ClareJonsson

The most terrifying moment of my life was when I was a little girl, we lived in the country and I was picking blackberries from a hedge in a field near our house. The field belonged to a farmer who had two dogs, I noticed the dogs at the bottom of the field running towards me. Now I love dogs and have been around them all my life, and I could see they were not gonna be friendly, so I ran as fast as I could. I remember this soo vividly, I could feel them catching up, I couldn't hear anything, but my whole body seemed to be really hot, it must have been pure fear and adrenalin.The dogs caught up before I got to the gate and one of them bit me on my right side and the other under my left arm. I was soo lucky to get away as the farmer shouted for them to stop. I scrambled over the the gate, ran to the house into the kitchen and burst into tears. When my mum and dad got out of me what had happened my dad ran down to the farm to have a word with the farmer and my mum took me to the hospital to get a tetanus jab.

It sounds like you have selected "What you hear" as the recording source, if you just want to record from the mic, you should just select Microphone as the recording source. To select your recording source open the audio mixer by double clicking on the little speaker icon in the system tray. If you just get a single volume control then double click it again until you open up the full mixer. Alternatively, you can open up the mixer by typing sndvol32 into the run box and pressing enter. Click Options and select Properties. Select Recording and click OK. The mixer has now turned into the input mixer, you can now select the input device and how loud you want the input to be.

It actually replaces images etc within DLL's with vista style desktop. I prefer the Crystal Clear skins though as I find them more pleasing to the eye.

Thrash is correct, your BIOS will have an option too boot from a network, and your PC is looking for a server to boot from. Disable this feature and make sure your first boot device is your hard drive. The floppy drive problem could be one of two things: 1. The floppy drive controller is enabled (This is the default), go to your BIOS setup and disable it. 2. Some BIOSs allow you to define USB drives as different types of media, such as hard drive or floppy. Do you have a pen drive plugged into one of the USB ports? If so, take a look at how your BIOS is configuring it/them.

Yep, very easy, all you need is a replacement jack socket and a soldering iron! You can get the jack socket from places like Radio Spares, Maplins or CPC.

People who stupidly endanger others lives. One such example is those who drink and drive. That makes me upset and angry when I see people drinking in a pup then driving shortly afterwards. There's absolutely no excuse for that.

Yep, that Jagex site is simply links to different web pages, They could have done it using an Ajax script to load the info into a DIV, but there's so little else on that page there's no point!

That is absoultly true. My dad got a new laptop and it came with Vista. So he let me play on it once and I was trying to find the control pannel to change some of the Display settings. Once I found it, it told me to pick a category. I was "WTF? Where's my Display monitor picture damnit!" Damn, Microsoft, leave the easy-to-do crap to Apple. You could have right clicked on the desktop and selected properties (That gets you the display panel) or clicked Classic View in the control Panel (That restores the old style control panel view) :) Trust windows to have many easy ways of doing the same thing :P

There are for and against arguments for both sides, a friend of mine is a vegan, she literally pukes at the thought of eating meat, nothing to do with her beliefs or anything. Myself I like veg and meat, and have a healthy balance of both as we as humans were designed for just that. Feasting ONLY on veg or only on meat in my books is not a good thing as you need both, also, our teeth bare the legacy of both vegetarian and meat eaters. One thing that I find kind of amusing: Hindus don't eat Beef as the cow is considered a sacred animal, but looking back in the past to find out why reveals that they didn't eat beef as it goes rotten quickly in hot countries. So the original reason was that it was just not practical, but now days we have fridges so that is not an issue anymore, too late as the original reason has been slurred and guess what, it's now religious! The crunch is, do what ya like, don't force your eating habits on anyone, but get a balanced diet. Simple really!

Wow yeah, Afterdark was on windows too. But still, Screen Antics has me gripped after all these years, I just saw Johnny eating boots :)

Well you just met a real live one :P Looking forward to the recipe, any hints what it is? P.S. I might as well post the URL, it's HERE, only a few things there so far but it will develop with time.

