Computing

Went on a course today (in Bristol! 3 hours drive! Still, beautiful scenery) to have a look at Snap, a piece of survey (as in questionnaires) software.

It was a good course, and introduced all the various elements pretty quickly. A couple of things annoyed me though. Firstly, the fact that the tutor had to go through the rigmarole of informing us that when using the software, ‘variables’ mean ‘questions’ and ‘code labels’ (or something) mean answers. How ridiculous. Why not just call them questions and answers in the first place? I mean, I know what those names mean, but it doesn’t really matter.

Secondly, it’s the fact that it completely ignores loads of the keyboard shortcuts many of us take for granted. Fair enough, ctrl-c, -x and -v do as you would expect, but then these are almost written in stone. But what about inserting a page-break? Ctrl-enter, as in Word and about a billion other apps? No way. Ctrl-S it is, I think. Barmy. Does Ctrl-A select the whole document? Nope. It inserts a frigging column break! Gah. Delete a whole question? I would go for ctrl-backspace, but no (that doesn’t seem to do anything). Ctrl-Y does the trick. Eh? And while I am at it, while they use the standard Microsoft icon set for the various toolbars, why did they decide to use a green tick sign for save, rather than the little disk everyone else uses?

Overall, though, apart from these things, Snap seems fairly competent. Being survey software, it is effectively a stripped down database attached to a stripped down stats package. But it works.

This from BBC News:

A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks.

The 28-year-old man collapsed after playing the game Starcraft at an internet cafe in the city of Taegu, according to South Korean authorities.

The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session, said police.

Online gaming in South Korea is extremely popular thanks to its fast and widespread broadband network.

Games are televised and professional players are treated, as well as paid, like sports stars.

Professional gamers there attract huge sums in sponsorship and can make more than $100,000 a year.

The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.

“We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion,” a Taegu provincial police official told the Reuters news agency.

He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.

They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.

Good grief.

Finally got a desk for the laptop to go on last weekend, which meant that I could get a mouse at long last too – after all, there isn’t much point in having on if the thing is on your knees all the time.

It has made using the PC a far, far more enjoyable experience. Touchpads are alright, but they do get pretty tiresome after a while… Eight quid well spent!

Since upgrading to Itunes 4.9 I have been attached to the US store and not the UK one and am unable to buy any music. Anyone have this problem? What have I done wrong?!? 🙁

Interesting article in today’s Guardian Online supplement:

Just when the government badly needs to show its competence at running large IT-based projects, along comes another wave of bad news. On Tuesday, parliamentary questions revealed that the cost of running Inland Revenue tax credits has risen tenfold over four years. Also this week, an influential committee of MPs reported that many government bodies ignore one of the main measures introduced to prevent IT disasters.