After commenting the other day how slow Microsoft Word is, I started to wonder if there were any updates available for MS Office. Up until now, I assumed that MS Office was automatically included in Windows Update but it seems apparently not.

There's Windows Update - http://www.update.windows.com - which gives you the latest security patches and upgrades for the Windows operating system. But there is also Microsoft Upgrade - http://www.update.microsoft.com - which covers all the Microsoft products including Office. When I ran Microsoft Update, it ran for 9 minutes and then gave me a list of 17 urgent security upgrades for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Outlook.

So if you were not aware that Microsoft Update even existed then go to the site now and check for urgent security upgrades! You'll probably find you have quite a few waiting for you.

I am a total fanatic about speed. I want computer / internet things to go fast. To quote Top Gun, "I feel the need, the need for speed!".

Nothing aggravates me more than something going as slow as a 56k modem. Since I have DSL broadband, I figure it isn't asking much for my Firefox browser to open within the next century or for Gmail to load before it gets out of beta. So I am constantly looking for hacks and tweaks to make things go faster. I am constantly tweaking the Windows Registry to disable non-essentials and to make other things go faster. When I re-boot the computer, I am sitting there with a stop-watch timing how long it takes for the PC to re-boot fully.

As a result, I have noticed the Windows OS speeding up more but three programs are still refusing to speed up for me - Firefox, Gmail and Microsoft Word (Word being the biggest offender). But I have found a few interesting tips that have helped to a certain degree :

Firefox : strip down all non-essential extensions first of all, including any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts. This includes anything that has no real practical use but only makes the browser look pretty (such as Color Tabs). Once that's done, right-click on the Firefox shortcut on your PC desktop and in the target box (where it says "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"), put /prefetch:1 at the end to now make the link "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /prefetch:1 . What does this do? It makes the Windows operating system cache the Firefox browser to make it open faster (Windows normally does this with Internet Explorer so you're basically switching it around so Windows does it with Firefox instead). You will need to open and close Firefox a few times though to see any change but eventually I HAVE noticed Firefox speeding up slightly.

I also found this which is a tweak to the about:config browser feature. I did what the author suggested and nothing appears to be going wrong as a result!

Another thing which has helped is uninstalling any unnecessary toolbars and browser buttons. So choose your one favourite toolbar (mine is the irreplaceable Google Toolbar) and disable the rest. I strongly recommend avoiding the Yahoo toolbar which in my opinion is bloated and not as flexible as the Google Toolbar.

Remove any buttons from your browser which you don't need (right-click on the bar and choose "customise"). I eventually managed to get everything I needed onto one bar and the difference in speed is noticable. The appearance of the browser is also nicer and sleeker. Less really is more.

Gmail : This is a tough one which has annoyed me for ages. I love Gmail but its loading speed is embarrassingly long. But some things I have picked up in my speed quest. In the "settings", choose 25 conversations for your main view (you can choose to have up to 100 conversations in your main view which REALLY slows things down). Disable any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts and any other unnecessary features in the Gmail settings. Install the Better Gmail extension and in the options, remove the invitation box (remove the labels box too if you feel you don't need it). The key is to not give Gmail too much to load up and to strip it down to the bare minimum that you need. Even with these changes though, it COULD be a lot faster.

Microsoft Word : I have NOT found anything about speeding up MS Word. If anyone can provide any tips on how to make MS Word open faster and load "doc" files faster, I would be grateful. I use MS Word a lot and so far it is really annoying me when it can take up to 15 seconds to open a document (which might not sound a lot but you sit at your PC for 15 seconds and you'll realise quickly what I mean). At times I am seriously tempted to install Open Office which does the same job as MS Office and is free.

Oh and before I forget, the award for the slowest installation ever goes to iTunes. I installed the upgrade to iTunes yesterday evening and it took a staggering 16 minutes to upgrade an already-existing program. It refreshed "registered components" 6 times, removed "security features" 5 times and by the time it announced to great fanfare that it was finished, I was blinking unbelievably at the PC clock, trying to work out if I had got the 16 minutes time wrong. But nope, it started at 21.41 and ended at 21.57. Then when I opened iTunes, I couldn't see any difference between that version and the last version!

