New era in broadcasting

BBC has apparently started allowing people to download its content via P2P technologies, and for free!

I know that Channel 5 and ITV have also joined the race by allowing their viewers to download programmes through their websites but they have been charging for it.

I think Sky has a similar offer as well.

This means that the broadcasting as we know it is changing and most of it will be driven through the internet rather than the airwaves in the future.

New articles from Appleton Estates

Appletons have started publishing some articles on the website. This is a mixture of lettings and estate agency related articles.

Free anti-spam filters for Windows

It's not as difficult to find free and legitimate software on the internet anymore. The open source society is working wonders out there and some of the software you get is almost as good as the packages you have to pay for.

So, I was looking for an open source anti-spam software the other night. A simple search in Google would bring up thousands of links, and mostly about free trials but eventually I came across a comparison site. I think my main 3 options were the MailWasher, the Spamihilator and the SpamBayes.

After reading up on these 3 options, I decided to go for the SpamBayes due to its ease of installation and significant similarity to Norton AntiSpam for use.

It is also using some clever "learning" techniques based on what you class as "junk". For the geeks out there, it is using some clever ase Bayesian algorithms to do this.

Anyway, just installed it and getting it tested at the moment, I'll report more on the outcomes.

The Prestige

I saw the film the other night. The trailers looked good but I wasn't particularly intending to watch it. When I turned up the other options were the "Jackass 2" and "the Tenacious D" and some others that didn't look good. Ah, and the Mr Bond.

Visually it is really good and the decor is pretty impressive as well. Of course the best part is the cast. By the way, I didn't know David Bowie was in it.

Anyway, there are a few twists and turns to the story. Probably from the middle of the movie, you can predict the final twist but it is still grabbing.

I would definitely recommend it. I'm glad I watched it instead of the Bond movie as the Bond movies tend to have a pretty standard story line.

Turkish entry discussions on hold due to Cyprus

What a diabolical decision on EU's behalf.

Quite recently, UN comes up with a proposal of uniting the island. The Turkish side accepts it, the Greek side rejects it.

The EU then awards the Greek side full membership while keeping the embargo on the Turkish side. In response to the the Turkish Republic decides not to open its ports to the Greek Cypriot side as the issue is nore resolved yet. But, its negotiations halt due to EU forcing this issue.

I think Turkish Republic is better off not entering the EU. The Turkish people have had enough of the begging and being told off and the double standards. Just take a look at the human rights argument that is being dictated to Turkey. How laughable is that? Are the human rights really so much different than any other so called "Westernized" country? Does Turkish government hold "terror suspects" without charging them almost indefinitely? Do the Turkish scientists get killed mysteriously for telling the public that there are no "weapons of mass destruction" is Iraq? Does Turkey support unilateral war on "evils of axis" without the UN support?

The EU need Turkish Republic more as a member state than Turkey needing to enter the EU.

Uploading pics to WordPress blog from Flickr

All of a sudden, I couldn't upload pics to my other blog from Flickr. Here's the trick if you're having the same problem:

Put the following lines in to you .htaccess file on the webserver:


SecFilterInheritance Off


More testimonials for Appletons

Appletons are receiving a lot of positive feedback from the landlords. It is very encouraging.

Liverpool are through to the next round of Champions League

Come on you Reds...

Firefox 2.0

The long awaited FF 2.0 browser is finally here. I've started using it today and the first impressions are very good. Especially the memory use seems to be more efficient but I need to carry out more tests to find out the boundaries.

The IE7 has also been released just a couple of days ago and I haven't heard many things about it.

The FF will continue gaining market share by the looks of it. Currently it has around 15% of the browser market.

Browser wars continue

According to BBC, the Internet Explorer browser will be automatically upgraded to 7.0 version. After 5 years of no real development from Microsoft, they've finally pulled their fingers out and decided to catch up with Firefox. Of course the main driver is the big market share loss to the Firefox.

IE is introducing all the cool features that I've been using for over a year now.

