By Mat | Published:
July 12, 2006
Received a nasty spoof mail today. Here’s the text:
Hello My name is Dave and I am from the Support of WorldPay. We have received the payment order (ID 0220712,Receipt Date 09/07/2006) from you and we need to make a verification of the details you have filled in, as we have received a notice from your card service stating that there was a chargeback made by the owner of the card with which you have made the payment and that your level of authorization has been altered during your last transaction. This is a very serious matter. We have deducted the amount of the chargeback, GBP 149.89, from your account and added our standard fee of GBP 24.00 as well (you can see your payment details in the attachment). We have failed to contact you using the telephone number you have provided earlier, meeting no response. As a precaution, we have limited access to your account in order to protect against future unauthorized transactions.Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your personal information. Please contact your credit card company to resolve this matter. Best Regards, Dave Gollick shopper@uk.worldpay.com
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Posted in Work | Tagged phising, scam, worldpay |
By Mat | Published:
June 20, 2006
I’ve been trying to find some good T-shirts lately to replace my tired and fading summer wardrobe, but have been pretty disappointed in what is out there in the way of t-shirts with a slightly geeky edge.
Thinkgeek are probably the undisputed kings of the geeky T and I’ve had a few from them in the past, but having to pay for shipping from the US bites unless you are buying a lot in one go. I’ve also bought a few from Primitive State in the past, which I really like. They do though have a tendency to put their own logo all over the T-shirts in a rather too prominent way.
In true web-designer fashion, the solution was of course to put together our own store, which makes an interesting Friday afternoon project for everyone in the office. The result is Shirthead. Read More »
Posted in Tech | Tagged geek, publishing, tshirts |
By Mat | Published:
June 7, 2006
I recently posted that I had picked up a new Dell Inspiron laptop and hinted at a problem with a reflective screen.
I was really disappointed in this. The TrueLife display (which I paid extra for) is supposed to increase colour brightness and contrast, which it does. Unfortunately the trade-off for this is a screen that is reflective enough to shave in.
Reading around the web other sites seem to suggest that this is not really a problem, something that I feel that I have to put right.
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By Mat | Published:
May 16, 2006
I’ve been a fan of Dreamweaver, the web development app from Macromedia, since I first picked up a license for version 1.2 many moons back. Whilst it is far from perfect (a crappy FTP engine and laughable CSS support spring immediately to mind) it is still leaps and bounds ahead of competing packages.
Like many fans of Dreamweaver I can’t help wonder what will happen to the package now that Adobe (of Photoshop fame) have bought out Macromedia. Such is my concern that Adobe are going to ruin the package that I’ve decided to upgrade to the latest version now before they get a chance to screw with it too much.
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By Mat | Published:
May 4, 2006
I’ve been finding work hard this week, so thought I would explore other avenues (well, it’s always good to know what’s out there). Here is a message I sent via the PG Tips website:
Hello,
I really like tea (PG Tips being my preferred blend) and think that I have a natural talent for the drinking of it.
I already spend a large part of my working day drinking tea and wondered whether I should be looking at utilising this work skill on a more formal basis.
Please could you tell me whether PG are currently seeking to recruit full or part-time tea tasters.
Many thanks.
Mat Bennett.
Wonder whether I will get a reply
Posted in Guff | Tagged stupid, tea |
By Mat | Published:
April 28, 2006
The new Dell laptop arrived today (very good, but bit too shiny for my liking - more of that another time). Once I had cleared off a few gig of useless crap that Dell had kindly installed, including 5 different AOL programs, I thought I’d load up some essential software before the holiday weekend.
Whilst I am sure that my list of essential software wouldn’t suit everyone, I found making the choices quite interesting. Here’s what I came up with and why:
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Posted in Code, Tech | Tagged avg, context, dell, dreamweaver, filezilla, firefox, fireworks, flash, freehand, gadget, ie, interakt, laptop, picasa, software |
By Mat | Published:
April 21, 2006
With over 70 million registered accounts at the time of writing, myspace is an internet phenomenon that is hard to ignore for those involved in online marketing.
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By Mat | Published:
April 5, 2006
Just found this one as well!
http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon
Posted in Guff | Tagged dictionary, tools |
By Mat | Published:
April 5, 2006
Just adding a quick note so that I can find this again in the future. Spent ages trying to find a good latin dictionary / translator online for something I was working on a while ago, and didn’t have much luck. Stumbled on this one by accident today.
http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookdown.pl
Posted in Guff | Tagged dictionary, tools |
By Mat | Published:
April 2, 2006
mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things that attracted me to the Panasonic FZ30 that I chose as my new camera was the fact that it had a whopping great zoom built in as standard. What I didn’t mention before is that it has a neat little trick up it’s sleeve for when the 12x optical zoom just isn’t enough.
The FZ30 let’s you lower the final image size and use the extra resolution to boost the effective zoom of the camera - all without resorting to digital. For instance, in the gallery that follows, I dropped the image size to a respectable 5 mega pixels and got the effect of a 15.3x zoom. Very handy indeed.
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