Any other speed freaks here with tips on making the computer go faster? Put them in the comments!

I have 3 remaining invitations to give away for Pownce. This is a site where you can build a network of your friends and securely send them links, files, messages and much more!

If you'd like one of the three invitations, please contact me with a valid email address. When the three invitations are gone, I will post an update to this post so you can all stop emailing! ;-)

The internet being what it is, there's a lot of crap out there. But in among the dung are a few gold nuggets which you should fish out and treasure. One of them is 3 particular email newsletters.

Email newsletters have partly suffered from the advent of RSS feeds (I cut my newsletter subscriptions by as much as 75% when RSS was introduced). A lot of email newsletters contain advertising and I quickly unsubscribe from those. But there are 3 newsletters that I practically read as soon as they arrive in my inbox.

Here, based on years of reading, are my recommendations for the top 3 newsletters you MUST subscribe to. I have removed specialist newsletters such as freelance writing vacancies or computer geekery as they won't be of much interest to the non-writers and non-geeks of the world.

1. This Is True

Written by Randy Cassingham, This Is True comes out each week as both a free version and a paid premium version (after months of procrastination, I finally upgraded to the paid version). TIT (great acronym!) covers weird and wacky stories found in the international media such as a man suing his doctor because he survived his cancer longer than the doctor predicted. Or only 68 of 200 Anglican priests polled could name all Ten Commandments, but half said they believed in space aliens. All the stories are true (hence, "This Is True").

What I like about Randy is that he makes some commentary on the stories and his views are often thought-provoking. He also adds on funny tag-lines to each story which are almost as funny as the story itself. He also has a "Bonzer Site" section where he shows you a cool new website he has found and "Honorary Unsubscribe" where he does an obituary on a recently-deceased person who made an impact in the world but was probably overlooked by the world's media. Oh and if that ain't enough, he has other sites such as his blog, Jumbo Joke, and Cranky Customer.

TIT has spawned books and also a TV channel broadcast on YouTube. Oh and if you're feeling a little unsecure, why not purchase a "Get Out of Hell Free" card. Hey, I've got mine! ----------->>>>>


2. True Stella Awards

Also written by Randy Cassingham (where does this guy find all the time?!), the True Stella Awards are named after Stella Liebeck who won $2.9 million from a New Mexico jury after she spilled hot McDonalds coffee on her lap. So the "True Stella Awards" are a look at some of the most ludicrous lawsuits currently working their way through the US legal system. Includes commentary and links to relevant online news stories. TSA are not published as often as This Is True due to Cassingham's time restraints (he has recently hired some "guest writers" to help him with the articles). Still worth a look though if you have an interest in the law.


3. The Straight Dope

I'd like to ask Cecil one important question - how does he know so much? (my hunch is that he looks on Google!). The Straight Dope gives you the answers to any burning questions you may have. Cecil gives long and fascinating answers and I guarantee you will be bookmarking a lot of his pages for future reference! Oh and the FAQ is a real hoot - especially number 15.

OK, the title of this post is slightly misleading as it may not be 10GB for you. But the following method is definately one worth doing to see how much space you can claim back from the Windows OS (as it already takes far too much).

There's a feature on your PC (if you have XP or Vista) called "System Restore". This allows you to roll your PC back to a previous state if you screw something up. Now by default, the System Restore feature uses 12% (!) of the total space on your drive to save restore point files and settings. If you use the standard settings, XP creates a restore point every day. The actual size of a restore point varies but using the standard settings, your PC could be holding data on 200 system restore points, which you don't really need.

Now you can easily reduce that System Restore space to just 1GB on your hard-drive which all you will ever need. When you do so, XP will delete the rest of the data and give you the space back. Plus in the future, System Restore points will only use up that 1GB of space.

Since I am using a German language PC, it is pointless to make screenshots if you don't understand German, so just do this : go to Control Panel then System then System Restore. Now using your mouse, slide that slider to the left until you get to around 1000MB (1GB) of space. This should be either 1% or 2%. When done, click the "apply" button to save the changes then "OK".

Now how much space did you get back? I got 10GB!

Power users of Google Reader rejoice! Someone has finally grown tired of waiting for Google to get its act together and has written a Greasemonkey script putting a search box in Google Reader.

