Entries by Alan W (130)

Thursday
Nov242016

Paper Mate Contour Powerpoint refills

I have a Paper Mate Contour ballpoint pen that hails from the 1970s. The problem is that Paper Mate Powerpoint refills are no longer available. A quick search on Ebay unearthed a few old mouldy-looking ones mostly from the USA, selling for £30-£45 each! In this article I pinpoint an excellent UK supplier of pen refills that are compatible with the old Paper Mate Contour. They might need a trivial modification as I explain.

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Friday
Nov182016

Beware UKPC UK Parking Ticket phishing

UKPC phishing scam email [click to see]

This Email just arrived and is supposedly a parking violation ticket. How does UKPC know my Email address? Of course, they don't.  It's quite well done apart from the very odd English, but I won't help the Eastern European spammers by telling them why their dialect is so strange to a native Englishman. The click-throughs seem to point to a Russian instance of mediagroupmoney.com.  Of course, clicking through to any unknown website is potentially lethal as it could try to install ransomware or a nasty virus on your computer, so it should be deleted immediately. Nice try.

Friday
Sep162016

How a CCJ can wreck your finances

Some recent news items highlighted the plight of innocent people who have nearly lost their homes or suffered severe financial problems when their credit history was damaged by old County Court Judgments (CCJs) that they knew nothing about - parking ticket penalty notices that are sent to very old addresses, for example. I'll explain a few options to help prevent this and check up on your credit file for free, to ensure you're CCJ-free.

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Friday
Aug262016

PURE digital radio 'Sounds' service closed

If you have a PURE Internet radio such as the beloved Evoke Flow then you maybe enjoyed the 'Sounds' service which streamed soothing soundtracks over wi-fi to your radio receiver. I particularly enjoyed the metal windchimes (played as background on the patio for summer parties), but most of all I enjoyed the babbling brooks, rainfall or running stream sounds which often helped me to get off to sleep at night. PURE Sounds has been an essential and well-used feature - so imagine my surprise to find that I could suddenly no longer use them - it turns out that PURE has silenced them for ever!

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Wednesday
Aug172016

So long, Demon Internet!

Updated on Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 12:40PM by Registered CommenterAlan W

Since 1995 my Demon Internet e-mail address has been deeply embedded in everything I’ve ever done for hobby/ amateur electronics and EPE Magazine. I coined the ‘epemag’ moniker when signing for a so-called Tenner-a-month dial-up account in an era when 14.4k modems reigned supreme, and alan@epemag.demon.co.uk was born. Vodafone (Demon's owners) is ditching supposedly 'free' email services, so my new address will be alan@epemag.net

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Wednesday
Aug032016

Install a Brother LT-400 lower paper tray

How to install an LT-400 lower paper tray on a Brother laser printer (an HL-1450 in my case).

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Friday
Jul082016

Getting rid of spider mite on greenhouse crops and houseplants

This year my greenhouse crops are being plagued by a spider mite infestation. These miniscule bugs can  destroy the most handsome of tomato or cucumber plants as I have found to my cost in recent years, so this year I'm declaring all-out war on them using a specific organic insecticide that's made for the job. More details, along with photos of what to look for on your greenhouse or indoor plants, for are in my special feature.  Read more about how to control spider mite...

Friday
Jul082016

World Business List bogus directory

They’re at it again, the phony directory scammers who try to fool you into paying €995 a year (wow!) for their so-called ‘services’. This type of scam has appeared for years in other forms including World Trade Register, European Company Network and EU Business Register. Now it’s re-appeared as ‘World Business List’ complete, once again, with a directory website and I got a spam email trying to get me to sign up.

Updates are still free, they say – but the scrambled small print has the overrider of trying to flog a ‘subscription’ to punters totalling nearly €3,000. They hope victims will be suckered by the ‘Updates are free’ and an invoice for €995 will somehow subsequently slip through the company accounting system later on.

I tried the much-vaunted World Business List website, in search of a comprehensive listing of global internet providers (for example), or anything connected with Internet services. I searched the keyword ‘internet’ in ‘All Countries’. You would expect hundreds if not thousands of entries in the ‘World Business List’, but I found exactly eight listings, and one of those is a takeaway restaurant in Britain!

The World Business List is a product of EU Business Services Ltd. (not an authentic UK company) and is similar to another site run by the same ‘company’ – the EU Business Register. You might compare the T&C to see how near-identical they are.

Don’t be fooled by this ancient old scam! And don't even think of paying them anything!

See previous entries in

 

 

Wednesday
Jun152016

How to download older versions of Adobe Reader?

One of my older PCs has started playing up, due in no small part to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader messing up, closely followed by Microsoft .NET problems and missing files – the usual thing of a small problem escalating out of control and before you know it, half of your PC’s software is toast and you end up rebuilding it.

I wanted to download Adobe Reader X but Adobe’s web site forces me to use Version 11, which proved incompatible with some legacy software I use (can’t remember which).

To access older versions of Adobe Reader, simply bounce over to Adobe’s FTP site where you’ll find reader from version 6.x to the present one, Reader for Palm OS (eg for a Palm Tungsten, which I also have!), Pocket PC and Reader for Symbian. You can fetch the 'base' version (eg. 10.0.0) .msi installer file, then fetch the patch (an .msp patching file) for the last release. I have yet to successfully patch the base version up to the latest one, though, but I am running V10.0.0 successfully.

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader

Versions for Unix and more are also there if you go up to a higher directory.

Tuesday
Apr122016

How to check the voltage of a USB port charger

Highlighting some low-cost useful gizmos and gadgets that will enable you to monitor what a typical USB port is doing. Digital readouts of current and voltage show the load requirements placed on a USB port, and you can tell when eg a mobile phone charger has finished charging.

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