steriley.com - The Blog of Stephen Riley

Clothing Care Labels

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:31:47 GMT

Ever wondered what all those little symbols mean on the labels in your clothes? Those strange circular and triangular hieroglyphics, well while researching how best to wash some of my things that I didn't fancy just bunging in the wash I found a hand little guide to tell you what ever symbol means.

Thankfully, I was going to take my jacket to the dry cleaners, however it states on the label that I shouldn't! So it saved me a trip into town with it.

Back From The Dead

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:29:00 GMT

My web space providers (I-Websolutions) finally bit the bullet mid-week, they'd been offering a pretty lame service level for a couple of months. I've now switched new to a new provider, EUKHosts.

Hopefully everything will start working as its meant as I finish uploading everything. I've also refreshed the design of the site a little to celebrate the new move!

How To Speed Up Firefox

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:11:46 GMT

I'm always a bit dubious about claims to altering your settings in applications will bring some magical extra performance, but this one really seems to work. Try it out for yourself and see if your Firefox flies too.

Feeling exhausted after a good 6 hour Halo 3 marathon session! I've not had a good blasting like that since the old days of Halo 2.

Ubuntu boot Up time

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:26:00 GMT

At the moment my laptop takes just over 2 minutes too boot up Ubuntu, I've been looking through the forums though and it appears that under a minute is a reasonable time. Apparently it could be my wireless card that is delaying the boot, this fix has been offered that I'll have to play around with tonight:

Edit /etc/network/interfaces and replace everything in the file with:



auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

Update: This worked really well, my laptop can now cold boot and be on the internet with Firefox & aMSN running also in around 1 minute 5 seconds, fast enough for me!

Dual Boot Vista & Ubuntu

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:11:00 GMT

Well I'm about to take the plunge into installing Ubuntu (Linux) onto my laptop and get it to dual boot with Vista. Probably end up destroying the thing, but we'll see.

Anyway, this is the tutorial I'm following.

Update: I had problems with getting Ubuntu detecting the Vista partition on my Dell Inspiron 6400, it seems this problem occurs quite a bit. However I've now come across this post that will hopefully help.

Update 2: I went with the install and it worked beautifully! So I now have a dual booting Vista + Ubuntu setup. I quickly started to miss the MS fonts on the system though, but I soon found a quick fix for that too. Along with a list of free killer apps!

100 Miles Milestone

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:11:00 GMT

I logged into my Nike+ account the other day and it tells me now finally I can have a certificate for running my first 100 miles. Which I apparently clocked up back in November last year. Oh well, its nice to get some recognition finally. I'm only 25 miles away from hitting the 300 mile mark now.

By the way, has anyone seen the fun lately, if so tell him to get his ass back up in the sky. I'm sick of all this rain. Grrr.

Get Into Online Poker

Wed, 23 May 2007 19:44:53 GMT

If you ever feel yourself wanting to get into a bit of online poker then I recommend you check out pkr.com a very slick site that will let you play for money or fun. They've just released a new version of the software that allows you to play in a full 3D environment.

They also provide tutorials explaining the rules if your completely new to the game.

I'm off for a quick game myself when the updates finished downloading. Although I'll be trying to keep an eye on the football tonight as well since its the European Cup final. Come on Milan!

New Laptop

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:54:55 GMT

I bought a new laptop this week, as a present to myself for my birthday, gone for the Dell Inspiron 6400. Seems like a pretty decent machine and I got it speced out quite nicely too.

Just in the process of setting it all up now, while taking in the Bahrain GP, although I'm sweating like a tramp as it's boiling hot outside. Will get myself outside later for a run once the GP has finished.

I Have Gone Insane

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:31:00 GMT

I have spent to long inside and have finally gone mental. At 5:26pm I lost the plot, I need to get outside and find someone to talk to.

I am off work for the next week and it could mean real trouble, time to start clucking like a chicken again.

If you are unsure what a mentalist is, check out the definition on Wiki. You may not hear from me for a while, I need to go away and rediscover what the purpose of this page was for. Moooo

Pancakes Delia Style

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:30:00 GMT

It's pancake day today so it's time to look up a recipe and knock up some tasty pancakes. I'm a bit freaky and eat them without anything on, right out of the pan. Here's what you need according to Delia Smith:

Ingredients:
110g/4oz plain flour, sifted
pinch of salt
2 eggs
200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water
50g/2oz butter

Makes 12-14 (small pancakes I'd say) Preparation time less than 30 mins. Cooking time less than 10 mins.

Scoff the lot and enjoy, I'm planning on beating my record of eating 7 pancakes today.

Britney Spears Shaves Her Bonce

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:06:00 GMT

What's going in with Britney Spears shaving all her hair off? Has she really lost the plot this time or is she trying to make some kind of statement?

I don't really think its a good look for her anyway.

Here's a totally unrelated game called Tangerine Panic, it's mildly amusing, it'll help you get over the trauma of seeing Brit's baldy head.

Recover Your Thunderbird Inbox

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:01:00 GMT

If you are a user of Mozilla Thunderbird and ever find that your Inbox is completely blank one day then try the following method to restore it:

Tools > Account Settings..., select the offending account

Choose Server Settings, then navigate in Window Explorer to the listed path under 'Local Directory'

Close Thunderbird

Delete the Inbox.msf in the directory that was listed under 'Local Directory'

Restart Thunderbird

This should then rebuild your Inbox folder and bring back all your missing mails.

I'm Not Dead

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:01:48 GMT

I'm just busy with other things at the moment, I'll give an update sooner or later no doubt when I've got nothing else better to do with my time.

Hello everyone!

Sham Service

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:12:00 GMT

You may have noticed the site having a lot of problems over the past month, this has been down to some pretty shoddy support from my service providers.

First off, at the start of the month I was unable to access my webmail for a number of days. This was followed by a complete loss of service on the 10th November when the site was down for over 30 hours.

When the service returned, PHP5 had been removed from the server without explanation. I have wrote to support on a number of occasions and have been completely ignored when questioning when this service is likely to return to full.

This week again I have lost access to my web mail again and then the mySQL service was lost for 24 hours. The mySQL service has been corrected but the web mail is still down, again no explanation has been offered to why this is.

So far this has been one of the worst experiences I've had with a host provider, the last being with RedStation and I'm getting pretty pissed off with this now.

Update: Ironically the mySQL service dropped for a few minutes while I made this post!

Back From The Capital

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:58:00 GMT

Made it back from London in one piece, everything went well and the course was pretty good, learned a fair amount of new tricks.

I booked into the wrong hotel after a bit of a mix up with work on the first night but got that all sorted on Tuesday morning, ended up staying at the Euston Thistle which was quite nice.

The worst event of the trip was a fire alarm at 2:30am on the Thursday morning, meaning the whole hotel had to be evacuated. Just what you need when your completely knackered from walking around for miles the night before.