So as the title suggests, there have also been a few changes around here. Most notably, the name/URL/domain/thing. Due to an unfortunate translation issue with my last domain (I had no idea how many French pervs there were in the world, trust me), I was kind of put off using that URL until I thought of a suitable replacement. So here it is - amelierosalyn.com. I'd been using that name for a while now anyway (as well as the old one, because I was lazy and couldn't be bothered changing everything round) but the change is now permanent. You can keep using the old one until the domain expires (March or April, I think) but after that plz2be using new one, thanking you most kindly. The feed URL has also changed - if you were subscribed to the old one via its Feedburner URL then you'll need to resubscribe. Otherwise, if you're using the /feed URL you should be redirected automatically (apologies if all my old entries are showing up as unread - they haven't changed!). I am aware of some issues with the title/search blending into each other a bit in some browsers, working on that... ;)

The other major change is in me. My focus had changed somewhat in the past year or so, but nothing to how it's changed in the past few months: I'm currently expecting my first child, and am going through what has thus far not been an easy pregnancy. So yes, blogging and website stuff haven't exactly been my priority of late, and probably won't be for a while now; if I do pick up the pace then it's likely the tone of the site will change. I'm not apologising for that - I've changed as a person and am not the person I was 10 years ago when I started this site (in its earliest version, many domains ago) nor am I even the same person I was a year ago when I began this version of the site. I only have to look at how much Jem went through with her daughter to see how priorities and entire lives change once there's a little one in your life. But to be honest, I can't wait for the change. I know you can never completely plan for these things, nor ever be really, completely, ready for the total changes that come your way, but I'm at a point in life where I feel that these changes are not unwelcome.

With that you might be wondering about a few things... So here's a quick little FAQ thing:

1. What's happening to PHPAskIt/Askably/whatever you've called it now?

   Good question. I haven't decided yet. I have moved development over from Google Code to Github and have changed everything to use the GPL license, so if anyone would like to contribute to, or take over the project, they can do so. Note that as I haven't fully decided what is going on yet, I may or may not change my decision here.

2. Why Amelie Rosalyn? Is that your surname?

   No, it's my middle name. And why that... well why not?

3. Will you turn into a 'mommy blogger'?

   I generally feel that children have no place on the internet and would not feel comfortable discussing my child's life on my blog. After all, children haven't asked to have their lives shared and I for one would feel very uncomfortable knowing my mother discussed my early life online. However, who knows what the future will bring? I have changed a lot in a short space of time already, so who's to say I won't change further in a few months?

So there you have it; and here's to whatever's next in life. :)

Edit: Thanks for the reports about the broken comments... Fixed now!

I recently had the misfortune to meet one called XP Anti-Virus 2011 (not my computer that was infected, I was just tasked with fixing this particular one). This virus - and yes, I am calling it a virus even though it technically isn't one - is the nastiest rogue software I have seen yet, though I'm sure it's not the only one to run as it does. It's not new, despite the name - it's been around for years under various different names, mainly comprising of your version of Windows and the current year. So under Windows XP, you'd get XP Anti-Virus 2011 and under Vista you'd get Vista Anti-Virus 2011...etc.

Why is this particular one clever? Well, as I said, it's probably not just this one, but what this program does is to change how .exe files are run on your computer. On Windows, .exe files are normally programs; nearly all executable files will have that extension. Mr Nasty Virus here reroutes all .exe files to run through itself - and it'll block any it doesn't like. Those it doesn't like include almost all legitimate antivirus/antispyware scanners and certain web browsers as well - it didn't seem to stop Chrome but it put a stop to Internet Explorer in any case and kept reopening itself informing me that the computer had too many viruses and I must click here to register and remove threats. That of course makes removing this piece of rubbish a right pain since, well, it doesn't let you. :P Of course, it did everything else these fake programs do - nice threatening messages, cloned the Windows Security Center but plonked itself there instead, typical antivirus program look... All very lovely.

