OneGuyFromBarlick

We complain so much about service here China but at least we haven't got government interference to contend with! (As far as we are aware....)
As for archiving emails. I never do it. I print the important ones and file them. Everything else is cleared so that there is never more than two month's worth on the file. I always remember the BBC IT department's reaction when my mate Daniel deleted all his unread emails, they considered it very irresponsible!

Stanley wrote:As for archiving emails. I never do it. I print the important ones and file them. Everything else is cleared so that there is never more than two month's worth on the file. I always remember the BBC IT department's reaction when my mate Daniel deleted all his unread emails, they considered it very irresponsible!

It all depends on what they are being used for, my important emails at work are regularly backed up. You never know when evidence of your accountability is required and electronic copies are much easier to locate.

If Stanley's back-ups include his Ubuntu profile files as well as his data files then he'll have his Thunderbird emails on the back-up.

I have a differnt approach again to email, I don't delete stuff at all, I just let it roll. Its not archived, its all live.

chinatyke wrote:

Stanley wrote:Why not use Thunderbird China? Never had a minute's bother with it.

Because I'm too lazy and set in my ways to change things.

You're right, time I looked into it. I'd love to get away from all things MSN.
Downloading it now ..... not sure if I can configure it though.

Thanks for the advice.

2:30 pm update. It works, but about as fast as treacle flowing from Sabden to Pendle summit. Not a success story but I'll give it a day or two.

3:45 pm Open up a folder and retrieve the contents: Thunderbird: 9 secs. Outlook: <1 sec.

2nd attempt on another folder containing a lot of attachments got the message "Connection to server timed out" after about 2 minutes. Outlook again <1 second.

Sorry - hate to support MSN but I'm going back to Outlook. Thanks for trying, Stanley.

Actually, Macs have their own email client called Mail oddly enough! Can't be bothered trying this one!

Check out Airmail http://airmailapp.com Cost's a very small fee and it's flawless.

chinatyke wrote: The Chinese censors could also be suspects, they've deliberately crippled Google here.

Can't you use a VPN China? I understand SSH tunnels cannot be blocked

chinatyke wrote: I use a Mac with Mavericks OS and Firefox as the browser.

I used to use Chrome/Firefox but found that they don't work with AppNap, a feature that doesn't interrupt what your doing but vastly increases your battery life. You'll probably hesitant to try it, but once you do you'll never turn back (Until Chrome/Firefox doesn't kill the battery

Thanks Steven. VPNs do work here but they are frowned upon by the authorities, I suspect they are illegal but using a VPN to access banned websites like social media sites eg Facebook, would definitely be illegal. Some foreigners do use them but doing dodgy things in China is a risk I am not prepared to take.
Yesterday I went to renew my residence permit and was given permission to stay here for another 3 years. Lots of documentation and preparation are required including having a medical earlier this month. I have to visit their office again this week to get a receipt document which they could not issue yesterday because of a power cut. This document acts in lieu of a passport and will allow me to travel and stay at hotels within China. My passport will be available for collection in 3 weeks time but by that time I'll be 1000 miles away in Yunnan. The permission to stay in China can be withdrawn at any time and then you are usually given 10 days to uproot and leave the country and not re-enter for 10 years. So you can appreciate why I toe the line.
I think one of the major problems for us foreigners is international access to the Internet, the domestic sites load very quickly and of course are very compliant with Chinese laws. Anything they cannot control at corporate level, like Google, is heavily censored and Google is crippled here.
I use a Mac desktop not a laptop so no problems with batteries.

Sounds like 1984 China... The world has a long way to go until it is one big happy family....
Incidentally, do motherboards still have a battery on them?

Yes motherboards still have batteries on them. Usually CR2032 coin cells, on desktops and some laptops, but most laptops use something a little smaller. It keeps the clock going when theres no other power and keeps some configuration settings. Back in the day, a CMOS battery failing was a major problem because it kept all the hard drive settings,, but nowadays its just inconvenient when the battery is flat. I keep a stock of CR2032 if you're after one. Typically they last 5 or 6 years.

Not to be confused with the big 'Main' battery in laptops that is topped up with the charger. Laptops have a CMOS battery as well, usually needing 2 hours work to dismantle the damned thing to get to it.

Back on the email trail, I've decided to route all my email through gmail and use a browser to access it. It seems both of my own mail servers on my two hosting providers have both been blacklisted by some major email processors so I'm getting a degree of bounced mail, which is a real pain. Yahoo (who process mail for a lot of ISPs) have now decided to blacklist my pluggy.me.uk server. Its not good for business when half my mail isn't delivered. So my mail is now being sent via gmail....

I use fastmail and have never had any problems. I rarely get any spam - in fact quite disappointed that I've never seen a Nigerian scammer. I pay for it, but not a lot, and I think they have a free restricted service.. It's been my main email for about twelve years.

