Bloody buggering Sky, I swear there’s a conspiracy to piss me off. Two months ago they buggered up my internet connection and then buggered up my phone fixing my broadband. I spent several days arguing with them over the phone that the problem was at the exchange, not my equipment or my phone, the micro [...]

Oh dear, looks like the fuck up fairy has visited Google!

For the last few months the service I’ve been getting on my Orange mobile phone has been getting progressively worse. A few months ago I couldn’t make phone calls at all for about half a day and nor could I receive any.  #1 son’s phone was the same, so was Mrs Sane’s and so was [...]

Google appears to have finally found some balls and has told the Chinese government that it is no longer willing to censor search results. The announcement – and the associated threat to pull its operations out of China altogether – was prompted by the hacking of two Google email accounts used by Chinese human rights [...]

I was on the phone to Orange customer services today to see if there was a cheaper way of getting my son a small amount of internet access. I was disappointed to find that not only was £5pm the cheapest option for data, but new customers would only receive 250mb for their £5pm, rather than [...]

It’s amazing how much we’ve come to rely on t’interweb in our household. Mrs Sane phoned me at work yesterday to say she couldn’t get on the internet so I popped home at lunchtime to see what the problem was.  I checked the modem status page and it said the ADSL link was down so [...]

After complaining on Sunday that Google decided to mark Remembrance Sunday with a picture of the Cookie Monster rather than a poppy, it was suggested that we should give Google the benefit of the doubt and see if they use a poppy logo on Remembrance Day itself. Well, today was Remembrance Day and guess what?  [...]

Facebook have decided that after more than a year and a half of being in existence, the England page I started on Facebook breaches their terms and conditions and has been locked. As of tonight 13,920 people have declared themselves fans of England through the Facebook page.  The only England fan page on Facebook with [...]

A 17 year old girl has been murdered after meeting a predator on Facebook. The girl agreed to meet a man who claimed to be a 16 year old boy who allegedly then murdered her. The usual criticisms of social media have been rolled out by the usual suspects along with the traditional warning of [...]

Orange has this clever feature when you ring customer services where you enter your password on your phone keypad – 2 for abc, 3 for def, etc.  It’s a great idea, assuming you don’t have one of these: You’ll note that, unlike regular mobile phones, the number keys don’t have a set of letters on [...]

If there is a known “feature” with the new version of WordPress that causes anything in the dashboard to generate internal server errors from an apparently random point in time that can be fixed by creating a one-line ini file in the wp-admin folder, why the bloody buggering hell doesn’t the WordPress install file create [...]

We’ve had a Wii for a while now and a combination of the kids using the remote and nunchucks as nunchucks (Kung-fu style) and chewing the wires has rendered the nunchucks a tad unreliable, often causing you to veer off to the left in Mario Kart Wii at inopportune moments. So we thought we’d invest [...]

… Microsoft Percentages! I’m sure every Windows user has experienced the curious phenomenon of “Microsoft Time” which uses the same units as normal time – hours, minutes, seconds – but in an entirely random way so you can never know whether “15 seconds” to copy a file in Microsoft time means 15 seconds, 5 minutes [...]

The BBC is a pioneer of High Definition (HD) TV in the UK, broadcasting HD content on satellite, cable, freeview and the internet.  So why do I have to watch BBC Breakfast in low definition while the BBC HD channel is showing previews of what’s on the channel tonight? And while I’m on the subject [...]

My trusty Netgear ADSL router gave up the ghost yesterday which was a bit inconvenient. Some investigations pinned it down to a problem with the wireless on the router so I phoned Sky technical support.  I was most surprised to get an answer at 10pm and even more surprised to speak to someone who spoke [...]

The English Democrats have been spamming Facebook for months now, setting up groups for England and St Georges Day and then re-branding them as English Democrats supporters groups when they get a few members in a desperateyl pathetic attempt to look like they have some support. Every group I was a member of that they [...]

Thanks to our glorious overlords on the continent and their proxy war with the US through the medium of anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft, Windows 7 in Europe will ship without Internet Exploder. Yes, Internet Explorer is a shit browser but there are plenty of websites out there that just don’t work properly with Firefox and other browsers [...]

There’s another scam doing the rounds on Facebook – this one puts a message in your notifications as follows: Friend Name has faced some errors when checking your profile View The Errors Message  The spelling mistake is a clue but it’s subtle and I must admit, I nearly clicked on the Activate button after clicking [...]

How many browsers have you got installed on your computer? One? Two? Er … five? I’m writing this post in Google’s new Chrome browser which I’ve just downloaded and installed for a test drive. So, what do I think? Well … the interface is nice. I like the way it turns over most of the [...]

Part of the British government’s plan to censor the internet includes requiring video websites to vet all their content before it’s published.  This, they claim, will protect us from seeing porn and happy slapping and the like. There is, of course, a pretty simple way of protecting yourself from viewing porn and violence on the internet [...]

A handful of ex-Googlies have set up a new search engine which they reckon is going to beat Google. Hmmm.  Well, I saw this mentioned on BBC News earlier today but didn’t bother checking it out.  Then I saw a thread about it on Telford Live so I thought I’d best give it a whirl [...]

Sometimes it seems like everyone in the IT world thinks they’re a psychic – every other day there’s some headline declaring the imminent death or arrival of something computer related. This time it’s the turn of the humble mouse.  Not the little rodent that goes squeak squeak, can’t stand cheese and craps in your cereal [...]

We bought a Nintendo Wii the other day and I strongly recommend one for every household, particularly if there’s a fatty in the household like there is in ours (me ). I’m sitting here typing this with sweat dripping off me (pleasant image, I know) after spending just 10 minutes playing on the Wii. In [...]

Looking at the browser stats for Wonko’s World, it seems that the newly released Firefox 3 is proving pretty popular – 124 visitors have used Firefox 3 so far despite the first release candidate being available for only a month. By way of comparison, only 88 people have visited using Opera since I started using [...]

Good old Sky, you’ve gotta love ‘em. I introduced a friend to Sky and got a free Sky Plus box for the introduction. I phoned the number on the letter and gave them the details. A couple of months passes and the phone call to sort out the installation hasn’t materialised so I phoned them [...]

I’ve just signed the petition for a .ENG domain courtesy of DotEng. The rules on top-level domains are being relaxed and this will make a .ENG domain much easier to secure than previously. If the .SCO or .CYM campaigns for Scotland and Wales are successful that will set a precedent for all the home nations. [...]

The insurance company finally paid out on my broken laptop so I’ve finally been able to get a replacement. It’s a nice bit of kit but it came with Vista, Microsoft’s most controversial operating system so far.  I’ve read and heard good and bad reports of Vista but so far I quite like it. After [...]

The British government has announced its intention to shut down England’s radio telescope array, Jodrell Bank. The Science & Technology Fund is facing an £80m shortfall in its budget which it intends to plug by cutting funding.  So far, £8m of taxpayers money has been spent on the e-Merlin project which is an upgrade to [...]

I’m a bit of a flip-flopper when it comes to web browsers. Back in the day I swapped between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator then between Internet Explorer and Firefox. I swapped to Firefox because it supported tabs and then back to Internet Explorer when version 7 introduced tabs. In the intervening period I dabbled [...]

Yahoo has rejected a takeover offer of $41bn (nearly £21bn) from Micro$oft saying that it undervalued the company! Shares in Yahoo closed at $19.18 (about £10) on the 1st February when Micro$oft made their offer and the $41bn offer would have been worth $31 (about £15) per share.  Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal reckons that [...]