I removed it by following a mixture of guides online - this guide is one of many that explains the basic steps (note the insertion of the license key in those steps - once you do this the program will act as if it removes the viruses and/or itself. Ha - I restarted and it came back up an hour later saying my registration needed confirming and I still had threats). Once you've got rid of it, make sure to update your real antivirus/antispyware protection and run a full scan to make sure it really has gone. A lot of those guides keep trying to push a download of SpywareDoctor (normally labelled as the "remover" for the viruses)... I've never found that program anything more than bloat, personally - I removed the items manually then ran MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware on a full scan to make sure all traces had gone.

How do you protect yourself from getting fake antivirus software on your computer? Here are a few tips:

1. Know what your real antivirus software is (and firewall, if you have one), what it looks like and how to run it. If a window pops up saying you have viruses but it doesn't look like your normal AV software, it is more than likely fake.
2. Use a browser other than Internet Explorer, or if you like IE, keep it up to date. XP Anti-Virus and its variants creep in through unpatched vulnerabilities in browsers - mostly IE.
3. Keep Windows up to date. I know, Windows Update is a right pain and sometimes its updates take ages to download/install and sometimes break things. However, some of the updates do fix holes in the operating system so that fake AV stuff can't get in as easily.
4. Don't click on dodgy links. Got some weird email from your friend with a link in it? Might be worth checking they really sent it and didn't get their email account hacked with virus-infested site links now being distributed through it (it happened to me last year - my email account got hacked and my contacts all received some virusy links :( )
5. If a message does pop up about viruses on your computer, read what it says carefully. In most cases, fake AV software is in broken English with poor grammar and spelling (e.g. "threat is been discovered on your computer"). If your computer's primary language isn't English and this rubbish shows up in English, that's also a giveaway right there.
6. If you do happen to get one of these fake programs on your computer, don't click on any notice it gives you. Click the X button at all times, don't click any buttons it gives you on screen - in getting rid of the millions of popups it was giving me, I inadvertently clicked on what I thought was a cancel button - it tried to send me to some dodgy website. Ick.

And so, here is a list of some of my favourite apps:

1. Twidroyd

   My phone (HTC Wildfire) has a smaller screen than a lot of Android devices, and as such a lot of the mainstream Android apps either don't work or simply aren't available for it. The official Twitter app for Android is one of these - it works, but the smaller screen means half the options are cut off and it makes it very difficult to use. For this reason, I chose Twidroyd - I used to use it before Android got an official Twitter app and I really liked it. Twidroyd has all the functionality of the official app and more - you can integrate Identica, use multiple accounts, use bit.ly API keys, upload to a variety of picture and video hosts, 'mute' especially noisy tweeters and more. Some of those features (namely multiple accounts) requires the paid-for version, but the free (ad-supported) version has more than enough features for the obsessive tweeter :)

   Edit: Twidroyd is no longer available after being replaced by Ubersocial. I wouldn't really recommend Ubersocial as it's rather too full of ads for my liking. The official Twitter client is much better :)

2. Android System Info

   This is more of a geeky one - if you want to find out a load of info about your phone, like what sort of features the processor has or what versions of OpenGL it supports, this app will tell you. I mainly use it to keep track of how much space I'm using - the bar charts on the front page will tell you all that and more. It also comes with a task manager, app manager (like Android's built in one, but this gives you more at-a-glance info - like how much space is being used by caches - than the Android one) and access to the system logs.

3. Google Maps (Navigation)

   Ok, I know this comes on most (if not all) Android phones, but they don't always have the most recent version - the one that has the free turn-by-turn navigation app bundled in it. Before this, I paid a monthly fee for a really rather nice GPS app - definitely rivalled the dedicated units in shops. Google's Navigation app isn't quite as nice as that, but it does the job very well for a free application and I'm much happier using that than buying a full GPS unit or paying a monthly fee.

