You are here: > Home > News

Blah blah blah blog...

23rd Oct '08: Apple's new MacBooks look and feel fantastic - you should see them at your local Apple store - and they are equipped with the latest cutting edge technology. However, that makes them very expensive. Although they are fantastic computers, in today's economic climate where the value of our property is falling, the unemployment rate is rising, the stockmarket is in turmoil, and money is tight, it seems like a bad time to introduce such expensive computers. Raising prices across the entire laptop range could well put off some potential purchasers. Steve Jobs with his millions in the bank doesn't know how tough it is for the rest of us.

This is why the computer I bought last month was a Windows laptop. For just under £350 I got a really nice laptop from PC World with a 15in screen, 1.8GHz processor, 2Gb RAM, 250Gb hard disk, Wi-Fi, 4x USB ports, and so on. It runs Windows Vista just fine.

I recently mentioned Microsoft's Live Mesh, a great service that puts a folder on your desktop that is automatically synchronised with every other PC that you use. You can save a file on your desktop PC at home or work, fire up your laptop in Starbucks or wherever you use it and there in the Live Mesh folder on the desktop is your file. It's brilliant if you use several computers.

Dropbox is an identical service that does exactly the same. Install the free software and it creates a folder wherever you want it. I prefer the desktop. The contents of this folder are automatically synchronised with every other computer you install the software on. Within the folder is a Public subfolder and this is one that others can access. So you can put files in there that others can access on their own computers. The rest of the files remain private. It's very similar to Live Mesh, but the software seems a bit more advanced because there are Windows, Mac and Linux versions whereas Microsoft has only got round to producing a Windows version.

I've no idea how these services make money. Microsoft obviously benefits because it's a Windows service, but Dropbox must have to either start advertising or charging at some point. Hopefully, there will be a two-tier service with a free basic account and a paid account with extra facilities. For the moment it's free, so go and sign up.

8th Oct '08: Microsoft's Live Mesh is an interesting project and it is another type of cloud computing service that aims to make your files available anywhere and on any device provided it has an internet connection. At the moment it only works on Windows PCs, but since most computer users in the world currently use them, it's not so bad. Support for mobile phones and Apple Macs is promised soon though. Everyone has a mobile phone and the top models are very capable hand-held devices, so it will be useful to be able to access files from anywhere - mobile phone access is much more widespread than Wi-Fi. Even Mac users might be tempted away from MobileMe, which has a similar iDisk service.

When you sign in at Live Mesh you'll be prompted to add a device and you can download a small program for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP/Vista. You can also access your online desktop too. You get 5Gb of storage space for free and the really cool thing is that when you create a folder on your online desktop, it is replicated on all desktop of all the systems that you connect to Live Mesh with. Normally folders on the Windows desktop are yellow, but you'll see a blue one and this is a Live Mesh folder. Any files you create or delete in here are copied transparently in the background to all other PCs with Live Mesh installed. What's more, there's a log window that records every action so you can see what has been done and when. It upens automatically when you open the blue Live Mesh folder on the Windows desktop.

It's an incredibly useful service if you work on multiple computers because you can keep your work files in the blue Live Mesh folder on the desktop and no matter which PC you use, you'll always see the latest files. You just open a file, make any changes that are necessary, save it and it's available on every other PC you use without you having to do anything special.

One thing you must remember though, is to give Live Mesh time to synchronise. It takes a little time to update the contents of the blue folder and this morning for example, I booted up and immediately accessed a file only to find it was an old version. I closed it, waited a few seconds and checked again. It was gone - because I had deleted it on another PC earlier. After another few seconds the up to date version that I had created on another PC was available. Obviously Live Mesh was working through the actions that had taken place and until internet transfers become instantaneous, this update delay will always exist. I'll just have to go and make a cup of coffee after switching on my PC to make sure it has time to sync. Live Mesh even works if you boot up Windows on a Mac too. It'll be even more useful - to me anyway - when there's a native Mac application.

04/10/08: Although Macbooks are portable computers, they aren't always used away from the office or home and you might occasionally, or even permanently, use one as a neat and compact desktop computer. After all, ignoring the Mac Mini, which isn't even a complete computer because it doesn't have a keyboard, monitor, mouse, or speakers, it is actually the cheapest way to buy a Mac.

