Your Location Is Currently In Use

Periodically a little icon appears in the system tray in the bottom right corner of the screen on my desktop Windows-running PC. It's a little circle with a blue square in the middle, and when you hover your mouse pointer over it a little bit pop up appears, saying "Your location is currently in use".

I don't mind my location being used (at least for the software that I've allowed to use my location) but I'm always faintly surprised when it appears - this is on my desktop PC, which has been in the same location for about five years, assuming you don't get into the technicalities of it now being two floors lower than it used to.

Now, let's talk ankles.

Mine, and of course the nasty bruise I wanted to show off has faded. Feel free to give me sympathy anyway.

I have a weird ankle.

Periodically, it just gives way, it somehow bends sideways and before you know it I'm heading for the ground at speed. I believe (although memory could be fooling me) that it particularly worsened as a result of one evening I was playing football, and I decided to try hopping over the ball whilst tapping it with my foot to control it, and instead stood on the ball and fell over. Anyway, it does now and again just fail to ankle.

And it seems to have a mind of its own, and do it when it's particularly embarrassing or inconvenient. From memory I can particularly recall it failing:

• In the supermarket while bagging groceries
• While running down an alley dragging a sofa
• On my neighbours footpath on the way to pick a parcel up

The most recent event I was walking through the grounds of my sons school after picking him up, so as you can imagine there was a good dozen or so other parents with children who were there to watch me plant my face into the ground., so I couldn't even let loose my favoured series of swear words and instead had to go "Whoops! Oh dear, silly daddy should have been looking where he was going!"

Funnily enough, it seems to hurt less overall if I just take the fall rather than try to stop myself falling, perhaps the time is better spent preparing for the fall rather than trying to rectify the ankle position or something.

While I'm blogging, I should point out for any cross stitchers my wife currently has not one, not two, but three competitions on the go - do check out her latest flosstube video for details!

Windows (in more sense than one)

 Me and my son were playing this morning with a small brown truck of his.  When I say truck it's probably more of a four by four car variant, by which I mean one of those things that look tough but probably aren't actually as good off road as a forty year old Land Rover, but nevertheless everyone wants for the school run.

 I asked my son, "How many wheels are there?"
 He considered this for a moment, and then declared "Four!"
 Full marks for that one.  I decided to push the boundary a little.
 "Do you know where the windows are?" I asked.
 He looked at me confused for a moment, as if to say what on Earth does that have to do with the topic at hand father, before pointing at the house window.
 Not the answer I was looking for but right nonetheless.

 I'm going to make a rash declaration now.
 I think Microsoft Windows won't be here in ten years time.
 Possibly five.
 The reason for this is that the way we use technology is changing.  Instead of having "The PC" we can now surf the internet on the TV, on our games console, we can write emails on our phones or tablets, all of which are ready to use faster than the traditional PC, crash less often, are simpler to use, and in the case of the last two mobile.
 People are going to start looking at why we tie ourselves to an expensive operating system which appears to take ages to load, crashes regularly and isn't always that easy to fix.
 Of course, the advantage Windows held was that anyone could write a program to run on it.  But the new mobile systems offered by Apple and Linux are better for the vast majority of users, in that programs are rated by users so poor programs are discarded, leaving the cream of the crop easily visible and installable.
 I've started not to write documents on my PC any more - instead I write them using Google Docs. Why not?  I don't have to worry about hard disc failure trashing my work, and I can access them from anywhere.  So the case for paying for an expensive Office suite also goes out the window, especially when alternatives such as OpenOffice can be used for free.
 I'm not a Microsoft-basher at all, I grew up using Microsoft systems.  I remember the first time I used Windows and how wonderful it was to use (yes really).  I remember making programs with Microsoft Visual Basic.  I use it on a daily basis at work, and I'm writing this using a PC running Windows 7 right now.
 But from what I hear Windows 8 isn't fantastic, and that could be the first nail in the coffin for Microsoft.
 The new mobile internet world, of which names like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter are king, is one which Microsoft hasn't got a handle on.  And it's a real shame - who hasn't got an old Hotmail (okay Windows Live Mail) account floating around from way back?
 I really hope Microsoft can work out what it needs to do to transform itself into an organisation fit for the current and future technological age.  I guess we'll see.

World of Warcraft crash? Don't worry, Windows is here!

Just lately, World of Warcraft (WoW) appears to come up with the odd error message, as you'll see in the picture below.

Hi Mac Users - this is called an error message.

When does WoW come up with this message? When I'm in the middle of a raid? When we've got issues with our Internet connection? Perhaps when I'm talking on my headset?

No.

It's crashes when I tell it to close down.

It's done this a number of times in the last week.  It gets to about a quarter past ten, when I decide it's time to finish gaming and head to bed (where instead of going to sleep as I should do I then spend an hour watching YouTube videos of Wil Wheaton and Nyan Cat - not in the same video I should add), so I drop a farewell message onto the guild channel and tell WoW to shut down.

And it pauses, and the window greys out.  Windows steps in at this point, to helpfully tell me that there has been a problem and Windows will close the program for me, and search for a solution to this problem.

But the problem is that I've told Windows to close WoW. The only solution I can think of is for someone at Microsoft to arrange to come round my house at about 6am, let themselves in, warm up some milk, get my son up and sort him out, allowing me to enjoy a nice little sleep in. Perhaps they could also send someone to work for me to cover for an hour or two.  That way I could play until about midnight instead.

By the way - happy new year.