4. Dropbox

   The Dropbox app for Android isn't as good as the one for iOS, and is definitely nowhere near as good as the PC/Mac clients, but I find it very useful to share photos from my phone. My last phone had an accessible SD card slot, where I could take the card out and read all the pics on it - this one doesn't, so if I want to grab the photos I need to pretty much take the phone apart. Not very convenient. This way, I can upload my pics straight to dropbox and they sync to my computer automatically. Lovely!

5. Wifi Hotspot

   Not sure if this one is downloadable, or if there is a similar downloadable app - this one came with the 2.2 (Froyo) update to my phone, courtesy of HTC. It allows me to broadcast my phone's 3G connection over wifi so that I can use my laptop even if there's no connection handy. Great idea for when I'm out and about and don't have to pay extortionate rates for hotel wifi :D It can be locked down with WPA and WPA2 security as well as only allowing a certain number of devices to connect.

Other things I haven't included here but use every day are: Facebook, Internet, Weather and Gmail, but those are all built-in apps (apart from Facebook, which is nothing special in terms of the app) so I'm sure most people already know about them :P

Anyone got any other favourite Android apps? Always open to try new things - and if they don't work on my Wildfire, I have a rooted G1 that things will definitely work on :D

It's not a new thing at all, but people are doing this over the phone too. A popular one that recently caught out a family member is that someone will call, ask for the householder by name, and proceed to tell them they are from Microsoft or 'Windows Support'. They may have the householder's email and/or home address (from where I have no idea; they may be using the local phone book or have the details sold onto them from other sources) and will gain the trust of the user by confirming these with them, proceeding then to tell the user their computer is infected by viruses and this must be fixed now or they will be fined/their computer will crash/other similar threats. Sounds like a classic scam, but due to the user being named it can catch people out - especially if they're computer illiterate.

The scam generally continues with some or all of the following:

1. The user is instructed to go to their computer, go to the Run command/Windows+R (which brings up the Run box) and type in "eventvwr" and/or some form of "prefetch unwanted"

2. The scammers tell the user that the entries listed in the resulting window are viruses and these must be cleaned.

   This is of course not true - "eventvwr" brings up the Windows Event Viewer and entries listed within this are events logged by Windows. Scammers may go further with this one and say that any items with a yellow warning triangle or red cross are malicious items, but they aren't - they're errors logged by Windows which for the most part are harmless. They are definitely not viruses.

   The "prefetch unwanted" command brings up the Windows prefetch cache, which is just that - a cache of programs which enables Windows to open them more quickly. Deleting these files won't remove a virus nor will it damage your computer.

3. After insisting that the files found are dangerous, the scammers will offer to 'fix' them and will ask for payment to do this. They might take users to a website or they will ask for card numbers over the phone. Common websites users are sent to include some variant of the words "tech support" in the URL.

4. What follows is an attempt to connect to the computer remotely. How this is done differs slightly per scam but in general they will direct users to a web page via the Run command and/or will ask them to install a program such as TeamViewer or LogMeIn. Installing those particular programs (the ones mentioned, that is - other programs may be more malicious) is not dangerous in itself - it's the part where the user hands over control that is, and the scammers will do this by asking the user to enter a code into the website or program. Control is then given over to the scammers - they can then see and use the computer as if it was their own.

5. Once the card payment has gone through (for far more than the user paid for, in most cases), the scammers will set about 'fixing' the computer, which generally involves downloading and installing lots of software onto the machine and possibly deleting anything they think is a virus (note: this could be anything - personal documents, essential Windows files, etc). They might tell users to leave the machine for a bit and during that time they'll snoop into their personal files - or they'll do it right in front of the user and claim it's part of the fixing process. It isn't - they're just looking for information they can steal.

6. Once all the software is installed, the user is told their computer is fixed and the call is ended. The installed software is, in most cases, harmless; it's just junk that doesn't do anything (or perhaps does do something, but not what it advertises - it may pop up a load of ads or redirect your browser to a dodgy search page, for example). However, some scammers have installed software which opens a backdoor to the computer and leaves it in their complete control and can use this to do far more damage. Rootkits and keyloggers can get installed and the computer can end up a so-called 'zombie' acting as part of a botnet.