Macbooks, being portable laptop computers, have a battery installed so that they can be used away from the home or office, but if you use it as a desktop computer that is permanently plugged into the mains power supply the question is whether to leave the battery installed or to remove it. Will it damage the battery? Will it over charge? Will it reduce its efficiency? These are important questions for people that use Macbooks as their main desktop computer either temporarily or permanently.

There is a very brief article in Apple's support section that says "MacBook and MacBook Pro: Mac reduces processor speed when battery is removed while operating from an A/C adaptor." So the Mac's speed is limited without the battery and it will run more slowly than normal. This is because it is supplied with a pathetic power supply that is not beefy enough to supply the Macbook with all the power it needs. Hey, but it looks cool and it has that clever connector. This is clearly a case of looks being more important than function, something that Apple is occasionally guilty of.

Another reason for keeping the battery in place and not removing it even though it is not needed is because one of the Macbook's feet is on the battery. There are four small feet un the underside, one in each corner, but one of them is on the battery. If you remove the battery then the Macbook wobbles! Not badly and you can live with it, but it definitely isn't as stable with the battery removed.

Will it damage the battery leaving it in and with the Macbook permanently plugged into the mains? Once a battery has been fully charged the power is cut and it stops charging, so you can't over charge it. Batteries leak charge slowly and eventually the charge will fall and the Mac will top it up, but it stops as soon as it is done.

A rechargeable battery can only be charged a certain number of times, so it makes sense to charge it up as infrequently as possible, but there's no evidence that leaving it in the Mac and letting it be topped up as and when required does any harm. Even if it does reduce the life of the battery, it is an easily replaced component and a disposable one that isn't meant to last as long as the computer anyway, so leave it in and don't remove it. You mac will be more stable and it will run faster.

01/10/08: Google's new web browser, Chrome, must be the most talked about on the internet and a huge number of words have been written about it. Most people are praising it, saying how wonderful it is, how much faster it is, and so on. But is it really that good? Google reckons that it is 10 times faster than Firefox 3. Some speed tests reported at Cnet show Chrome to be what looks like hundreds of times faster than IE7 and perhaps 10 times faster than Firefox 3. However, Firefox developers have produced test results that show that Firefox is faster. It just goes to show that the results of speed tests depend on the test, so don't believe everything you read about Chrome.

Someone else posted figures that show how many milliseconds it takes to display a web page and Chrome was something like 50ms and IE7 was more like 250ms. So what? When you have to wait 10 seconds or more for a web page to download because of the amount of internet traffic, the fact that Chrome shaves a few milliseconds off the rendering time isn't that important. Forget speed tests, just try it. It certainly feels quick, but it is nowhere near as fast as the speed tests suggest and it only feels slightly quicker.

If you run online applications then having a fast JavaScript engine is certainly an advantage, but other parts of Chrome are disappointing. For example, there aren't any add-ons. This isn't surprising because the project was top secret and the browser has only just been released. Add-ons will probably come in time, but till then you are best sticking with Firefox. Bookmark handling is awful and there doesn't appear to be any form of bookmarks manager. You can't delete more than one at a time, and moving them around and reorganising them is awkward. There are Open All Bookmarks and Open All Bookmarks in a New Window commands. I must have hundreds of bookmarks and Chrome just crashes if I try this. They are pointless commands and only work if you have less than a dozen bookmarks. Chrome's creators obviously don't like or use bookmarks. They should look at Firefox 3 to see what you can do with a good bookmark manager.

Other stuff is missing, like print preview, shrink to fit printing, security (go to eBay or PayPal using Firefox 3 and see how much more reassuring it is), RSS feeds, notes, widgets, blocked content, links list, browsing without images, and so on. Google Chrome is a beta and the version number is 0.2, which is all you need to know. You need more than a fast JavaScript engine and crashproof tabs to make a good browser. Firefox is much better. Even Opera is better. It's one to watch because it will no doubt get better. For the moment though, it's best avoided.

21/08/08: We all know that the Mac is a very secure operating system and that there are hardly any viruses, spyware, adware or other type of malware programs. However, phishing is another thing altogether and Mac users are just as liable to be caught out as Windows users. A phishing scam has nothing to do with the operating system you have and it works on everything.

