shewy.co.uk

Didn’t January go quick? Time for February, I wonder what excitement awaits? Well find out below! For those who don’t want to find out look away now…

Capricorn – Moan, moan, moan. All you have been doing recently is moan! It’s not your fault though, because there hasn’t been an awful lot to get excited about has there? Don’t worry. All this is about to change. Your going to meet someone new. It could be a soul-mate or just a car insurance salesperson. So you’ll either have the excitement of a wedding to plan, or perhaps a cheaper renewal quote. Either way, get in! If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Aquarius – This month you may feel more open minded than usual. This could be because you read a challenging book or article, or you may be shot in the back of the head. It’s more likely to be the book though, so don’t panic. Your new found open mindedness will open doors for you in February, with the help of your hands obviously. Look out for a large red object, I mean, like an unusual large red object, not a bus or anything, although you probably should look out for them too. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Pisces – Something or someone has been bothering you recently. Not in a good way either. It’s time to get rid of them or it. You’ll feel much better when you do. The trouble is, you seem to attract annoying people. Rubbish isn’t it. So don’t jump at the first person that comes along. Take time to analyse the people you meet. When you do this, you’ll meet someone slightly less annoying. Re-read any letters you receive this month, they may contain a hidden message or hilarious typo. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Aries – Things will start to slow down for you this month, unless you drive a Toyota, in which case they may unexpectedly speed up. Whatever happens, It’ll turn out well and you will enjoy the next few weeks. A romantic event is on the horizon for you, possibly on Valentines day, that would make sense actually wouldn’t it?  A close friend might need your help this month. It’ll be your decision whether to help or not, and this may prove to be a tough call to make. It’ll probably depend on what is on telly at the time, but take time to remember BBC iPlayer. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Taurus – You are feeling incredibly generous this month. So reward those closest to you, in whatever way you can. Obviously don’t do anything illegal though. Other than that, it should be a routine few weeks, might get a bit boring, but you’ll be glad of the rest. If you get too bored, why not try learning a new language such as Spanish or Javascript? The stars show that no matter how much you try to resist you will end up with an iPhone eventually. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Gemini – Your relationship is starting to get back on track after a bit of a bumpy patch. You are like the sandpaper of love, and you partner likes this. Really spoil your partner and you’ll get spoilt back, in an absolutely smashing way. It could be something as simple as an unwavering commitment to you, or a bacon sandwich, with egg. Life tastes good Gemini, and this month you’re at an all you can eat buffet. Obviously none of this applies if you are single, but that’s all I got from the stars, there is a limit to the amount they give me you know. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Cancer – There’s no easy way to say this, but it might get a bit crap over the next few weeks, but then don’t worry because it’ll all get better after! Phew. It’s not going to be that bad, just a bit sort of, you know, meh. You’ll feel like you don’t fit in anywhere anymore, but it’s all in your head and possibly your belly. To counter this get out there, meet people. Luck connects you to someone who works in the nuclear power industry. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Leo – Being king of the star signs is hard work isn’t it? Never mind, you can handle it, because you’re the best. This month you will receive many offers – of love, of tea and biscuits and of half price broadband. It’s up to you which ones you take, but just make sure you understand the download limits. Try to spend as much time as possible thinking and stroking a beard, it doesn’t have to be your own. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give another Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Virgo – You may still be feeling the pain of a recent split, or fall on an icy road. You have to move fast if you’re going to heal this pain. Spending time in the spotlight is a great way to do this. Try whatever you can to get your face out there. Arrange a party, do something for charity or commit a petty crime in front of a CCTV camera. There have been many famous Virgo’s, such as John, and you could be the next one! How very bloody exciting! If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Libra – Something will be missing in your life in February, it may take you a while to work out what it is. So the stars have decided to help you and tell you what it is. It’s Celebrity Big Brother, and to be honest it wasn’t that great anyway, so you shouldn’t be missing it that much. If it makes you feel better, why not spend time trying to think of which celebrities are big brothers? I’ll get you started, Andrew Lloyd Webber, he’s one. Do this for the next month and you’ll fill a hole. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Scorpio – After what was essentially a boring month last month, things can only get more exciting right? Nope, sorry. It’s gonna be about the same again. You may get some entertainment out of seeing a repeat of a Top Gear you haven’t seen before on Dave. Remember, if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you. You could apply this to other areas of your life. Try a new drink or buy a random classic album such as Spice Girls “Spice”. This may lead to an encounter that could prove significant in the future. Also, it’ll help pass the time. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Sagittarius – Start the month by taking a look in the Mirror. Then the Sun, Daily Mail, Independent and finally Guardian. Your brain has been craving the printed word for sometime, this could simply be because it is addicted to the smell of printer ink. Something tiny may upset you this month, try to keep it in perspective though and don’t let it get you down. It could be something like stepping on an upturned electrical plug without any shoes on, or a heated exchange in a pub with a jockey. Remember, although frustrating, these are minor irritations. If you find yourself lonely on Valentines day, and your female, and nice, why not give a Leo who understands Unix file permissions a ring, email or tweet?