Personally I don't find computers too advanced, but then it's my job! I was there at the start, before DOS and CPM, Basic graphics, the age of game and watch and the fall of Troy, erk mayby not the Troy bit. I loved DOS, and could batch program faster than Freddy Fudpucker on acid. I saw the birth of the WIMP (Windows Icons Mice & Peripherals), which is what we now call the GUI (Graphic User Interface). Not forgetting WYSIWYG in word processors, which the Amiga was in it's day, streets ahead of the PC. The more complex the system, the more interesting I find it, and the more there is to learn. I'm a puzzle solver! I love working things out and getting them to do what I want them to do. I was inspired by someone called Leon who was a student at my Uni. He would hack anything, he even hacked our drinks machine and figured out how to get sugar in the oxtail soup! I bet he's some system admin now making a fortune, I should have bagged that guy LOL. In answer to the threads question: No, computers are no more complex than they were 20 years ago. You may forget at how annoying it was getting a game to run in a DOS environment. You had to set the Blaster Env Variables, configure Expanded or Extended RAM and setup the game to access your hardware such as BASE I/O and IRQ for your sound card, and every game was different. What a nice bunch of batch files we had in those days LOL.

Hi folks, I love to cook, and am fed up of not remembering all those recipes people have told me. Being a coding kinda girl I decided to write a digital cookery book. But as usual I got side tracked and it never happened. Well the other day I saw my laptop sitting there in it's bag, not been used in ages, and thought I could put that in the kitchen (it has wireless) and use that as a digital cookery book. Overkill? Maybe. Awesomely kewl? My boyfriend thinks so :). All that was missing was the software to run it! So I have put up a webspace called Recipe using Joomla so I can add recipes from anywhere that has an internet connection. Why am I telling you this? Well I was wondering if any of you had any recipes you would care to share with me? If you have then please post them here, If I like the sound of them I will definitely give em a go.

Thought I would share this one with you all.... For those of you who remember the days of Windows 3.11, well there was a free screen saver released by a company called Sierra called "Screen Antics". I had totally forgotten about this gem and OMG someone has ported it so it runs on XP and Vista! So what is Screen Antics? Also known as Johnny Castaway, It's a little guy on a desert island, and his life day to day. He gets up to all sorts of things, even falls in love with a mermaid and goes water skiing with a shark. It will take you forever to see everything that happens to him as he builds the raft on the side of the island. Here's a snapshot of it in action: And here's the Screen Antics Webpage: LINK. Have fun, Clare.

I can chat if you like, PM me.

On my side, usually cuddling a pillow, a fluffy teddy bear, or my boyfriend. I can't sleep on my back.

You still don't get it, TS's don't become TS, they are born that way. It is in no way a life choice. No real TS wants this to happen to them, and if there was a way to change the gender of the brain to match the body then that would obviously be a better solution than changing ones physical makeup to match the brain, but as yet that's impossible, you cannot change the brain.

Stick my knickers on my head and talk in a silly Indian accent.

What has nobility got to do with it? I am saying for some people it is the RIGHT thing to do! The alternative is generally suicide, and I am deadly serious about that. I just think it's unnecessary to call a transsexual a brave person for getting an operation. Don't be silly, I was not referring to the surgery alone, you have absolutely no idea do you. And thanks to ignorance like this is what creates all the stigma. Do you honestly think that it's a case of a little operation and hey presto you're a girl? jeez!

What has nobility got to do with it? I am saying for some people it is the RIGHT thing to do! The alternative is generally suicide, and I am deadly serious about that.

It's attitudes like that, that makes it oh the more difficult for my friend. And yes there is physical a difference between female and male brains, specifically the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) in the hypothalamus, it's larger in males. And guess what, the BST in male to female TS's match that of a female. And this test has also been done on TSs that have never had HRT, so it's not the effects of Hormones, it's from birth. Please update your own personal homophobia model or at least try to learn a little and be more accepting. I will bet my left arm that all the TS's out there that don't end up dead through suicide and actually make it out the other end happy are not only happier in their life than you are, they are also much braver than you or I ever will be.