Phishing scams usually target users of online banking, payment services, auction sites, and so on. What happens is that an email will arrive in your inbox describing a problem. It will urge you to click a link in the message to take you to a website where you can log in, entering your username and password, and solve the problem. The message is a fake and it's not from the real company, the website is a fake and isn't the real company, and when you enter your username and password the perpertrator of the scam will use them to log on and empty your account, buy themselves a Porsche using your money or whatever.

Recently Apple has morphed its .Mac online service into MobileMe and it has had some problems. Steve Jobs admitted as much in an email and Apple has extended some users' trial accounts for several months as compensation. MobileMe problems was great news to phishing scammers because it's an opportunity to rip people off. They wrote an email stating that there was a billing problem and urged anyone with a .Mac or MobileMe account to click the link in the message and update their payment details - a fake Apple site asked users for their credit card details. The scammers could then run up huge bills on other peoples' credit cards.

• Always regard emails as suspicious - they are easily faked
• Never click links in emails - they may take you to fake websites
• Always run your web browser manually and type in addresses
• Use a web browser with anti-phishing technology, like Firefox

04/04/08: I spent some time recently looking at the latest web browsers and the improvements in security are excellent. Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox have anti phishing features built in, but IE8 and Firefox 3, and Opera 9.5 take security to a new level. When you go to a website like PayPal or eBay a section of the address box turns green and shows the company name. Clicking it displays brief details about the company and more information is available by clicking a button. This won't be available on a phishing website, that's if the browser lets you go there, and probably it won't. It'll warn you before even displaying the home page. The security is excellent and you should definitely get one of these web browsers.

You do need to be careful though. The problem is that only known phishing websites can be blocked by a web browser and if you visit an unknown phishing site it might seem OK. When a phishing website is created someone has to go there, discover it is a fake, and then report it. It then gets added to the database of known phishing websites accessed by the browsers. There's a short period of time in between the site going live and it being reported and you might visit the site during that period. So even if your browser doesn't block a site or report anything wrong, always be suspicious. Never ever click links in emails.

20/08/08: When the iPhone came out I wanted one like everyone else, but it simply costs too much money. It wasn't just the price of the phone itself, it was the contract. In fact, the phone isn't that expensive when you consider that it's also an iPod and a personal organiser too. However, just don't make enough calls or texts to make the monthly payment worthwhile. For this reason I decided to get an iPod Touch. What made it even more tempting was that a trip to the US meant that I could get it for £40 ($80) less than in the UK.

They say that you can lose 70% of your hearing before you actually notice anything seriously wrong with it. No, I haven't gone deaf, but I think the same must be true of earphones. A couple of months ago I suddenly realised that there was something wrong with the iPod's sound. It was poor, lacked bass and stereo separation. I plugged in some other earphones and wow, what a difference! The sound was amazing - crystal clear treble and thumping bass. It now seems that the original earphones had been very gradually failing. Each day they must have been very slightly worse and the change was so slight each time that I hadn't noticed until it was really bad. The original earphones were obviously broken and were thrown out.

Now the touch screen on the iPod Touch has dead spots. What happened is that a horizontal strip across the screen about 1cm high near the top just stopped responding to the touch. This means that you can't select anything in this area and it disabled many functions on the iPod. A search at Google revealed that lots of other people have had dead spots too, with both the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Considering the number of devices sold, however, it's probably not a large percentage.

It appears that Apple knows about this problem and after demonstrating it at an Apple store they'll replace it on the spot if they've got your model in stock, or they'll order it if they haven't. Mine came in just 24 hours. Full marks for customer services then, but I wonder how serious a problem it is. How many have Apple replaced?

19/08/08: Yahoo! has had a music download service for a few years, but there hasn't been sufficient interest in it and now it has been announced that it is to close. This is just yet another online music service that's closing and others include MSN Music and Sony Connect.

The problem is that all these online music services were supplying DRM protected tracks - DRM (Digital Rights Managment) is basically copy protection that limits what you can do with copyright music. Anyone that has bought music tracks from Yahoo! will still be able to play them, but the DRM servers will be closed down at the end of September. This will prevent anyone from moving their music to another computer. The tracks are stuck on the computer they are on and there's no way to transfer them to another computer. Computers date very quickly and eventually they break down and when this happens you'll lose all your music.

This is just one of the problems associated with buying DRM protected music over the internet and there are others. For example, a disk fault could wipe out your whole collection that you paid a lot of money for. Would any of the online music services let you download all your music again? Not likely. Of course, you could back up your music, but hardly anyone bothers to run backup software.

