn them. They sent out a newsletter saying that they have extended their sale and within 15 minutes I had bought 1 t-shirt for myself and 1 for my girl!
Two t-shirts each $10, and $8 for the shipping. Coming to a grand total of £14! With exchange rates like I love the demise of the American Dollar because it means that I get original t-shirts which very few people in the UK wear. If you are from the UK, don’t check out Threadless because that means that I will be slightly less cool as you will end up buying something from their awesome range!
Future Plans
Mar 10th
If I can I like to take the chance to kill two birds with one stone (Metaphorically speaking, poor birds.) As part of my assignment I have to design a portfolio website, and as this site is in need of a branding/positioning makeover then it seems like the perfect opportunity.
At the moment it’s just a plain ole’ blog powered by Wordpress. Don’t get me wrong, I do really like Wordpress, but it simply doesn’t beat my favourite CMS which is still relatively unknown. For my needs, Website Baker has always remained the number one tool, it’s simplicity, and as I’ve got to know it inside out; it’s power.
In combination I want to maybe add a more interactive point of view with video media, and will definitely be integrating Twitter and Flickr into the site. I’ll be working on a concept over the next few weeks, and hope to release something fresh. I’ll also be tackling the issue with the growing mobile Internet users, by also adapting the site for mobile content. I’ve recently experimented with this on a client site, and it’s been a great success so I hope I can reproduce similar results!
Also in the pipeline is a new media company, a venture with a great American counterpart, and another personal venture targeting the lower end of the market. Obviously these are secret works in progress but will be discussed more here once released!