A while ago my computer informed me, via an annoying little popup that Windows Update (or MS update technically) has some updates available for me. I tend to ignore that message for quite a while, and now I remember why. That message itself is a little misleading. It looks like:

Misleading...

This is all well and good but, well, basically it is wrong! I think Microsoft made a mistake here when they wrote the message and so I have decided to recreate it for them:

An Updated Version (No pun intended )

Or to paraphrase, the Update button should be renamed “Self-Destruct”. That would be a much better way to describe what it will do to your computer. Click below to read more!

Now I know that it doesn’t *always* crash your computer but I have had enough of it now. I finally decided to give in to the temptation (and the nagging!) and click the big update button. It then proceeded to download the few hundred MB’s of updates and start to install them. This all went well but it decided to hang on the 16th update, which is apparently because Windows Live Essentials update setup was asking me a question. If it had flashed the icon in the taskbar perhaps I might have noticed... Or maybe even brought it to the front, that would have been a nice touch. But no it left the installer window behind the update progress window.

I thought okay, it is allowed one mistake that is fine. And obviously being updates to the system it needs to restart, my Mac also does that, I’m used to it by now. But when I restart to be met with a black screen and a flashing cursor I am not happy. Went into the BIOS and set slow boot to true to see if that would perform some checks to fix it. Nope. The time by this point was 00:30am and I wanted my bed so I left it.

CC Licensed on Flickr by jypsygen

I guess my next steps will be to boot into the install CD and repair my system. However this brings me nicely onto the IE6 issue. How many people has this happened to in years gone by? How many average computer users know how to solve this problem? And how many people end up taking their computer to be repaired each time they update?

This makes me think that many average users will be scared to update in case it breaks. That is why IE6 still exists for some people, they are too scared to update to the newer browsers through Windows Update. And yes I realize that that is no excuse for not switching to Chrome or Firefox or even Opera, and yes I understand that some people keep it because the work system only works on it, but how many people are too scared to upgrade in a day and age where it should work flawlessly?!

So I decided to pop in the Windows 7 Install DVD and attempt to repair my installation... Went through the usual language setting screen and selected to 'Repair Computer' and it brought up the usual options. The first of which was 'Repair startup issues' - I thought, Perfect! that should do the trick! However I was wrong, I ran it twice to make sure but nope it couldn't fix any issues, or even find any.

I then moved onto the next viable option, restoring to the previous restore point just before updates started... I went away for a cup of tea at this point as it took about half an hour. I came back and it had failed. I thought fine, I can deal with that as I have another one earlier on in the day from another update of another program. Apart from that one failed too.

By this point I was very bored and decided to just to restart and see if anything had indeed happened. So I popped the CD out and restarted and voila! It started! And when I had logged in it informed me I had successfuly restored my computer (though to when I have no idea). I decided then that I wouldn't do anymore updates for a while until I had the time to fix it if things went wrong so I proceeded to ignore the annoying popup and carry on with my day. Little did I know that it was scheming against me all the time!

3am that night. That was when my computer decided it needed to wake up and install the updates, but I'm a heavy sleeper and didn't know until the morning when I found that I had been logged out. But the computer had started, so I don't know what it did right this time but something worked for once.

I was quick to set updates to download automatically but wait for me to install them to stop my computer waking up at 3am and making my whole room glow blue (and waste a lot of power I might add!)

So that is the extent of my troubles with Windows Update and another reason why I think people are still using IE6 (ignoring those folk who are forced to use it by their workplace!)

GoSquared have created an amazing web application called LiveStats and since it’s release they have also added Trends to this amazing application. In short LiveStats is an analytics web app. Now many of you will think, “Oh. Well I have Google Analytics for that!”. Well you can be forgiven for first of all dismissing the idea because Google Analytics is good, and I do still use it. But that isn’t what LiveStats is truly about! Continue after the break to find out more!

To help illustrate my point I’m going to pose a question to you:
“Do you know how long it takes for Google Analytics to update the tracking information gathered?”

A simple question really. And the answer is one that shocked and annoyed me in a day and age where everything is trying to be instant. - It can take as long as 4 hours! That is the average time that it takes Google Analytics to update your account, and by default it only looks at everything up to the day before unless you manually change the date to look at. Now this is all and well but it means you don’t know how many people are on your site at any one time. Again I hear you cry that there are counters that you can put on your page which will allow you to know this information.

Well be prepared to be amazed because I don’t think your counter can do this:

GoSquared's LiveStats!

I didn’t think so. LiveStats is a new breed of analytics which shows you all of the vital information about the visitors on your site in real time. And that is literal REAL time. Someone goes on your site and on average they appear in LiveStats in about 2.5 seconds. If you ask me that is damned fast!