Well that’s that for the month, I’m off now to ”chmod” some files to 755 on my Unix machine, and continue to look forward to my birthday, which falls in between July 23rd and August 22nd. TTFN.

Google Streetview, the tool that has divided many, is being expanded once again. This time to cover the Moon. Using their own rocket, Googlenauts left a top secret spaceport on Wednesday. The whole project had been kept quiet, so as not to annoy privacy campaigners, many of whom had been planning on moving to the moon, to avoid been caught on Streetview.

An insider revealed, “we chose Wednesday to launch our rocket because everyone was distracted with the iPad launch”. When asked how long Google have had the ability to go into space and if it was really necessary, the insider stated “we have had our own space section for a while, and yes of course we need it, how else would we update Google Earth?”

Modified Moon Buggy with Streetview Cameras

The team are expected to spend the next week or so mapping the moon. To survive they will have to make do with vacuum packed space food and Starbucks coffee, who now have three branches on the surface of the moon. They are using a modified space-buggy, which they borrowed from NASA, that has been equipped with the familiar Streetview panoramic cameras.

The team will then return to Earth, a tricky part of the mission – yet one they are well prepared for, having spent many hours practicing the procedure using the “zoom in” function of Google Earth.

After months of speculation and several well managed information leaks, Apple finally revealed the iPad to the world on Wednesday. The iPad is a tablet PC style device, that looks like a big o’iPhone. It is set to take the world by storm, in the same way that the iPod, iMac and iEverybloodythingelse did.

Though iPad pricing hasn’t been revealed to the UK, its a safe bet it’ll be quite expensive – however if you own an iPhone there is a very easy 99 pence hardware hack you can do, to convert your Phone to a Pad.

This hack is revealed below -

iPhone without iPad Hack

You need to head to any good supermarket, or local business if your feeling nice, a buy a piece of hardware called a “magnifying glass”. Then to complete the hack, hold the magnifying glass about 3 inches above the iPhone – et voila -

iPhone with iPad Hack

So there you have it, a device with more connectivity options than Waterloo station, can play music, allows you to read books, can run iPhone apps and is essentially a large iPhone. All using your existing equipment plus around 99 pence of hardware. Job done.

Wireless internet security is an area that many people still struggle to understand, and are quite happy to use weak or no encryption to protect their juicy airborne packets. Many people pride themselves on having the best firewalls and Anti-Virus software that money can buy, however don’t do wifi security properly. This is basically the same as locking all the doors and windows in a three walled house.

It is hoped that the launch of the next generation of wireless security standard will inspire people to sort out their wireless security.

So whats so good about WPA3? Well, to answer that, you first have to look at which alternatives are available.

No security – As you would imagine, no security means no security. You are like Tesco, open 24 hours a day.

WEP – Weak encryption. Takes about 5 minutes to break, or less depending on how much data is floating around.

WPA/WPA2 – Stronger encryption, almost impossible to break if a strong passphrase is used. The best most home users can use, without having to do some technically advanced setting up of stuff.

