Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:I miss work (Score 1) 404

by MikeS2k (#33750962) Attached to: My Job Is..

Seconded. I find it takes about 4 or so months until I'm comfortable enough to show up to work without the "heart in chest" sensation. Once I'm settled in, I'm fine. It's the whole process of going through the interviews, being the "new guy", meeting many new faces to be daunting enough for me to not answer the phone when the prospective bosses phone up.
I was unemployed for about a year - either not bothering to apply for jobs, or working up the courage to send off my application only to claim unavailability when the interview phone call came. I decided I needed to get over my fears and applied to work in a high school. Been there over three years now.

Comment: Re:32" + 15" LCDs (Score 1) 375

by MikeS2k (#33043932) Attached to: How Big Is Your Primary Display?

I bought a cheap 32" 1080p LCD TV for use as my primary display and I'm happy with it so far; the main things I've had:

using VGA output sucks - I never really noticed a difference between VGA and DVI on my 22" LCD, but on this 32" LCD the colours are washed out and the text a little blurred (you see this most with red text). Using a DVI - HDMI adapter with a HDMI lead is fine. This could be VGA itself or just an issue with my cheap 32" panel.

The pixel size is fine for me, but even at 1080p resolutions in games Anti-Aliasing is still needed.

I run mine with a DPI of about 125 (as opposed to Windows's standard 90dpi) so I've upped the font size a little.
The rational for getting a HDTV was that it was practically as cheap as the cheapest 26-27" 1080p monitors were - so I opted to just go for a 32" HDTV.
I have bad eyes (bad eyes at 24 years old!) and I get headaches, I find the further away I sit from a display the better.
A few other users wonder how I can even use a display and font sizes so large. I wonder the same when I sit at their 19" displays set with tiny little fonts.

I also bought a wall-mounting kit, but the kit I have is meant for standard monitors - a standard VESA mount will not fit a HDTV as the HDTV mount holes are spaced much further apart. (you can actually tilt a vesa mount sideways and use the two top holes on the HDTV to bolt onto it... but I don't fancy having my display falling off of my wall) Bit of a dumb mistake to make on my part. :)

You will need to buy a specific HDTV mount.

Comment: Re:One flaw (Score 1) 316

by MikeS2k (#29951948) Attached to: An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment

I was an ordinary helpdesk drone and I had access to all of my customers e-mails. I worked for a large UK DSL ISP.
Infact, I would semi-regularly have customers phoning me up asking me to read out their e-mails, as if I was some sort of human "speaking clock".

"Do I have any e-mails from 'sonnyjim'? Oh, could you read it out to me? See, I'm not at my computer and sonnyjim is my son who's in Australia..."

I would do so if I was happy with the customers identity.
I don't recall anyone ever abusing this facility. From what I saw, the contents of every mailbox I went into wouldn't make riveting reading - it's not all "carry on" affairs in there. We had better things to do, like browsing BBC news and reading Slashdot.

Comment: Re:I don't get it... (Score 1) 157

by MikeS2k (#28873669) Attached to: Stopping Spam Before It Hits the Mail Server

Indeed, a lot of spam to my mail server comes from China, Korea, or India.
I see the occasional spam come from the USA, but it's a very small amount. Same with Canada.
The hostnames I often see seem to belong to residential addresses - DSL connections etc. It seems a damn botnet is responsible for sending all the "Acai berry" and Viagra/Cialis spams to my domain.

I don't shitcan the mails from "bad" countries outright, but I do increase the "weight" / probability it might be spam.
I've also whitelisted Britain, so no e-mail coming from UK IP addresses will get filtered (I am based in the UK)

Setting this up on an SMTP proxy box running ASSP took a day, and has reduced spam on my network by 90-95% - it's a no brainer, really.

Comment: Re:Don't to Done (Score 1) 136

by MikeS2k (#28819479) Attached to: IBM Seeks Patent On Digital Witch Hunts

It's bizzare - what if you word you've chosen is important to convey a message (or a subtle pun?)

Why don't they just put double-spaces inbetween words - you can still track people by seeing where the double-spaces appear, and the message itself isn't as distorted.
How did this idea get out of somebody's lunchtime daydream?

It's the same old story; boy meets beer, boy drinks beer... boy gets another beer. -- Cheers

Working...