Stolen
Topic: My Web Pages
Had a shock on Monday (hopping mad, too!). Found a webpage which had copied all of my words from my first Tribute page and from the story of the Traitor, several family photographs had been taken as well. It all looked particularly awful, too. Why? Well, he had not copied my external style sheet information - probably didn't know how to. I followed his link back to his personal pages and found he had listed a number of pages about people with his family name! All copied direct from the original sources (which all had copyright notices). Two or three emails later, he agreed to remove the stolen content.

Earlier in the year, someone I was corresponding with also took family photographs from my site without asking. It is the 'without asking' that is hurtful. The result of this episode was to make me frantically update all my pages in early April with a JavaScript 'No right click' program. I know this won't stop anyone who is determined but it will put off some people. People should realise that a published web page has automatic copyright, just as a published book does. Downloading an article for research or to read later is one thing but, if you find something you would like to include in your own website, you should ALWAYS ask permission first and, if permission is granted, give the source the appropriate credit. After all, would you think of visiting your local library, photocopying entire pages from various books, putting them together and then publishing the result as 'your' very own book?

---

The Twins' Replies to the Tooth Fairy
Topic: Grandchildren
Yesterday morning, I was thinking about Elliot's tooth and I thought it would be great fun if the children received emails from the "Tooth Fairy". I searched the Internet. Found a poem about the Tooth Fairy, found a picture somewhere else (which I admit I nicked!). Put it all together for Elliot with music. Decided to use the same picture with a letter from the Tooth Fairy for Stephanie: "Congratulations Stephanie. You have a loose tooth!.....". Sent them off. Hopefully, they would get them before they went to bed. Well, they did. WOW! Were they a success. I think they went to bed rather late again last night - two late nights in a row, good job it is the weekend!

Here is Elliot's reply: (dictated to Mummy)
Thank you for the money. I was excited when my tooth was coming out and Grandpa pulled my tooth out and I was very brave and I didn't cry. Then Grandma took a photo of me. What time did you come last night? Did you come at 10 o'clock? I was in bed at 9 o'clock. I was very tired so I didn't want to stay up. My sister called Stephanie is a chatterbox and when I want to go to sleep she always chatters to me and I wish I could have seen you. Next time are we allowed to leave you a little present? I told people my tooth came out and I am very pleased. When my tooth came out my tongue could touch the gap and it felt very funny. Thank you for your e-mail.
Lots of love from Elliot xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I hope you have a nice time at your house. Where have you put my tooth?

Here is Stephanie's reply: (also dictated to Mummy)
Thank you for not leaving me out and I'll put my tooth when it falls out in a tin foil with salt and it will be in the same place as Elliot's. What do you make with the teeth? Do you make houses and do you make furniture? Do you make beds out of teeth? Do you only take good teeth or do you take good and bad teeth? I have a fairy watch so I can remember you all the time and do you have a name? I like your letter and I feel happy about you and I love you so much. I'll never forget you. I won't be sad if you don't reply because I know you are very busy.
Love from Stephanie
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

My daughter's reply: You made their day sending those e-mails. Stephanie in particular is so happy and they both said to me 'so they really are real'. they 100% believe that your e-mails came directly from the tooth fairy and asked questions like 'how does she know my name, will the computer know where to send the reply'? Stephanie has been looking out of her window...

They wanted to reply because they were so pleased? All from them (although I changed some of the grammar). I did say that the Tooth Fairy may not have time to reply so don't get upset and they were fine with that.

The Tooth Fairy did find some time to reply. Seems Grandmothers have lots of different purposes in life!

---

The Tooth Fairy will be coming!
Topic: Grandchildren
Elliot's first loose tooth was getting really wobbly. So, Grandpa asked him if he wanted him to see if it would come out today. He did! Elliot wiggled it himself for a while and then Grandpa got a tissue and... out it came. One perfect small white tooth. Elliot looked amazed and then delighted. Excitedly, he announced: "The Tooth Fairy will be coming tonight"! Stephanie had a loose tooth also but not anywhere near loose enough to come out. I could see she was every so slightly jealous! Grandpa got some warm boiled water and put a pinch of salt in it for Elliot to rinse his mouth. He was so happy he didn't mind at all. I decided to take a photograph so that I could send it to Uncle David.

---

Unwanted Nuisance Calls
Topic: Miscellanea
I smile now every time the telephone rings! I was SO fed up with all the marketing calls we were getting. First it was junk mail, then spam emails, and then intrusive, time wasting telephone calls. It seemed like hundreds of them every week! I registered with the "Telephone Preference Service" but it takes a while and depends on business using their 'don't call' lists. I could have had 'caller display', but why should I have to pay to know that 98% of my calls are unsolicited marketing calls? Our old analogue answering maching had packed up about three months ago and I had not been able to find a replacement. So, I was using British Telecom's free answer service for when I was on line or out of the house. I even thought of buying a new telephone. Then last Saturday, when I was not even looking, there it was, a stand alone digital answering machine sitting on the supermarket shelf. It gives us great satisfaction to hear it saying, "Thank you for calling"!