WPA3, is basically WPA2 + the instalment of a Ninja, who will wander around the range of your wireless network and physically remove people who are trying to connect. You don’t have to feed or water the Ninja, they are completely self sufficient. The Ninja based system is almost impossible to attack successfully, because everyone knows Ninjas are ace.

WPA3 Ninja - Ace.

Problems arise when two different WPA3 protected networks overlap, if they are both using the same wifi channel. During beta testing several Ninja vs. Ninja battles were reported, however many of them were set up on purpose by developers for their own entertainment.

WPA3 enabled equipment will start rolling out in April. Look out for boxes labelled “supports 802.11WITCHA”.

Major panic has erupted at the BBC’s Drama unit after an employee let slip who had killed Archie Mitchell in popular soap opera Eastenders. After not properly setting their privacy settings on Facebook, the employee accidentally gave away the name in a status update.

The story line had been set to keep viewers in suspense for the next few weeks, with the big reveal to coincide with the shows 25th anniversary. The actual episode in which the killer is named is to be filmed live. It is understood that the unit assistant who gave away the secret had been working on scenes to be shown after the live episode.

The employee in question has now been reassigned to work on BBC Four or anything with Graham Norton in it, as a punishment.

So who is the killer? Well in a shock twist it isn’t Ian, Bradley, Max, Phil, Sam, Peggy or Ronnie. It is a returning member of the cast.

It is in fact – Boris Johnson. Doof Doof…

The status that gave away the storyline.

The employee, whose identity I have chosen to protect, somewhat ironically, revealed that Boris Johnson has been nicknamed “Bruiser Boris” by the production team. Whereas this will come as a shock to most viewers, soap insiders are not at all surprised. It’s not the first time that politicians have been involved in Eastenders storylines, many viewers will recall the 1998 love story involving the then leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown and Robbie Jackson’s dog Wellard.

Boris apparently impressed Eastenders bosses when he filmed scenes in the Queen Vic in 2009, and was offered the chance to return on a more permanent basis.

The involvement of Boris Johnson in Archie Mitchell’s murder may open the door for politicians from the other main parties to feature in Eastenders, so the BBC is seen to be impartial. There have been rumours that Gordon Brown is set to be revealed as the real father of Heather Trott’s baby and that Nick Clegg has been in the show for years, but no one has noticed. For the first time a member of the BNP will also feature, as the BBC now recognises them as a main political party. Nick Griffin is being lined up to add some spice to the Syed and Christian storyline.

Bruiser Boris, with Peggy and the Murder Weapon

The BBC is now issuing revised guidelines for all its staff on the use of social networking sites.

ICANN have announced that the internet will be switched off for around two minutes at some point within the next month. This is to allow the net to undergo an electrical safety test.

This is the first time such a test has been required, and many fear the consequences will be disastrous. With so much vital data traversing the net, this interruption could cause major problems for businesses, financial markets, airlines, hospitals and Stephen Fry’s twitter feed. A senior manager at Ebay is reported as saying – “Just stick the green label on and be done with it. Chumps.”

The internet will be hoping for a new green sticker.

The need for a test has only recently been raised as an issue after ICANN appointed a new health and safety manager, who has been described by his colleagues as “meticulous and lonely”.

In a statement ICANN said – “The internet will be unplugged briefly in February 2010, to allow the PAT test to take place. The test should take no more than two minutes. We will have another pre-tested kettle lead on standby should the current one fail. We understand this is inconvenient – but it is vital, try to imagine how our staff feel, currently they can’t make tea or coffee at work. We all have to do our bit.”

Chaos at Facebook HQ tonight as the social networking colossus is threatened with legal action by the US Supreme Court.

The US Justice department has told Facebook to get tough over the increasing number of profiles being set up for pets, as almost all of them are under the age of 13 years old. This is in breach of the Child Online Protection Act, which states Facebook is required to protect minors from exposure to potentially adult material – even if those minors are not human. The number of profiles being set up for cats, dogs, fish, mice and even rats has rocketed in recent months.

