Kumail's 11+ exams almost over!

Some lovely news this morning: Kumail has passed another 11+ exam - this one was taken yesterday at the historic St Albans School, and he has been invited back for an interview.

It's very pleasing to see the lad's hard work, and preparation pay off: So far he has passed exams 3 of the five exams for six schools he has applied for:

St Albans School

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School

Queen Elizabeth’s School

Watford Grammar School for Boys

Parmiter's School

Some interviews are also complete - two more this week. Kumail deserves a treat and a good break - but I don’t think I can stretch to the 20,000 pound car that one classmate's father has offered his boy if he does well in his applications!

Footballers and the Radlett Crime Wave

I cannot help but notice how the much higher police presence in Radlett, and the surrounding areas, and link it to an increase in robberies, and burglaries in the area.

The affluent area Radlett is most recently attractive for footballers (pretty handy for the Arsenal training grounds in London Colney -

though the rumours about David Beckham living in Radlett are rife, after him being spotted training at the Arsenal facilities, but seem unlikely), as well as the traditional lawyers, accountants, and bankers that seem to dominate the area.

A few weeks ago I got a letter asking me to contribute towards private security that some neighbours have engaged - so much for the local bobby's on the beat!

With the house-price peak/ decline, threat of rail depot development blight, and what seems to be a new crime wave, it's probably time to move!

News feeds

In an attempt to encourage people (friends & family) to adopt 'Feeds (rss/atom), here is a link to a little guide courtesy of the BBC.

Here is a feed for this blog which you can use with your chosen 'reader - personally I currently favor the Google Reader.

Hillary KFC - Repost

Hillary Clinton: I would not go as far as to say poor Hillary, but this is nasty.

I'm becoming fascinated by the US Political race - oh democracy!

(reposted on 13/March/2008 as the image suspiciously disappeared!!)

Calendar play-pen

This calendar can be used to easily add an appointment that will be visible in my Outlook Calendar...



Ideally this is best done after this is used to check my availability....

Windows Seasonal Overconsumption

Disk Purge

Windows, and/rather applications installed on windows, are not great at cleaning up disk space.

Is it too much to ask for a base windows system to fit on an 8GB Partition - I only use office, ITunes, and some other basic apps after all – and keep data on a separate partition.

After some hounding around here are some locations/applications worth looking at for recovering some disk space…

a. ITunes - this thing is messy. It keep, and never seems to purge

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Apple

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Apple Computer

The iTunes installer seems to re-create what it needs, so purging this is worthwhile.

b. IPod photo cache - if you have changed it within iTunes, you will need to manually remove the old one more info.

c. Uninstalling Photoshop Album leaves some stuff in

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Album

This needs a manual purge - its where that app keeps its catalogue of your photo's.

d. Windows updates

C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download

Can be purged …more info.

e. Compress Service Pack files C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 ….more info.