THIS is a cinema display!

(Don't take this post as a commitment to blogging resuming - I just found the idea amusing. Images from here and here.)

For anyone still following this, I'm pleased to announce the release of PubCat, a tool for combining Publisher files, and one long-requested in the groups. It can be found on the swanky new Tools page.

I might start blogging again soon. Time will tell.

Well, it seems I never let you (whomever you may be) know how Attempt 3 went. Following the instructions on the tin (80g of egg replacer - which is a massive amount - and an amount of water that now escapes me), with 8oz of flour, margarine, and sugar + flavourings gave me something bearing a remarkable resemblance to cake! Problems: Lack of flavour (I failed to account for the amount of cocoa required to flavour an extra 80g of egg replacer), lack of height (I might try adding a little baking powder next time), and tasting a little too strongly of egg replacer (maybe more cocoa will solve that). I'm not sure when I'll try the next one.

As my warranty for my laptop expires on the 28th of this month, I decided that sending the machine off for one final warranty repair would be a good idea. The faults I highlighted to Novatech were the intermittent display corruption, USB port instability and the dodgy audio. UPS were a pain (collecting a day later than when they were scheduled to), and Novatech claimed delivery far later than they should technically have received it (not sure who to blame there), but I can't really complain as when I finally received the machine back yesterday (exactly two weeks after it left me, almost to the hour), not only had it had the motherboard and VGA cable replaced (as had been claimed on the phone to me and the repair sheet with it), but it had also had seemingly every other component bar the hard drive replaced. Perhaps a kindly Novatech tech decided to give me an early Christmas present. To whomever was responsible, thank you and a Merry Christmas (or other appropriate holiday greeting) to you too.

I should really have done some (academic) work this vacation, but have so far failed (mainly citing my lack of laptop as the reason, although procrastination was probably another contributing factor). For the first time in a while, I do have set vacation work, as well as trying to catch up with Quantum and revising for collections.

(I think there's a mouse in my keyboard - it's just started squeaking at me!)

Below is possibly the worst cartoon you'll ever see. Richard said it was good (he may have been humouring me), so I decided to inflict it on all 0 of you reading this. Have fun!

And before I forget, to try and give it a kickstart into the Google rankings, here is the website for the Oxford Students' Ice Skating Club - OxIce.

Have a great Christmas (or if you don't want to, don't).

Well, it seems this is turning into a cookery blog! It turned out that the second half of the Accidental Brownies was so burned that it was not worth eating.

Attempt 2 (using more baking powder, a little bit of Xanthan Gum, more oil, less water, and some Stork - as shortening is impossible to get hold of round these parts) was made Wednesday, and was slightly more successful. The cake rose massively at the edges, overspilling the tins, but failed to rise in the middle. It also turned out to be rather greasy (oil needs to be replaced with water, I'd guess). It has less of a tendency to fall apart than did the last attempt, and now it's iced it doesn't taste half-bad. Although it's not the sponge I was going for. I've ordered some Allergycare Egg Replacer from www.goodnessdirect.co.uk; I'll make another stab at the sponge once that arrives.

Well, today I tried to expand my range of allergy-compatible cakes by baking an egg-free cake. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to properly account for the lack of egg, and the cake didn't rise. Well, it rose for about 5 minutes in the oven before it exploded and collapsed back into the base of the tin. As I was scraping the remains out of the tin and wondering whether to throw the other half of the mixture (my college oven can handle only one half of a cake at a time), I tried a crumbling, flaking bit of the residue (which was unable to hold itself together, at all). It was gorgeous! I had, as many before me also had, discovered Accidental Brownies. I'm now going to get very fat, as I've already eaten one entire half; the other is waiting downstairs (although that is a little overcooked, so I'll have to leave it to soften before eating it).

Last week I got a telephone call from Opodo regarding my Summit flight in March, asking me to call back on "0871 277 9852" regarding my schedule change. This is also the number listed at the bottom of my schedule change confirmation received by email. I finally got around to calling back today, and calling that number puts you straight into a recorded loop saying how brilliant Opodo is.

Then, after a while of that, the message switches to an Expedia message, saying that the number is out of service and to ring a different (0870) number instead. So I ring that (naively thinking that Opodo and Expedia have merged, or somesuch), and after an age of waiting on hold, manage to talk to a human (or at least a Glaswegian).

