Ok just putting a quick post up tonight as i have a lot of work to do. I have to finish off an assignment for college and also add some more programs to my new Windows 7 operating system.

I did not expect to get Windows 7 today, i was expecting to get it tomorrow (Friday) since i had opted for free delivery on amazon, however that was not the case, i arrived home today to see that it had arrived . According to amazon’s site it should of arrived tomorrow.

When i find out all the interesting bits about Windows 7 i will sure to be making a new post here!

I just upgraded my flickr account to a pro account! I have been meaning to get around to doing this for a while now but just forgot about it!

Flickr only allows you to upload 200 photos if you have a standard free account, you can actually upload more than 200, however flickr will only show your latest 200 uploaded.

I ran into this problem when I returned from Edinburgh last summer, I added all my pictures to flickr and then I could only see a few of them.

It is great to have the flickr pro account as this means there is no more restrictions on my account . For the pro membership it is a yearly cost of $24.05 which is about €16, not exactly breaking the bank with that membership as it is completely worth it.

This is the first time I have paid for hosting of my pictures but it is completely worth it also now I have the ability to upload HD videos to flickr! Not that I will be using this feature, it is always nice to have something extra .

Now that I have the pro account it helps out here on this blog, I have a section on my blog, now all my flickr photo sets / album’s can be seen here too! As soon as I upload them to flickr they will all be right here on this blog. This feature has been on  my blog for a while now however with the old limitations of my standard account for a few months visitors could only see a few of my pictures .

I will most likely begin to use flickr to store some pictures for some of my websites, this will save bandwidth on my end and also the images will load quicker as they are coming from a much better server!

Even though I will be in college tomorrow all day, it will be a great break for me. All of this past weekend I have had this routine, go to work -> come home and have dinner and watch a bit of TV then go to bed -> next morning wake up and go straight to work, then  the steps just repeat!

I have had no time to relax this weekend, no sleep-in’s either! By the time I came home from work and had my dinner it was almost time to go to bed, it was ridiculous. So tomorrow will be a nice break for me .

I just found out too that I have a test tomorrow on Asp.net and XML in Web Applications Development. It should go fine though since it is a multiple choice exam and it’s not like we can be asked a whole lot since there is only a small amount that we have learnt so far.

I really need to get a move on with my college project too, I enjoy doing this project, so tomorrow I want to have a go at doing something for my project, most likely when I finish college.

I save money every week when i get my wages.  A little bit every week throughout the year and then when christmas comes i take it all out and use it for something usefull.

The money i am currently saving will be going to pay for next years car insurance, well most of it. I have to spend some of it otherwise it would of being pointless to save! Treat myself with something then put the rest onto the insurance.

Now however i have another target that i want to begin to save for. I want to save up for a new computer. So tomorrow i will be going down to the post office to start a savings account. By putting my money there it will mean i will not spend it. Once it is gone out of my bank account i dont mind, it is just like i dont have it, but if it was there i would be more inclined to spend it on something.

The computer i currently own is 3 years old and will be nearly 4 by the time i get my new computer. I have no idea yet how much i will be saving from week to week, but i will definitly be saving something.

Any money that i make from doing websites for people now will be going into my savings, which will be a big help.

The computer i have in mind will be a Dell XPS, not sure what model yet, but i want a really good computer. Must be fast, really fast, have lots of memory and disk space .

…Computer drivers that is ! The reason i hate them is because they cause a serious amount of hassle. This week my computer broke. No idea why, it was working perfectly the night before then when i went to boot it back up the next day, nothing! There was a black screen saying that windows failed to load a file and that it might be corrupt.

So i did what i normally do, i went on the web to find a solution to my problem to see if there was any way to fix my computer without wiping it. Unfortuantly every possible solution that was given would not work. I tried replacing the file from a working version of windows and had no luck getting my computer working again.

I finally decided to just go ahead and wipe my computer, i had all the files backed up thanks to a handy usb to hard drive cable . I then went ahead and reinstalled Windows XP, this time instead of putting back on pro or home edition i decided to try out Media centre edition, and i am glad i did, it works the same as home edition, as expected, but it just looks so much more appealing to the eye and i can now connect my pc to my Xbox through Media Center.

Anyway once the initial setup of Windows had finished my problems began! Since i have so much different hardware plugged into the computer i had to install all of there drivers, so for example i needed a driver for my mouse, keyboard, printer, monitor etc. I managed to get all those drivers no problem, however there was one that i still could not get even after trying many different driver solution on forum’s online.

The driver i could not get was  the Video Controller and Video Controller (VGA Compatible), i found out this was for my graphics card, i needed it because whenever i moved things such as a window around the screen it would just jump like mad. I could only imagine how bad a game would of played on it, not that i play a lot of games on my pc.

No matter how many drivers i tried it would not work, in fact when i went to install the ATI driver that i needed for my ATI graphics card it would just freeze my computer. I went to the dell site and entered in my service tag code to get the driver i needed and that too froze my computer!

It was getting a bit annoying as the computer was basically useless without it. After a while i started to mess about on my computer and realised that the driver i downloaded actually saved as one file, so that when i double clicked it the installer would open, instead of opening the installer i right clicked the file and extracted the files inside it and then tried a manual install of the driver and it worked perfectly .

To make a manual install first the files have to be extracted, then simply go to the control panel, then click performance and maintenance then into system. Once in that windows click the Hardware tab then click into device manager. Once in there right click the driver you need to install and choose update driver. Then choose to select where to the install the driver from and include the folder of extracted files.

Then it works with no freezes occurring .  It is such a simple solution and i really wish i had of thought of it sooner, it would of saved me a lot of hassle.