The twist in the tail is that FF is also going to release their 2.0 version, which should put them ahead again. I can't wait to see what new features they're introducing. Also, I keep my fingers crossed that they'll improve the efficiency of the memory usage.

No SPAM

FF search engine list modifications

The FF seems to keep the search plugins at the following location:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

All that is required is to edit the .src file for the search engine script that needs modification with "wordpad".

For example, I used this to change my Yahoo entry from yahoo.com to yahoo.co.uk.

Appleton Estates in the media

Appletons have received good media coverage on top of the weekly advertising in the local newspapers such as, Maidenhead Advertiser and Reading Chronicle. Now a selection can be found at the Appletons in press page.

King Cobra

King Cobra golf clubs are great.

The King Conra woods have been very kind to me. Since I've changed my driver, my driving has improved around 50 yards and they seem to be right in the middle of the fairway :) I even managed to outdrive some big hitters with my 3 wood.

Definitely recommend it to anyone.

YouTube

It is now an old story but it is still an amazing one. It goes to show that a niche idea is still invaluable; well valued around £800 million :)

I am glad to see that these guys made so much money. I only met YouTube about a year ago via word-of-mouth and have been using it. Their product was so good that they didn't even have to advertise, as far as I know. And, best of all it has been all Free!!!

This also goes to show the power of the internet that if there is something good on the internet, it does reach millions of people in no time.

The British singer (I can't remember the name, "I wish I was a punk rocker" one) was another great example.

Let's hope that we come up with a good idea like that one day too :)

^ in regular expressions pattern matching

^ in regular expressions means the start of a string. For example,

^Hello will find you the words starting with "Hello".

Ramadan started

Fasting started last Sunday. Following is the timetable from islamicfinder.org:

Day	October	Hijri	Fajr	Sunrise	Dhuhr	Asr	Maghrib	Isha
Sun	1	8/9	5:11	7:01	12:53	4:01	6:44	8:29
Mon	2	9/9	5:15	7:04	12:53	3:57	6:39	8:24
Tue	3	10/9	5:17	7:06	12:52	3:55	6:37	8:21
Wed	4	11/9	5:18	7:08	12:52	3:54	6:35	8:19
Thu	5	12/9	5:20	7:09	12:52	3:52	6:32	8:17
Fri	6	13/9	5:22	7:11	12:51	3:50	6:30	8:14
Sat	7	14/9	5:24	7:12	12:51	3:49	6:28	8:12
Sun	8	15/9	5:24	7:12	12:51	3:49	6:28	8:12
Mon	9	16/9	5:25	7:14	12:51	3:47	6:26	8:10
Tue	10	17/9	5:29	7:17	12:50	3:44	6:21	8:05
Wed	11	18/9	5:30	7:19	12:50	3:42	6:19	8:03
Thu	12	19/9	5:32	7:21	12:50	3:40	6:17	8:01
Fri	13	20/9	5:34	7:23	12:50	3:38	6:15	7:59
Sat	14	21/9	5:35	7:24	12:49	3:37	6:13	7:57
Sun	15	22/9	5:37	7:26	12:49	3:35	6:10	7:55
Mon	16	23/9	5:37	7:26	12:49	3:35	6:10	7:55
Tue	17	24/9	5:40	7:29	12:49	3:32	6:06	7:51
Wed	18	25/9	5:42	7:31	12:48	3:30	6:04	7:48
Thu	19	26/9	5:44	7:33	12:48	3:29	6:02	7:46
Fri	20	27/9	5:45	7:35	12:48	3:27	6:00	7:45
Sat	21	28/9	5:47	7:36	12:48	3:25	5:58	7:43
Sun	22	29/9	5:49	7:38	12:48	3:24	5:56	7:41
Mon	23	1/10	5:49	7:38	12:48	3:24	5:56	7:41
Tue	24	2/10	5:52	7:41	12:48	3:21	5:52	7:37
Wed	25	3/10	5:53	7:43	12:47	3:19	5:50	7:35
Thu	26	4/10	5:55	7:45	12:47	3:17	5:48	7:33
Fri	27	5/10	5:56	7:47	12:47	3:16	5:46	7:32
Sat	28	6/10	5:58	7:48	12:47	3:14	5:44	7:30
Sun	29	7/10	5:00	6:50	11:47	2:13	4:42	6:28
Mon	30	8/10	5:01	6:52	11:47	2:11	4:40	6:26
Tue	31	9/10	5:03	6:54	11:47	2:10	4:38	6:25

Maidenhead Schools

Appletons Maidenhead Estate Agents have now collected a list of the schools in Maidenhead on the Appletons website.