It seems to me that the best way to build up a music collection is to buy the CDs and to rip them with your favourite music player/organiser. If your computer develops a fault or you buy a new one, you can simply rip your CDs again. If you have the original discs it solves a lot of problems.

31/07/08: Apple claims that it has sold over 1 billion music tracks through its iTunes store. I bought one myself - just one, I prefer to buy the CDs an rip them using iTunes rather than buying tracks online. That's a different story, but getting back to iTunes, have you noticed that music is sold as separate tracks? Of course you have, but an important question is, what's a track? Or to be more precise, how long is a track?

Popular music tends to be around three minutes long on average and some songs are slightly shorter, while others are slightly longer. Three minutes seems to be the perfect length for a pop single. Here in the UK a track costs £0.79 from the iTunes store, so an hour's worth of music, which is 20 tracks, will cost £15.80 (over $30).

If you only listen to three minute pop singles you will be paying a lot for your music. People with wider tastes in music will find that their collection will be much cheaper. Outside of pop singles, the length of music tracks varies a lot more and it can range from 1 to 60 minutes. If a track is 10 minutes or longer, the Apple store tells you to buy the album, but any tracks less than 10 minutes still cost the same £0.79.

If you search for your favourite artists or composers you will find that there are some long tracks and these are good value for money. If you can find tracks that are 9min 59 secs you will be able to purchase an hour's worth of music (well just a few seconds short of an hour), for £4.74 (around $9). That's a huge price difference.

Try listening to some alternative music, you might like it, and you'll save loads of money.

26/07/08: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been available for some time, but only as a direct download and Microsoft held it back from the Windows automatic update service. It finally became available a week or so ago. There actually wasn't much to download and there isn't much to see. If you have had automatic updates turned on then you will have already downloaded lots of updates and patches already and on my Windows PC, Vista SP1 was only about a 48Mb download. In fact, it was just like any other update and it installed without a hitch.

Vista is OK, but even after 18 months, I still can't see why anyone would want to switch from XP. My dual-boot PC still defaults to XP because it does everything I need. Vista needs something to make peopel switch, a so-called killer application that only works on Vista. There isn't one though and XP continues to do everything I need. It gets used for 90% of the time and I only use Vista when I'm actually writing about it.

Surely the day will come when it will be worth switching from XP to Vista, but for the moment, there doesn't seem to be much of an advantage. Of course, it's a more secure operating system, but there are lots of security programs for XP, so you can lock it down as tight as you want. Unless something comes along that won't work on XP, I can see it still being used this time next year!

What's new?: The most recently updated page is Links, a page that was in need of a redesign. Check it out, it's much better.

25/07/08: I was writing an article a few days ago and it was quite a long one at 3,000 words. For various reasons it was partly written using Microsoft Word on a PC and Pages on the Apple Mac. When I got to 3,000 words on the Mac I transferred it to the PC to tidy it up and send it off to the magazine. Unfortunately, there was a problem - there were only about 2,700 words. I loaded it into Pages again and it was 3,000, but in MS Word it was definitely around 300 words short. The word counters on both programs also show the number of characters, lines, pages and paragraphs. Everything else matched exactly, but the number of words was different.

After some detective work I quickly discovered why Word and Pages resulted in different word counts for the same document and it all depends on what a word is. Word's definition of a word is different to Pages. A word in MS Word is one or more characters with a space at the start and the end. Pages, however, defines a word as one or more characters that start and end with a non-alphanumeric character.

The problem was that the article I had written had a lot of web URLs, like www.google.com. Now MS Word counts this as one word because www.google.com is a single group of characters with a space at the start and end. Pages, however, counts it as three words because the full stops aren't numbers or letters. It's like three one-word sentences in which I forgot to insert a space after the full stops. This is why my article in Pages had 300 more words than the same article in MS Word.

Which is right? Well, there isn't a right or wrong here and both word counting methods are valid. However, some URLs are very long and when you are writing to a specific article length it's probably more accurate to measure words the Pages way. a very long URL takes up a lot of space, more space than a single word, and counting it as several gives a more accurate idea of the space required. My only problem is what the commissioning magazine wants. If I send the article as it is and they load it into MS Word they'll complain that it's too short and I've not written enough. On the other hand if I write 3,000 words in MS Word and they load it into Pages, they'll complain I've written too much, which is just as bad. Hmm. A tricky problem.