Of course to have Greasemonkey, you need to have the Firefox browser. Then just download the script and refresh your Reader page.

I wonder what millenium Google will finally bring out their own official search engine for Reader?

As you will perhaps have noticed (if you've visited this blog in the past), I now have a nifty looking navigation bar above, courtesy of a bit of CSS coding (the pink bar).

I had originally asked for bids on Rent A Coder as I was initially unable to do this myself but I found myself the unwitting participant of a dispute with one of the coders. Basically he did the work without me approving his bid first which put me in a difficult situation morally and legally (morally because he had shown me how to do it myself so why should I pay for it now? Legally because I couldn't use his work without paying for it). After consulting with Rent A Coder's legal department, I decided the best course of action would be to delete the work he gave me and forget how to do it (which is easy as my memory is atrociously bad due to all the epilepsy and depression medication I take) and I asked a friend here in Germany to pull an all-nighter with me last night to make our own version. That way, my conscience is clear - I don't steal the work from this particular coder, I don't get into legal trouble because of it and I still get my navigation bar.

Despite my initial bump in the road with the site, Rent A Coder seems to be an excellent site if you're looking for any programming to be done and I will definately be going back in the future with more projects I would like to see done.

You'll notice that there is an option in the bar called "Other Blogs". I have now started another blog - Epileptic Lifestyle - and I have two other blogs in the works. So you can use that "other blogs" button to go to my Blogger profile where the links to my other blogs will be displayed. I hope you'll read them often and subscribe to the RSS feed.

When I was making some Google Toolbar buttons on Monday, I made one for one of my favourite websites, Lifehacker.com and I sent it into the Lifehacker editors as a little gift (since I am a nice chap). Just now, they put it on the Lifehacker website for other readers to download and use!

My 30 seconds of fame! :-)

Bookmarking websites takes up quite a bit of my day as I do a lot of research for the freelance writing assignments that I take on. So I often find myself bookmarking 30, 40...maybe even 50 sites in one day if they are relevant to what I am working on. So when my Firefox browser refused to let me bookmark anything today (and would crash if I persisted) then I knew I had a big problem on my hands.

It was giving me an error message saying that there was an "app incompatibility" and enquiries on the Mozilla Firefox user forum were no use (it suggested deleting the "localstore.rdf" file in the profile which may be corrupted). So on a whim (and rapidly running out of ideas), I decided to deactivate the "Add Bookmark Here" extension and see what happened. The problem immediately went away and bookmarks started being saved again. So there's your culprit. :-(

First the Skype extension and now this - two of my favourite Firefox extensions down the tubes! What's next? Please Lord, not the Google Toolbar or the "copy plain text" extension! Mercy please!

For months now I have been testing the German beta version of Firefox's eBay extension. I have been extremely impressed by its stability and features and it has rapidly become one of my "must-have" extensions. I buy (and sell to a lesser extent) on eBay all the time and that extension is extremely handy. You get a pop-up notification when you have been outbid, when the auction is about to end and much more.

Now it seems that the extension has come out of beta as eBay is now advertising it. I can only find the British version and the German version. If anyone can find a US version, please post the link here.

If you use eBay and Firefox, this extension is a must-have.

If your computer is your second home, like mine is, you might, from time to time, have a power-nap at the computer while you're waiting for that defrag job to finish. I recently found an online alarm clock that can wake you up in either 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or 60 minutes.

Amusingly called "The Naked Alarm Clock", it is a simple clock which shows the time on your computer and allows you to set an alarm to wake you up again. You can choose from four different alarm types and is easy to use.

I have been a huge fan of Ad-Aware for years, ever since Spybot Search & Destroy really DID search out and destroy by nuking my Windows OS. Ad-Aware, on the other hand, has never caused me any problems and I have become a huge fan of the product - I like products that work like they say they do, without any hidden surprises. But after installing Ad-Aware 2007, I may have to revise that opinion quite a bit.

The first problem was that when installing the 2007 version, it didn't automatically over-write the previous version. So I ended up with two Ad-Aware programs on the computer. So I had to uninstall both programs and delete any relevant remaining files on the hard-drive including registry entries. I then re-installed 2007 on its own and it seemed to work - for a while. But to date, I have been unable to get the program to complete a full spyware scan.