Wonderful, eh?

Fixing all this once the user discovers they've been conned depends on quite how bad the damage is to the computer. Personally I'd recommend a full reformat - you never know what nasty little things were done during the 'fixing' process and what that seemingly harmless software might leave behind. It might still be 'calling home' in the background, sending personal details back to the scammers. Not really a nice thought. It also goes without saying that you should cancel all cards given out to these fraudsters and contact your bank telling them what happened. It's unlikely you'll get the money back, as you willingly gave the details out, but you should still contact them. Watch out for an increase in junk mail, email spam and/or similar phone scams as your details get passed around - don't fall for them again. If you can, get a credit check done to make sure no one is fraudulently using your details.

However, the best advice is not to be scammed in the first place. When random people call you up out of the blue, treat them as if they'd emailed you - would you blindingly trust any email that says it's from a certain sender? You shouldn't trust people on the phone that claim as such either. If they pretend to be from a reputable company, ask their name and ask for a reference number for the call, then call the company's main advertised number (NOT the number the person on the phone tells you to call, even if they say it's their private extension or similar) and quote the details. No such person/reference? You know that call wasn't genuine.

Think about it: would a major computer company such as Microsoft really care about individuals with viruses? And furthermore, if they did care, would they really task themselves with dealing with it? No, they wouldn't - they're a huge company with far better things to do. It's common sense; you cannot know a person is who they say they are even if you met them face to face, so how can you possibly know over the internet/phone? You can't, so don't give them the privilege of having your personal data. You don't know what they'll use it for - ID theft, selling it on, stealing from your bank account ... You name it.

Oh, and don't save things on your computer that will delight such fraudsters when they find them either - bank details in a Word document? Not a good idea. Really.

This layout is simple (and has some funnies going on with links...but I'll get to that!), but I think it fits the overall tone of the site from this point. I want to focus on things that interest my readers; I want to talk more about the differences between Chrome and Firefox than the differences of what I had for lunch today and what I had yesterday. People just don't care about that sort of thing!

Anyway. Sit down, grab a drink, make yourself at home. If you want to subscribe to the feed, it's a different URL to the last site (click ye olde orange feed icon, top left) so you will need to resubscribe if you were subscribed before. Sorry about that, but I did want to keep things kind of separate.

So yes, here's to a long and happy web life. :D

So, I have been looking for a new phone and was thinking about getting the iPhone 4 or the HTC Desire. I was quite fond of my previous HTC, the T-Mobile branded G1 (aka HTC Dream), but it was crashing a lot. I ended up with an HTC Wildfire (that's it over there on the left. Pic of box taken with phone. Wheee).

Now, the Wildfire was not a choice as such - I went into the shop to see what deals I could get on plans, I wanted to go for the cheapest plan I could and see what phones came with it, if any. In the end I stayed with my current network (T-Mobile) as they had the best deal on cheap contracts, it seems. They offered me a variety of basic phones, but there were only two Android ones - the T-Mobile Pulse, which looked very nice but had a rather old version of Android on it (older than the version I had on the G1) and while I thought it looked great, I did want something a bit more futureproof. The other Android was the Wildfire, a new addition that had just come out, running Android 2.1 via HTC Sense. I went for it.

I was immediately disappointed by the phone. I expected it to be more or less the same as what I'd been used to; as it was a free phone I hadn't had a chance to try it in-store and kind of regretted that - it wasn't at all the same. For a start, I noticed the lower resolution. The G1 had a 320×480px widescreen (16:9) resolution (the same as the original iPhone's) on a 3.2" screen running at 180dpi. The Wildfire has the same 3.2" screen, but it's a 4:3 resolution of 240×320 (dunno how many dpi, but it's less than the G1), which is about 2/3 what I had before. The colours were not the same either - the Wildfire boasts the same 16-bit colours as the G1 but does not deliver them. I get patchy, dithered colours reminiscent of the old 256 colour system.