16/07/08: I recently put VirtualBox on my Mac so that I could run Windows on it. Of course, Boot Camp is an option, and so is Parallels Desktop, but the former is a hassle because you have to reboot and the latter is more than I want to spend - as little as possible. VirtualBox is pretty good and Vista runs fine on it. You can install a wide range of operating systems, including various flavours of Linux, Unix, Dos and Windows. In fact, just about the only OS you can't run on it is OS X.

Wouldn't is be really useful to be able to run OS X in a virtual machine in OS X? You could use it to test software without any danger of it messing up your system, you could run OS X 10.4 in 10.5 or vice versa for testing purposes. (I run Vista in XP on a PC and it's brilliant for testing things.) I can understand VirtualBox (and other virtual machines for that matter, not being able to run OS X on a standard PC, but this is an Apple Mac so why can't it run Apple OS X?

On a slightly different note, I bought a Mac magazine recently to find out about all the latest software, hardware and other goodies I could buy or download and yet again there is a whole page dedicated to slagging off Microsoft and Bill Gates. I buy Mac magazines to read about the Mac and consider such articles a complete waste of space. I don't want to read about some Mac fanatic going on and on about how bad Vista is, I've got a Mac and I want to read about all the cool Mac kit and discover the great things I can do my my computer. Why do people write this rubbish?

20/06/08: At long last OS X 10.4 has been upraded to 10.5 on my MacBook. It's not that there was anything wrong with 10.4, it's just that I like to keep abreast of the latest developments and technologies. There was little point in upgrading when it was released last year, but now after several updates - OS X 10.5.3 is now out - it is much more stable and improved. Some people have found it slow, but it's not that much slower than 10.4 on my MacBook, but then it's onlye year old so it has a fast processor.

Time Machine is often touted as one of its best features, but this only works if you have an external USB or FireWire disk and if you use a Macbook away from your desk you won't have one. Time Machine came up with a message recently saying it hadn't backed up for 11 days or something. That's because I've not plugged in my USB hard disk recently.

I went into the Apple store with a pocket full of cash the other day, but they've removed all the tills. Don't they sell anything any more? I came out without buying anything. OK I'm not that stupid, but try to buy something when the store's busy and all the assistants are busy. There's nowhere to queue up, so you just stand around like a dummy not knowing what to do. You could try getting some attention by walking out and setting off the alarm!

07/05/08: This page has been rather neglected and hasn't been updated as often as I was intending. However, the website as a whole is expanding rapidly. The reason I've not been spending time updating this page is because I've been so busy updating other pages. There is quiet a lot here and there are lots of articles to read, software to download and hints and tips.

There are now quite a few XP, Vista and OS X tips, and this section will carry on growing rapidly. There are now three Mac programs too and I have at long last updated to OS X 10.5 Leopard. Too many people argue about which is best, the Mac or Windows PC, so I won't get into that here. If you like the Mac then you'll like OS X 10.5, but it won't convince Vista users to switch. Similarly, Vista is nice, but it won't convince Mac users to switch either. You either like one platform or another, or if you're like me, you like both!

30/12/07: Christmas is over and the sales are on, so a trip to my local shopping centre was essential. With a wad of cash in my pocket I headed off to the shops looking to pick up a few bargains. The Apple store was a huge disappointment and there was nothing off any hardware at all. Everything was full price just the same as usual. There were very few bargains to be had in the software department and £10 off Microsoft Office was just one of about three or four exceedingly dull offers in the whole store. I walked out without buying anything. Just a short walk away were stores selling PCs, accessories and software at knock-down prices and I picked up three Windows games at rock bottom prices and a replacement DVD-writer for a faulty one in one of my old PCs. There were lots of people in the Apple store playing with the kit, but few people buying anything. In contrast, I had to queue for 15 minutes at the checkout at the PC store the queue was so long! It's not surprising that Windows PCs dominate the market.

06/10/07: Lottery Cracker World has been updated to version 7.2.0. There aren't any new features and the changes are very minor. Some old contact information that was out of date has been taken out and the US Mega Millions download link has been updated - it had changed and LCW wouldn't download the draws. If you are happy with the way LCW works, there's no need to update it. If you do download it, delete cracker.ini in the Lottery Cracker World folder so that the new settings are written, otherwise it'll carry on with the old settings.