OK I know there are other companies out there that are doing this now, and I don’t pretend to know who started it off but I just can’t get over the beautiful implementation the guys at GoSquared have come up with. So now onto a little more about LiveStats and trends itself and then maybe some about it’s future, both my views and what they have hinted at

I think that first of all we need to talk about their signup process. These guys really know how to keep it short, sweet and simple! All you need to do is head here and choose your plan that suits your site best. Each plan comes with a 30 day free trial and there is even a free plan which is supported by well targeted ads and has a limit of 10,000 pageviews. (I’m on the free plan and it is perfect for what I need )

I don’t need to describe the rest of the signup process as they have created a wonderful video showing just how quick it is:

So once you are signed up and have put the account code at the end of your webpages (just before the </body> tag) LiveStats will start showing your visitors and Trends will start to gather pageviews and referral information. As simple as that!

Now onto the true power of LiveStats... You can see an overview of all of the visitors on your site and from there you can expand one or all visitors to see the breadcrumb trail of where they have been on your site and how long they spent on each page. From there you can see further details about their browser and resolution which is great to see what your audience actually use.

The next place to get useful information is the map view. This shows you the geographical locations of all of your visitors on one global map. It even includes an amazing feature which allows you to see where it is daytime and where it is night time which is useful to see where most people are likely to be visiting from.

Finally we get to Trends. This is where you can see maps and tables and graphs of data ranging from pageviews to visitor counts and traffic sources to browser used. This is all useful data which, for me anyway, is starting to replace Google Analytics. There is such a wealth of information that you have access to and best of all it looks beautiful!

Oh! Did I mention that there isn’t an ounce of flash anywhere?! This means that accessing on your iPhone or other iOS and mobile devices looks just as great as a native app! You can’t ask for more than that can you?

Well actually you can. For some people adding code to webpages is something they pay other people to do, and why would you want to have to do that if you run a CMS system such as Joomla, Drupal or a WordPress blog (such as this one) where you are used to just installing a plugin and away you go. Well the great news is that you can! Well at least with WordPress for now but soon with Joomla! and Drupal. But I think I should save that for another blog post seeing as that is what I happen to be working on right now. *Hint Hint* shhhh!

Anyway, even if you stay using Google Analytics at the end of it, at least give GoSquared’s LiveStats a try, it is free after all!

Oh and don’t forget, the signup page is here, you can follow them @GoSquared and @GoSquaredStatus on Twitter and their GetSatisfaction page is here!

Well, it has been a while since the last blog post but not as long as before

Just thought I'd write a quick (which could yet become long) blog post about my experiences of the first week of uni! I have just started my first year at Portsmouth University studying Digital Forensics Bsc (Hons). The course looked great in the prospectus, and the rest of the course content that supports the digital forensics work looks great too.

I started last Monday 27th September. The first week was, obviously, Freshers Week. This meant a lot of boring lectures about how the uni works and a few slightly more interesting lectures introducing each section of the course and then came the real fun... Freshers Fayre. This involved lots of freebies, a bar, and even free Domino's pizza It was at the Freshers Fayre that I found out about the Mountain Biking Society. For just £45 I could join the society for the year and go out riding with an enthusiastic group of people and even get involved in some Cross Country (XC) racing if I decide I like the look of it. Will let you know more about my experiences with that after my first ride on Wednesday

Python Programming

The week just gone was much better than the first week as we actually got down to some proper work. And it was nice and easy to break us in gently! Can't remember the precise order in which everything happened but these are the lectures I had:

• Introduction to Structured Programming - aka Python
• Computer Organisation - And no that isn't keeping all your files in well organised folders
• Digital Forensics - Kinda obviously!
• Web Authoring & Design - Better than I thought it would be actually!
• Social Aspects of Computing - So we are learning about Facebook... :\

That list wasn't in any particular order I might add. Well apart from Social Aspects of Computing... That definitely comes in last for me but it is only a 1 hour exam which is predominantly multiple choice questions and a couple of short questions done on a computer.

Anyway I don't plan on blogging on for too long this time, I am supposed to be studying after all, so I shall blog again soon

Well... That was quite a week. I think the term I should use would be "a roller coaster of emotions"! There have definitely been ups and downs for sure but also some lessons along the way. So, lets start at the beginning:

The Moon by Me on Flickr

On Monday 17th August the weather forecast was set to be good so a couple of mates and myself went down to Manor Farm Country Park and took a load of photos. We didn't have a purpose for these photos, just wanted to get some good ones of the sunset and anything else that may be interesting down there. If you want to know more about the actual photos and the techniques that were used, especially in the night photography shots, then head over to this blog post (which I'll be writing soon and adding the link in soon after ). The really elating part of this was getting home and downloading, sorting and editing the photos. Where the photos had no specific purpose the edits could be done to however I wanted which was wonderfully fun as it turns out. This was definitely an up on the rollercoaster of my week!

