Across the pond

The mighty nature God must have been looking over my shoulder while I wrote the previous blog. She drummed on the roof of my bungalow half an hour after I had finished with some of his hail stones. And, as if to demonstrate her, super-human powers, she kept the sun shining, melting the stones as they hit the roof.

Not only that she messed around with my computer connections to try and stop me posting the story to the web. The screen told me that the computer could not find a connection to the internet.

I checked all the connections at the computer. All firm and fast. I got up the carpet to check the connection to the wire that leads to the socket in the hall. Equally firm and fast. I tried a phone in the last link before my computer. It worked OK.

So by now I decided that it must be the wicked Lord of Sky, Rupert Murdoch. The Sky server must be down, breaking under the load of serving the millions of customers who have signed up for its seductive package, thereby swelling the profits of Murdoch plc.

I was about to ring the Sky help line, when I remembered the First Law of Computing.

‘If a program stops working, and you cannot find the cause, turn everything off at the mains. Count from one to ten. Then restart the computer.’

This law has no basis in science that I know of. It derives from ‘trial and error’. Based on my own experience on the humble Amstrad PCW, which was the greatest achievment of Alan Sugar, and was the first personal computer that enabled the poorest Brits, not only to replace their typewriiters but to get on to the net. What a shame he now barks at people on the telly instructing them on how to make as much money as possible.

Many computer techies I have known also subscribe to this law. It seems to work just as well in the age of Vista, Google, and MySpace as it did in the days of CPM and the Amstrad PCW.

So if you get an error message on your computer. Remember the First Law. And remember the God of Trial and Error.

Test your eyesight. Can you spot Portland Bill?