When I ask it to do a full scan, it starts off promisingly enough but 15-20 minutes into the scan, it says it has encountered an "unexpected error" and it shuts the scan down, effectively forgetting what spyware it has found and going back to square one. This has been going on every day for ten days now and I am about to search out and destroy Lavasoft (the company that makes Ad-Aware).

I am seriously considering re-installing the older version. I normally don't like to do this but hey it worked for years without a hitch! Plus the 2007 version keeps bugging me to upgrade to a paid version which is seriously pissing me off. In my dictionary, "free" means "free of any charge". It DOESN'T mean, "free but only on the condition that we bug you every day until you upgrade".

Is anyone else having problems with Ad-Aware 2007? Please tell me I am not the only one going through this crap.

I found out today that Paul Potts is due to release his debut album on July 20th here in Germany. Although I will probably buy it on iTunes.

I am impatient more than anyone for his debut album to be released but that is awfully fast. I mean, he only won the Britain's Got Talent show last month!

I really hope for Paul's sake that they haven't rushed out a botched sub-standard album simply to cash in on Paul's sudden and overwhelming popularity. The enormously talented guy deserves much better than that.

In case you haven't got a clue what I am talking about, here is his initial audition, his semi-final performance and his final performance.

I recently blogged about Google Browser Sync not installing on my Portable Firefox on my USB stick. Well if it was only GBS not working then I would have just stopped using it and forgotten all about it. But ALL my Firefox extensions were not working on my Portable Firefox and that obviously needed to be fixed. Firefox is not the same without my extensions. I spend a lot of time customising my Firefox browser so I would like to be able to take it on the move with me.

At first I thought that it was the fault of the USB stick not reading the information properly. But then I was looking at the development website of John Haller (the man who developed the Portable Firefox application, as well as a whole host of other portable apps). It turns out that each portable app has its own FAQ and forum board and it was on the forum board that I found out the fix for getting my Firefox extensions to work on my USB stick.

All you need to do is go into your profile folder in your Portable Firefox and delete "extensions.rdf" and any cache files and any "ini" files. Delete them from the trash bin and then re-start Portable Firefox.

Bingo! My extensions started working and Google Browser Sync is good to go!

I love it when problems finally solve themselves and things start working again. You just can't beat that feeling.

This morning I set up a second Skype account and I added my main ID (camelot2302) to the new Skype account. So I was basically sending an authorisation request to myself to add myself to my account. This is the window my new account received.

Notice the yellow message underneath! That just cracked me up. I haven't seen it before either (I approved or declined a few authorisation requests yesterday and that yellow warning message wasn't there).

Would I want someone like me to contact me? I don't know. That is one weird unnerving eye looking at me!

The benefits of setting up a second account can be many. For a start, you can use a second account as a security precaution to check up on your home while you're away. This has been blogged about before but of course Murphy's Law dictates that I can't find those blog posts now that I need them. I vaguely remember someone at eBay blogging about it but I'll be damned if I can find it now.

Anyway, what you do is this - set up your second account (in the options panel) to answer calls automatically and make sure your webcam is switched on and obviously it goes without saying that your computer needs to be on (!). Then when you're away and you want to check up on things at home, use your main account to call your second account. When the call goes through, the second account answers automatically, the webcam kicks in and bingo, you have a security camera with which to see if a burglar is rifling through your drawers (ooh-er missus!).

The guy at eBay who originally blogged about this also had his PC speakers switched on so he was able to call to his dog who was in the room. So you can also use this second account method to harass poor animals too!

Oh and you can also use a second account to initially talk to people whom you don't quite trust yet with your main Skype account. Then when you're convinced they're not a lunatic stalker who will hound your life forever, you can move them over to your main Skype account for further contact.

Sometimes it pays to be paranoid - sometimes they really are out to get you!

Del.icio.us is one of my favourite websites and I use it to tag sites every day. In fact, anyone that subscribes to this site's RSS feed also gets a copy of my tagged sites every day. So when I read today that they are planning to change the site, I became concerned.