The photos are now on my Flickr stream here.

Continue after the break if you want to see more about my week, including the drama of results and the dreaded crashing hard drive!

That is the begining of the week over and done with. The next big thing to happen this week was exam results. This was a big thing because it was basically my future in a little brown envelope! I had gained offers from all of my university applications and chosen 2 from them. My primary choice - Southampton Uni to study Computer Science which needed AAA grades - and my insurance choice - Portsmouth Uni to study Digital Forensics which needed 260 UCAS points and 2 A-levels minimum.

Well the long and short of it is that I got AABB for my results. OK I admit I was gutted when I found out I couldn't go to Southampton however now I have realised that Portsmouth may be even better than I first thought as I will be studying a course which fewer people are doing over the country and as a result the competition for jobs will be easier and the topic seems really good too! Also I am already programming so maybe specialising is what I need to do.

So it is off to Portsmouth University September 20th I go! Expect to see more Digital Forensics related posts on here in the future!

And finally the big hard drive disaster which started off good and became very bad very very quickly! After downloading all of the photos from earlier I soon realised that I needed more space and I had been thinking of getting a new hard drive for my MacBook Pro for a while now so I decided that I would purchase a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive for my Mac. I ordered it from eBuyer as they had it for a good price and I have never had any problems with them. The hard drive arrived nice and quick and I set about taking my MBP apart (using a YouTube video as a rough guide on what to do: Upgrading the Hard Drive MBP 15" (Mid '09)). This was all going fine until it got to the part where I needed to remove the 4 Torx screws which hold the HDD in the shock absorbers. This meant a trip to my local RS Components store to get one as ScrewFix and PC World both didn't have any. Anyway I finally got the HDD installed and everything backed up from my TimeMachine on my Ubuntu Server.

Everything was fine for 2 days... Then everything froze. Oh apart from the mouse oddly enough. A forced shutdown was required (First time ever for my Mac too!). Upon turning it back on I got nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

This was not good. I resisted the urge to run and scream and instead proceeded to trying to boot from the Mac OS X install CD... Err no that didn't work either. I couldn't boot to anything at all. After phoning Apple and them helping me go through everything I had already done again and coming up with a few extra ideas I hadn't come up with but to no avail. I finally gave in and put the old HDD back in and voila! it worked again. Fortunately.

CC Licensed on Flickr

So a phone call to eBuyer later and it is swapped over for a new one. This one is installed with no random trips to get a new Torx bit as I had already changed HDD twice so far (for any of you who are keeping count). Then it came to backing up from Time Machine. Well getting the new drive had taken a while and so I had completed some work on my old HDD that I didn't want to lose so I decided to backup to Time Machine again. Unfortunately I needed to wipe Time Machine and start again. No big loss. 5 hours later it was ready to restore to the new HDD - Yay!

Start Mac. Boot from CD. Mount Ubuntu Server. Start restore from Time Machine. Wait 2 hours for it to get to 95% and FAIL! This happened a total of 3 times before I gave in and bought a new 1TB external HDD (Western Digital My Book Studio) and used SuperDuper! to backup to that. For those that are indeed counting the number of times I have now taken apart and swapped HDD's it was 2 times per failed restore plus once more after buying the new drive. This gives a grand total of 9 times I took apart and swapped my HDD. Not sure if that makes me an expert but I'm now pretty sure I could do it with my eyes shut and hands tied behind my back

Anyway everything is now in working order and I'm going to get on with some work and write another blog post later this week hopefully!!

CC Licensed on Flickr by MedienGuerilla

What is this blog all about I hear you ask... Well I can tell you that this blog is a place for me to talk about my current projects but also about general things that interest me. I suppose I had best tell you what my interests are so that you know what you can expect from my blog posts. I am a student, and I have just finished my A-levels in Computing, Maths, Electronics & Geography, I am now waiting for my results... Computing is my favourite subject and my chosen career path (I think!). I am planning on going to university to study either Computer Science or Computer Forensics. I am currently employed part-time by Wildern School as an extension of the Graphics team there. At Wildern I am currently looking into rebuilding their wildernTV system and hopefully integrating it into Joomla so that it is similar to the current site. But more on that in the future I am sure!

There is plenty more I could talk about but I shall only leave you with some links which are to me on various places on the interwebs:

• This blog
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Google