Steve McCabe: from island to island

It's been a busy hardware-oriented week. This is what I've learned. 1. When your Windows PC gets the blue-screen of death (BSOD) that says 'memory_management', your  memory really is fried. I was lucky to get the memory I need from the nearest store, and before you know it I'd not only resolved the problem, but got an extra 1Gb of RAM that makes my laptop noticeably faster. 2. If you've got a old PC with an Intel Socket 775 CPU, do consider swapping out the old 1.3Ghz single core processor for a dual-core 2.6Ghz CPU. For a few quid, I've got a blindingly fast PC I was previously thinking of dumping. Then to make things sweeter I overclocked it to almost 4Ghz! And it took just 10 minutes to install. 3. If your Ubuntu PC won't come back from hibernation, it'll probably be due to a conflict with your NVidia card. Here's the solution. 4. If you can't log into your Ubuntu Samba-shared folder, make sure you're logging-in  with the host...

Liam: I smell Sonic! Me: What does he smell like? Liam: Sonic!

Liam tries for the Tin Man look Barely a day goes by without Liam coming home from school singing a new nursery rhyme. I did introduce him to that classic of the 1870's, Ring a Ring o' Roses, and a tune allegedly about the Bubonic Plague went down well - beats this wishy-washy 'I love you, you love me' stuff they feed the kids these days. But by far his favourite is 'Three Blind Mice', and he sings the line 'who CUT off their tails with a carving knife' with an impressive gusto!