Local news

Appleton Estates have started publishing the news in Berkshire. This is a collection of the news from the BBC.

Why choose Appletons

Working on some more improvements on the Appletons and here's the article to explain what differentiates. It details why to choose Appletons.

One of the main key offering is that Appletons are on the leading edge of the Internet technology with the unique offering of 360-degree Virtual tours, etc.

Appletons in Maidenhead's Finest

Appletons have appreared in the latest edition of the Maidenhead's finest. Here's the article: Appletons in Maidenhead's Finest

Appleton Estates in the media

Appletons in the media since launch. Some of the articles still need to be completed.

Firefox memory leak

Has anyone else noticed that FF chews up a lot of memory? Especially my work laptop has this problem because of the minimal amount of memory it has. Here's the problem: FF has a lot of good features and some of htat deservedly require more memory and noone is complaining about it. The real problem is that Google does not seem to be releasing the memory evne when it has finished with it.

I find myself having to kill the firefox process from the task manager a lot on my laptop. Evne when I quit the browser, it holds onto the memory.

Of course, it makes everything else a lot slower.

Now I've searched and searched on the net but couldn't find a way to fix my problem. There are a few blogs explaining how to change the FF config but they haven't solved my problem so far.

I'll keep you posted if I find anything.

Totally addicted to CSI

I can't believe that I haven't come across the CSI series before. It's been such a long time since I last followed any TV series with such dedication :)

My favourate is the original CSI, then CSI Miami and finally the new CSI NY. For some reason, I find the NY a little cold. H in Miami overacts and poses a lot but even that is worth waiting for.

Although some of the plots are far fetched, I still like the series. Totally recommend it to anyone.

Poor start from Liverpool

It looks as though this season is going to be a tough one for Liverpool like the previous 10-15 years.

Liverpool looked pretty ordinary and let Sheffield take the initiative. After the Sheffield goal, Liverpool was always chasing the game.

Eventually, they found the equilasier but then seemed content with a draw.

Let's hope they improve as the season hots up.

Google observations

My observations on G SERPs after recent changes:
- more weight on the age of the site
- more weight on the age of the BLs
- less weight on the BLs from the dirs or forums
- potentially more weight on the size of the site (I don't think this is new)

I have no scientific evidence on this though!!!

First Month's free lettings commission

Appleton Estate Agents in Maidenhead we are running a special offer:

**NEW LANDLORDS**

FIRST MONTH'S COMMISSION IS FREE ON ALL NEW LETS (minimum six month tenancy) UNTIL THE END OF AUGUST 2006.

You can call Sarah on 0845 466 0046 for a FREE market appraisal of your property.

It is a geniune offer, don't miss it if you are thinking of letting your place.

British weather

I don't understand what people aree complaining about. I love this weather, it's nice and hot. In the winter, I literally go green due to the lack of sunshine. Com'n everyone just enjoy it. You know that it's not going to last long.

England out

Another heartache for the English fans, 'nough said.

Testing

How to upload a picture to the Blog without having to host them elsewhere.

England is in the quarter finals

England has made it to the quarters yet again. Although the opponents were one of the weakest in the knock-out stage, England's improved performance was the encouraging part of the game. For England fans, the better news is that their quarter-final opponents Portugal cannot put their strongest team on the pitch after the nail-biting game against Holland last night. The refereee must have been one of the worst I've seen in the tournament, almost par with Graham Poll :)

So, he ended up sending 2 Dutch and 2 Portugese players for 2 yellow cards. I believe he has shown 10-12 yellow cards during the game.