I don't think god is an entity of any kind. I think God was originally something that us as humans made up because at the time we were not advanced enough to explain our world and its creation. An all seeing/knowing/powerful being known as "God" was the simplest way to explain it all, and to some it still is! It's a bit like Heaven, we are the only species on the planet that knows we are one day going to die, and we make up all sorts of theories about the afterlife or heaven as I think it would literally drive us mad thinking about our own death and the prospect of just simply blinking out of existence into nothing. Saying all the above, God to me is love, hate, evil, good and the compassion that can be found in all of us, including animals and inanimate objects. It's much more than personal relationships as I feel it's the whole fabric of the connections we form with everything around us. Call it what you will, God, The Force (yes, that's a good a name for it as anything), it's an interesting subject!

Okay, I really need to throw in my 10c worth on this subject. First of all, you really should know the facts about real transsexual people (Not the transvestite cross dressing weirdos you see on Springer). TS people are born with something called Gender Dysphoria, it basically means some or all of the brain is of opposite gender to their physical body. This condition has actually been proven as they have dissected the brains of TS's after death and found the brains to match that of the gender they claimed they were (A section of the hypothalamus is a different in men and women). If someone claims they are TS they have to go through one heck of a lot of hoops before they have surgery, regular visits to a Psychologist, 2 years living as the opposite gender, Hormone replacement therapy, and they need the opinion of two consultant psychologists before any surgery is allowed. And I can tell you all of that isn't easy. Also the surgery isn't exactly a breeze, possible complications and it can be quite dangerous. Nobody would go through all the physical pain, mental anguish and life changes unless it was absolutely the ONLY option left to them. I know all the above as one of my best friends is TS, I was there and helped her through it all so I have experience of what she had to endure. So, should she have gone ahead and was surgery the best option for her? lets sum up her life before and after: Before She was totally unhappy. Attemted suicide. Constantly crying. Introverted, closed off from the world. Drinking to excess, she said she was trying to kill herself through alcohol. Her job was suffering to the extent of employers going through motions to have her dismissed. She referred to "That THING" between her legs, with total disgust, as if it was an alien in origin. After What a change, amazingly happy. Always smiling, always chatty. Her employers kept her on and now she is a valued member of staff. Only drinks sociably. She's such a lovely person to have around. The above cannot really show 100% what a change surgery made to her life. Someone who you would class as manically depressive and in a state of suicide into someone who is constantly happy, so the question again: Should she have gone ahead and was surgery the best option for her? Absolutely YES. I do believe that everyone is different and each case should be taken individually. I get the impression that there are true TS's and people who just think they are TS and can be happy without surgery. But for my friend, to me she is proof that this is a very real condition and that her hell has passed. Reading through this forum thread I have seen something, should a TS girl be allowed to take part in a beauty pageant? Well yes of course, she only corrected a birth defect. Here's an analogy: If someone was born without the use of their legs, and one day a surgeon developed a technique to fix the problem. Should they be allowed to run in the Olympics with all the people who were born able to walk and run? Well yes obviously, nobody will have any problems with that, in fact I will take a guess that people would say things like "Wow, well done you did really well!". But a TS taking part in a beauty contest? Well as far as I can tell it's because it is to do with sex, if you can just get past the homophobia you will see that she's just a girl like any other. Please don't say something stupid like "Well if she can't have children then she isn't female". What about women who were born with a defect to the ovaries or womb. One of my friends at school never had a period because of such, it devastated her to find out she will never be able to have children, but she is still female. People who have a problem with TS's are the ones who need to update their views and get over the homophobia. You really know nothing of what TS's have to go endure and if you had any idea, you would be praising them for going through it all. My friend is much braver than everyone I know, I don't think I would have made it if I had been in her situation. One last thing before I sign off, not all male to female TS's fancy men you know, some fancy women and they would be classed as lesbians. Sexual preference and gender are not connected. Ask any lesbian if they would prefer to be a man and they would probably say "Definately not!" :D. Thanks for reading, Clare.

Take them apart and clean the contacts, it's probably just dust.

Here's some I would love to see: Shark lassoing. Drunk javelin throwing. Monkey tennis. 100 meter sprint through the mine field. Hurdle Gurning. Jumping straight up. Underwater Tiddlywinks. Standing completely still in the lion cage. Blowing out the Olympic torch. Kicking your own [wagon]. Pointing interestingly at something. Lard juggling. The wall of death on unicycles.