Lottery Cracker World for the Apple Mac is in development and it'll be similar to the PC version, but not quite the same. It won't have any more features, but it will be nicer to use (hopefully). This isn't anything to do with the Mac, it's just that with having to start from scratch, there's an opportunity to make things better.

The new Apple Macs look fantastic and are almost works of art. However, Apple tends to focus more on design and looks than functions and features. There's not a screw to be found in the case and even if you could get the cover off, there's no space inside to install anything. It must be packed as tight as a laptop. Looking over one in the Apple store, I couldn't even see how you'd install more RAM, never mind a second hard disk or a video card upgrade. So the new Macs are brilliant right now, but in two years the hardware will be dated and you won't be able to upgrade. A PC may not look anywhere near as good, but it's so easy to remove old components and slot in new ones it's worth putting up with. The screen display on an old PC was breaking up, particularly with 3D games. The video card was the suspect, so I removed the cover, replaced the video card, and the PC's fine. In fact, it's faster than before thanks to the new video card. This just isn't possible with one of the new Macs. Apple Macs are fantastic, but they do have their drawbacks.

15/07/07: I've had a laptop running Windows XP for several years - it's an old Acer with an AMD Athlon processor running at 1.3GHz with a 20Gb hard disk and 512Mb of RAM. It's been a good computer and I've used it a lot, but it is getting past its use-by date. When you switch it on some of the keys don't work for about 10 minutes, but when it warms up they magically start working again. It's irritating to say the least. It's old, underpowered, and temperamental, so it needed replacing. But what with?

Despite there being lots of lovely Vista laptops around, I actually got an Apple Macbook. It was expensive, but I've never used a Mac and have always wanted to try one, and mac users are always going on about how fantastic they are. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. Is an Apple Mac better than a Windows PC? I can't say I'm that excited about it. It has some very good features, but it also has some poor ones too. It's not better than a Windows PC, it's just different.

If you believe the hype and the fanatical Apple enthusiasts you'd think it was the best thing since sliced bread, but I've crashed applications and had problems just as I do with PCs, so it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Will I grow to love it like other Mac users? Will I permanently switch to Macs? At the moment it's hard to see that happening. It's just a tool and it's there to do a job. You use one tool for one job and another tool for another job, so in some circumstances the Mac may be better, but the PC will be better for others.

06/06/07: There haven't been any entries here for a long time, so I thought it was about time I updated this news/blog. Regular visitors will know that the old website was thrown out and a new one has been created. The content is pretty much the same, but the design is different. The reason is that I got a new PC a while back and couldn't use the old web design software I was using on my old PC.

Wysiwyg web designers are great and you can create whole sites without knowing any HTML at all. However, sometimes the code they produce is long winded or unnecessary, leading to bloated sites. They can also screw up bits of code you add yourself as they try to format it. So I thought I'd hand code a new site.

It's harder, but you get a better understanding of the code and can put in as much or as little as you want. The code is more compact and you get to learn more about HTML and other web design technologies.

I have plans to update the programs in the software section, but then something always gets in the way. A money manager program is almost complete, so when that's done, I should do some updates. I also want to add some more articles too.

All the software works on Vista, but UAC (User Account Control) gets in the way. This is a new security feature of Vista and it stops some programs from working - several of mine. If you have problems running any programs in Vista, right click the menu item on the Start menu and select Run As Administrator. Alternatively, you can turn off UAC by going to User Accounts in the Control Panel.

The problem is that some programs save data to the folder they are installed to - configuration files, data files and so on. Vista makes the folders read-only, so the programs can't save anything. When you Run As Administrator you allow the program to save data in its own folder. You need to select Run As Administrator even if you log on as an administrator because Vista secretly logs administrators on as standard users. (Microsoft is trying to wean people off administrator accounts in Windows.)

01/11/06: It's been a while since I last posted anything, so here's an update. InfoManager has been released and this is a great personal information manager, but then I would say that wouldn't I? You can try it for yourself anyway.

A big problem with having public email addresses is that they get a lot of junk mail. Recently, I got around 200 emails to one account in one day and there are three accounts here! Getting a few junk messages each day isn't a problem because they are easily deleted, but when there are 200+, it is difficult to manage.

