I was reading TheMadAdmin today and I came across the following post. As I’m not having time to write much ATM, I’ll be quoting and commenting.

The below are based around real requests made to his IT department:

I need a Mac so I can learn to troubleshoot the marketing department.

Does that sentence even make sense?

Using surround sound will let me hear error alerts much better.

But error alerts in surround sound are so cool!

I need a wide screen laptop so I can fit more work on my desktop.

What a pathetic excuse! I’m My son is off skool today as I he is lazy ill.

I know I am a network admin, but the webmaster training will teach me to script the server.

How on Earth are you a network admin?

Yes I need the water cooling system, how else am I going to over clock the server?

But over-clocking’s fun…

I need a server at my desk with plenty of storage, so I can backup the network, nothing to do with those movie downloads. Oh and it needs a DVD burner as well.

Honesty is the best policy.

Three screens is a minimum. Any less and I’d never get my work done.

You should talk to Atariboy; our favourite three-monitor guy.

I need the new Pocket PC phone. Yeah the one that can play music. No I need it so I can use…Remote Desktop, yeah remote desktop protocol.

Palm person myself. I wouldn’t like to do remote desktop over GPRS, though

I need to upgrade my Graphics Card, the Radeon X1900 should do well and help me open emails much quicker.

I think it’d slow down your productivity myself

I know my PC is 2 months old, but it is too slow. I need the new Duo processor and several gigs of Ram. It’s the only way I can keep up with the work flow around here.

Couldn’t agree more.

Tags: geek, funny, tech, humour, humor, lol

1. I’d like to aplogise for the lack of posts; I’ve been and will be very busy until Friday. Hopefully then, my usual posting patterns and quality will come back.
2. DownloadSquad report You can view and use the new interface of Google
3. A few weeks back Megite kindly offered me a customised page on their site. Their site is, put simply, an RSS aggregator. It is very nicely designed, but in order to get a personalised homepage you have to send an OPML file to matthew.chen (at) gmail.com . You can view my homepage here.
4. DoshTracker is a good website which allows you to track the history of a sterling note. Though I’ve always been the first person to enter a specific note, you could be lucky. This site’s idea is similar to that of it’s American counterpart: Where’s George?
5. deviantART reached 20,000,000 deviations. That is 40 times as many files there are on the Wikimedia Commons!

Tags: deviantart, google, megite, money, doshtracker, wheres george, where’s george

I was reading 9rules’ blog and came across this post where they challenged their readers on a game of Asteroids.

I played, and scored poorly, but I was curious as to the site they used. I took a look, and was interested. The site they use, bunchball, allows you to embed dozens of games into blogs, and have a competition. Another option is to have a private game with your buddies who happen to be members. At times, the site seems a little too complex when it comes around to buddies.

Now, I aplogise for the briefness of the review, but you can try it out below. Play for a high score!

Tags: pacman, pac-man, games, bunchball

CraftyTV is a website which allows you to watch TV online, and is therefore Internet Video on Demand which is a type of Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV for short.

You can choose between hundreds of shows, including The Simpsons, various Star Trek series, CSI, CSI:NY, CSI Miami, South Park, Family Guy, American Dad, up-to-date Lost and Friends. This is extremely useful as it streams NSVs, unlike torrents where you have to download. In total, there are 4,400 episodes.

As you may have guessed, the site isn’t free. I had an account when it was, but due to the strain on servers all free accounts lost the ability to view videos (you can still view the available shows and talk in the shoutbox). By no means is subscription pricey, only £6 per month or £38 per year. When I remembered about this site, I bought a subscription and now I can watch (nearly) skipless videos.

The site claims to be legal, operating through a loophole in the DMCA.

The site uses a bit of Ajax, but not a lot. The shoutbox is Ajax, as is the remote.

Videos are at anything from 110kpbs to 300kbps; so it’ll run fine on a 512kbps connection.

As you may have noticed, I’m not posting as much as I should - and this site is to blame.

It is worth reading this which allows you to watch CraftyTV in VLC.

Tags: iptv, craftytv, tv, television, internet, video

Why spend £219 on Freehand MX or Illustrator when you could get a tool, which is almost as good - if not better- than it.

The software I’m talking about is Inkscape. Inkscape is a open-source, cross-platform and W3C compliant vector editor. The software uses a GTK+ interface, much like The Gimp.

For a Windows user, the interface at first looks a little daunting, but you learn to love it. The software is really powerful and can create some vector eyecandy!

The beauty of a vector is how when you zoom in it’s lossless. Inkscape can export SVGs and PNGs amongst others.

You can create shapes, lines, text and my favourite is the calligraphic line!

The Wikipedia article has a little more info.

Screenshot uploaded by Eurleif and Deeahbz

Inkscape Homepage

Tags: inkscape, graphics, svg