No matter, I told myself; I can get used to a smaller screen. It's only then, of course, that I realised that the Android Market wasn't showing me a lot of the apps I used to have installed. I searched for them - nothing. I learned why - a lot of Android apps require the default screen resolution of 320×480, which most of the phones have. The Market won't show items that won't fit on your screen, and even those that do say they'll fit on your screen end up looking very squashed, for the most part.

Then there's HTC Sense, which is HTC's UI on top of Android. Now I'd never been hot on the vanilla Android design, but it was ok and I got used to it. I thought HTC Sense would be a great addition to Android, finally some shininess! ... er, well, not really. The awkward colours mean that it doesn't really work for one, and secondly I'm not sure who designed the HTC Sense UI but it's like HTC took every app on Android and uglified it. Not a fan at all, and I immediately reverted to vanilla Android Home instead of the Sense display. It's a shame, because they have done some rather nice tweaks to some of the apps (the rest, I really wish they'd left alone) but with the ugly interface, I'm really not inclined to use them. That and a lot of the apps are useless anyway - one is "download Navigon" and is nothing more than an advert for a navigation app. Even if you do download Navigon, it doesn't go away. You can't delete it or hide it. Grrr.

One thing I LOVE LOVE LOVE is the fact that I can add my Facebook, Twitter and Flickr contacts, and link them to my phone contacts so that if the person has an updated email/phone number on one of those accounts, it'll update it on my phone. But the problem with that is, once you add those items, Mr Wildfire thinks you will want to be automatically updated of people's statuses/etc when they call you or you call them. Er, no thanks. I'll check my Facebook et al when I feel like it. Oh and note to Mr Wildfire: I set a contact's default number for a reason. I want that number to show up first when I type their name into the recipient field; I don't expect you to list all their numbers in numerical order. That inevitably means I will send things to the wrong numbers, since all landline numbers here start with 01 or 02 and mobiles start 07. That means if I have my friend Bob Jones with a number of 01234 567890 and his mobile number of 07123 567890, when I start typing "Bob" into my recipients, it'll autofill the first number in numerical order - the landline number beginning 01, even though the mobile number is set as his default number. Do not want. Also, I would have thought it would prioritise 'Mobile' numbers over 'Home'/'Work' when texting, as it is more likely I will want to text another mobile than a landline... Eh. Oh, and that's another thing - when you're making a call, it seems the proximity sensor isn't working properly, as my ear pressed a load of stuff on the screen - cut off the call, muted me, etc etc. Hmmm.

And you know the one thing I really wanted on Android - the indication light that flashes different colours depending on what I've received? Ah yes, the Wildfire might as well not have one. It only flashes green (or orange when charging), it doesn't have a multi-colour LED like the G1 and the more expensive phones. Wah :( It also turns itself off after 5 minutes, so if you happen to be in a meeting or some other place where you can't look at your phone every 5 minutes, you'll miss a notification.

But it's not all bad! Honest! I have had the phone a week now and I've actually grown to love HTC Sense's home screen. Still not so hot on the apps (ugly) but the home screen actually fits in much better on the phone than the vanilla Android one. My complaint now is that it eats a lot more battery power :P I got 3 days' battery on vanilla Home, I get a day and a half on Sense, which has more funky widgets and has 7 screens to put them on instead of just 3. The on-screen keyboard took a bit of getting used to, but the predictive text - while largely a rip off of the iPhone's - makes it much easier to use than the version on the G1 (which I hardly used in favour of the slide-out one). I also love the look of this phone - even though I would have preferred it in white (and there IS a white version! It just wasn't available at the store I went to :( ), the grey/black combo looks sleek and professional. It fits snugly in my pocket, unlike the G1 which was a bit too big.