Several popular cats have already amassed well over 250 friends across all species, however Facebook say their profiles will have to go if they are underage.

This Facebook user is just a kitten

A spokesperson said “You must be at least 13 years old to use Facebook. That is the end of the matter. If you do not meet this requirement, then we reserve the right to remove your profile. It doesn’t matter if you are human or not, the law makes no distinctions.”

The alarm was raised on this issue after a 42 year old man from Bellevue, Washington, sent abusive messages to a dog he had abandoned three years earlier, after finding his profile.

The dogs current owner, who didn’t want to be named said – “It was horrible, this man mistreated my dog and is still doing so via his Facebook wall”. Although the content of the message is too graphic to repeat, it is believed several references were made to castration.

The dog, who is now severn years old, has had his profile removed.

The British Government has announced plans to put thousands of unemployed youngsters, aged 16-19, to work. However, they will not be flipping burgers or modelling for the images that are used on cigarette packets. They will be used to protect sensitive government data.

Currently, when sensitive information is transmitted between departments it has to go through encryption equipment, this ensures that the data cannot be deciphered by anyone but the intended recipient. However, all this equipment is very expensive, and with national debt at a record high, the government is being forced to cut costs where possible.

The new system will see each government department being assigned a youth, who will be provided with a phone. When a message needs to be sent, the transmitting youth dials up their counterpart at the receiving department. They then read out the message in “OMGI (oh my god innit)” or “street” talk. This renders the information indecipherable to everyone, except the youths themselves.

A treasury spokesman said – “This scheme is brilliant, not only are we saving money, we are putting people to work. The broken English that spews from these teenager’s mouths is impossible to understand. Our research shows OMGI to be as strong as any 2048 bit encryption scheme.”

In addition to the general poor English, additional protection is added to messages in the form of “padding”. The  teens are encouraged to talk about other things, such as Big Brother, X Factor and what Shelly and Ryan did behind KFC, at random intervals, to completely throw anyone who is eavesdropping.

The teens will be paid in Primark vouchers.

When asked if they were worried about youths from hostile foreign nations infiltrating the scheme, to obtain sensitive information, the government denied it would be an issue. “No one speaks English as poorly as British Teenagers”, said a Downing Street official.

The French government has officially told it’s peeps to stop using Internet Explorer 6, due to multiple exploits in it that could allow hackers to take over the host computer. Common sense really, seeing as IE6 is two versions out of date. They have suggested alternatives including the beautifully crafted Mozilla Firefox (fair enough), and Google Chrome (about as secure as a Northern Rock mortgage).

They have also announced plans to release their own browser, to keep citizens safe.

Called “Le Navigateur”, it has a feel similar to Apple Safari and includes several enhanced protection features, including filtering of dangerous or upsetting content and a “surrender” button, should a user find themselves in a heated chat room argument that could turn nasty.

Thanks to an insider, known only as Jacques, we have an exclusive screen shot of Le Navigateur.

An example of Le Navigateur's Content Filtering

It’s a well known fact that any of societies problems can be solved using an iPhone app. The trickiness of splitting the bill at the end of meal, forgetting where a car is parked and resolving drunken arguments about which celebrities are gay, are just a few examples of where the iPhone has made a real difference.

Now though, the iPhone is set to take on a much more important role  - protecting us from nasty criminals.

With prison overcrowding at an all time high, record numbers of offenders are being electronically tagged, rather than getting locked up. Her Majesty’s Prison Service have released an app for iPhone users that shows them the location of the nearest tagged offender along with details of why they were tagged in the first place. This will allow them to be better prepared, should there be a confrontation.

One user said “this is the coolest app ever, I mean, the lightsaber app is pretty good but this is much better. Personally, if I walk past an offender who gets shown up on the app, I point, spit and shout at them. That is actually worse than being locked away in prison.”

The App, called iOnYou, is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

iOnYou Logo

There have been teething problems, reported mainly by users in the Westminster area of London, where the app repeatedly crashes outside the UK parliament. This has been put down to an overload of signals from tags in the area.