I tried using a few anti-spam programs and some are OK and some aren't. Looking at all the spam, it often seems quite easy to detect manually and you can tell within one second whether a message is interesting or junk. (Note: if you email me, you get one second to catch my attention before I hit the delete key!) This made me wonder whether it would be just as easy to write a program to do it for me. I know there are lots of anti-spam programs already, but firstly it's fun writing stuff yourself and secondly you get exactly what you want.

So that's my next project, an anti spam program. It's actually nearing completion and it just needs a few tweaks here and there. I'm already using it on some accounts and it catches a lot of spam. Nothing catches 100%, but even if it clears 75% of spam from my inbox, that'll be 150 junk messages I don't have to read each day!

Spam Cleaner should be finished by this time next month and you'll be able to download it and use it to keep your inbox clean too.

25/06/06: I had a couple of emails recently which I think are of general interest, so I'll answer them here.

Q: "I am interested in purchasing program. Pa lottery is only updated to 4/11/06. Will these databases be automatically updated after the purchase?"

A: Some lottery companies provide a download link on their web site so that people can download the lottery results. Last time I looked, the PA databases were not available. If you can find a download link then I will add it to the program. You may be wondering how I got the results in the databases you have got. They were displayed across multiple web pages and I had to copy and paste them into one text file, then write a program to turn them into a form acceptable for LCW. It took a lot of fiddling and it is not possible for the program to do this. To see what I mean, go to the Megamillions site at www.megamillions.com/winningpicks/download_numbers.asp and you will see a Download button. Basically LCW clicks the button and gets the results. There isn't one that I could find for the draws you are interested in. Let me know if you can find a download link on the PA site.

Q: "I have just downloaded and had a look at Form Cracker. I only looked at two races and there seems to be a bug in the program. If I click the button a second time to predict the outcome of the race, the horses get different scores and the top two or three swap positions. This might explain why sometimes 2nd rated horses out perform the top rated."

A: It's not a bug. Suppose you analyse a race and one of the horses has never run before and has no form. What score should the program give it? Clearly with no form it cannot judge how good a horse is. It cannot give a score of zero because it might be a good horse. It cannot give it a really high score because it might not be that good. What should the program do? It must guess! This is why when you analyse a race some horses get different scores. It is because some things are unknown and the program must guess. You need to take this into consideration when choosing which horse to back.

A horse with no form is an extreme example and more often there are horses that have run a couple of races. Two races isn't really enough to establish the form reliably, so there is some element of guesswork involved here too. Suppose a horse was brought down in its last race through no fault of its own. It's there in the form, but how is the program expected to score it? The horse might have won had the incident not happened. More unknowns and more guesswork.

This is why it is so difficult to predict the outcome of horse races. Form Cracker does its best to analyse the data, but it won't get it right every single time. Most top racing tipsters in the daily newspapers get 20 to 25% of races right, according to data at the Racing Post website. I have found that Form Cracker gets it right about 30% of the time if you pick the right races to analyse. That's better than any racing tipster.

Form Cracker is a tool - something to help you analyse races and provide that extra bit of information that other people don't have. No program in the world gets it right every time. If it exists, then tell me. I'll buy it and give up the day job.

07/04/06: Form Cracker has been updated, so go and download it. There aren't any new features, but there are some changes. A bug when archiving races has been fixed. The race archive has been reversed. This makes more sense and new races are placed at the start of the archive instead of at the end. This means that when you go to browse the archive, the most recent races are shown first and they get older as you go. It is much easier to browse recently added races this way.

As I added the latest race to the databases, the horse database ran out of space and the program stopped with an error message. I've added a check so that a friendly warning is displayed that the database is full instead. No-one else has reached the limit, or at least they've not emailed me to point out the error, so maybe it's just me trying to track too many horses.

There is a limit of 2,000 horses in a database, but there is the option to create more databasese. You can create databases for jumps and for flat, which would mean you can track more horses because the databases will fill up more slowly. I may start doing this. I could have extended the limit to 3,000 or 4,000 horses, but then I thought that there's no point in trying to track every horse. So I went through and deleted any horse with a low rating that always comes last, or near to last. After all, what's the point in tracking useless horses? The horse database is now a bit smaller. I think I'll only add the first four or five in each race instead of the whole field and see how it goes. I only want to track the best horses, so I might prune any that consistently come way down the field. If I run out of space again, I'll increase the limit and post an update.