All in all, I have actually grown very fond of this phone and despite the screen resolution/colours and ugly apps (apart from the weather app. That has gorgeous graphics), I'm really glad I got it. I got a cheap contract, and got a cheap (ish. It's not cheap on its own, but compared to the other smart phones) phone with it. For the price I'm paying, I could have expected something that wasn't a smartphone at all, or something that is but was nowhere near the quality of the G1. But I didn't get that, I got something which - yes, it's not as good as the G1, but I'd say it's about 90% the smartphone the G1 was. It may have less of a screen resolution and less colours, but it has almost 4 times the memory and storage space I had on the last phone, as well as an LED flash and brightness sensor. Ok, so the former I don't really use (other than as a torch/flashlight :P ) but I actually really like the latter. The G1 never really did go bright enough... You'd get a bit of sun and that was it - screen was invisible. I've not had any sun yet to try the Wildfire on, but it certainly seems to be able to go much brighter than the G1.

But yes, I'm actually very happy with it now :)

Let's take a fictional character and call them Joe Bloggs. Joe doesn't subscribe to all that fancy schmancy internet nonsense and has no clue what a 'Facespace' or a 'MyBook' is. He checks his email every now and then and might browse the web from time to time, but that's all he really does on the internet.

So imagine his surprise when he gets an email from some Facebook thing telling him he should sign up, because all his friends are on it. He'd dismiss it, only - it really is listing all his friends. How can Facebook know who his friends are? How does it know that Jane Bloggs is his sister and John Bloggs is his father? How does it know so much about him when he knows nothing about it?

The answer is that Facebook collects emails and search habits. You know that 'enter your email details to search your contact list for friends on Facebook' feature? Be careful with it. Facebook keeps all the addresses it finds and associates them with you. If you've got those email addresses in your contact list, they must be your friend, right? Repeat this for all the other members on Facebook who are doing the same thing and Facebook can build up a pretty good picture of who you are.

Facebook also allows you to list various family members on your profile, and if said member doesn't have a Facebook profile, it asks for their email address. Facebook then knows when someone invites you to Facebook that you're the brother of X and the father of Y and whatever else.

Facebook's privacy has come under fire recently and I'm not surprised - I admit to using the email search feature when I first joined Facebook and nowhere do I remember it saying it would collect all my contacts' email addresses and retain them in order to guilt-trip other people into joining. I had another look at it recently (without actually entering my details, of course) and I still didn't see it. Admittedly, I have not read their very long and very complicated privacy policy in some time so it is likely to be mentioned there.

Am I going to delete my Facebook profile after this? I'm not sure. It is a great way to keep in contact with people I haven't spoken to in years but if it's profiling me behind my back, I'm not sure I agree with that. Facebook are by far not the first or only company to do this, of course, but they are so far the most high-profile and media attention-worthy. With millions and millions of members, they can make some hefty $$$ from all this if they really wanted to (and there are rumours that they do want to. Imagine what advertisers could do with that data!). Then again, if I did delete my profile, Facebook never really deletes a profile in case you want to reactivate it. So they've got my info anyway, whether I gave it to them or not, and whether I want it there or not. Fun.

Scary stuff, if you ask me.

I feel a bit like I did back in 2004 when Firefox first came out (and was called Firebird). I swore I'd never leave IE6 - I was happy with it, it did everything I wanted and I didn't want to change my ways just because someone said somewhere that IE might be rubbish. Of course, I was convinced eventually - the main deciding factor was the tabbed browsing and the fact that I could open all my daily bookmarks just by middle-clicking a folder or selecting "open all in tabs". After switching I discovered just what a headache IE was and how stupid I had been to be so in love with it :P

So am I just in denial again this time and standing by Firefox because I am too stubborn to switch to the new cool kid in town? I don't think so, this time. Don't get me wrong, Chrome is a great browser - I have it and use it every now and then.

Things I like about Chrome:

1. Speed
   You can't deny that Chrome is very fast, and Firefox's increasing bloat is really noticeable next to it. Chrome starts immediately on my PC whereas Firefox takes about 30-40 seconds. It takes a bit longer on the Mac but it's still faster than Firefox which again takes around 30 seconds to start. Both computers are of a similar spec and age, just in case you were wondering.