---

Father's Day
Topic: Family Days Out
Yesterday was Father's Day - my son's first. We all decided to have a day out and meet at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey. The original palace belonged to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, chief minister to Henry VIII, who lived in it for eleven years. He added hunting lodges for the King but eventually he was forced to hand the palace over to King Henry VIII in 1525. I went there as a child but the only real memory I had was of seeing the famous old grapevine. I went again when my children were around five and six with my sister - on that occasion we tried getting lost in the maze but didn't go into the Palace. (The maze was planted in 1690 and is 2 miles long, so you need plenty of time!) We had a lovely day together wandering round the gardens and the Palace, despite a drop of rain in the afternoon. We just managed to see everything and, because of Baby Andrew's pushchair, we were privileged to use the lift instead of climbing all the stairs to view Henry VIII's state apartments! Afterwards, we all visited my sister, who lives very near to Hampton Court.

---

Zone Alarm
Topic: Computer
Delighted with the free version of Zone Alarm, which my son suggested I get. Amazing to see how many access attempts are being blocked! Went to a site called Shields Up yesterday, which I had bookmarked ages ago. I remember failing all the tests miserably. Anyway, this time, the results stated:

"Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet solicited or otherwise was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice."

Posted by Noviomagus at 00:01 BST Post Comment | Permalink

---

All Was Not Lost!
Topic: Computer
Been experiencing a problem or two with the new external drive/old drive. I had done a virus check as a precaution a while back. Decided to do a scan disk of E drive and lots of errors were found and some invisible files and folders were restored. Wish I had thought of doing that at the start - it would have saved me lots of time searching for copies of programs on the Internet, downloading a new Windows Media Player, etc., etc.! Pleased to get back all my fonts, games, screensavers and unzipped folders, which have all reappeared.

---

How Daft Can You Be?
Topic: Computer
Solved the lack of colour in toolbars, scrollbars and 3d objects! First, I rediscovered how to customise the display properties then, eventually, it dawned on me that I had actually installed a 'Theme' some three years ago. I had completely forgotten about it and I feel particularly daft as I had carefully matched the Windows Media Player embedded in one of my old pages with that colour not realising that it was a 'local' colour scheme. Messed up my Encarta 2001. I had copied all the files over from the old external drive and stupidly deleted them. I must have left something behind though because, when I next wanted to use Encarta, the program reinstalled from the CD and the result is I have lost all of the updates I had downloaded.

---

What A Headache!
Topic: Computer
Gradually progressing with restoring my computer. Found my old wallpaper so my desktop looks more familiar but the old colour is missing from toolbars and scrollbars, which are now a horrible grey. Got my printer working again. Found all the folders on the old drive but the printer driver was missing - had to reinstall from the HP disk. Also reinstalled my scanner and Canon ZoomBrowser from disk. Thank goodness, all the folders with my photos were intact but the driver for the camera can't be found so, I can't download photos via the usb - good job I have a pc card adapter. I finally found the folder for my Outlook Express address book and copied that over. Also discovered that Microsoft Works had not been reinstalled so now my spell checker is working again as OE shares that dictionary. However, a lot of files are missing from the old drive - System32 folder is virtually empty. The Bowep folder is gone so most of my games have gone too and others are missing .dll files. I have recreated Bowep and have managed to find quite a few of the old games on the internet. Not that I play them very often! When I had my first computer, a reconditioned ex-office laptop with no modem, I did get quite addicted to JezzBall! Mainly because someone commandeered the machine before I had had it ten minutes, got a good score and (so I was told) commented, "She won't top that!" or words to that effect. (I did!). Anyway, now I like WordZap and card games best when I want to wind down, no time to spend several hours on JezzBall!

---

A Disaster!
Topic: Computer
Well, the worst happened and I crashed my computer on 18th April! I hope I never go through that experience again! NEVER try to replace user.exe with a different one! I now know that it is unique to each computer. Thankfully, I found an excellent local repair man at Black Cat PC Computer Solutions in Bognor Regis. He went to a lot of trouble to restore as much as possible. Thank goodness all my web pages are there as I didn't have a backup of some unpublished pages and my recent amendments! He also installed a much larger hard disk and put the old one into an external drive so that I could access what remained of my old files. So far, I have managed to restore MailWasher, Paint Shop Pro and PestPatrol, also reinstalled Internet Explorer 6. Can't seem to restore the emails for my separate identities but got some back for my main identity minus all the 'Rules' which have gone. My Address Book is missing too and the spell checker is not working. Just to complicate things, Freeserve (my ISP) has just changed its name to Wanadoo. Seem to have lost all my games, downloaded fonts and screen savers, Windows Media Player and my recently updated WinZip9. Hope I can find my registration code somewhere! Could be much worse.

---