I get a childish delight when I find something good on the internet. Such a thing is software called Audials. I downloaded it and (unusually), bought a backup CD. This arrived from Los Angeles in less than a week, with my name printed on the disc. I've also put it on the smart phone that I didn't understand - and it's wonderful. Choice of 57 thousand radio stations, and you can make recordings of up to five stations at a time. It splits the tracks and names the artist.

Of all the 57000 stations I've stumbled across this one which not only plays my sort of music, but also preaches the benefits of butter and lard. Amazing. Check out Healthy Fats here - Ritter Farms Radio.

David, you've reminded me that when I was scraping the paint off the house at Northfield I always had a radio with me tuned to a Twin Cities station that played nothing but 60s records back to back. There was a country music station as well but I soon got fed up with cowboys singing about unrequited love....

"The benefits of lard"!!!

Ugh, I'd be horrified if Facebook was blocked. I love the service. Group chats is basically all I use it for, and nothing replaces it!
Sure, hangouts, iMessage and Skype handle it, but most are limited to one platform. Everyone has Facebook, Facebook works on all devices, easy!

http://www.howtogeek.com/193876/using-f ... -outdated/ -- Thoughts?

Steven Chorkley wrote:Everyone has Facebook..

Untrue statement.

Steven Chorkley wrote: Everyone has Facebook, Facebook works on all devices, easy!

Well, I don't!
And I wouldn't have it even if I could. IMHO it is a very insiduous program worming through everything you do and open for all to see. No thanks.

Neither have I... Never tweeted either. Never bought a lottery ticket.

I started with Facebook last week; resisted for so long 'cos of my concerns, which were that there weren't enough hours in the day for it.

All very true; bed time is later and breakfast earlier - reckon I've lost two hours a night sleep.

The ubiquity and versatility of fb is phenomenal though. There's a multitude of things I've done this week which just wouldn't have been on my radar without it.

And for people who like chatting (mentioning no names, Stanley...) it's fantastic!

(Another downside is I'm using a lot more !!!!)!

Steven Chorkley wrote:Ugh, I'd be horrified if Facebook was blocked. I love the service. Group chats is basically all I use it for, and nothing replaces it!
Sure, hangouts, iMessage and Skype handle it, but most are limited to one platform. Everyone has Facebook, Facebook works on all devices, easy!

http://www.howtogeek.com/193876/using-f ... -outdated/ -- Thoughts?

Yes the Flash used on Firefox (and everything but Chrome and IE) is out of date. It doen't worry me, on Linux, most of the exploits in old versions of Flash are to do with getting Windows code to run to infect your machine with something or other, and since standard Linux doesn't do windows code, its a non problem. Now if the latest version (presently 14.x) started doing something that 11.x on Linux firefox didnt, that might change my view somewhat.

I don't do facebook either, I have a FB account but I never use it, I opened it when I started in business because people were saying you need FB and twitter to sell your business. I lost the will to live and soon gave up with it.

This popped into my inbox today:

Earlier this year you registered your details on the Superfast Lancashire website for us to let you know when high speed fibre broadband becomes available to you.

Our records indicate that the cabinet serving your area hasn’t been upgraded but we’ll keep checking for you and let you know when there’s good news.

We’ve popped a link to the availability checker news page of our website below so you can keep up to date with what’s going on in your area.

https://www.superfastlancashire.com/check-availability

And if you use Facebook or Twitter, why not follow us, or like our page for further updates.

With Best Regards

Superfast Lancashire Programme Office

Kind of them to let me know that we still don't have fibre after all these months. Perhaps I'll get another reminder in December that we don't have fibre yet?

Some people like to have the latest, the biggest or the fastest David. I suspect you are in my school, as long as it works and I don't have to watch the blue blocks building I am happy.... I can remember Dial-up....

With four people now accessing t'interweb simultaneously at ours, sometimes on multiple devices, contention causes contention. More bandwith would be a blessing!

With the nearest fibre cabinet at the junction of Coates Lane with Skipton Road, there'd still need to be quite a bit of copper involved. (I'm surprised they haven't put an extra cabinet in further down Coates Lane.)

I'll bet it's OK first thing in the morning......

Your sort of early Stanley, yes!

From the flickering on the router, it looks like there's a lot of traffic just now.

Stanley wrote:Some people like to have the latest, the biggest or the fastest David. I suspect you are in my school, as long as it works and I don't have to watch the blue blocks building I am happy.... I can remember Dial-up....

C'mon Stanley, you can't use that one. You've a computer that is probably faster than anyone else on this board.

Since Openreach doctored my phone line, my internet is faster than its ever been. Over 16Mb/second now. I never thought I'd see such speeds in Barlick.

Mines the same since most of the copper was replaced on my line on a few pole hops a few years ago now. Talk Talk stable at 17Mbps on my bit of the Croft.