Cold

I’ve had a cold for the last few days, which I must say is an absolute delight. There’s nothing nicer than having almost constant coughing fits, interrupted only by the dribble of snot coming out of my nose. See, it’s even delightful reading about it!

There is a bright side though, it brought back happy memories of the Star Wars Name game – my Star Wars name being Danbo Bosyd, Newmagna of Strepsil.

Before the cold reached its peak, I got a chance to have a look around the IT 2000 expo with Iris. Some interesting technology, but nothing particularly amusing, so instead I’ll just mention the displays from two very foolishly named companies, called DCNUT Pty Ltd and ARES Interactive respectively. I think that’s just asking for trouble, in a French Connection UK kind of way. On the other hand, maybe they wanted their company names to be misread constantly as … err…. words possibly (or definitely in one case) inappropriate in a business context.

I also have two observations to share with you about Windows 2000. One is that the default start up music (WAV format, 485Kb) sounds like the theme heard at the end of a soap opera commercial break.

The Registry Editor. What’s your favourite key?

The other concerns the RegEdit program, the haven of extreme geeks with a wish to fiddle with configuration settings the messy, dangerous, no safety harness way. The version of RegEdit in Windows 2000 features a way of remembering particular locations in the humungous configuration tree known as The Registry. (They should have called it The Matrix – what would have been way cooler). Anyway, this feature is called "Favorites" – another victory for American Imperialist spelling, no matter what your English language settings on your computer, it won’t include the U. But that’s not my point. Favourites. Favourites?!?

Does anybody literally have a favourite spot in the Registry that they like to visit? Some little hideaway in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to go on a rainy day, away from the maddening crowds, where you can create new keys and values to your heart’s content?! I’m sorry, but in the real world, nobody but nobody uses this thing for fun!