   The other speed factor is the more up-to-date JavaScript engine included in WebKit (the rendering engine Chrome is based on) - AJAX queries are much faster in Chrome than they are in Firefox which is useful for JS-heavy websites.

2. Resource usage
   Firefox is pretty heavy on the resource front. Right now I have 4 tabs open and Firefox is using a whopping 169MB of memory to run them. Opening the same 4 tabs in Chrome only takes up 91MB. Of course, the reasoning behind this may be simple - I've got far more extensions running in Firefox than I have in Chrome (I do have some in Chrome though, so it's not an out-of-the-box copy). However, I'm inclined to believe this isn't just to do with the extensions since I've heard of lots of people with no extensions having issues with stupid memory usage courtesy of Firefox.

   When I shut down Firefox, it takes aaaaages. I know it does things like backing up my bookmarks and saving my open tabs and sessions and whatever else, but so does Chrome and Chrome shuts down immediately. On the Mac I've also had odd issues with Firefox continually reopening itself whenever I shut it down as well... Never had that with Chrome.

3. Themes
   Firefox has a great many themes available for it, and I've never really been a fan of the default so have always used one or another. They're ok, but they are a bit flakey in places - the theme I'm using at the moment doesn't theme dialogue boxes correctly so they look all squashed. It's not the first time I've experienced that either - perhaps just lazy theme makers.

   Firefox has recently introduced the concept of Personas - simple themes that plonk themselves on top of the default to give your browser a bit of a facelift. Easy to install and no restart needed (except for the installation of the original extension). Except... to use them, you need to be using the default theme, which as I said before, I'm not a fan of. Therefore, any persona looks horrible to me because it's on top of the icky default theme. I don't mind so much on the Mac which has a different default theme - in fact, I'm using Personas on my Mac copy of FF - but on Windows and Linux I don't think they really work with the default theme. Sorry Firefox. Chrome's themes are more like the Personas - they don't change much except add a background here and there and maybe change some colours, but some of them are really well made and I found a theme I fell in love with immediately. It really makes me want to use Chrome more since I really do like it. Not seeing anything similar for Firefox and even if I did, I don't think it would work too well since it seems centred on the way Chrome is actually laid out.

4. Little things
   There are little things that annoy me about Firefox. The most annoying is when it randomly decides it won't load a page, even if I was just on it a moment ago. I have to go and empty the cache before it'll load again. Sometimes I just give up and open Chrome to view the page rather than fiddling about with caches :P I even tried reinstalling Firefox and removing my profile data to see if that helped - it didn't.

   Restarting to install extensions and themes really annoys me too. I know why I have to (it's the way FF works) but Chrome manages its extensions just fine without a restart and I can install a bunch of them and see how they work without having to wait ages (see point 1 above) for my browser to restart.

   There are other little niggles about Firefox that annoy me too - sometimes your bookmarks will all disappear; it'll crash and won't let you reopen it, claiming it's still running; it does weird stuff with saved usernames/passwords, capitalising parts it shouldn't... There's more, but if I can't think of them right now then they can't be that important.

Having said that though, there is one BIG reason why I will not be switching to Chrome, despite all the above - extensions. I use around 30 extensions at the moment and I find every one of them useful. Some of them are silly things like showing me the weather forecast or generating Lipsum, but others I could not live without (well, slight exaggeration. Maybe). Adblock Plus, NoScript and HTML Validator are just some of the extensions I use on a daily basis and which Chrome hasn't managed yet. Yes, it does have an Adblock extension and some sort of port of the others, but they just aren't as good. The fact that Chrome has no status bar means most of the extensions that have icons are bunched up into the toolbar, making my address bar smaller. I installed a few Chrome extensions and they all went into my toolbar - all 6 of them - and it makes it look cluttered and busy. In Firefox, most of the extensions sit nicely in the corner of the status bar which makes them non-intrusive and I can look at them quickly if I want to see their status or change an option.