Don't get me wrong - I am not averse to improvements and upgrades. But sometimes a website doesn't need to be changed. The Del.icio.us site works fine, it is stable, I have never seen it crash, it does what it promises - so why change it? What could the Del.icio.us team do to possibly improve on what is already there?

This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of Web 2.0. Website feel that in order to "stay in the game", they have to constantly modernise and upgrade their websites. If a rival goes all flashy then everyone else has to as well, lest they be accused of "lagging behind". Why can't people just recognise a winning formula and stick with it? Minimalism is good - just look at the Google website. They've hardly changed their design ever and look how successful they are.

Sometimes it isn't the design that counts but the service you offer your visitors. The rest is just meaningless window dressing.

OK, I admit it. I am addicted to RSS feeds. They're really useful for monitoring multiple websites and I wouldn't get my daily fix of news if I wasn't subscribed to the CNN feed and the BBC feed. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time each day reading them so I cut out all the non-essentials and outright crap and came up with my best "must-have" 50 feeds (although sometimes that creeps up a bit if I have a run of good luck finding interesting blogs).

But quite often I am too busy to check my Google Reader app and when I do log in, I find 150+ new posts waiting for me. So when I was reading Steve Rubel's excellent "Micro Persuasion" blog, he mentioned that he has the same problem and he uses a service called RSSfwd to have new blog posts emailed to him. You still have the original posts sitting in your RSS reader but copies are emailed to you, free of charge.

What are the benefits of this service? Well for a start, I check email much more than I check RSS feeds. So if an interesting / important post is put on a blog, I am likely to see it faster if it is sent directly to my email inbox. Second, using Gmail's filters, I can have the email automatically labelled and, once it's read, archived so I end up with a database of posts from my favourite blogs. So if I need to find a certain post in the future, I can simply search my Gmail archive for it (Google Reader still doesn't have a "search" capability which, considering that Google is a search engine company, is really perplexing!)

The best way to set it up is to do what Steve suggests and set up a separate folder in your RSS reader (mine is "favs"). Then label the RSS feeds you want sent to you with the "favs" label and give the RSS links for your "favs" label to RSSfwd. That way, if you want to add or remove feeds from your RSSfwd mailings, all you have to do is add or remove the "favs" label, which is a lot easier than separately unsubscribing from each feed.

How do you keep on top of your RSS feeds? Can anyone suggest a better idea?

** This blog post has been edited since it was first published earlier today **

update : 13.25 - after discussing the issue further with Peter Kalmstrom, he has made me realise that I am confusing the toolbar with the extension. So I have updated the post accordingly. Apologies for the confusion.

update : 14.05 - it appears I may have to uninstall the extension! After 15 minutes of running, my Firefox browser is hovering around 50% of CPU usage (at one point, it shot up to 81%!). It hasn't been like this since I uninstalled the toolbar. I have informed Peter at Skype and he is looking into the situation. I'll update the blog post if I learn anything new.


I previously commented that my Firefox browser was crashing due to a crappy Skype toolbar and so I had to uninstall it to rescue my Fox. It looks like the blog post quickly came to the attention of the right people because this morning, I received a Skype chat message from Peter Kalmstrom who is the Skype manager for toolbars. He and the German Skype forum moderator, Claudius Henrichs, both informed me that the Skype toolbar is not a Firefox feature that automatically updates and that you have to manually update it yourself. Not manually updating the Skype toolbar, it appears, can cause some compatibility problems!

It seems you can update the toolbar in the following ways :

1. From the menu of the toolbar - there is an option there to check for newer versions.

2. By downloading and installing the latest version from the website.


This begs the question why the Skype toolbar is not automatically updated by Firefox (just like most other FF features). I mean, if you're busy, who remembers on a regular basis to update everything? Mr Kalmstrom replied that this is because "we have not done it strictly according to the FireFox framework". OK but why is this fact not widely advertised on the Skype website / forum? I wonder how many Skype users uninstalled the toolbar in disgust, not realising that the problems they were experiencing could easily be removed by manually updating the toolbar? If you don't openly advertise this issue then no-one will ever know - all it takes is a short message on the Skype download page, something along the lines of "please be aware that when you upgrade your Skype program, it's a good idea to upgrade the toolbar too". One sentence that could remove headaches from a lot of annoyed Skype toolbar / Firefox users!