By the way, around 32nd minute, I told my friends that England would be scoring in the 60th minute. Some may call it a lucky prediction but I claim that I predicted that based on how the 2 teams played up until then.


Anyhow, let's hope England can carry on improving their performance.

Google Big Daddy update sucks

G seems to be updating its index for the last few weeks. With the new upf=dates, they've finally fixed couple of the commands. However, they seems to have majorly screwed up their indexing. Peole are complaining that that quite a few spam sites that were originally dropped from the G index are now back in. Not only that but the doorways seems to be back in fashion with the new update. I don't believe this is intentional but G somehow has made a big mistake somewhere.

London to Brighton

Yesterday, I finished the bike ride of 54 miles. I cycled all the hills as well apart from the "beacon". I had to walk the last 350 metres of it as I hadn't trained enough.

We started at 6:30am and arrived there at 11:40am. This also includes the stops of over 1 hour. All inn all, cycling 54 miles in 4.5 hours is not so bad for me.

And, I've managed to raise over £100-120 for the British Heart Foundation.

21st Century currency

If you search the net, you'll come across many conspiracy theories about the USA deliberately starting the Iraq war 'cause Saddam wanted to start trading in Euros instead of US Dollars.

New announcement from Google about their rival to Paypal, namely Gbuy, made me think whether Paypal and Gbuy will be the currencies of the 21st Century as there are billions of transactions carried out on the net everyday.

If the conspiracy theories are true, is the net going to be battlefield of the 21st Century?

Landlord Letter

A came across this joke in one of the forums and it cracked me up:
-------

A businessman met a beautiful girl and agreed to spend the afternoon with her for $500. They did their thing, and, before he left, he told her that he did not have any cash with him, but he would have his secretary write a check and mail it to her, calling the payment "RENT FOR APARTMENT."

On the way to the office he regretted what he had done, realizing that the whole event had not been worth the price. So he had his secretary send a check for $250 and enclose the following typed note:

Dear Madam:
Enclosed find check in the amount of $250 for rent of your apartment.
I am not sending the amount agreed upon, because when I rented the place, I was under the impression that:
#1 - it had never been occupied;
#2 - there was plenty of heat; and
#3 - it was small enough to make me feel cozy and at home.
However, I found out that it had been previously occupied, that there wasn't any heat, and that it was entirely too large."

Upon receipt of the note, the girl immediately returned the check for $250 with the following note:

Dear Sir:
First of all, I cannot understand how you could expect a beautiful apartment to remain unoccupied indefinitely. As for the heat, there is plenty of it, if you know how to turn it on. Regarding the space, the apartment is indeed of regular size, but if you don't have enough furniture to fill it, please do not blame the management. Please send the rent in full or we will be forced to contact your present landlady."

Testing

Testing

Testing the embedded video functionality with the blogger.

Has the summer finally arrived?

After an awful April-May period, has the British summer finally arrived?

In Turkiye, we are used to the summer starting around April time but having to wear the winter clothes until June is a bit too much. I finally managed to wear my short on Sunday when I attempted to cycle to Virginia Waters to Alex.

England and World Cup

There is such a build up to yet another big football tournament by the English, mostly fuelled by the media and the commercial expectations. You can probably find an English flag themed product ranging from footballs, shirts, socks, to dog outfits.

Anyway, again, the expectations are very high to win the World Cup.I'm watching the Jamaica game right now and the score is 5-0 to England but I don't personally think England will even make it to the final based on what I'm watching right now. This game should probably be 8-0 t England but the team just don't like a Wold Cup winning team.

I do wish all the best to the English team and I will be supporting them all the way as the Turkish side couldn't make it to the finals "yet again" :( but I don't think the manager is good enough to take this outstanding team to the final.

London to Brighton bike ride

I've finally started training for the bike ride tonight. There is about 3.5 weeks to go so I haven't got much time to train.