She asks for an itinerary number (which I do not have, only having a Booking Reference, Ticket Number, and various other numbers not calling themselves an itinerary number). She offers to search for my email, which she cannot find. Neither can she find my name on the system. I ask whether this is Opodo, Expedia, or what. She says it's Expedia, and talks to her supervisor. After another while on hold (more cheesy muzak), she comes back and informs me that it's definitely Expedia, and Opodo is a competitor, and that they have been receiving a high volume of calls asking for Opodo, but don't know why (despite the fact that I've already told her that it is because an Opodo number is calling itself Expedia and asking people to ring Expedia).

So now I have no idea what to do. I can't remember my account settings (why does every single website have different requirements for lengths and allowed characters for usernames and passswords?!) for the online website, so can't check my details there. I guess I'll have to ring the main line and try to get put through to somewhere.

. I hate phones.

If anyone else has had this problem, feel free to comment. I'll update with a solution if I find one.

After much fretting, I finally decided to risk booting from CD to install the 8355H BIOS. After much waiting whilst the machine hummed and harred with unreadable error messages, the screen turned blue (with gibberish) - the colour of the flash program. A progress bar counted down backwards in red, then faster in green (indicating that the update was a success), and the machine powered itself off. Restarting, it started fine!

Unfortunately, now I get a "PREVIEW VERSION - NOT FOR RESALE" message and a date flashing on the POST screen every time I boot, and the new BIOS still didn't allow Vista to progress past its ACPI BSOD.

For those of you who want to know how to flash a BIOS using a boot CD without touching a floppy drive, there is a basic tutorial here. Instead of using the floppy image provided, download a basic Win98SE floppy image from here, and add the BIOS flash utility and the new BIOS image using WinImage. Then use the tutorial linked above to burn using Nero, selecting the floppy image file you've created instead of using the floppy drive. If you want to be fancy, you can replace the default autoexec.bat with a new one that automagically runs the BIOS flash.

To those of you who are getting the same problems as me attempting to install Vista on a laptop, I'm sorry that I don't have a solution (save trying the x86 version instead - worked for me during Beta 2). I've reported the problem to MS and am waiting for a response.

To those of you who visit the site to access the VBSmart Mirror formerly hosted here, please accept my apologies. Andres Pons, the original creator of vbsmart.com, emailed me and bluntly asked me to remove the site. I reluctantly obliged.

I was trying to install Vista RC1 x64 last night, but was getting an error before setup even began about a missing ACPI controller. After some research the problem appeared to be solvable by a new system BIOS. So this morning I head over to the Novatech Forum and see that my machine (Crossfire 3400) is actually a MiTAC, and BIOS updates can be found there.

Happily, I visit the MiTAC site. I locate updates for both the system and the kbc BIOS, and after a little bit of Google, instructions on how to install both. I download these and the flashing tools, and (lacking a floppy drive) use Nero to make a DOS boot CD that will run them. I boot to this.

Installing the KBC BIOS is a breeze (if a little surreal, with little smiley faces filling up a progress bar, and the notebook then switching itself off with NO lights - not even the battery status. In addition, whilst flashing, the mother of all fans that I have never heard before kicked in. The machine sounded like a jet engine. I boot the machine back into Windows (XP x86 SP2), just to check that nothing was borked, then go back to the boot CD to install the system BIOS.

I type the requested instructions, and the BIOS flasher appears, does its job, then verifies and shows the green text to show that the update was successfully installed. Little did I know that that would be the last coherent text my notebook displayed. THe machine shut itself down, and upon pressing the power button again, I see scrolling vertical lines of gibberish (rather reminiscent of The Matrix, but in white rather than green). After a short length I see what looks like the prompt for my BIOS password (yes, I'm paranoid). Thinking if I can get past this screen, I might be able to make some progress, I type in my password and press return, and the machine even beeps to say it's accepted, but then I see (hidden behind the garbage lines) what looks like DOS error messages. No beef.

It turns out from the Forum that my machine is in fact a MiTAC 8355H. The only difference is the graphics card, but apparently that necessitates a different driver (in stark contrast to desktop machines, where you can use whatever the hell AGP or PCI-E graphics card you like and still use the same driver).

MiTAC service have yet to get back to me, but let this serve as a warning to all Novatech Crossfire users: do not install the O1.09 system bios flash for the MiTAC 8355 unless you fancy hosing your machine. The 1.09 BIOS for the 8355H might be worth a try, but I wouldn't put money on it, as I haven't tried it myself.

As if that wasn't enough, by that point in the morning I'd already acquired a bitchin' headache within a quarter of an hour of getting up, and I spent the first hour of work this afternoon re-shelving books to accommodate someone else's flagrant shelving error.

And to top it off, the Novatech forums are censoring the word "Bugger", making it look like I'm being profane when I'm just being mildly vulgar.

Today is definitely not my day. I hope it's yours.