So if your Skype toolbar is playing up, you can update it using one of the two methods outlined above. Or instead you can install the alternative Skype Firefox extension. If you would prefer the extension, here's what to do. I did the following and it appears to be OK so far....(fingers crossed).

1. Download the latest version of Skype from the Skype website.

2. When it is downloaded, run the "Skypesetup.exe" file. The following window will open. Click on "options"



3. Then this next window will open. Make sure the box "Install Skype Plugin for Mozilla Firefox" is ticked (or the Internet Exploder one if you use that.....uuurgh!). Then click "install".




4. The Skype program will then be re-installed on your computer along with the current version of the Firefox extension. But a warning - doing this install will require a re-boot of your computer! So make sure you're not in the middle of anything important when you're doing this!


Kudos to Skype for taking the time and effort to help me out with this toolbar issue. They really do look after their users.

Going off-topic for a moment, I often get asked to explain the title of this blog and it's quite simple really. For those of who who don't know me on an intimate level, I have epilepsy and manic depression. The epilepsy has been around like an unruly relative outstaying her welcome since 1988 and the manic depression burst out in 2002 after God knows how many years lying in dormant wait.

When I had my breakdown in 2002, I went through various forms of medical treatment - first off was invariably the pills (LOTS of them) and then came therapy sessions which were basically forced upon me by a health insurance company trying to protect their profit margin, growing alarmed at my mounting medical bills. But therapy in the end wasn't for me. I hold the mental health profession in the highest of respect but some people just don't take to therapy. Others find it beneficial and others find it a total waste of time. I belong to the latter group. The therapist tried hard but really he only ended up making things worse. But I was obliged to do all 24 sessions as prescribed by the insurance company. In the end, I only did 23 and then walked away. Maybe missing the last one was a small act of rebellion on my part or maybe I just didn't have the time and inclination. Who knows and who cares 4 years on?

As treatment options faded for me, I was told that in all probability I would have to deal with the illnesses on their own. That I would have to find some way of reconciling myself to a life of hardship and suffering and one doctor told me to only do things in life that gave me pleasure. That way, if I was doing something I enjoyed, that at least would partly blunt the brutal effects of the depression & epilepsy symptoms (which by this time were inextricably linked). He advised me to find some hobbies and pleasurable pursuits. He urged me to decide what I was passionate about and then throw myself right into it without thinking about it. It was good advice.

I realised at that point that computers were my main passion. Up until 2001, I only had a passing knowledge of them but when I moved to Germany in 2001, my girlfriend's brother introduced me to computers and the internet. I discovered software programs that thrilled me with what they could do. I fervently monitored the rapid development of the internet and how it was able to influence our lives for good or for worse. I realised that my passion for writing would be helped by starting to write blogs like this one, and I realised that the internet could connect me with fellow epilepsy & depression sufferers as well as being a source of information for the latest advances in medical research in psychiatry and neurology. Then I started to learn HTML and I got my own domain. I am currently starting to study Microsoft Access to learn how to build databases.

In short, I realised that the time I spent in front of the computer and learning new things is much better than a therapy session. For when I learn something new and build something new, that achievement boosts my ego. It makes me realise that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. So when I was thinking of a title for this blog last year, there really was only one title in the running!

But I have other passions apart from computers and the internet - I love to collect stamps (my grandad has been collecting for 60 years and it gives me immense pride to continue the family tradition). I collect books, I collect banknotes & coins, and my other passion is my family. For years I slowly drifted apart from them but my health problems have made me realise that family can be better than medication, that blood really is thicker than water. I try to connect with them as often as possible, contacting relatives who haven't heard from me in a long time and allowing them to make me feel better in ways that compulsory therapy never could.

So as well as writing about computer issues, I would like to diverge a little now and then and write about other things that I am passionate about. The latest stamps I have found, the latest coins I have picked up and the latest books I am reading. For all these things really are better than therapy.

So if your Firefox is doing a dying swan act everytime you open it (and you also have the Skype toolbar), you now know who the culprit is!

I am really pissed off because that was one of my favourite extensions!