The good news for me is that without any training for the last 2 months, I've still managed to cycle nearly 1/3 of the final distance.

I'm going to start cycling into work as well tomorrow, hopefully it should help.

I didn't know

At the weekend, I bumped into My Hyde. He was telling me that this blog came up in a conversation. I didn't know people were aware of this blog, this is my place to rant and rave about things or try out some ideas to do with the websites.

From now on, I'll try and write some more interesting stuff if you're out there and reading this.

Letting negotiator vacancy

Appleton Estates is advertising a lettings job in Maidenhead.

Properties to let in Reading

Here's the latest Properties in Reading.

Properties to let in Maidenhead

Properties in Maidenhead

Properties in Reading

Properties to let in Maidenhead

Properties to let in Maidenhead

Properties to let in Reading

Another crap British day

Having recently come back from Istanbul where the temp was around 25 degrees on average, it sucks to have gray and cold weather again.

Turkish Food

Turkish Food has been launched to allow Turkish people in UK to order their favourite Turkish food from the comfort of their seat.

Another project

Opec Plc Facilities Management company provides bespoke and cost effective solutions. Their clients are able to concentrate on their core business function, safe in the knowledge that the service is flexible enough to meet the demands of changing business environments. Their in house mechanical and electrical capability can be combined with individually designed maintenance support solutions to provide an ongoing service.

Opec Construction Plc recognise that every organisation has a responsibility for the safety and security of its premises and personnel. Fire and Securities offer the knowledge of legislative regulations combined with the technical expertise to suit your requirements in respect of life and property protection systems.

Made it to the M.head Advertiser

I made it to the sports pages of the Maidenhead Advertiser last week for the Meridian FC win over the arch rivals Maidenhead Nomads.

Another Meridian win

Meridian FC match report from yesterday:

Windsor AFC 1
Meridian 3 (Mellin, Shaefer (pen), Ford)

On a blustery day Meridian won a closely contested Division 2 match. With neither side adapting particularly well to the conditions, this was a scrappy affair between the two finalists of the Mary Wells competition.

Meridian opened the scoring early in the first half via a Christian Shaefer break down the left wing. His cross eluded the Windsor defence and Nick Mellin was on hand at the far post to knock the ball into the net.

Taking advantage of the wind at their backs, Meridian had a couple of other chances in the first half but all shots went wide or were easy to save by the Windsor keeper.

In the second half and with the wind now in their favour, Windsor quickly equalised. Windsor midfielder Broom beat the Meridian offside trap, raced into the penalty box and put the ball past the onrushing Orr.

Meridian took the lead again midway through the half when a Windsor defender was adjudged to have handled in the box - Shaefer scoring from the penalty spot.

Windsor almost scored again via a break-away but midfielder Adil Akkus made a superb last gasp tackle in the penalty box to deny the forward.

In the closing minutes of the game Meridian scored again to put the result finally beyond doubt. James Brown's cross into the box was met by Darinder Bhangoo and his pass to James Ford was then powerfully prodded into the back of the net.

MERIDIAN MAN OF THE MATCH: Well done to James Ford for his all-round play and his goal at the end that killed off the game. Kudos also to Adil Akkus and Paul Corbin for their midfield work.

Paired Programming

I have been hearing a lot about paired programming recently. I've done some research on the net about this to find out what exactly "paired programming" involves.

First off, here's one of the better descriptions of Paired or Collaborative Programming from Wikipedia:

Decription:

"Pair programming requires two software engineers to participate in a combined development effort at one workstation.

Each member performs the action the other is not currently doing: While one types in unit tests the other thinks about the class that will satisfy the test, for example.

The person that is doing the typing is known as the driver while the person that is guiding is known as the navigator. It is often suggested for the two partners to switch roles at least every half-hour."

Pros/Cons

That are people for and against the idea for different reasons. The supporters of the idea argue that the paired programming
- increases software quality for various reasons.
- increases morale and team work
- speeds up the software delivery
- improves hands-on training of the junior programmers
- and spreads the code knowledge reducing the dependency on a single person for an area of the code.