There is a lot of community support for Chrome, but it isn't at all what Firefox has. Perhaps because Firefox has been around for about 6 years longer than Chrome - in 6 years we might have the same, if not more, community support for Chrome than Firefox, but it isn't the case now. You can Google anything to do with Firefox and find a way to do it - if you can't tweak about:config or find an extension for it, I'd be very surprised.

While I would love to use Chrome if it had the extensions I love from Firefox, I doubt they will implement a similar engine. Chrome is not Firefox and by making these extensions work with Chrome, will they not just be producing a clone (or 'lite' version) of Firefox? I would have thought that Google would want Chrome to be its own browser and not just a faster version of something already out there. Also, Google is unlikely to change its support for an Adblock or NoScript plugin since its own ads would be blocked by such things... Not a good idea for them.

There is also some rumour that Google collect everything you do on Chrome and use it to target ads at you or something (not read up on the details, I must admit). Not keen on that but it wouldn't deter me from switching if the extensions were better.

In short, I like Chrome... but I won't be switching. I'm happy to stay with my slow and bloated Firefox that has the extensions I know and love. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point, but not yet.

Anyway, fast forward to August, when I was shopping around for more decent ISPs. Our 12 month contract had been up in June but we hadn't had time to go and find a new provider as yet. Having found a new one - Plusnet, if you're interested - we called BT to tell them to cancel our internet. They did everything they could to try and keep us, promising that they would lower the price to the same rate as Plusnet and blah blah blah. NOT THE POINT. The fact is, you messed us around so much last year that I am not prepared to give you any more money.

We decided to keep the landline with BT for now, as we weren't sure if we could get a better deal elsewhere, but when the bill came - still in our old landlord's name - we decided to complain, again. They wanted us to agree to a 12 month contract if we changed the name on the account. I'm sorry, what? Since when do I have to agree to a further 12 months of staying with you because YOU refused to change the name in the first place? No, I don't think so. We switched to Plusnet for our landline as well, and couldn't be happier.

That means we are completely free from BT, FINALLY. Good riddance, I say. Don't let the door hit you on the way out and all that.

He wanted a top-of-the-range machine so that it wouldn't need upgrading for a while yet, so we selected the almost-best-but-not-quite (not made of money here :P ) parts.

We went with the following:

• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R motherboard
• Intel Core i7-920 @ 2.66GHz processor
• ASUS EN9600GT (with Nvidia Geforce 9600GT GPU/1GB VRAM) graphics card
• 6GB Corsair DDR3 RAM

When it arrived, we found that ah - previous computer case was a Micro ATX form and the motherboard we purchased was ATX. The graphics card required at least 400W of power and the current PSU would only supply 115W. Hmmm. Oh well, blame my n00biness. :P Out we went again, and picked out the following extra parts:

• Jeantech Arctic 600W PSU
• Jeantech Luna case with fiddly light-up bits
• Sony BD-ROM Blu-ray/DVD/CD-ROM

So! Now we build (pictures described by text underneath them)...

Parts!

The working area - ooh, shiny

In goes the motherboard

Processor

Almost there... Most of the bits in now!

Aaaand... Then I forgot to take more pictures, so here's the finished product:

The front bit opens up to reveal the optical drive etc. Yes, it lights up (not my idea...), but it worked first time, the drivers and everything installed without a problem, and everything is great :D We took the 200GB hard drive and 8-in-1 card reader out of the old computer as they were still pretty good, then reformatted the lot and put Windows 7 RC 64-bit edition on there (it previously had XP Media Center which would only see 2GB of RAM :\ ) and lo and behold... Latest games run fine, not found a single problem with it yet. We'll definitely be getting the full version of Windows 7 when it comes out as the boyfriend hates Vista and needs DirectX 10 for his games (which is only available in Vista and 7)... So, there we have it. He can pay for that though :P

I was surprised to find that it worked, to be honest... I'd never built a computer from scratch and while I did have some guidance at first, I was apparently doing so well I didn't need it XD

More pics can be seen on my Flickr account :)