Other people object that
- some people are more productive when they work on their own
- senior people may find it frustrating work with people who are still coming up to speed. Also, the new people may find it frustrating if the senior people have a tendency to take over the whole programming process.
- different people have different coding styles and there may be potential conflits.

I have found that the biggest objection to this idea is the lack of scientific research into comparing the productivity/quality of paired programming and the traditional approach.

I must admit over 11 years of my programming, personally, I have produced better results when programming with another person. My second ever proffessional project never had any bugs from the testers or the field and I was working very closely with another programmer. Can it be a concidence? Maybe I am more suited to working other people.

Future
Especially due to the following reasons, I see a lot of potential for the collaborative programming in the upcoming years:
- A very significant amount of software programming in the USA, UK and other countries have been outsourced to India, China, Russia and similar countries. One of the biggest challenges that have been well publicised is for the Western companies training up the outsourced partners and having enough control over the software that is being produced.
- Broadband technology has had a giant leap within the last few years. The analysts predict that the dial-up technology will be history very soon.
- Google is now trying to by-pass the whole dependency, created by Microsoft in the 80s, so that everything can be done over the internet without having to need anything but a browser.

So, the way I see it is that the paired programming can be and will used to have tighter relationships with the outsourced partners in the upcoming years.

Quicktime sucks

I have been having endless problems trying to play embedded WAV files using my Firefox 1.5 browser.

Also, I hate the fact that I cannot remove the Quicktime icon from my system tray.

On top of this, it keeps asking me if I want to register even though I've ticked the "don't want to register" option a million times.

Gmail chat issue

I am so angry about GMail's new Chats feature. I wasted a few days trying to figure out why one of my friends had this feature enabled but not me.

After a vigorous investigation, I figured out that it was because I had my language set to UK-English rather than US-English. Yanks think the universe revolves around the US. There is US and the rest of the world.

Euro 2008 draw

Turkey has had a lucky draw. The main challengers seem to be Greece and Norway on paper. I think it would be worth putting a few £ on Turkey winning the group.


Group C
Greece
Turkey
Norway
Bosnia
Hungary
Moldova
Malta

Google update and cache issue

Last few days I've noticed that I couldn't see the cached versions of some of my websites.

Looking through the forums, I've got the impression that there is a Google update recently started. I think the cache issue may be related to this update.

Football

Meridian is doing well this season, we've managed another win in a cup game this morning.

Winning it was even sweeter against a bunch of dirty players, Microblast FC. I hope they get what they deserve. In the game, they tried kicking me off the ball and one of them even stamped on my leg intentionally.

World's strongest man

Just finished watching the Met Rx World Strongest Man 2005 competition on telly. This year it was held in Chengdu, China. From the outset, there was only gonna be one winner, Mariusz Pudzianowski. Some of the competitors in the heats were not that good compared to others but 2 of the heats were amazing.

Throughout the heats and the final, 2 world records were smashed: Fingal Fingers, Hercules Hold and the Atlas stones.

I first got hooked on watching this event a few years ago when we were on holiday in Malta. That year the finals were in Malta and one of the competitions happened to be on the same beach as we were. The competitors are huge in physique. Their arms were almost as big as my legs :)

Anyway, Mariusz is only 28 and already has 3 world's strongest man titles under his belt. I reckon he has a few more years to dominate this competition.

Epson scam

I've been using an Epson RX500 printer at home. This is a replacement as the first one had to be replaced after 16 months or so. Luckily it was still within the warrenty period. Guess what, after 18 months of usage, this one has a fatal problem as well, identical to the first one.

Looking through the forums on the net, I don't seem to be the first one or last to see this. The printer says something like some parts of your printer are at the end of their life, service required. When you call up Epson helpline, they tell you that it would cost you too much to repair it and practically advise you to get a new one.

However, it seems to be a case of an internal counter reaching a limit in the printer rather and any obvious problems.

Anyway, I found a way of resetting the counters in the EPROM on the net. All I need to do now is to clean up the ink pads.